kanji koohii FORUM
My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - Printable Version

+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: JLPT, Jobs & College in Japan (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-12.html)
+--- Thread: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread (/thread-13440.html)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-04-24

Hey guys,

Just a quick note that today I knocked off another episode of shirokuma and another reading comprehension drill from drill & drill.

The drill & drill exercises are amazing. I'm finding that I have the exact same problem with them that I had on the exam: I could get the gist of the passage - to the point that I could accurately tell you the main events in the passage. But the question had just an extra layer of nuance or subtlety so that it was just beyond me.

The nice part of the book is that in addition to the "main" question, they have a bunch of "hint" questions, that are much easier and "fill in the blank style", and I can get almost all of those. So I can still feel like I'm making progress despite not quite getting the main q&a.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-04-27

FYI, yesterday I decided to make a big push in vocab. Perhaps because I have been making so much progress in reading recently. But I upped my new vocab (all from my N3 kanji book) to 5 a day. 

I found that scanning the book, and adding in the words that "seem easiest", regardless of where they appear in the book, is the easiest way to learn them.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-04-28

Way to go ariariari! It's always good to see some updates here. I've been on a semi hiatus from Japanese for a few days but not without some way to try and get back into it Smile

First off, I finally received the "Let's Read Japanese" book set that I ordered via Amazon. Though I plan to save that for an epic June tadoku round (full month after all). Then while reading through my Feedly stuff, I read an article on JALUP challenging those willing to participate to  complete 10 manga volumes in one month (May 1-31).I don't officially want to participate (I'm not at all confident I can achieve that goal...), this got me thinking about how I can possibly get my reading comp up overall.

Of course the first thing to do is learn more vocab so I've been blasting through my Core 6k reps and trying to get rid of my backlogs and continuing my 30 new words/day pace. It's difficult since my reviews are 100+ at this point but I feel like I'm actually learning Smile

Then there is reading speed. I read quite slow even in English so this will be a challenge. But I did find some great tips as to how I may be able to achieve this. One of the tips is from the article from JLPT BOOT CAMP

JLPT BOOT CAMP Wrote:Take some kind of reading material that you are working with, graded readers are an excellent resource but anything your level will do, time yourself reading 2 pages of it. Try to read as fast as possible and time yourself doing it. The key here is to read at a pace where you are still comprehending everything not just blindly reading along, but actually understanding the whole story.

This is something I can easily implement into my manga reading. I actually feel like I am reading pages faster nowadays but I can't be too sure since I never timed myself. I usually just count the number of pages I read at a given session.

So now my goal is to continue reading while increasing my vocab and to monitor my speed per 2 pages. Only time will tell if there is improvement.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-04-28

@rawpk that's awesome! 30 words a day is a huge accomplishment. I don't think I've ever been able to do that continuously.

I hear you about reading slowly. When I first started reading I was amazed at just how slow it was for me. One of my teachers at JOI recommended reading aloud (音読). I would go to my Japanese conversation group with an NHK Easy News article that I had already read, and read it out loud to them.

I'm not sure if that was a secret sauce or not, but I feel like every 2-3 months I notice an improvement in my reading ability.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - sumsum - 2016-04-28

Hello everyone!
I've been stalking this thread for a while now as I really love to read about how everyone is progressing and preparing. It has kept me motivated for a while now and so I finally decided to post here as well!
I'm not entirely sure if I should be aiming for N3 or not... but I kind of want to give it a try and even if it doesn't work out, I'll hopefully learn a lot while preparing for the test.
Currently my Japanese ability is a bit over the place... I recently took the J-CAT and had a huge 35-Point difference between my best and worst section (60p for listening, 25p for grammar.... the other sections were 43p for vocabulary and 49p for reading)

My biggest weakness right now is definitely formal grammar study as the test reflected quite nicely.... I don't think I even reached N4 niveau in that regard. I roughly understand quite a few more grammar patterns when I see them in context, but if you were to asked me which verbform is used for this or that particular pattern, I'd probably be lost - which means the grammar part of the test will be quite a challenge...

Apparently I'm quite good at listening though? Or maybe I was just lucky? I don't know. I feel like I'm rather good at roughly figuring out what's going on. I don't think I completely guessed many answers, but I definitely made "educated guesses" on quite a few. That probably means my listening ability is a bit instable *hmmm*

Oh well, I feel like this post has already gotten quite long, so I'll continue some other time. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello guys!

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-04-28

@sumsum Welcome!

