(2016-06-01, 12:59 am)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:

(2016-05-24, 11:01 am)rich_f Wrote: But what I have figured out from my own experience is that reading LNs or WNs doesn't help me with N1 very much. It helps my Japanese, and it's entertaining, but aside from some limited vocab help, it doesn't really help me with N1 as much as reading a stack of writing by old men yelling "Get off my lawn!" would. :\

I've been using that book I mentioned on page 1 for some help with that. The essays are more enjoyable than shasetsu.ps.land.to's stuff, and overall the content has a very N1 feel to it.

I have a subscription to 日経 now and have been reading that for "fun" every day. I guess I have a weird definition of what I find entertaining.

However, I've also found that it's helped my Japanese to up the level of the novels I'm reading. At some point, you outgrow the material you started with, and it's time to look for something more challenging. I've been reading 池井戸潤 lately, and between the complicated subject matter (Ikeido seems to specialize in stories of salarymen caught up in massive financial swindles) and the specialized vocab, it feels like a nice stretch for me. Yeah, I *could* read a fifth 東野圭吾 novel (and I very well might at some point), but I know that's not going to give me the same mental workout.

For me, I get plenty of doom and gloom from the daily stuff, so when I read, I want to read fluff. Probably because I was a lit major in college, I burned out on the heavy stuff. RL is plenty.

LNs are generally fluff, and pretty much the literature version of chocolate ice cream. They're not particularly nutritious (I haven't learned any great truths from them), but they're comfort food, I guess.

I've got Rikaisama up and running again, so it's time to go to shasetsu-land, I guess.

Oh, a note of caution about the Target Series Books (Vocab for N1 and N2): they came out with new revised editions, but honestly, if you already have the old edition, I'd hold off. I've been going through the N1 book deck from Memrise which is based on the old edition (to import into Anki eventually... if there's anything not already in Core10k) and I've been comparing it to the revised edition. After 500 words, most of the changes I've found are word order. 

Maybe 1 new word has been added, and it's already in core 10k. I wish I had made a note of it, other than, "Oh, that's in Core10k. I already know it. Meh." Frankly, a lot of the vocab is already in core 10k.

TL;DR if you have the old Target N1/N2 vocab, don't rush out to buy the new ones yet. I'm kind of kicking myself on that purchase. 

(2016-06-01, 9:07 am)rich_f Wrote: For me, I get plenty of doom and gloom from the daily stuff, so when I read, I want to read fluff. Probably because I was a lit major in college, I burned out on the heavy stuff. RL is plenty.

Oh trust me, this is what I read for fun, so it's not like I have any room to judge anyone.
Something else I've been doing lately is checking out magazines with at least some essay content. The format is close to the JLPT essays, but they tend to be a lot more interesting. E.g., Dancyuu (http://www.president.co.jp/dancyu.html) usually leads off with a one-page lifestyle essay that's often worth a chuckle. If you're a dude into food and nihonshu, the rest of the mag is pretty interesting as well.

I was wondering how you guys feel about the effectiveness of NHK easy news and the like for those past the N3 vocabulary threshold and done with an N3 level textbook like Tobira.

A lot of people praise it, but I feel the grammar is perhaps a little too simplistic to push someone forward once they've seem most N3 grammar points. The vocabulary seems closer to N3 and every now and then I find an interesting word that I didn't know, but they oversimplify things sometimes by writing the hiragana equivalent of words commonly written in kanji, which can be more confusing than helpful imo (esp. if you've finished RTK).

So is there any point in reading NHK easy news at this level? Despite the fact that I still need exposure to N3 vocabulary, I'm not sure it'd be worth it. Aside from reading whatever you enjoy, is there a more reliable, solid next step? I've been thinking regular NHK news, but I'm not so sure about that since the gap in vocabulary seems to be a little too big to help one absorb N3 vocabulary efficiently. In fact, I think that might be true even when it comes to N2 vocabulary. Maybe TED talks? They do have transcripts.

Deciding to post an update on my listening progress, because...well, because I'm sitting in a room in the Shin-Takanawa, it's three-1/2 hours before I have to go and support Japanese customers in lab exercises, and studying sounds about as thrilling as eating boiled cardboard for breakfast.

