Boy, have I been busy. This is going to be a HUGE update, because there is a LOT that has happened since mid-April.
SPRING BREAKI did a bunch of traveling over spring break. First destination? Berlin! This was my first time ever speaking [flag=]de[/flag], and things went quite well! I was able to successfully order food (
Ich nehme das 29, aber ohne Tomatensauce bitte - the first German sentence I ever spoke to someone), answer follow-up questions, and ask for prices. The best part was that people seemed to think I actually spoke German! No one switched to English on me - whereas with French, a language that I allegedly speak, I get switched on maybe 70% of the time. And ironically enough, I felt more at ease ordering in German than in French. I think my confidence in a language is directly related to how easy I find the pronunciation, and I find German pronunciation infinitely easier than French.
I fell HOPELESSLY IN LOVE with Berlin - so much that I have decided I want to move there ASAP after graduation!! This is not an exaggeration - I am 100% set on this! I'm also considering joining my school's German Club in the fall, and I'm looking into grad school programs in Germany. Which means that I need to improve my German, stat! It's going to be one of my main goals for this summer. Hopefully I'll get that blog I mentioned started soon!
After Berlin (and I was so sad to go!), I returned to Paris for a few days, and then I did some Eurotripping with a bunch of friends! Spain was first on our list - we went to Madrid and then Grenada. Surprisingly enough, even after not having really spoken [flag=]es[/flag] since high school, was able to communicate without a problem! I was afraid that I would have forgotten all of it (and granted, I did forget a bunch), but for the most part it felt like I still had it. And again, I felt more comfortable ordering in Spanish than in French.
Our final city was Lisbon. I thought the little [flag=]pt-br[/flag] I had studied would serve me well, but lol. I couldn't remember anything. I ended up just speaking Spanish or English.
[flag=]ja[/flag]
Back at the start of May, I got confirmation that I will be studying abroad in Tokyo this July!!! I'm unbelievably excited to be going back to Japan! Even though I won't be taking Japanese classes this time around, I'm planning on doing some intense self-study!
The bad(?) news is that I won't be taking the JLPT until December, first, because I got the confirmation that I was going to Tokyo after the sign-up deadline for the July test had passed, second, because I probably wouldn't have been ready. Between my last update and the beginning/middle of May, my Japanese studies had pretty much come to a halt. I only got through the first week of So-Matome's kanji book, and my Anki deck spiraled out of control yet again.
However, a few weeks back my studies resumed with more zeal than ever before, partially in anticipation of my summer abroad, but mostly because I discovered a site that really revolutionized a lot of things for me:
japaneselevelup.com. I find JALUP to be incredibly similar to AJATT (in that they both have pretty much the same message and methodology), except that it's done much better. One of my favorite features of the site is the
"level guide" - a lot of his approach centers around the idea that learning Japanese is like playing an RPG, and he's come up with a level-up system for tracking your Japanese abilities. According to
the test, I would say I'm about level 37. In addition, he's even come up with a solution for the biggest problem I had with RTK (multiple kanji with too-similar keywords), and he addresses the issue of coming into RTK with prior Japanese experience. And he has a lovely explanation of his sentence mining method.
I'm currently working through the JALUP RTK deck. I'm doing 100 kanji a day (which is not as arduous as it sounds, giving I went into the deck already knowing about 1500 kanji), so I should be done in a few days. Reading through JALUP and his description about how he uses his Anki deck has made me reconsider the way I use Anki and what it is that I want my deck(s) to accomplish. I've come to the conclusion that my original Anki deck is not meeting my needs, so it's been put on hiatus until further notice.
Since RTK only teaches kanji meanings, once I'm done, I'm hoping to use Kanji in Context as a supplement to memorize the kanji readings. I've also discovered this wonderful resource called the
Japanese Core 6000, which is a collection of 6000 sample sentences using the 6000 most frequently used Japanese words. I'm hoping to start working through them soon.
As for a quick 1Q84 update, I'm on page 300, which leaves me with a little less than two chapters left of the first book. On one hand, I feel kind of silly that it's taking me more than a semester to read this book. But on the other hand, I'm pretty damn proud.
[flag=]fr[/flag]
They say that you should only list a language as "fluent" on your resume if you can interview in that language; a few weeks ago I interviewed in French. Though I definitely am far from calling myself fluent in French, it does feel nice to know that I have two foreign languages that I'm relatively functional in. Going back to the Japanese Level Up thing, I feel like I have these two superpowers!
My semester in France came to an end on Wednesday. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by the little progress my French made. In terms of speaking ability, my French was incredibly rusty before coming to Paris - obviously that's no longer the case, and I have definitely gotten over the sort of fear of French I had before, but beyond that, I can't say that I've felt any vast improvement. I can tell my written French has gotten better though. In the last French conversation class I took, even my short homework assignments would come back to me marked up with corrections galore. But when I had my study abroad program proofread one of my final assignments (which was a few pages long), it came back to me almost untouched. On the whole though, I really wish my French had progressed more (I wanted
fluency!!), and I'm not thrilled about that.
I think I've decided to change the focus of my French studies from here on out. When I think about what disappoints me with my French skills, the main things are that I can't understand French movies without subtitles, or that I don't understand the people that I hear on the street. I've come to realize, though, that these are all goals revolving around comprehension. So going forward, my goal is going to be to have fluent comprehension, and worry about speaking in the future if I feel so inclined. As I hinted at briefly last post, I've gotten quite discouraged with my French speaking abilities, and I get the impression that I might never be able to speak it fluently, but I think fluent comprehension might be a more obtainable goal. Plus, while I don't see many opportunities for speaking practice in my near future, I figure that my comprehension abilities will be easier to maintain. And if I do decide later on that I want to work on my speaking, comprehension fluency is necessary for speaking fluency anyway.
My French 1Q84 reading is currently lagging a few chapters behind my Japanese one.
[flag=]ko[/flag]
Basically nothing to report, because my Korean has been virtually untouched this semester. My classes were pathetic, because they were conducted entirely in French, and there was literally no speaking practice or homework involved. I went to ask one of my professors a question in April, and when she responded to me in Korean, I was weirded out because all of our interactions up to then had been in French. Yet despite all this, somehow I've gotten better at spontaneously producing the aforementioned second-year grammatical structures. Now that I'm on summer vacation, I can't wait to seriously resume my studies.
SUMMER 2013 (SAC) [flag=]ja[/flag][flag=]ko[/flag][flag=]de[/flag]
You might have noticed that I have a bit of a problem: there are three languages I have pledged my utmost devotion to this summer XP I'm going to be in Japan, so I obviously need to use that time to improve my Japanese as much as possible. But I also need to beef up my Korean considerably before the start of the school year! But if I'm going to be moving to Berlin or going to grad school in Germany or trying to join the German Club, I need to work on my German too! CONFLICT! Once again it looks like I'll be juggling more than I want to be
We'll see how this goes.
In other news, June's
Tadoku Challenge started on Saturday! I'm entering with Japanese, Korean, and German, but I messed up my registration and am only signed up for the last two.
Taiwan (臺灣)
United States (United States)
You'll be hearing more about Korean in June - which is surprisingly soon! Where has the time gone?!
Part of the reason I'd been so excited about Korean was that I was really looking forward into spending a lot of time there after graduation, perhaps doing the EPIK program or something. Now that I am essentially guaranteed to never go to Korea, I have lost so much desire to continue...
I do NOT want to have to bring my textbooks and workbooks to Japan with me, which gives me until next Monday to finish them. I'm relatively confident I could finish them in time, but I'm not so sure I can finish them without hating myself by the end. We'll see how things go.