If you are interested in self-studying grammar I think that most people recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Japanese-Language-Proficiency-Complete/dp/4883196100.

I like taking grammar lessons at the Japanese Online Institute (JOI), mainly because I like practicing speaking the new constructs with a real person as I learn them.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - yogert909 - 2016-04-28

Totally off topic, but the kanzen master books have the best cover design of pretty much any textbook I've ever seen.  Maybe reason enough to buy the books...?

[Image: 51Q7P1wj3mL.jpg]

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - sumsum - 2016-04-28

Thank you!
I think I do have that book (yes, that design seems very familiar Big Grin), but I haven't used it yet (and up to a few minutes ago I was very sure I knew where it was, but when I just went looking for it, I couldn't find it ~uhhh~ I wonder were it went?)... Weeell anyway, I feel like I really should work through the N4 grammar beforehand. I'm currently working my way through the second minna no nihongo book  to fill in all the holes. But sadly I haven't come that far yet.
I guess the main problem is, that while for vocab and kanji I'll just do my reviews everyday, I don't really have a set schedule for grammar and thus have been really really lazy. But now that I set N3 as my goal I guess I really have to make a study schedule for it and set a few nice goals along the way Smile

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-01

So, another anniversary of the JLPT, another update:

Compared to last month:
Mature grammar cards: 568 (today) - 564 (April) = +4
Mature Kanji cards: 715 (today) - 715 (April) = 0
Mature vocab cards: 4,824 (today) - 4,783 (April) = +41

Total mature cards: 6,107 (today) - 6,062 (April) = +45

Compared to December 7, 2015 (the day after the exam):
Mature grammar cards: 568 (today) - 476 (12/7) = +92
Mature Kanji cards: 715 (today) - 684 (12/7) = +31
Mature vocab cards: 4,824 (today) - 4,500 (12/7) = +324

Total mature cards: 6,107 (today) - 5,660 (12/7) = +447

So outside of vocab, there wasn't much increase in anki. I think that, anki-wise, next month I'll see a larger increase in both vocabulary and grammar. Vocabulary because I recently moved from 2 new cards a day to 5 new cards a day. And grammar because I've been taking lessons at JOI again, and I think that there's a bunch of new cards in anki that simply haven't had a chance to mature yet.

Outside of anki, last month was a stellar month for Japanese for me. For reading, I reached my limit in the the Japanese Graded Reader series, and then opened up my "N3 Drill and Drill" book for reading exercises. This is the first time I opened it up, and I'm ahead of schedule. After the exam last year, I said that I'd goof off for the first half of the year, and then start looking at text books in the second half of the year. What really impresses me with this book is that while it's very hard, I do find it do-able. So something tells me that if I continue on this path, the reading section should be passable for me by December.

I've been doing slow and steady listening practice as well, mostly with shirokuma. I like this because it's dialog. Last year I prepped for the listening section mostly by doing conversation exchange, which wound up not being helpful at all.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-01

Oh, I should add: a main reason for the vocabulary push is that I really want to finish my kanji book not only before the exam, but sooner rather than later. I still have a ways to go for that.

Update: I should also mention that right now I've finished the first 10 sections of the book. But this isn't a complete picture of my progress through it. Because the book comes with a pamphlet and says "before reading each chapter we recommend going through this pamphlet and familiarizing yourself with the following kanji and words. And since I like anki, I often just go through the pamphlet, ignore which words are part of which chapters, and just add the words that look easy to me.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-01

Here's some other nice news. This is the first month that my "N3" vocab deck has had more than 1,000 mature cards!

[Image: Screen_Shot_2016_05_01_at_12_42_47_PM.jpg]

I can't believe that I've been at this deck for 16 months!

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-05-01

Great stats! Makes mine look pretty bad since I don' anki daily, though I am trying to again.

Anki Stats!

[Image: lgsSItB.png]

Mature Core 2k/6k cards: 187 (today) - 48 (April) = +139
Percentages of Core 2k/6k cards: 5% Young+Learn; 3% Mature

Not bad for reviewing 56% of the time. It's messy but I'm sure next month I'll do better and have stats for other stuff too like kanji and grammar.

[Image: bRXBkIo.png]

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-01

(2016-05-01, 4:11 pm)RawrPk Wrote: Great stats! Makes mine look pretty bad since I don' anki daily, though I am trying to again.

Anki Stats!