I got pretty sick and tired of my Anki deck, which consisted of cards imported automagically using Epwing2Anki. The card quality was hit or miss, and my success rate started creeping down into the mid-70s. So I deleted the damned thing, and am now slowly inputting new cards by hand. Slow and less efficient? Surely. But it's giving me time to select good J and E definitions, and to dig up good, memorable example sentences from Yourei. My failure rate on vocab cards has decreased dramatically as a result, and Anki feels like less of a giant pain in the ass as a result.

Beyond that, much the same as before. I need to slot some time in June to take a sample test, and see exactly how far I am from making the N1 mark this year.

(2016-06-02, 6:36 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I was wondering how you guys feel about the effectiveness of NHK easy news and the like for those past the N3 vocabulary threshold and done with an N3 level textbook like Tobira.

A lot of people praise it, but I feel the grammar is perhaps a little too simplistic to push someone forward once they've seem most N3 grammar points. The vocabulary seems closer to N3 and every now and then I find an interesting word that I didn't know, but they oversimplify things sometimes by writing the hiragana equivalent of words commonly written in kanji, which can be more confusing than helpful imo (esp. if you've finished RTK).

So is there any point in reading NHK easy news at this level? Despite the fact that I still need exposure to N3 vocabulary, I'm not sure it'd be worth it. Aside from reading whatever you enjoy, is there a more reliable, solid next step? I've been thinking regular NHK news, but I'm not so sure about that since the gap in vocabulary seems to be a little too big to help one absorb N3 vocabulary efficiently. In fact, I think that might be true even when it comes to N2 vocabulary. Maybe TED talks? They do have transcripts.

When I was ready, I simply started reading NHK News, using Rikaisama to help look up words. I also used Rikaisama to save the words to a text file, and then pulled them into Anki for further study. After several months of this, the news got easier, and I was able to progress to a point where I could read many articles with few or no lookups. 

It might seem like a mountain of words, but NHK News in particular uses fairly standard, consistent grammar and vocab across all of their news stories. 

That said, I would recommend some exposure to N2-level grammar, as the news makes use of a lot of grammar classified as N2 (and occasionally N1).

Yeah, I agree with gaiaslastlaugh on NHK News Easy. If it's too easy for you, and you're not getting any challenge out of it, move on to the grownup version.

There is a big gap in vocab, but there's not much you can do about it, other than study your 漢語 like crazy. NHK News loves their 漢語 over 和語. Lots of kanji, strung together, is a pretty regular thing for them. On the upside, you'll get really good at on-yomi.

You'll notice after a while that NHK latches on to certain set phrases that will get repeated over and over. 意識不明、心肺停止 are two I really find annoying, but they love the latter one a lot lately to describe "unofficially dead people." But yeah, there's a ton of NHK語 that you'll learn after a while, too.

I'm not exactly expecting a positive answer, but would you guys happen to have any tips to speed up the ability to immediately recognize numbers and dates when you hear them?

Japanese is my third language, so I know listening solves this in the long run. The thing is, I don't think numbers, dates, and the time were that challenging when I was learning English. More often than not, when I hear a date, my brain is still trying to put the year together when the speaker is already saying the month and day.

If possible, I'd like to take a shortcut at this point rather than leave it up to the randomness of input. I haven't been able to find any useful tools so far though. I mean, I did find a blog with a audio tracks designed for this purpose, but the person didn't read certain numbers properly so I ended up ditching it.

You could watch history documentaries/lectures to guarantee lots of input of dates. I'm pretty sure this helped me with the same kinda problem with dates (processing them quickly while listening and saying them smoothly myself).
The other thing to recognise is that Japanese often says the year in full (せんきゅうひゃくよんじゅうごねん etc) so 「せんきゅ…」 (edit: or acutally even from the 「せん」 cus of the intonation) is like a big sign saying "Hey! Listen up! Here comes a date!!!"

(2016-06-04, 5:49 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I'm not exactly expecting a positive answer, but would you guys happen to have any tips to speed up the ability to immediately recognize numbers and dates when you hear them?

Listen to 日経平均株価 reports until your ears bleed.

Sounds like torture. I don't even listen to stock reports in English :/ maybe Japanese auctions? I know based on what I've seen that English speaking auctioneers speak fast. Is that the case for Japanese auctioneers?

If you have Android, you want this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai....Kikisuuji

It was made by one of the posters here, IIRC. Basically, it just reads random numbers out loud to you using TTS, IIRC.