Update and Reading

I recently received my JLPT certificate in the mail! Many of my friends also took the JLPT and passed their exams as well. This year I would like to take the JLPT N2. I heard it’s more difficult to pass than the N3, so even if I do not pass this year, I will not be discouraged.

Lately, I have been thinking about language learning a lot. I finished reading a book called ‘Fluent Forever,’ which is about concrete steps a language learner can take to learn a language. I really enjoyed reading the book and its appendixes. It helped motivate me to use Anki again. I like using Anki, but the deck building process can be a little convoluted at times.

‘Fluent Forever’ introduced and reminded me of many aspects of the language learning process. Specifically, it mentioned the developmental stages of a L2 (foreign language) learner, pronunciation, frequency lists and Anki. I want to explore the concept of developmental stages of language more. Basically, the developmental stages of language refers to the process of learning a language. For example, we learn present tense before past tense etc. Of course, this is not the best explanation of this concept, but I think if I understand these stages for L2 learners it will make me a better L2 learner and a better English teacher.

Pronunciation is something I struggle with, not so much with Japanese, but there are some sounds that I need more training in. The book talks about how to tackle pronunciation, so I am going to try to incorporate that advice into my studies.

Frequency list are something I keep hearing about in passing, but I have not used them very much. For Japanese, I mostly use JLPT vocabulary list or vocabulary list provided by my textbooks. I would like to try out learning vocabulary through frequency lists, because I have heard a lot of good things about it.

Anki is a free online SRS (spaced repetition system) flash card website and app (the iTunes app is not free and cost about $25, while the Android app is free). You can build your own flash cards with whatever features you want (audio, text, pictures etc.) or download and use flash card decks shared by other people. I do not use Anki regularly so, I had to look a lot of things up to figure out how to build a custom deck. Also, Anki uses HTML when you create fields or question cards, so that can be confusing. It helps to know HTML, but you can use Anki without knowing it. Anki is a great free resource that is customizable, so I am going to try using it again.

漢字の館とお化け達：小学生1-6

If you have a Japanese 3DS, you may have heard of the 漢字の館とお化け達 (Kanji no yakata to obake-tachi: shougakusei) series. Or if you are considering investing in a Japanese 3DS, this is a game you can buy for it to help in your Japanese language studies. 漢字の館とお化け達 is a Kanji learning game series for Elementary school students. Each game gives you writing practice for the kanji that Elementary school students learn for each grade level, for example, the first grade game has all the kanji that first graders learn. If you play the entire series, first grade through six grade, it is possible to learn or rather practice 1006 kanji. The series focuses on writing kanji, recognizing kanji and kana reading skills. 漢字の館とお化け達 is broken down into three gates or types of kanji drills: 書き書きお化け, かくれんぼお化け and 書き取りお化け.

The first gate, 書き書きお化け, introduces 5 kanji by displaying each kanji on a big ghost (or obake), giving you one or two of the readings for the character in a small green box on the top left 3DS screen in kana. On the bottom 3DS screen, you have to write the kanji. There are options to end your study session, change your writing speed (the options are fast, normal and slow) or to erase the last thing you wrote on the bottom screen. After the game recognizes what you wrote in the bottom 3DS screen, whether you finished or not, the character the game recognizes your writing as will appear in a small box on the top 3DS screen below the ghost (オバケ).

The second gate, かくれんぼお化け, has multiple picture frames of various sizes on the top 3DS screen, which a kanji will move behind, so only parts of the character will be displayed through the frames. Again in the bottom 3DS screen, your goal is to draw the kanji based off the parts of it you can recognize on the top screen.

The third gate, 書き取りお化け, is a timed activity unlike the other two gates. A small オバケ slowly blows out a row of candles as you attempt to read a group of hiragana on the top 3DS screen and write the accompanying kanji for it on the bottom 3DS screen. This activity has the potential to give you a lot of points or rather, kanji written if you have a wide vocabulary and can remember and write the kanji for hiragana words quickly.

After you finish each quick activity, one of the gate activities, your written kanji will be added to a list of (whatever grade level you are playing) kanji for the game that will list how many times you have written each kanji. After you write a certain amount of kanji so many times, pieces of a hidden puzzle on the top 3DS screen disappear and your rank for the game goes up. The rank starts out low at E and rises until rank S, where the all the panels are uncovered in the puzzle panel.

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

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: Japanese for All Occasions

Yesterday, I rediscovered a book I bought a while ago to improve my Japanese called Japanese for All Occasions: Mastering Speech Styles from Casual to Honorific by Taeko Kamiya. It’s published by Kodansha International, which makes a bunch of Japanese culture and learning books. I haven’t really used the book, but I skimmed through it and decided I’ll make it a part of my study plan for the next three months.

What I like about this book:

• No romaji! This book is not for beginners. You need to at least know kana and some Elementary Japanese (vocabulary and grammar) to really benefit from this book. So, it’s for Intermediate learners.
• Conversations/Dialogues. This is the majority of the book (19 dialogue lessons, 57 dialogues) with pictures, explanations of new phrases, English translations and grammar notes.
• Charts. Although some programs give you organized charts for reference, most of the ones that I’ve seen are not as nice as the ones in this book. There are vocabulary charts, conjugation charts (for verbs, adjectives) that are more complete than any other charts I’ve seen in other books. The verb conjugation charts include all (I think) of the conjugations covered in both Genki I & II textbooks.
• Audio CD. This covers all of the dialogues in the book and the example sentences in the first section of the book, none of  the charts though.
• There’s Furigana! If you don’t know what furigana is, I’ll explain. It’s small kana characters that appear above kanji to help you know how to read the kanji they accompany. Most of the kanji have furigana, but it doesn’t hurt to know some kanji before picking up this book.

What I dislike:

• While I was skimming the first section of the book, I did not see any mention of using じゃあ instead of で（は）. Actually, this contraction is explained later on in one of the notes in the dialogue section, but I think it should have been put in the beginning of the book with the conjugation charts. 
• I did find a small English translation mistake in the front of the book, where the word “after” was typed instead of “every” . But from what I’ve seen so far that was just a typo and most of the book’s English is correct.
• Sometimes the print seems a bit small (furigana, charts and in the appendices).

Conclusion:

This seems like a great book and if you want to work on your 警護（けいご）formal language and other speech styles and levels, this is a good book to purchase.

Resources:

http://www.kodansha-intl.com

JLR: Dr. Moku

Dr. Moku is a smartphone (Android and iPhone) and Desktop application for learning how to read kana through picture associations. You can try the app for free and if you like it, you can get the paid (full) version. The Android application is cheaper than the iPhone application.

Resources:

http://drmoku.com/