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Greetings!
TL:DR – At what point should I branch my studies out to other sites to avoid getting too textbook focused?
I’ve been happily studying along on Textfugu and moving at a pretty comfortable pace. I’m about finished with Season 3 and starting to wonder if my education is a little too “Textbook/reading” focused.
What I mean is I’m doing a good job picking up most of the grammar and vocabulary, however when I’m reading example sentences I’ll quickly know the meaning/translation, but it’ll take me a long time to actually say the Japanese. I’m also horrible at recognizing speech and getting the words they are saying from it. I’ve been trying to do some example sentences while looking away from the monitor and clicking play, but without much success. Forming my own sentences is also quite slow.
So here’s my question, should I stop where I’m at and look at other learning sources for awhile to get all of this to stick and then come back? Or maybe this is just normal and I shouldn’t be worried about speaking/hearing anything just yet.
The main reason I like textfugu is that it’s good at explaining the rules. I’ve listened to some things on JapanesePod101 and Livemocha, but without a good foundation of grammar rules it didn’t make a lot of sense. I would wind up coming back to Textfugu to understand what I was trying to listen to or read on another site.
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks.Speaking and listening are generally are the hardest parts to learn.
No, I don’t think you should move off this and come back. Do both, now.
Instead of doing just TF, start practising your listening (and speaking if possible) as well as doing TF.Thanks for the feedback.
Any suggestions on what learning tools/sites I should use? I’ve been looking at JapanesePod101 and Livemocha. I’ll add Lang-8 once I’ve got enough kanji/vocab to actually write something.
Memrise.com is good for learning vocabulary. The Japanese section also has a few audio-only courses for “getting used to Japanese”. They’re neat.
For writing, there’s lang-8, really, unless you also want to start a Japanese journal on WordPress or something.
If you think you can get through one (I can’t; too boring and I already know most of the basic stuff in them) you could get an audio-only course. For that, you’ve got Michel Thomas (British) and Pimsleur (American), as well as Assimil (originally French, but the English version is just as good). Personally I prefer Assimil’s way of teaching; it’s much less boring than the other two, BUT it doesn’t work for everyone and can be really expensive/hard to find unless you, ahem, know where to look. The other two are generally cheaper and much easier to find. I prefer Michel Thomas, but honestly both are just as boring. If you want to use either, listen to the first few lessons of both before you decide what to get.Edit: forgot to mention that Assimil also has a textbook and the audio is used in conjunction with that (it works very well), while MT and Pimsleur are audio-only afaik.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by
嶋家 雷.
Memrise looks pretty neat but the Japanese words are all written in Romaji at the beginning. Does this change to Kanji or Hiragana?
Thanks for your help.
– Ok, just figured it out myself. The site could be really incredible if they had some more advanced Japanese learning material. Hope they will do some more in the near future.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by
kowski. Reason: ---
I’d start Lang-8 now, it’ll be a good means to help you expand your vocabulary – there’s nothing like actual usage.
Any podcasts (heaps of free ones on iTunes) and watch movies, TV shows or anime, whatever takes your fancy.I’m somewhere in season 5 now, and starting to speak to people has been a real rush and really helped keep me motivated and show you in real life scenarios what you need to work on.
My experience/ recommendations:
I travel a lot, often in countries where I don’t speak the language, so I usually try to find a japanese restaurant with japanese speaking waiters/ waitresses and fire up some japanese (possible in almost every city I’ve been to- in germany, south america, montreal, US, spain, etc etc). This was intimidating for me at first, so before that I actually started by trying to find skype partners through lang-8 (usually people that gave good corrections and had slightly better english than my japanese so we would be able to understand each other at least a little if the going got rough). Also intimidating, but basically you just find someone’s skype on their profile, they put it on there for a reason, or post something like “I want to skype!” and if someone sends you their info call them up! It turns out everyone is on there for the same reason, and most people are shy, like everyone, so most people are really glad you took the scary first step of calling a stranger. I also have found language schools that have free ‘meet up and speak japanese days’ (usually with japanese people living in the country to learning english), and Japanese meet-ups in bars and restaurants in plenty of cities. I’m still a beginner, but the point for me is to learn to speak to people so you really have to put yourself out there to make this happen, and it’s the only way it will improve. I have so many times when people use words I ‘know’ from flashcards, but I don’t catch it at first in the conversation. Gotta just keep trying I guess! Ganbatte! Good luck! -
This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by
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