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… what you’re currently doing when it comes to learning Japanese is all wrong, and will not get you anywhere? I know if I just keep at learning vocab and grammar there’s no way I’m not going to get better eventually, but something in my head keeps telling me I’m not doing it right and it’s all wasted effort.
Oh, I’m not going to stop, but I’ve dropped so many things I tried to learn because I had the persisiting feeling that I’m doing it wrong and it won’t lead anywhere, yet I don’t know how to do it right. And I’d rather not do it at all, than waste so much time and energy. So I’m afraid one day my resolve is going to crumble and I’ll truly waste all the time I’ve put in Japanese so far. I want to prevent it, and thus, want to hear your advice :p
Depending on how active you already are on lang-8 I would suggest doing entries often. It will let you know what you are doing wrong, and is a huge morale booster(for me) as I don’t want to make the same mistake in the next entry as I have just done.
I havn’t really been posting many entries myself(only 4 :/), but that is how I feel with posting on lang-8. I want to improve every time I do a post, and at the same time you can meet some nice people :)
Don’t know if that helped, but hope it is of use.^I know that article, but thanks for reminding me it exists :p I’m hardly an intermediate learner, but I suppose that applies to me just as well. I should just bookmark it and read it whenever I feel like stopping.
@Mark: I don’t feel that I know enough to make an entry beyond a few disjointed sentences… I’m not going to wait until God knows when, but just until I know more vocab, and since I’m learning new words every day, that should come soon.
I wish I could remember more from the time when I could be considered a beginner/intermediate learner in English. It would’ve helped greatly. Except, I didn’t learn English through any conscious effort, just classes at school and the internet. Never had to study grammar or vocabulary lists. But it also took a very long time to learn this way :p
＠Irmoony, what is your native language? Your english is more than excellent… how long did it take?
irmoony – I feel that way. When I was in Seattle last week, I visited a Japanese bookstore. I was really excited to buy manga but couldn’t find everything I was looking for. Looking at the shelves and shelves of nothing but Japanese, I felt completely lost. I’ve been studying over a year but sometimes wonder if I’m going about it all wrong and that’s why I still can’t understand much when looking at raw Japanese materials/books/articles/television. I fare much better with lesson material, but give me native material and I’m lost.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much advice to offer other than don’t give up completely. Just wanted to let you know that there are others out there who feel the same way!
Cassandra
“I fare much better with lesson material, but give me native material and I’m lost.”
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＾Does that qualify as spam?
AnonymousMissing as a person qualifies as spam
@Armando – my native language is Polish. I’ve been learning English as a school subject for about 9 or 10 years now, it’s hard to tell when exactly I started. But the fact English is about everywhere nowadays made learning it a lot easier. But believe me, my English isn’t really excellent. On the internet I can mark up what I don’t know with chatspeak and emotes, hard to do in an actual conversation :p Not to mention if you start talking about a subject I’m not familiar with, I’ll quickly find myself at a complete loss of words. And I keep messing up past tenses. But I tell myself that as long as people understand me, it’s fine.
I do have the habit of thinking in English most of the time, writing stuff in English whenever it doesn’t have to be in my native language, and weirdest of all, talking to myself in English – to the point I can often thing of phrases in English faster than ones in Polish. It’s a bit scary, to be honest xD
Lol @ Missing.
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
irmoony.
@Cassandra: In terms of language learning, 1 year is a really short time. If you can’t understand much native material yet, don’t worry; it’s not uncommon :) Find something written in Japanese, like a book, and just take it sentence by sentence. Spend all day on the one sentence if you have to, deconstructing it, looking up the words and grammar you don’t know. Keep learning vocab and grammar separately by all means (that’s exactly what I’m doing), but you can’t just expect to pick up a manga and read it straight off without practice first :) The more you try to read, the better you’ll get (even if you can barely read a line at first).
That’s probably not worded the best.Michael – I bought three volumes of Bakuman at the Seattle bookstore. ;) I also bought a kid’s magazine and a beginner’s sewing book, all in Japanese. The sewing book will be interesting because first I’ll have to understand the directions and then complete the sewing projects. Ha! That’ll take awhile.
Missing’s advice of immersion is helpful but not. I try to listen to Japanese stuff in the background when I work around the house but eventually I start tuning it out. Does it really help hearing a ton of Japanese if you don’t understand anything?
I second MisterM2402′s comment. I have a few elementary books that I just deconstruct and play around with. I am lucky to have a couple of Japanese co-workers whom I can share my bad Japanese with. But the best thing I can say is don’t give up. Do Not. That attitude is the worst thing you can have. Scientifically, a person that keeps learning day in and day out will eventually get it! But you have to stretch your skill set a bit as well. If you know that 猫 means cat. Then the next step is to practice adding a verb to affect that stinky 猫. When you’ve gotten to the point of basic sentence creating, start looking at books which show Japanese expressions, these books will help you figure out all those little filler words and expressions that you want to understand.
Grammatically, Japanese is not hard, DO NOT, DO NOT, tell yourself it’s impossible. S + O + V / S & O can jump places, with the proper particle usage of course, but really nail that verb always being at the end.
Lastly, I don’t know… just stay motivated!
~ fv
AnonymousHearing Japanese you don’t understand won’t do anything for your Japanese ability. It’ll get you used to it, that’s the extent of it. Listening to Japanese you do understand however improves you 10x fold.
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This reply was modified 13 years ago by
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