Monthly Archives: September 2013

Sep 24 2013
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教育についての記事です

test今朝、買い物して、掃除をして、教育について長い記事を読みました。特に、お祖母さんの経験についての記事でした。お祖母さんは、明治時代に生まれました。幼い頃から／子供の頃から、いろいろな家で働かされていたので、学校の授業にあまり出席しませんでした。だから長い間、字を読んだり書いたりできませんでした。でも、お祖母さんが字を習おうと思った時／お祖母さんが勉強をしようと思った時、もう60才でした。もうゆっくりと休むことができるのに、お祖母さんは独学することにしました。毎日字を、1つ1つ覚えていきました。最初、ひらがなを全部覚えました。それから、かたかな、漢字と続けていきました。お祖母さんの記事について読んだことは、励みになりました。

This morning I did the shopping, cleaned and read a long article about education. In particular, the article was about a grandmother’s experiences. The grandmother was born during the Meji era.  As  from a young child she had to move to many different houses, she often didn’t attend classes in school. Therefore, for a long time she couldn’t read and write. But, when the old woman thought she would like to learn, she was already sixty years old. Nonetheless, as she still had a lot of free time, the grandmother decided to teach herself. Every day she would memorise the characters one by one. Firstly she learned the entirety of Hiragana characters followed by Katakana and then continued with Kanji. I have become inspired by reading about the grandmother’s dedication.
Sep 21 2013

Hurdle – Speaking

On a regular basis I always listen to the YouTube videos by Steve Kaufman. I think since joining his site, LingQ.com, my skills, confidence and enthusiasm for language learning has really improved. It’s not that I wasn’t enthusiastic before but rather that my studies have shifted from drill books to a fully immersion in the language. I’m reading articles/conversations for about an hour a day and listening to the audio for at least two hours. There is a lot more to LingQ than this but my blog today is really about Steve’s video on speaking and listening. Steve talks a great deal about listening comprehension as a priority and speaking being less of one. The thing I picked up on was his two hours of conversations a week. I don’t do any and haven’t for years. Speaking is my biggest problem not just because it’s hard to do (I think you can throw a stone at Japanese or Chinese and find something which is hard to do) but mfriendsore because I become anxious at doing it. Well, this week I decided to take a new approach.
Talking to myself. 🙂
Using Audacity I started the week only managing about nine minutes of Japanese – though this was predominantly peppered with ers and ums. By the end of the week I managed to do about fourteen minutes. After each recording I would listen and make notes as to the problems I had and then went about solving them. This whole process not only showed me the grammatical patterns I was using regularly but also gave me more confidence in solving problems. In fact, after over five years of doing Japanese I did my first Skype conversation today! Onwards and upwards.

Links:
Sep 17 2013

Vocabulary

I’ve recently read an article about vocabulary on lingoholic.com – a really useful and encouraging website to aid language learning. I’ll link the full article at the bottom of this post but in essence I’m interested in trialling the methods outlined. Some of them don’t automatically appeal but I’m intrigued by how others have adapted them to make them more enjoyable. I’m going to try to do that as well. So, for two months I’m going to set 15-20mins aside for a task. I’m not sure how motivated I’ll feel throughout the whole process but I am particularly drawn to learning vocabulary from a contextual perspective as I’ve recently seen this method in a couple of Chinese textbooks and wondered about the success of such approaches. Anyway, here are the methods I’m going to try.

 
1. GoldList MethodImage
Materials: 
New notebook
Pencil
Method:
Comfortable setting
Date the page
Left – Language being learned (I’m going to use Japanese)
Right – native language (English for me)
25 words
Write out vocabulary, reading it out aloud (20mins) followed by a 10min break.
No attempt to memorize 
Activity is as regular as I like (every day, every month etc) but in a single day not to do any more than ten sessions.
Two weeks later read through the list – 30% should be retained. Discard the words I know and write the remaining 17 words on the same sheet as the original 
Repeat this distillation process ten times with a two week break in between each time.
 
What I will do
I’ll be using my N3 word list and will even attempt to adapt this with a three column method – Kanji, Kana, English. I’ve seen a Youtube clip of someone using this same method with successully with Mandarin so I’m willing to try the same.
 
 
 
2. Luca Lampariello’s Natural Approach to Remembering Words
Learning through context using back-and-forth translation exercises.Image
Learn through context by reading as much as possible and being engaged (actually interested) in what is being learned.
A few days later go through translations and try to translate them back to the target language.
 
