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+--- Thread: Japanese free TV and something else (/thread-8818.html)
Japanese free TV and something else - Johny - 2011-12-23
Okay before I give the Japanese free TV link for everyone who is interested to practice and even if you don´t understand it´s always good to watch it like 10 minutes a day, without relying on subtitles because you can the feeling of how they speak, the language rhythm, how they emphasize, express emotions, etc etc...
Before all of that~ I would like to get into "and something else" part first.
I have started studying Japanese 2 years ago. Although this is actually a bad joke if you watched how I studied. I used smart.fm (at the glorious days when it was free to use) and learned only things like ohayou gozaimasu, konnichi wa, hajimemashite, and no kana. Even at writing Hajimemashite I have recently found my old memos and I wrote it like "tajimemashite">awkward. So after one day I gave up.
It was on last year´s September that I truly made my début to study this fantastic language. I can read tones of Kanji and Kana and have a fairly good amount of vocabulary to be able to talk about many different topics although many times I am only good enough to make myself understandable, my sentences sound awkward, are unnatural.
Lately I have gave up learning Japanese like 10 times at least, I just feel discouraged, at the moment I can´t find it funny to study vocabulary or grammar from textbooks, the only way that I actually enjoy is by talking with people who are nice and willing to teach (voice to voice in skype) I have recently became a friend with a Japanese person and we talk via skype. I´m Portuguese and she´s also interested in learning my mother´s tongue so, it´s a great language exchange. To be honest with you this is the only reason why I haven´t entirely gave up on learning Japanese.
Before I was learning this language at a very fast pace because of my immersion, time invested but also, something very important I used to have,,,~motivation. Back then my thoughts were "I learned a new word, I´m one step ahead of my goal to achieve fluency in Japanese" Nowadays my thoughts are~"I can´t understand this word, I suck"
I saw this foreign person in youtube (he talks very good Japanese) he said that in Japanese it´s kinda easy to just stay in the same level and stop making progress for a bit, even though you´re actually trying to move further, sometimes it´s hard to progress if you don´t know what step to take next.
I didn´t understand at that time now I do. I just don´t do any progress at the moment, my level is the same as it was one month ago, nothing changes and I am feeling stuck.
Please, I know I am kinda whining but I am actually feeling hopeless about learning Japanese so can you try to be nice and give good advices on to just keep it up and what steps to take so I don´t loose my track ?
Okay now for the tv http://wwitv.com/tv_channels/8087.htm that is for "Odoroku tb" but you can go and click in Japan and check other channels. Also for those learning Korean/Chinese or other languages, there is also channels for other countries. Actually for Chinese there is one channel (forgot but you can search) it had Chinese subs and Eng subs so it´s good to practice
Hope you find the link helpful and I hope you can give me helpful advices
Japanese free TV and something else - EratiK - 2011-12-23
I'm not sure I understand your situation, but if you lack vocab, srs the new words you encounter; if you lack grammar, srs the dictionnaries of japanese grammar books; if you're fine on both fronts then just read a lot. A lot of intermediate/expert learners experience this kind of plateau. You just have to find where your weaknesses are, and work from there. Hope that helps...
Japanese free TV and something else - Splatted - 2011-12-23
Thanks for the link Johny. I think your feeling that you're not making progress is pretty normal. When you learn a knew thing in the beggining it's really obvious that you're improving because your learning the really common basic stuff and it represents a much larger proportion of what you know. If you think about it, you're not going to notice the diference between 10,000 and 11,000 the same way you did 1,000 and 2,000, but you have still learned just as much and you have still improved you're Japanese.
It's also worth bearing in mind that thedevelopment of most skills tends to happen in stages not a smooth upward curve, even if you work on them consistantly. As an example, a lot of go(碁) players tend to find that after a period of intensive study their competitive rating actually drops before jumping to a higher level.
You might also want to check out this thread that I made for just this kind of situation. The idea is that you post a detailed description of your attempt to do something that was too hard, and then some time in the future you come back and try to do it again. You compare the result to what you wrote the first time, and hopefully it will be obvious that you've improved, even if you didn't think you'd achieved anything.
頑張れ！！
Japanese free TV and something else - wccrawford - 2011-12-23
I think you need to re-examine your goal. You say, "I want to be fluent." But WHY do you want to be fluent? Language is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
I started learning Japanese so that I could read some manga before it was translated. That's not an issue these days, but there are still books and manga that never got translated, and I want to read them. That's my goal. I learn Japanese so that I can use it.
In the mean time, I have -never- given up on learning Japanese because I don't consider studying a necessary activity. It accelerates your learning, but is not necessary. Sometimes, I go months where I just read or watch anime, and don't study at all.
I went months without studying and without listening to audio stories. I recently listened to an audio story and was very surprised to find I could understand a lot more than before. Without studying.
So don't give up. Switch focus, change priorities, or simply enjoy the language for a while... But don't give up. Ever.
Japanese free TV and something else - Johny - 2011-12-23
My goal... Somehow I feel familiar when I get in contact with Japanese things,, everything sounds familiar.
I would like to work as a translator of books/manga/dramas,,,,
That´s basically my goal.