JLR: Verbling

Verbling is another website you can use to practice your speaking and chatting (instant messaging) skills in Japanese, or whatever language you’re studying. I don’t remember the first time I heard about Verbling, but I recently rediscovered it when I decided that my language skills in both Japanese and Spanish wouldn’t improve very much if I didn’t practice speaking in addition to all the other type of studying I do. Speaking is a valuable skill that I have been avoiding practicing because it’s really nerve-wracking to think about. But that’s just something you have to get over as a language learner.

What I like:

• Chat box (send text messages/instant messages through the chat feature)
• Video feature, if you want to see who you are talking to.
• Audio only feature, if you don’t want to share your face and background or if you don’t have a webcam.
• English lessons (this is only good for people learning English, but I like this feature too.)
• Conversation starters are suggested to you in the language you are learning (with English translation) to help promote actually talking in both languages in the exchange and avoid awkward pauses in the conversation so that you make the most of your time.
• Congratulatory stars under the video screen to encourage your partner as they speak in your native language (good grammar etc.), which will flash across the screen in real-time.
• Add friend feature after you’ve talked with someone over Verbling if you want to continue speaking with them as a language partner.

What I dislike:

• I wish they had lessons in other languages besides English.

Conclusion:

I’m still learning how to use this website, so I can’t say much about it seeing how I’ve just started using it. But, some things I noticed during my first few attempts were: your connection on Verbling depends on each person’s individual Internet connection so you may experience problems and it may take you some time to find a partner (I had to wait a few minutes before someone else was on the site). I didn’t speak with any Japanese speakers, so I don’t know how many are actually on the website. But, it is listed as a language on the website.

Resource:

http://www.verbling.com

Preparing to go abroad

When I received my packet of information about studying abroad, there was a list of things I have to do before I can go abroad. One major thing is that I have to get a Visa for my long-term stay in Japan, which is more than 90 days, since I’ll be there for a whole semester. Another thing I have to do is pay for housing, otherwise I’ll be homeless in Japan, which wouldn’t be good. I have a whole list of things I have to do that were included in my mail. Some things have to be completed before I go abroad and some things were just giving me advance notice of what I’ll have to do when I get there.

Lately, I’ve been working on that list of things I have to do, so that when it is time for me to leave, I’ll be prepared or at least more prepared than the average person going abroad…I’m not sure about other international students so I won’t compare myself to them, since they’re probably more organized and prepared than I am. In addition to the advice and to-do list given to me from my college in Japan, I’ve been doing my own research using YouTube and reading other blogs about Japan that I hope will better prepare me for whatever situations I find myself in when I go to Japan.

JLR: The Japanese Page

I haven’t written about a website JLR in a while, so here’s another one: The Japanese Page. I haven’t used this website, but I discovered it in the past and wanted to write about a JLR website instead of an app for a change.

What I like:

• It’s free.
• Beginner lessons
• Intermediate and some Advance lessons
• Free ebooks
• Free downloads
• Kanji practice (stroke order, multiple kanji lists such as JLPT N4 [I think the website goes by the old JLPT levels])
• Listening practice and audio for ebooks
• Seems like there are ways to connect with native speakers for language exchanges (you teach English and they teach you Japanese according to the Japanese advertisement on the right side of their website)
• Teaches kana (hiragana and katakana)

What I don’t like:

• I don’t actually use this website so I can’t really say I dislike anything, but I would like for them to update their JLPT level lists in accordance with the new levels (N5-N1)

Conclusion:

This seems like a good, free resource. If you have used this website, please comment below and tell me about your experience with it.

U.S. Travel website: Travel.State.Gov

I recently discovered a travel information website while looking at the U.S. State department’s website. It seems there’s a lot of government websites and resources that no one either knows about or speaks about. This website is a free service for U.S. citizens, where you can look up information about all sorts of travel information from getting Passports and Visas to adopting a child from another country. The feature I’m interested in is STEP, Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, which provides information to U.S. citizens traveling or living abroad about the specific country they’re going to and with specific information about the U.S. embassy/consulate in the country they’re traveling too.  There’s also an iPod/iPhone application, but from the reviews and the screen shots on iTunes I gather it isn’t updated frequently and basically not a very good app.

Resources:

http://travel.state.gov/

iTunes: Search Smart Traveler

Booking a flight

Finding and booking a flight to Japan is one of the things I had to do at some point during my three month break from school. Luckily, I follow a bunch of great blogs and websites that give me great information about these types of things.

I was reading an update by another blog that I follow (Surviving in Japan), which has a lot of great information, and somehow from there I got on Facebook and saw an update from Clark Howard, which led me to his website. On Clark Howard’s website I started watching videos, which led me to Mobissimo, a website that is good for finding and booking international flights. Long story short, sometimes when you think you are not being productive, you learn important things that can help you out later.

I actually started writing this post about a month ago, but since I recently received my packet of information from the university I will be studying abroad at, I decided to post this. While looking at other blogs and getting advice from many of my other friends who have studied abroad, I wound up using Kayak and Priceline (Negotiator) primarily, to look for and buy a round-trip flight to Japan. It was a little nerve-wracking because buying the ticket makes everything seem so final, but at the same time it was exciting.

Resources:

http://www.survivingnjapan.com/

https://www.facebook.com/

http://www.clarkhoward.com/

http://www.priceline.com/

http://www.mobissimo.com/

http://www.kayak.com/

JLR: Minna no Nihongo

This is one of my favorite apps to use. Minna no Nihongo is an iPod/iPhone application that is basically a textbook in an app.

