shifting goalposts
August 9th, 2005 by heather(update: I just noticed that over at Mike Smeen at Learn Japanese was having the same thoughts about goals.)
when i began, my goal was to dabble in learning japanese, to aim low, and get some “survival japanese”. as i wrote in as i wrote in my profile, i was thinking of effective phrases i could say to get fed, watered and directed to proper locations.
today, i was looking at language schools for studying japanese, and saw a list of proficiency levels. here, half way down the pageis their list. i’d like to get elementary-level, this is how they describe this:
- has grasp of simple sentence structures
- has grasp of basic grammar
- has basic speaking and listening comprehension skill
- is able to recognize and produce approximately 100 Hiragana / Katakana / Kanji in context
- have a vocabulary of approximately 800 words
not sure if that’s possible in 6 months, but i feel very encouraged with the progress i’m making, and also the help i received on this journal. thanks people for visiting and helping!
i’ve opened a can of worms. i spent time thinking about the ‘right way’ to study. you can’t learn language by memorizing phrases, duh. you need to know how to make sentences all by yourself. and becoming familiar with hiragana is immensly satisfying. (i find myself collecting labels with japanese on them to try and trying to sound things out, like some kind of code-breaker; and guessing how to spell japanese loan words like origami, etc).
i have all the basic hiragana memorized now. next i’ll do the voiced sounds and katakana. just need to get some more index cards! i also desperately need a dictionary with furigana so i can figure out if my guessed spellings are correct.
i think i need to start making my own little vocabulary dictionary here so i can be sure what i’ve collected.
and i need to be clear about my goals, and my time commitment now that i have to get back to work tomorrow!
August 9th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
The dictionary I have and recommend is “The Oxford Starter Japanese Dictionary”. For each word, there is a furigana version and tha kanji version (if there is a kanji for the word. And no romanji, which is a good thing.
August 10th, 2005 at 11:49 am
The “right” way — I know what you mean! Since I’m self-taught, I have some pretty bad gaps in my knowledge. There are words I hear/know but don’t read/know, words I read/know but can’t pronounce, buckets of words I can read but not write because I don’t have the kanji for them… Sometimes I think that with a more organized course of study, I would not have these problems.
I try to work on what is most frustrating me at the moment. Right now, vocabulary is the problem, particularly linking up kanji compounds with sound-and-meaning… so I’m making flashcards for that.
Resources: I’m using the MIT quicktime movies (http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/ji/kuten/index.html) for how to write the characters properly. Not all kanji listed have movies, but most of ‘em do.
For vocabulary, I’m pulling words from the JLPT 4 list because they’re words that at least someone thinks are useful for beginning students of the language. I got my list here: http://www.manythings.org/japanese/jlpt/
August 12th, 2005 at 9:05 am
Heather,
That all seems right, and good luck! I’d recommend the Oxford Starter Japanese Dictionary, which has both hiragana/katakana and kanji.
Now you’re back at work, be sure to keep posting!
David
August 13th, 2005 at 3:22 am
Recently I’ve temporarily diverted my focus from learning japanese to learning all the ways to enable japanese input in linux and bsd. I have my reasons for wanting to do this.
One goal I have is to make writing japanese on my PC as easy as it is on my phone. But my phone uses a super predictive input method that practically leads me along. If I hit the [1] key on my phone twice to produce: い
the completion are is already offering me the following words:
今 家 います 行き いしよう いつも １ １－番 いや
Suppose I choose 今 ＝いま meaning ‘now’
then it instantly, without me having to even start typing another syllable, provides me a list of words and particles that commonly follow directly after 今. And if I choose one of those, it continues.
What one realizes quickly is how incredibly narrow the range of things are that one normally has to say when writing an email from your phone. The phone pretty much always knows what I was planning on saying.