[Image: lgsSItB.png]

Mature Core 2k/6k cards: 187 (today) - 48 (April) = +139
Percentages of Core 2k/6k cards: 5% Young+Learn; 3% Mature

Not bad for reviewing 56% of the time. It's messy but I'm sure next month I'll do better and have stats for other stuff too like kanji and grammar.

[Image: bRXBkIo.png]
Neat! If you are +139 for the month then that's really good!

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - riogray - 2016-05-02

(2016-04-28, 7:10 pm)yogert909 Wrote: Totally off topic, but the kanzen master books have the best cover design of pretty much any textbook I've ever seen.  Maybe reason enough to buy the books...?

That was one of the reasons, why I chose them Wink

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-05-03

(2016-05-02, 10:06 am)riogray Wrote:
(2016-04-28, 7:10 pm)yogert909 Wrote: Totally off topic, but the kanzen master books have the best cover design of pretty much any textbook I've ever seen.  Maybe reason enough to buy the books...?

That was one of the reasons, why I chose them Wink

Pretty and functional...the perfect combo! Making plans on getting the set in the next month or 2. Is it recommended to get the entire set or maybe just a couple? I know the grammar book is solid but I don't know about the other books.

(2016-05-01, 4:26 pm)ariariari Wrote: Neat! If you are +139 for the month then that's really good!

Thanks. I feel that though the pace seems a lot, I rather be overlearning than under learning (is that even a word? lol). I'm finding it to be a benefit whenever I get into some media (read or watching shows) and picking up stuff I learned from Core little by little.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-03

(2016-05-03, 9:55 pm)RawrPk Wrote:
(2016-05-02, 10:06 am)riogray Wrote:
(2016-04-28, 7:10 pm)yogert909 Wrote: Totally off topic, but the kanzen master books have the best cover design of pretty much any textbook I've ever seen.  Maybe reason enough to buy the books...?

That was one of the reasons, why I chose them Wink

Pretty and functional...the perfect combo! Making plans on getting the set in the next month or 2. Is it recommended to get the entire set or maybe just a couple? I know the grammar book is solid but I don't know about the other books.

I *highly* recommend the kanji book. It's one of the best Japanese textbooks I've ever used!

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-05-03

How is it in comparison to the Sou Matome kanji book? As you know I have the entire N3 Sou Matome series.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-04

I didn't know that you had all the sou matome books.

I have sou matome vocab and like it. I might have the sou matome kanji book lying around as well, but I haven't opened it.

The kanzen kanji book for me is just one of the best japanese books I've ever read. The reason I like it is that I feel like it is actually teaching me real Japanese, in the way that maybe a Japanese kid would learn it. For example, in the first few sections I learned all about on and kun readings. I had maybe heard about on and kun readings a dozen times, but the distinction never really stuck for me.

I'm going by memory here, but maybe in the first chapter they explained the distinction (along with the kanji for on and kun!), and were like "here's a dozen common kanji along with their kun readings." And maybe they had pictures. And they were like "Here is when you use Kun readings." Then the next section was the same for on readings. The distinction finally stuck.

Oh, also in the first few chapters I learned the kanji for hiragana and katana, and also what okurigana is.

So you can see, it had a big impact on me and was kind of eye opening. It was a lot more than just memorization, which is what I do with anki.

If you have an existing book and like it I don't remember changing. This was just the right book for me at the right time.

BTW, I really like the sou matome vocab book. IIRC the first chapter is a picture of a kitchen with arrows to all the things and their translations. Made me feel like an idiot for living in Japan for 2 years and not knowing all those words. But there you go Smile

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-05-04

I got a sweet deal for the N3 Sou Matome books at $2 per book during the last known "Free Books Days" @ the Japan Foundation Los Angeles a few years back along with some free older reading books. I don't have the listening section but that shouldn't be a problem since listening sources are easy to find. Smile

As for kanji, I'm not at all knowledgeable except for basics and like the minimal readings for a kanji (1 on and 1 kun). Basically very elementary! A strong kanji book seems like the best solution and from how you describe the kanzen master kanji book, seems like the best bet.

I haven't cracked open the Sou Matome books in a while but I do remember very cute drawings, and yes the kitchen vocab! Some of those words I know thanks to my occassional dabbling in reading recipes in Japanese and watching one of my favorite animes last year called 食戟のソーマ with Eng subs (season 2 is coming up this summer). Though fair warning, it can be a bit graphic (characters clothes come off when eating food...an epic foodgasm) which the main chacater causes when people taste his cooking lol  Tongue

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-04

I just watched that anime for the first time over breakfast. It was fun to go from G-rated shirokuma to something R-rated. But man, I didn't understand *any* of the dialogue.

