Japanese learner's timeline

[Brody]

I thought it might be good for beginning Japanese learners (such as myself) if we could see how others are progressing (i.e. make up a timeline of when you were able to do what, how you studied, etc).

Here's my example:

Japanese study timeline:
Began studying Japanese at an American university in Sept 2003.
Major in Japanese and will graduate from American university in December 2006.
Been to Japan once for four weeks on a intensive Japanese program.
Planning to go on an academic year study abroad beginning in September.

Study habits:
I study for a few hours every day. I mostly read Japanese literature and try to translate into English. Also I watch Japanese movies to work on listening comprehension. Recently, I began trying to translate English literature into Japanese with the aid of the book already translated into Japanese.

During school, I mostly reviewed grammar and vocabulary. Didn't really practice expressing myself in Japanese. We had no real practice speaking or listening to Japanese, only translated from Japanese into English.

The first year I studied Japanese, I got good grades but didn't really get it. I went on my study-abroad after that first year. When I got back, I really found myself beginning to be able to understand what I was reading. Now, after two and a half years of intense study, I can read almost anything with a dictionary. I can barely speak, and my listening comprehension is hit-and-miss. Sometimes, I can perfectly understand what's being said, and sometimes I can't get even basic sentences. I can identify kanji and meanings very well but it is very hard for me to recall them when I'm writing them. I'm not too worried about this because most of my writing I can do on the computer and I usually can remember the hiragana.


Anyway, I thought if people gave profiles of themselves like this, others may be able to see what to expect when, and see how people are getting to where they are. Perhaps we could also give others suggestions on what to do to improve.

Mostly though, I thought it could give some encouragement to all those learning Japanese. It might be nice to see what others are doing and that others are having a hard time as well.

Good idea? Yes? No?

[Bueller_007]

Japanese study timeline:
Moved to Japan in Oct 2003.
Started studying Japanese in Jan 2004.
Passed JLPT3 in Dec 2004 and JLPT2 in Dec 2005

Study habits:
Hardcore on-again-off-again studier. Will go 3 months studying for four hours every day, and then 3 months without opening a book.
Started with Japanese For Busy People and Tuttle Kanji Flash Cards. Moved on to Kanji in Context. Used Unicom JLPT guides to get extra grammar info. Used to read 日本語ジャーナル regularly. Don't particularly care for Japanese music, movies, video games or TV. Have never even opened a comic book.

Living in Japan aided me only slightly in learning Japanese. It gave me the motivation, but working as an English teacher, you get stuck in an English "bubble" (you speak English all day, you have lots of foreign friends, etc.) so it didn't really help me very much.

I know maybe 1400 kanji, but I can't write very many. I don't care, because young Japanese people can't either.

[metablue]

I'll add some balance with my puny history.

Started learning soon after the "Tennis Anyone?" podcast, which must have been around March 1st. I've wanted to learn a second language for a long time. I went to primary school in Canada, where I had a bad experience with French. It was horribly boring and all I remember learning after 2 years was how to count to 10 and a lot about crepes. In high school in New Zealand I didn't want to study French and the only other option was Latin. I did well in tests, but I didn't feel like I knew it, and now I've forgotten everything. I also took a Maori class, and learned a few very basics, but at least Maori feels natural and familiar. Finally I tried to learn Mandarin from tapes, but though the first lesson was fine, I couldn't follow anything after that and all I learned was "Hello", "Thank you", and "Am I your wife?"

I play Final Fantasy XI, which has a large Japanese population, and a good friend at work has been dating a Japanese girl for a few years and would occasionally practice on (at) me and try to teach me words. So I decided this was a good opportunity to learn a language.

I started with hiragana, since I had no idea how start and it was the only clear path I had to follow. Then I found Jpod 101. I listen to the podcasts on my commute, which is about an hour a day, and sometimes at night and in the mornings on my laptop. At work I occasionally practice speaking with that friend but mostly we talk on an irc channel with a Japanese friend. We try our best and he puts up with us and corrects us and tells us when we say stupid things.

