Posts Tagged ‘Language Learning’

Japanese rebirth!

July 15th, 2010

Well for one reason or another I’ve been putting off actively studying Japanese for some time now, I’ve still been reading Japanese when I can whether its over on twitter or on various websites but my study as a whole has taken a nose dive. This has obviously had some side effects, one of the main ones being I’ve forgotten the Japanese meanings for a lot of Kanji I still recognise them and know that in the back of my mind I know what it is and with a little thinking I can usually remember.

Even with the long brake I’ve noticed my Japanese hasn’t really left me its just been relegated to the archives of my mind and just needs a little push to start bringing the knowledge out again. So starting this week I’m going to gradually start adding Japanese study back to my daily routine I’ll start off slow so I can fit it in with my other study’s/interests then over time ramp it up so its back to the old days :) .

Oh I can still read Hiragana/Katakana pretty much as fast as english so all that reading in the past payed off on that front.

DSCF1507
The town I stayed in Portugal, beautiful place

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Korean Language Log 1

January 16th, 2010



Well as I mentioned in a previous post I was going to learn to read Hangul 한굴 this year well days after that post I went ahead and re-learned the Hangul probably took 1-2 days to memorize them all and a little longer to get the pronunciations and irregularity’s correct, still probably not perfect but can read quite well now I just need to speed up.

After getting the taste of Hangul my attention turned to actually wanting to learn Korean itself as I’ve always had an interest in Korea and its culture other than Japanese its by far my next favorite language, so for a while I’m going to switch my attention to learning Korean especially after my long hiatus from Japanese its very daunting to re-start 1700 sentences that haven’t been reviewed for 5 months or so.

Although to not forget my Japanese I’m going to were I can translate my Korean sentences into Japanese and avoid English as much as possible the great thing about Korean for anybody who has studied Japanese is the many similarity between the two languages.

e.g.
저 – jeo = Similar to 私
씨 – ssi = similar to さん Mr, Mrs, Miss
은 / 는 – eun / neun = Topic Marker similar to は
입니다 – nida = similar to です　”to be”
이 / 가 – -i / ga = Subject marker

저는 학생입니다. = I (topic marker) student am a – I am a student

The sentence structure is pretty much the same too as above. Now that I know the writing its just a case of learning the vocab and grammar so should be pretty quick to match my Japanese ability and to pass it, currently the thing I’m finding most difficult is getting the pronunciation correct but that just needs practice.

So I intend to keep these regular logs on my Korean progress and also for a place to list things I’ve learned which will hopefully be beneficial for myself and anybody else that’s interested in or learning Korean.

Oh and one last thing to finish up I’m also going to set a few mini goals (as suggested by Squintox) each time I make a log as a way to keep pushing myself along and as a guide of my progress.

- Finish Beginner series 1 of Korean Class 101 – 5/31
- Add 200 vocab/sentences to Anki – 62/200
- Watch at least 1 Korean movie a week – 0 (3-iron has arrived ^^)
- Listen to more audio 20Mins today so far (still collecting things together for this)

Feel free to follow me over on Twitter – Tibul

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How I Sentence Mine

August 4th, 2009
From My Yaruki

I’ve read and seen many ways that people do there reviews for there sentences, people recommend different things like “you only should pass a sentence if you can read everything” and “you should click hard for every review unless you can read it instantly”. I’ve adapted many of the principles and completely thrown some out depending on what I thought suited and worked best for me.

Now the way I review goes like this,

1) I first look and see if I can read the main word of the sentence (the part I’m wanting to learn) which I usually bold for emphasis.
2) If I can read the word I go onto trying to read the rest of the sentence and try to understand how the word is used in context.
3) If I can read it quickly without much thought it gets an “easy”.
4) If I can only read the word I’m trying to learn and maybe some other bits of the sentence it gets a “Good”.
5) If I struggle to read the word but manage it after some thought it gets a “hard”.
6) Obviously if I don’t understand anything its an “again”

Now here is were I may differ to other people, if I can read the sentence and the word but mispronounce or just miss out on the exact reading and go “haha damn I new it was that” I give it a hard. Really doesn’t help me to fail every card just because of a little mistake if anything it makes me feel down and have less urge to get more done but meh people might disagree and say we should understand it 100% or we might make future errors when speaking etc.

But this is were I disagree again who can speak, read, write there native language 100% without any areas or without picking up bad habbits? So look at it this way if you cant be 100% perfect in your own language how can people expect this from a foreign language?

The advantage is even though you may make little mistakes here and there think how easy it will be to correct this when you have the general knowledge of how something is read/spoken, much better than not knowing the word at all or getting so frustrated that you cant learn it perfectly that it effects your learning in general. It will correct itself in time either via somebody pointing out your mistake or your mind working a way in the background clicks when it realizes its wrong and sticks much more easily than repeated ‘again, again, again” in an SRS.

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Meta skills increase learning power

April 20th, 2009

Recently when I started to learn Hangul I noticed how easy learning another languages characters/alphabet actually is, now a few years ago this would have been a different story before all the meta skills that I’ve picked up along the way while learning Japanese.