On Lingholic.com some people have responded to this method by offering their adaptations of its principles. One way is to watch films or read books that they are already familiar with in their own language before tackling the target language version
 
What I will do
Japanese: ‘Monster’ manga volume 1, ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’. This will be interesting as I really want to read these texts anyway but in particular I’m wondering if reading ‘Monster’ will assist me (hinder me?) in my Kanji learning.
Chinese: Use my podcast resources for this. Nice short sentences with useful translations and consolidating audio as well. Looking forward to this as I already spend time enjoying these podcasts, particularly with shadowing, so it will bit fun to do another activity with them. 
 
 
 
Full article of vocabulary acquisition:
See also:
 
 
 
Sep 8 2013

漫画

最近、NHKで東京の大手出版社について記事を読みました。NHKによると、そのビルの建て替えを前に人気漫画家が壁や窓にイラストを描きました。そして8月２４日と25日一般公開されることになったそうです。そうして、そのイラストは「豪華な落書き」と呼ばれています。この表現は矛盾語法のようですよ。記事を読んで聞いたあとで、このビルを見に行きたくなりました。私はいつも日本語と英語両方で漫画を読みます。特に浦沢さんの漫画を読むことが好きです。それから、漫画を描いた壁に友達という主人公がありました。もしあなたが「20th Century Boys」を読んだことがあったら、彼がその主人公を選んだというこを面白いと思うかもしません。。。ほれは彼からメッセージなのでしょうか彼か。とにかく、ビデオを見ると、この壁も窓も素晴らしそうです。これまで、もう1日1000人以上の人がこのビルに訪れました。ですから、このビルが取り壊されるのは悲しいです。

Recently I read an article at NHK about a Tokyo publishing company. According to NHK, before the building is demolished famous manga artists drew their illustrations on the walls and windows. In fact, it is said that on the 24th and 25th of this month it will be open to the public. Also the illustrations are called ‘Magnificent Scrawl’. The name seems like an oxymoron. After reading and listening to the article, I really wanted to go and see the building. I always read manga both in English and Japanese. Particularly, I enjoy reading Urusawa’s manga. On the wall is one of his characters called ‘Friend’. If you have read ’20th Century Boys’, you might think that it is interesting that he chose this character. Is this a message from him? Anyway, when you watch the video you’ll see that the walls and windows are amazing. Up until now already in one day over a thousand people have visited the building. Therefore it is really sad that they are going to demolish it.

Related articles
Sep 2 2013

Chinese – ‘New Practical Reader’ (update 1)

books

Well it’s been at least two weeks since I started the traditional route with Chinese, i.e. the textbook approach. I recently forwarded a couple of questions to ask Benny Lewis just how much SRS he does and how often he uses grammar books. In addition, I also asked about his thoughts on shadowing. I will do a separate post on shadowing and Benny’s response. For the moment, though, I ‘m just going to do a short review of the resources I’ve been using recently. In particular, I think the New Practical Reader textbook and workbook are great. The books ‘teach’ through listening, reading and writing (pinyin and Hanzi). As a package both books can take a great deal of time to get through a chapter. For me I’m sometimes taking more than a day because I want to use the next as an active review – have I just been copying sentences or do I ‘understand’ what I’ve been writing?

What do you get from the textbook?
Listening – Not just to the script but also to tones with some supportive comments on how they are produced. I still feel that the McGraw ‘Pronunciation’ book excels in this. Nonetheless, still the textbook and workbook offers invaluable listening practice and consistently introduces new things (e.g. Half third tone).
Reading & Listening – scripts that support the grammar and vocabulary covered. At the moment the grammar isn’t burdensome. I don’t find I’m sat there trying to figure out structures and decipher linguistic jargon. Instead a few things are covered simply but are consistently reinforced through the texts. It’s almost as if I’m figuring it out rather than I’m passively copying or making notes.
Writing – Hanzi is introduced immediately. In particularly the characters used in the texts are reinforced through the writing practice which is particularly supported in the workbook. Other writing includes completing dialogues which is really good for pinyin and highlighting any pronunciation problems.
I’m only a few lessons in at the moment but it is going well. That said, I am working much more on total immersion in the language (largely through listening and reading of podcasts). This way on a day-to-day basis I’m not trying to figure every grammatical construct but actually becoming familiar with grammar by simply being immersed in regularly. Slowly I’m beginning to see how certain things go together and when I pick up the grammar books this adds clarity to something I’d already noticed. Let’s see how it goes for the next two months.
Next post: Shadowing