Learning Japanese has been both easier and harder than I expected. Easier because after my other language experiences I felt that learning a second language must be nearly impossible. So I was surprised at how quickly I was learning. Harder because even though I feel like I'm making progress, there is such a long way to go, and there are so many basic things I can't express.

Mostly I listen to the podcasts over and over again until the words and grammar sink in. I try to learn like I did as a little kid. Saying silly things, making lots of mistakes, and making up words if I have to.

I have a few books, but I find that the grammar doesn't really stick until I hear it on the podcast. I just started learning kanji with the Tuttle flashcards and the book Kanji Pictographics. My goal is to learn to read 1000 or so kanji as fast as possible, because I think that once I can read I'll be able to learn much faster.

Things that I find really frustrating:

- Not being able to read. Even though I recognize the individual kana, it's still a slow process to actually read them. I have to say each one out loud in order to recognize the word.

- There are so many similar words. They all sound the same. They all seem to start with "shi" or "i". imasu, arimasu, kimasu, ikimasu, iimasu.

- Nothing is automatic. I have to think about everything. Even listening to a familiar conversation in the podcast takes effort.


Things that I've enjoyed:

- Going back to old podcasts and being able to understand conversations that were completely meaningless before.

- I think I've finally got the "r" in "benri" and "ryouri" right.

- Learning Kanji. It really helps disambiguate all those similar words.

- Listening to anime dialog and hearing the individual words rather than a solid stream of foreign language.

- Having secret hiragana conversations with my friend in meetings.

- Going to the asian supermarket near my house and having kana suddenly look familiar rather than alien. Being able to translate the text on packets in the cookie aisle. Starting to recognize kanji. The kanji for (the Chinese version of) milk are "cow", "woman" (a radical) and something else.


Things I'm looking forward to:

- Being able to read without trying.

- Being able to understand the side conversations in the Intermediate class.


edit: added "Chinese" to the milk point.

[Bueller_007]

Not being able to read. Even though I recognize the individual kana, it's still a slow process to actually read them. I have to say each one out loud in order to recognize the word.

This comes with time. Don't worry about it.

- There are so many similar words. They all sound the same. They all seem to start with "shi" or "i". imasu, arimasu, kimasu, ikimasu, iimasu.

This is a grammar, not vocabulary issue. It's like complaining that many English words end with "-ing". In fact, the regularity of Japanese verb forms makes them MUCH easier to learn than English ones.

Consider these words: "kuroi", "karai", "kirei", "kurai", "kirai", "kiiroi", etc. Yes, they are similar, but there are similar words in English as well: "bid", "bed", "bad", "bud", "bide", "bode", "bard", etc. You'll have this problem in any language.

The kanji for milk are "cow" "woman" and something else.

Milk = 乳 ("chichi"). Cow's milk = 牛乳 ("gyuunyuu"). Two kanji. No "woman". You were looking at a Chinese label. In Chinese, milk = 牛奶 (niunai), which uses the character for "woman" as a radical in the second kanji.

[Brody]

Bueller-san, you're VERY good at Japanese and I'm not pulling at Japanese person being polite for politeness' sake trick here.

How are you speaking-wise?

We've been studying about the same amount of time and I gotta say, I feel your lightyears ahead of me. Do you have Japanese friends, since you live in Japan? You must get more exposure to Japanese than you're letting on. Either that or you're incredibly gifted at languages. Do you know any others?

I agree with you about writing kanji. There doesn't seem to be much of a point (at least being able to write them as I go). I can identify most of them as I read, and if I need to actually write, I can: a) write in hiragana or b) use the computer.
Also, I have the time when writing to stop and think, unlike when speaking.

Now, if I were to work in a Japanese company, that would be another matter...

[Bueller_007]

Bueller-san, you're VERY good at Japanese and I'm not pulling at Japanese person being polite for politeness' sake trick here.

How are you speaking-wise?

