Tag: japanese grammar

I was digging around in my closet last night for a gel pack, but I rummaged through a box of books I meant to give away, and realized that’s where I’d put my first Japanese college textbooks (Yookoso!… don’t know if I would recommend them exactly but they weren’t terrible). So I pulled those out to look through for fun/as a progress check. Flipping to the last section in the first book, I read through the reading sample there with ~90% comprehension sans dictionary (if a bit slow, especially on katakana). And then I feel a little silly for feeling accomplished, because ahaha okay, congratulations, Self, you definitely pass your first year Japanese class now. But I actually recall that glancing at that page two years ago gave me mild anxiety from the wall of incomprehensible text that would take me ages to decipher using a dictionary. So even though my first thought on looking at it was still kind of, “Oh holy wall-of-text…” it’s encouraging that I also didn’t completely panic, and once I started trying to read it, it was reasonably easy.

Also was noticing last night that iKnow had short descriptions of the core levels and what you would supposedly be able to do after completing a core set. It looks like through 4000 is supposed to give you a good enough vocabulary to handle most situations that crop up that aren’t too jargon-heavy, so that’s kind of my minimum end goal. After 2000 supposedly I’ll have a good enough foundation to manage basic situations and “start reading on my own”, though after 3000 is apparently where you’ll be “in a position to start reading Japanese without the assistance of dictionaries”, so that’s really more what I’m going for. I find I have zero patience to read if I have to look up words.

I’m just starting set 4 in 2000, but I had hoped to be through 3000 by the end of December– I haven’t really worked out the numbers, but I might have to up my game a little if I actually want to accomplish that. I’d need to be complete with 2000 by June to give myself another six months to finish 3000. Which is more than a set a month, and I’ve only been averaging that or less.

This kind of depresses me a little since I think Core 3000 is about where I need to be to pass N3, and I’m probably not even going to be through all that by the time the test happens at the end of the year, not to mention I still have a lot to study in grammar. So I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to have to put it off again, until maybe summer 2014. Though on the other hand, it does give me some confidence that by the end of the year I should be able to kind of muddle my way through HP sans-dictionary and actually get something out of it, which was one of my other goals.

Grammar is starting to become my major worry– I feel like my general comprehension’s been helped a lot by expanding my vocab, but whenever I do workbook pages it’s clear I’m not really solid on my grammar, so things like multiple choice where the correct answer is subtle are nearly impossible for me to figure out a lot of the time. I’m trying to think of better ways to get grammar to stick, but I think really it’s just I don’t get enough practice using particular grammar points to be attuned when I hear or read them and decipher nuances. I have a ton of grammar books at the moment, but I feel like I end up trying to cram it in so quickly I only remember during a lesson or maybe that week, and then I forget again. I need to set up some sort of SRS-type system for remember grammar, where I’m reviewing everything consistently (and possibly more importantly: using it all consistently), but that requires energy to set up that I don’t have at the moment.