successful language learners -- the little details

From: Justin Wilson (jpwilso_at_bgnet.bgsu.edu)
Date: 10/08/04 

Date: 8 Oct 2004 06:09:15 -0700

Hi again everyone:

I was very pleased to hear some of your suggestions as far as the
necessity of being social and pursuing Japanese friends without a
terribly strong interest in English, taping tv dramas etc.. While that
is all fine and dandy, I'd like at this point -- if you'all don't mind
-- to ask you to share some specific details of what you think the
best attack plan for the language is... I'll give a summary of some of
the ideas I have. Please critique it, as well as telling me what you
did do and were pleased with the results, or what you would have done
differently in retrospect.

My goal is to reach the highest proficiency level possible in 2
semesters time in Japan, while not feeling miserable and enjoying
myself at least a good part of my time here.

Here are my thoughts/plan of action:

Vocabulary: Before I waste my time randomly picking words out of books
that may very well be completely obscure, it is essential that I learn
all of the high-frequency words that can pay dividends every single
day. (ie, understanding a word that will occur 10 times in a short
conversation, instead of one that may occur once, will improve my
listening comprehension ten times faster for an equal investment in
study time).

I have the very lovely Oxford Starter Japanese dictionary. One of the
nicest things about it, as opposed to using EDICT, is that it lists
but 1 or 2 essential meanings for a word. That is good because I won't
be so tempted to put all those extraneous ones into my learning
software, and thereby make the memorization process extremely tedious!

>From my estimates, the Japanese->English half of the dictionary
contains in the neighborhood of ~5,000 words. My experience using
Oxford Starters for other languages tells me that nearly every single
one of those words is essential and extremely useful. So my plan is to
add in the neighborhood of 20-50 words from the dictionary into
Supermemo per day until I have learned'em all.

In the meantime, I carry a pad in my back pocket at all times. When I
go out to eat, go shopping, etc.. every time I see a sign that seems
important etc.. that has a word I don't know, I jot it down. I try to
write a minimum of 10 per day. After I get home and look these up, I
will add the most useful ones into Supermemo. As for the ones that
don't seem so important, I may just append a definition to them on my
pad, and casually review them later. (I'm considering writing these
with a red pen and then using the red/green clear plastic testers when
reviewing. Good idea ne ?)

After I finish with the Oxford, I intend to start with the JLPT 4 list
and make sure there isn't anything I have missed. Then the JLPT 3,
then the JLPT 2, and finally the JLPT 1 list. I would guess that my
vocabulary is around ~1,500 words at this point. I hope that I can
finish the JLPT 1 list within 4 month's from now, though that may be a
tad bit optimistic.

After that, I sincerely HOPE that it will be possible for me to simply
pick-up a book and only have to look up 4-5 words per page. In that
case, I'll save everything I look up to a list -- and periodically
parse for dups. Any dups I will then immediately add into Supermemo.

Overall, I expect that I will need to spend in the neighborhood of 3-4
hours/day studying vocabulary -- drilling with Supermemo, and looking
things up that I have written on my pad.

I read a webpage the other day that suggests if you have the
opportunity to learn 10 nouns or 1 verb, learn the verb. Does anyone
have any strong opinions about such an idea ?

Grammar: I don't have any real specific plans for this. I've got a
decent grounding, having studied Yookoso 1 & 2. I've got a few
supplementary books on verbs, adjectives/adverbs, and sentences
structures. I'll read through these a bit, though by my estimations
the most important thing for my grammar will be massive input --
hearing native speakers conversations. Once my level is high enough
(though it is a lofty goal I admit), reading books ought to do wonders
for my ability to construct more complex, yet completely grammatically
accurate sentences.

I'm going to be taking Japanese classes 5-days/week for about
3-hours/day at the university here, so I think my in class time ought
to provide sufficient opportunities to have any huge grammatical
blunders corrected by the teacher, or otherwise NOTICED.

Speaking: Since I'm not the most socially adept person, this isn't
something I can specifically plan out. I'm going to make use of the
opportunities I can find. In a worst case scenario, I'm sure I can
find a language exchange partner to speak one hour of Japanese with me
for every hour of English I speak with him.

Time Utilization: When I studied in China I did far less studying than
I should have, were I to reach the proficiency levels I wanted to
reach. Even knowing this, I'm still not sure exactly how I should
divide my time up between studying vocabulary, being in class for a
guaranteed 3-hours/day, watching TV dramas for listening practice, and
holding actual conversations. Since my biggest hurdle to understanding
at the beginning is very likely to be my small vocabulary more than
anything else, I think it is prudent to initially spend massive
amounts of time building my vocabulary up. I think it is much easier
to have it in the back of my mind and "activate" it after the fact.
(Ie, the first few times I pick it out in a conversation it may take a
few seconds before it kicks in, but that's far better than not kicking
in at all!)

Well, what do YOU think !? =)

-Justin

Relevant Pages

  • ara?
    ... The teacher thought it would be a good idea to bring over old copies of the JLPT 2-kyuu test and see how I would do on them. ... I thought this would be interesting for a change since up till now I have fastidiously avoided studying test preparation materials as a way to learn Japanese. ... I didn't ever really sense that misunderstanding grammar was hanging me up, and while I was aware that I would occasionally make grammatical mistakes in speech, it was something that I figured would naturally get better if I just payed attention to the way Japanese people said stuff. ... It wasn't my overall ability to do the test but the huge skew in my ability from section to section, and the discrepancy between my expectations above and the reality. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Japanese Language Proficiency Test 2005
    ... >The argument that the JLPT test is useless because it doesn't cover all ... a really accurate gauge of proficiency, sometimes in written japanese ... know enough kanji and grammar well enough to be able to pass it. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: JLPT level readiness
    ... > with any hope of passing, so I re-took Level 3, to see if I could ... I say fuck the tests and learn how to speak Japanese. ... taken the JLPT, but from glancing over practice materials I figure I ... reading the reasonably well written book for middle-school students, ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: Japanese Language Proficiency Test 2005
    ... at the time i took the test i only knew grammer/vocabulary from jlpt level3. ... brain and continue with the japanese text, and most of the time i can understand the meaning of the sentence, because i already know the chinese meaning of the word, and it is usually very similar to the japanese meaning in the "on yomi" cases and similar sometimes in the "kun yomi" cases. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: grammar books
    ... I'm an intermediate student (in Japanese for Busy People ... description of the grammar. ... The only grammar books I ... There is a series of grammar dictionaries that I have found extremely ...
    (sci.lang.japan)