We've been studying about the same amount of time and I gotta say, I feel your lightyears ahead of me. Do you have Japanese friends, since you live in Japan? You must get more exposure to Japanese than you're letting on. Either that or you're incredibly gifted at languages. Do you know any others?

I agree with you about writing kanji. There doesn't seem to be much of a point (at least being able to write them as I go). I can identify most of them as I read, and if I need to actually write, I can: a) write in hiragana or b) use the computer.
Also, I have the time when writing to stop and think, unlike when speaking.

Now, if I were to work in a Japanese company, that would be another matter...

Speaking-wise, I'd say I'm about the same as Peter, although I get the feeling that he often holds back and pretends that he doesn't know stuff. (Perhaps to give the listeners more confidence.) And the lessons never really put his Japanese to the test, so it's hard to say.

My speaking's not nearly as good as my reading/writing, and I'm sure most intermediate/advanced learners are the same. The stuff that I translated for you on the other thread for example, I probably wouldn't be able to say it in a conversation without thinking about it for a moment. So I wouldn't say I'm "fluent" by any means.

And my vocab isn't so good. I haven't studied much since the JLPT2, and I've forgotten a lot. I have to rely on a dictionary far too much to be a professional translator of anything longer than a couple of pages. I'm much too slow to do it for a living.

Also, I've never had a Japanese teacher to correct me (I've only studied by myself from books), so I think I make some easy mistakes when I'm speaking. I also think I handle complex topics better than easy ones.

I don't live in Japan anymore. I left in December just after I took the JLPT2. I have some Japanese friends, yes, but the "great" thing about living in Japan is that most of the people who are interested in becoming friends with foreigners can speak English. And they have been studying it much, much longer than I have been studying Japanese. So I was never FORCED to speak Japanese, which is what I really needed. If I had any troubles, I would just explain myself in English.

Also, most of the people who befriend foreigners are women. So I probably sound a bit like a woman. And an Osakan woman at that.

If I move back to Japan, I will get a male teacher who refuses to speak one word of English.

[metablue]

Consider these words: "kuroi", "karai", "kirei", "kurai", "kirai", "kiiroi", etc. Yes, they are similar, but there are similar words in English as well: "bid", "bed", "bad", "bud", "bide", "bode", "bard", etc. You'll have this problem in any language.

Hmmm. There's still a frequency issue. The words I mentioned were all ones I had to learn very early on. The only equivalent here is "bad", maybe "bed". Given the limited number of sounds in Japanese, and the huge number of homonyms, you really can't convince me that the similarness of the words is all in my head.

Milk = 乳 ("chichi"). Cow's milk = 牛乳 ("gyuunyuu"). Two kanji. No "woman". You were looking at a Chinese label. In Chinese, milk = 牛奶 (niunai), which uses the character for "woman" as a radical in the second kanji.

Yes, it was Chinese. All the kanji in the signs in that store are Chinese. And yes, there were 2 kanji, 3 parts. I was still very happy to recognize them.

Not to sound peevish, but I didn't post here asking for help. I posted my experiences in case other new learners are interested. If I want help with something I'll make another thread and add "please help me" to my post.

[gryffindor]

Started in April 2006

Listen to a podcast a day.
Read the transcript of the podcasts to learn the kanji as well as to build up my reading abilities.
Watch japanese drama occasionally and sad to say that I can only catch a couple of words here and there. Without the subtitles, it's just gibberish to me. (It has made me realise that the podcasts were really extremely simple i guess.)
Learn about 5 kanjis a day in preparation for jlpt4
Read a pretty useful book which explains the theory in an accessible manner

After two months of work, I guess I can occasionally make out what the new podcasts are about. But when they incorporate a lot of new vocab, then I'm totally lost. I can read maybe 30% of the sentences in the transcripts of podcasts. Occasionally with the help of an online dictionary.

I hope one day, just one day, I can be good enough to do professional translation from J to E. And hopefully, find work in Japan. It's such an amazing country!