What I like:

• Flashcards. Most of these have audio and some have kanji. They’re primarily written in kana with English translations. Some flashcards only have kanji and some of those have comments with show the reading in hiragana.
• 50 Lessons. I don’t have a physical copy of the Minna no Nihongo textbook, so I can’t compare the app with the physical textbook series. But that’s a lot of lessons.
• Really inexpensive. I don’t remember what I paid for this app, but I’m sure it was cheaper than the current price ($5.99), which isn’t very expensive.
• Dialogues. The dialogue tab has so many features/ways you can interact with the dialogue. There’s a picture with each dialogue, English translation, audio, text (which you can make disappear depending on which role/person speaking you want to listen to, manual mode to listen to each sentence at your leisure and my favorite: a video of the conversation.
• Grammar lessons. These are pretty brief, so it’s best to have another grammar source to use alongside this app for better explanations.
• Covers some things that I didn’t see in the Genki textbook, such as some vocabulary. Or maybe the way/order it teaches grammar and vocabulary is different.

What I dislike:

• I wish there were kanji for all the vocabulary words that kanji exists for. 
• Some English mistakes, I noticed “postcard” was spelled “poat card” and some other things. Overall, the English is really good. The application maker seems to primarily make apps in Chinese.
• A learning tool for kanji would be cool.

Conclusion:

I really like this app. It’s more of a review for what I learned with the Genki textbook series for me. I think the dialogue features are what makes it the best…and the low price. It covers what my college considers elementary and intermediate Japanese, so two years of college Japanese (minus the reading and writing practice).

Resources:

Minna no Nihongo by iLoveStudy

Study Update

Recently, I’ve been a little slack with studying. I just received my packet of information from the university I’ll be studying at in Japan, so I’ve been working on all the things I have to do before my program begins. I spend a lot of time on YouTube watching videos about learning languages, language learning resources and, of course, entertaining videos related to languages. I’ve been using an app called Minna no Nihongo, which I’m surprised I haven’t written a JLR post about, to study Japanese. So, I’ll rectify that soon.

JLR: Japanese the Manga Way

One of the books I bought at the bookstore (Barnes and Noble) was Japanese the Manga Way or マンガで学ぶ日本語文法. It’s a grammar book decorated with manga strips to help explain new grammar.

What I like:

• Manga to illustrate how grammar is used.
• Explanations. There’s information about different types of speech male vs. female, and speech levels plain/polite etc.There’s information on sentence final particles.
• Romaji. I’m glad that there’s romaji, because this book doesn’t seem to use furigana above the kanji in neither the manga nor the transcripts in the text.
• Elementary and Intermediate grammar.
• Hiragana and Katakana charts.

What I dislike:

• Sometimes not all of the text or onomatopoeia is translated/explained in the book.
• It’s a lot of reading; so it’s best to divide the reading into small chunks.

Conclusion:

I like this book a lot. It has a lot of explanations that other books I’ve seen don’t have and the fact that it uses manga to help make learning grammar more fun and memorable is a plus.

Resource:

Japanese the Manga Way/ マンガで学ぶ日本語文法

JLR: Kanji Wordsearch App

A while ago, I received a comment about an  iPod/iPhone app called Kanji Wordsearch, so I tried out the free version of the app.

What I liked:

• You can do the hiragana word search using Kanji as the prompts
• Or you can do the  kanji word search using hiragana as prompts
• The app really tests you on your ability to read/recognize/match kanji and hiragana, because it only gives you one prompt at a time instead of a word bank where you can choose whichever words you can immediately find.
• There’s a time limit. This can be frustrating, but it does motivate you to find the answers quicker…or show that you don’t actually know the material as well as you think you do.
• Definition hints after your first attempt to highlight the answer to the prompt is wrong. This is really helpful, when you can guess/remember the characters based of the definition of the prompt.
• You can reset the rating of each word/compound. So if you make a mistake or there is a glitch in the app, you can easily change the rating of how well you know the word.

What I disliked:

• The app description states that there are flashcards for the kanji, so I expected flashcards that you could digitally flip. The flashcards are actually all on one page with example compounds that you will find on the  word searches.
• Random words picked for each word search. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to go through the flashcards for all of the possible words/compounds before beginning the word search if you do not know some of the terms. There’s not a feature that introduces or teaches new words/compounds to you, you just have to look at the list for the level, study them on your own and/or do the word searches repeatedly.
• The word search is not like normal word searches where items can only be connected in straight lines, sometimes you have to connect items on the word search by using angles. This sort of threw me when I tried the app out; I guess that’s why there’s a 5 x 5 grid option.

Conclusion:

At first this app was a little frustrating for me, because I was not used to doing word searches using Japanese characters and the fact that not all of the answers were in straight lines on the 4 x 4 grid version. After using  the app more, the word searches were easier for me to complete. This app is a good way to test how well you know to read kanji.

Status Update and Going to the Bookstore

As my first month of studying draws to a close, I’ve started to reflect on how my studying has gone so far. Although I had wished to be more productive and studious, it didn’t happen. I realize that I should have stuck with my original plan and tried to accomplish a ridiculous amount of studying and stayed optimistic, because that mindset and attitude gave me better results. With the second month of studying, I plan to crack down and study harder by going back to my initial study plan.

In order to promote this renewal of the old study plan, I went to the bookstore and bought some new material…actually, that’s a lie. I went to the bookstore on a whim, to look for and possibly buy some travel books for Japan and wound up buying more than I had planned to. So, I’ll be writing about the new books I bought some time in the near future or in the new blog I plan on writing when I’m in Japan.