In little over a week I’ve learned how to read and write 한굴 and this is with missing days here and there, but if it wasn’t for Anki and the huge amounts of shapes/variations I’ve seen while studying Kanji/Kana I doubt that I would have done it so fast with a 100% retention.

This all comes down to meta skills basically smaller skills that you pick up along the way to learning the main skill that your after e.g. Japanese I’ve picked up how and what an SRS is which basically helps me never forget material and using mnemonics to remember characters, all skills that will potentially stay with me for a life time and will keep on helping me in the future.

Also the other side to it is that in the process of learning another language other languages become easier to learn this comes down to the fact that your brain becomes more used to handling the data that you feed it i.e. this and this make up the structure of a sentences or this this and this make up this shape which forms a Kanji, basically your training your mind to get good at language learning. Thus why a lot of people who know a second language from when there very young find it much easier to learn more languages, they’ve processed so much information giving there brain more ways to just ‘click’ with the information that its given.

To sum up if you have the opportunity to learn new skills then dive in learn all the processes along the way, learn all the techniques to mastering the target skill that your after, as you can guarantee one day you will be glad you did if nothing else it will make you a more rounded individual.

Another great article explaining meta skills can be found here

또봐요

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Internet Language Learning Resources

April 16th, 2009

Thought I would do a quick rundown of some language resources (mostly for Japanese) that have been useful to me and may be useful to you.

Reviewing the Kanji

Without this site I would probably have given up on learning Kanji a long time ago so i owe a lot to it, basically for those who don’t know RevTK is an SRS (Spaced Repetition Software) for people who are using the Remembering the Kanji book and have learned some kanji but would like to not forget them what you need is an SRS like the one at RevTK or anki etc.

RevTK also has other great features such as the ability for users to share and make there own stories and a great forum to boot.

Anki

My Preferred SRS for learning and remembering sentences.

Smart.fm

Previously known as iknow an excellent learning resource for those who have just finished learning the Kanji and are moving onto learning sentences etc I usually use this to first learn the sentence/word then move it over to Anki to keep in long term memory.

Great example sentences with audio and visuals to help you learn and also a great community of people sharing content.

Lang-8

Only signed up to this one recently but really like the idea basically you write in your Journal with the language you are trying to learn and other users correct any mistakes you make and you can do the same for others seems excellent for improving your “putting together your own sentence skills” :D

Read The Kanji

Recently had somebody twitter me this, I’ve only had a quick go and it seems like a good way to help learn the reading for Kanji and also has example sentences for each, you can even use it as an SRS system for learning the different vocab from the JLPT’s

If anybody else has recommendation that you feel should be included in the list please feel free to comment.

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3rd language Korean

April 9th, 2009

Well I recently took it upon myself to add an extra language to my life, through Japanese I’ve become more and more interested in learning languages just love learning new stuff and having a deeper understanding about different languages and cultures really appeals to me.

For a while now I’ve been thinking to myself once I’m fluent in Japanese I’d like to start Korean but why wait that long when I can start now, Its not going to be on the same scale as Japanese I’ll only work on Korean when I fancy a change from the Japanese, Japanese will always be my love.

The great thing I’ve already noticed with Korean is how simple there writing system is with not needing to know Kanji and only 24 characters in there alphabet no wonder they have one of the highest literacy rates on the planet.

After only 2 days I know the majority of 한굴Hangul there alphabet and find it easy to remember probably a direct cause of learning Japanese gave me the meta skill of remembering characters much easier (more on this another day)

Will talk more about Korean over the comings days as I finish learning the 한굴

Now for a quick Japanese stats update.

Deck created: 4.4 months ago
Total number of cards: 1464
Total number of facts: 1464

Card counts
Mature cards: 870 (59.43%)
Young cards: 404 (27.60%)
Unseen cards: 190 (12.98%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 95.7% (600 of 627)
Young cards: 86.7% (9725 of 11221)
First-seen cards: 88.4% (1218 of 1378)

The 1274 seen cards in this deck contain:
767 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 740 of 1945 (38.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 5 of 287 (1.7%).
22 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 70 of 80 (87.5%).
Grade 2: 143 of 160 (89.4%).
Grade 3: 147 of 200 (73.5%).
Grade 4: 112 of 200 (56.0%).
Grade 5: 77 of 185 (41.6%).
Grade 6: 65 of 181 (35.9%).
JuniorHS: 126 of 939 (13.4%).

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Illiteracy – Crave Critisicm!

March 11th, 2009

Ever notice how when you read a lot in your native language your spelling and grammar tend to improve and every time you make a mistake and correct it you less frequently make that mistake again you’ve basically told your subconscious mind that this is correct and how it should be even without actively trying. Most of the time you don’t even need to actively find and correct your mistakes as they will correct themselves the more you see them written correctly in context.