I sometimes beat myself up for missing dialogue in shirokuma, but this new show made me realize what it's like to get only close to 0% of the dialogue.

PS Another plug for crunchy roll! So glad I could watch it without subs so easily!

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-04

So I just googled (yet again) for a list of easy anime and wound up here:

http://japaneselevelup.com/difficulty-level-guide-everything-japanese/

Now I am watching an anime about a cat that wants to go outside. Much easier to understand than an anime about gangsters who are trying to get a restaurant to give up their land!

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-05-04

(2016-05-04, 10:02 am)ariariari Wrote: So I just googled (yet again) for a list of easy anime and wound up here:

http://japaneselevelup.com/difficulty-level-guide-everything-japanese/

Now I am watching an anime about a cat that wants to go outside. Much easier to understand than an anime about gangsters who are trying to get a restaurant to give up their land!

Nice list! I'm surprised Yugioh is on the easy list...but then again the show is quite repetitive so that's probably the reason for it. Chi's Sweet Home is the show I'm guessing you're talking about? It's a very cute show Smile

As for Shokugeki no souma, that series takes some getting used to. It's like Iron Chef + softcore porn (comedy) combined. But the plus side is all the food made on the show is definitely possible to recreate though reading the manga is easier in a sense that you can easily read the recipe vs quickly try to listen to it in the anime. I always end up very hungry after an episode! XD

Another series I do recommend after shirokuma is 妖怪ウォッチ. It's another slice of life anime with the fantasy aspect of 妖怪 (ghosts/supernatural creatures). Originally first a video game turned anime series, it's a really fun way to learn about being a typical Japanese kid in Japan. It's also fun to see the ghosts in such a different light than the traditional Japanese folklores about them which I found a very appropriately named website called yokai.com

EDIT: Like Shirokuma, Youkai watch doesn't really have a plot which I don't really mind at all with this type of series. I actually like it more than Souma because of its positive outlook on life in general. Also the game is pretty fun.

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-04

I am officially giving the N3 exam the nickname "animal anime level" Smile

RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - RawrPk - 2016-05-09

Hello everyone! I took the time to grab all the Japanese subs for shirokuma and used cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool on them and it gave me a list of words based on frequency. To save everyone's time, here is the list. One can easily make an Anki deck and pre-learn the vocab for the series  Big Grin

How to read the report:
Quote:Word Frequency Report
Name: word_freq_report.txt

Format:
Field 1: Number of times word was encountered
Field 2: Word
Field 3: Frequency Group (see explanation below)
Field 4: Frequency Rank (see explanation below)
Field 5: Percentage (Field 1 / Total number of words)
Field 6: Cumulative percentage
Field 7: Part-of-speech


RE: My humble 2016 JLPT N3 thread - ariariari - 2016-05-10

(2016-05-09, 8:36 pm)RawrPk Wrote: Hello everyone! I took the time to grab all the Japanese subs for shirokuma and used cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool on them and it gave me a list of words based on frequency. To save everyone's time, here is the list. One can easily make an Anki deck and pre-learn the vocab for the series  Big Grin

How to read the report:
Quote:Word Frequency Report
Name: word_freq_report.txt

Format:
Field 1: Number of times word was encountered
Field 2: Word
Field 3: Frequency Group (see explanation below)
Field 4: Frequency Rank (see explanation below)
Field 5: Percentage (Field 1 / Total number of words)
Field 6: Cumulative percentage
Field 7: Part-of-speech

Neat! I'm sure that that will help some people.

BTW, I was looking at where I'm at with my books and made a goal for the rest of the month: finishing 1 chapter a week for the rest of the month. For me that's chapters 11-14 of my book.

It's funny, my progress through the book has actually been pretty good. But the way I've been going through it has made finishing the chapters take a long time.

The book recommends with comes a separate pamphlet. The pamphlet has words for each chapter that they recommend you learn before starting the chapter. So I guess you gain some familiarity with the kanji and some of the readings and vocab before finishing the exercise.

But for me, I was just like, "Oh, this word is easy, I know this kanji, ...". So I wound up basically focusing on the pamphlet, picking up words and kanji here and there, instead of finishing the actual chapters. This method has worked well for me so far, but now I really want to finish the book (25 chapters), so I'm gonna focus on that for a while.