[Charles]

Japanese study timeline:
Began studying Japanese at an American university in Sept 2001.
Minored in Japanese and graduated from an American university in December 2005.
Never been to Japan. Planning to go someday, but don't know when, how long, or for what.

Study habits:
Whenever I feel like it. That can be hardcore on-again-off-again, like Bueller. I was really interested in Japanese games for a while, but now I've lost interest. Video games are such a time sink.

[metablue]

Watch japanese drama occasionally and sad to say that I can only catch a couple of words here and there. Without the subtitles, it's just gibberish to me.

Ditto. We just don't know enough vocab yet, I guess.

One thing I've noticed though is that I can now (often) hear the individual words in TV Japanese, even if I don't understand them, as long as the speaker is clear. ie an actor, not a person being interviewed on the street. Before it was just solid stream of gibberish. That feels like a pretty big improvement.

[Bueller_007]

Video games are such a time sink.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Jason]

Timeline:
I started studying at college in the Fall of 2002 and finished the last class they had 3 years later. My speaking ability, which anyone who's listened to the audio clips on my journal knows already, is bleh. I need more practice with that, but there aren't many Japanese people in Lousiana, so I never have really had a chance to practice on my own. My vocab definitely needs work. I always kinda neglected that for concentrating on grammar and such. I know a decent amount of kanji, though I have no idea how many but it's not anywhere near the number needed for reading fluency. I've never been to Japan yet, but I hope to go with some friends in December 2007.

Study habits
Since my last class ended, I haven't really had any kind of structured study habits. I've been meaning to finish the 2nd volume of Yookoso, but keep forgetting to. But I get a decent amount of exposure to Japanese most every day thru a combination of games, anime, manga, and jpod101. I'm planning on taking the JLPT level 2 this year (and maybe next year, too), so my study habits will probably need to change soon. I've been neglecting my journal lately too, which I need to get back to doing.

[Bueller_007]

Timeline:I'm planning on taking the JLPT level 2 this year (and maybe next year, too), so my study habits will probably need to change soon.

I highly recommend these for JLPT preparation:
http://www.unicom-lra.co.jp/ja/ja_e.html#ja_e

[ali17]

My time line is really short. I am a beginner beginner. I learned a few words from friends and my husband who can hold simple conversations in Japanese. Then about a year ago we got some books and I started learning Hiragana and Katakana. Learning to read is very difficult for me (in English and in Japanese) So that was a little slow but I can understand simple sentences and I understand most of the podcasts now.

Glad that they are here.

[sutekikanojyo]

Japanese Study Timeline:

I first came face-to-face with Japanese when a good friend tried to get me addicted to anime "the right way" (no dubbing or subtitles) and that was a bust. Then he settled for teaching me insults, and I learned a couple of random words (kuroi neko, or black cat). Since then, I've been interested in learning Japanese, but never really looked into it. On an iTunes newsletter (Podcast Highlights, March 22), I saw a link to education podcasts, searched the database, found JP101, and began downloading immediately. I have been studying on and off ever since! ^.^

Japanese Study Habits:

I used to overload myself on 6-10 podcasts in one day and then just work with those for a while, but it was difficult for me to remember, in the long run, everything I learned. Just recently I purchased a spiral notebook (just 79cents at Publix!) so that I may write the vocabulary I learned in Romaji, and it has helped tremendously. Whenever I want to speak in Japanese and I do not remember something (which is happening less and less), I can turn back to it without having to listen in to every podcast.

Just recently (about two days ago) I joined two Japanese journal communities at http://www.greatestjournal.com in hopes of finding someone to IM or e-mail with so that I may practice my verbal skills on a more regular basis. I read e-mails I receive and send out loud to practice accuracy and speed.

Every now and then I will whip out a sentence I constructed and impress my parents and boyfriend, ^.^ but, again, they are not learning with me; doing so is merely for personal entertainment. ^.~' I even write some away messages for AIM so that I may practice constructing sentences as I learn more and more.

I am still open for more willing chatters! I am on AIM at SutekiKanojyo if anyone is willing to contact me. ^.^

Mata ne!