Hey there,
it’s me again. Maybe some of you remember my last few entries some time ago.
Ever since then I started to study Japanese every single day nonstop with no exception at all, although it’s really hard as I have a full-time job. (As you might know I work as English teacher in Japan)
Anyway I’m only progressing very slowly because I don’t have as much time as I want to have. I have several questions for you guys and I hope you can help me a little bit.
First of all is there anyone here in this community that has / had to stuy while having a full-time job. How was/ is it going? Any hints for “timeboxing” / “timemanagement”.
I don’t have to use the subway, bus or anything to go to work, so no time to study there.
I’ll tell you what I’m doing right now and you tell me what you think about it. If that’s a good stragedy, if I should skip one thing or another and rather stick to some other method etc.
Right now after getting up, I eat breakfast and then usually start to study right away. My working hours are from 2pm-10pm, so I only have time BEFORE I go to work.
What I do then is working with a textbook that I’ve brought from Germany and which I used when I was still in university. It’s very basic stuff, but I want to get down the basics properly before I go on (and start to prepare for 2kyu) – that goes especially for grammar!
So I’m reading the current lesson’s text. Add the new vocab to my flashcard program (currently using Anki and I love it). Sometimes I add whole sentences, especially when I wanna memorize the use of particles, but most of the time it’s only isolated words. Then I work on the grammar, add the grammar to my flashcard program as well with everything there is to know and sample sentences. Then I get my “Basic Japanese Grammar dictionary”, look up the grammar and add more information to the flashcards. After that I do the exercises in my textbook. For this I write everything down in my notebook, so I have writing practice, too. I realized that it boosted my writing skills quite a bit. Now I actually wanna study how to write Kanji as well (so far I only can write some basic ones, whereas I can read over 350 by now).
I also have bought the Rabbit thingie kanji flashcards for JLPT4 and 3. I’m reviewing these and after that adding them to my flashcard program. Actually I use 2 different sets for this:
One set only for the kanji where I write down the meaning, stroke number, radical, kun and onyomi.
Second set has quite a few different compounds with that kanji in it.
So I have one pile with kanji only and one pile with vocab/compounds. I’m going to make sets for each JLPT level this way. (which will take forever, but oh well …)
Then whenever I pick up words at work, by watching a drama/movie I add it to a “random” flashcard set which is for vocabs I just picked up by chance.
Whenever I have some free time at work, I start Anki and study vocab and kanji or do some of the exercises in my textbook.
From time to time I exchange e-mails with Japanese native speakers or use mixi.
When I come home from work I usually watch Japanese stuff (anime/jdrama/variety shows), but usually with subs only!
When I go to bed I usually review 5 kanjis and then read some doujinshi.
That’s about it. What do you think?
There is no language school in my village, but a volunteer service. You can get your own Japanese teacher there and practice with him/her. I don’t think that will help me much at my current level though. Maybe once I got my basics down.
As for studying kanji. It’s really hard to remember the ones with a lot of strokes. At some point they all look similar to me (not the JLPT3 and 4 ones, but when I study vocab, I try to memorize the kanji as well …). Do you have any hints or tricks to study them? I know about Heisig of course ….. or using radicals, but any specific method that helps/helped you is interesting for me right now!
For vocab I’ve read about people who never ever study isolated words, but only whole sentences instead. And not even how to translate those sentences, but just looking at them and maybe study how to write the sentence. I don’t know about that.
Today I found a pretty useful book at work. It’s for Japanese elementary school kids (and young middle schoolers) that want to study English, but the words and especially the sample sentences are very good and daily life style. My textbooks uses a lot of words I’ll never use anyway (economic related stuff etc.)
So I’m going to work with this book for a while, add the vocab and sample sentences to my flashcard program and study these. I especially like that they write down the particle that is usually used with the verbs etc. And with this I can be sure that it’s CORRECT Japanese! (For anybody that is curious: it’s an Eiken 英検test book).
Up till now I really had problems memorizing a lot of vocab. Some words sound soooo similar and are sooo different from any European language (I have the feeling that every second word ends with “shou/jou” GAH!). So maybe studying isolated words is not the right way after all?
I mean … most of the vocab I know now, I didn’t study, but just KNOW because I’ve heard them 100 times thanks to watching anime, jdramas for over 10 years now.
Once I’m through with my current textbooks and the basics, which will get me past 3kyu level, I’m not sure how to go on from there. Are there any advanced textbooks that might work well while preparing for 2kyu?
Generally I’m not a very patient person and to think that I actually was interested in learning Japanese since 1998 and started to study seriously in 2002 (but with tooooooons of breaks in between because of graduation projects, exams etc.), I’m still at the lowest beginner level. I want to be able to at least read and understand quite a lot of my manga or things like that. I know, I know, … but I guess you know what I want to say.
Anyway that was long. I’m sorry and I’m thankful for any tiny kind of help you can offer me!
よろしくお願いします！♪
Current Mood: 
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excited
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