Well the exact same thing will happen in the language your learning if your like me and sometimes misspell a word or miss pronounce it reading and speaking a lot will correct these little niggling issues even if you don’t understand the word your mind will process this in the background on how it should look and feel another great advantage to the sentence method so when you do eventually learn the words meaning there will be much less chance of getting it wrong. So read / listen as much as you can even if you understand very little an article over at alljapaneseallthetime.com explains it in more detail.
Also make sure you crave criticism I know people tend not to like being criticised especially when they are learning something new but its often the only way to quickly correct your mistakes being told what your mistakes are even if its just a simple spelling mistake or miss pronunciation as long as its constructive it can only help so don’t fear criticism crave it!

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Sentence method cause and effect

March 7th, 2009

For the past couple of weeks or so I’ve been mostly concentrating on learning vocabulary and almost completely ignored actively learning grammar which has involved me mining many +1 materials with new vocab words this has lead to an obvious increase in my vocab knowledge which in turn i can understand more from shows and written works than i could a month or so ago.

Now a lot of people may say that oh well you can understand more vocab but do you actually know what it means when used in context well the answer the majority of the time is yes for one all my vocab has been learned in context and without any real effort. I’ve picked up a load of grammar without actively studying it in a long time for example the other day i had a quick look through Japanese In MangaLand and to my surprise i understood a lot of the grammar it was trying to explain and this was from later in the book that I’ve never read, more proof that you don’t have to actively study the grammar to become fluent but I do agree that it can speed up the process although i wouldn’t worry too much about it concentrate more on vocab in context.

Then when you have some spare time or fancy a change go find a good source for grammar I highly recommend Japanese in Mangaland for this as its easy to understand and the manga examples help lots especially for someone like me up untill a few months ago didn’t even know the difference between an adjective and a verb in my own language :P

So to sum up don’t worry too much about not knowing what the conjugation of this and that is or what the gerund form is you’ll pick up a lot without even realising and if your thirst for knowledge increases and you want to know more ‘then’ go find some grammar explanations.

Anki stats update note: only issue with manually adding every sentences its taking forever to read 2000 lol really should have just imported all 2000 iknow sentences.

Deck created: 3.3 months ago
Total number of cards: 1115

Card counts
Mature cards: 560 (50.22%)
Young cards: 540 (48.43%)
Unseen cards: 15 (1.35%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 96.4% (244 of 253)
Young cards: 85.4% (7691 of 9005)
First-seen cards: 86.7% (1042 of 1202)

The 1100 seen cards in this deck contain:

  • 748 total unique kanji.
  • Jouyou: 722 of 1945 (37.1%).
  • Jinmeiyou: 5 of 287 (1.7%).
  • 21 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

  • Grade 1: 69 of 80 (86.3%).
  • Grade 2: 143 of 160 (89.4%).
  • Grade 3: 146 of 200 (73.0%).
  • Grade 4: 109 of 200 (54.5%).
  • Grade 5: 74 of 185 (40.0%).
  • Grade 6: 62 of 181 (34.3%).
  • JuniorHS: 119 of 939 (12.7%).

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language learning myths

March 4th, 2009

Recently I’ve been thinking back to before I really started learning Japanese to a time when I thought that to learn a language you needed to be really smart or have it forced down your throat from a young age and also that other huge myth that a large amount of people (maybe the majority) still believe that you need to live in the country of the target language to reach any sort of fluency which i now know to be completly false and so does a growing number of language learners just checkout some more of the blogs on my blog list for some good examples.

Why you ‘DON’T’ need to live in the country of your target language to be fluent you have so much more resources at your disposal these day if you think the advantage to another country is that you will be surrounded by people talking in L2 then just get some headphones and audio and have this playing in your ear its exactly the same if you think “oh well there is newspapers and tv etc” erm well you can find all these on the internet for free so in this day and age there is no excuse for the ‘you have to be living in the country’ tiss a complete myth.
The old teachers and classes myth another potential if not possible harmfull waste of time is taking a course in the language some people may argue that you need somebody to explain things to you or that they learn better when somebody is telling them directly what to do. The only issue is that half the time the teacher wants you to feel good about yourself so they will only teach you how to say things whether you can understand the response is another story also if your learning something like Japanese you probably wont even start learning the Kanji for atleast a year and even then only a few as there is a misconception that the Kanji are extremly difficulty which is false really if you want to obtain fluency you need to be learning the Kanji from day one I recommend like so many others that you get a hold of Remembering the Kanji by James W. Heisig and you can learn all the 2046 jouyou Kanji in a few months.
Also in a lot of cases people who take classes will tend to go slower at learning the language unless they learn a lot in there own time put it this way the person who self studys everyday of the week x amount of time will be much further ahead than somebody who only does 1-2 days a week of classes and for the people that say they learn better when somebody is telling them are you sure that its not just a motivational thing? As when in a class your forced to listen/learn but at home its easy to be distracted by the next show on TV unless you keep motivated
So really there is no excuse anymore for not learning a language you have a great interest in as long as your motivated don’t get me wrong it will still take time but thats only down to how much time you can spend learning each day if you fit something from the language into your day to day life each and every day and still keep up your interest and thirst for more knowledge you will learn in no time. You have all the tools you need on the ‘internet’ get yourself an SRS (I use anki) so you never forget anything again and will speed up the process immensley even if you stop studying new things for weeks you won’t forget anything you’ve learned so far as long as you keep up with your daily reps.

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