JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:hyvel Wrote:Passed N2 with 127/180点!
First of all, congratulations. That's a hell of an achievement. You should be quite proud.
Like Ryuudou, I'd like to know how on earth you managed to pass that test in 9 months, because that's amazing.
Sorry for being so slow in replying. I'd like to blame it on moving back to Europe and on university for keeping me busy, but that would be a lie. In fact I've already tried 2-3 times to write a useful reply, but always ended up deleting that stuff again because I felt like it was just too focused on what I did specifically and did not contain a lot of transferable concepts of general interest. So let me try once again.
Disclaimer
1) It might be rather ironic coming from me, but in my opinion it doesn't really matter how long it takes you to reach a certain level. Instead of killing your motivation by forcing an unrealistic schedule upon yourself, go at your own pace. Learning Japanese is a marathon, so don't ruin it in the start. In my opinion the main thing that is important is that you keep going and learn just a little bit every day.
2) While good study habits and methods definitely help, there is no secret to learning Japanese. In the end, most of it boils to effort. I haven't found a way around that myself, and even though many people on the web act as if they have, I have a hard time believing them.
3) I've enjoyed excellent conditions and opportunities for learning Japanese. Those coupled with a lot of effort and some brains have led to the outcome. However, obviously not everybody is as fortunate as I was, so your mileage will definitely vary.
Things that have helped me:
1) Trying to abuse everything as an opportunity to learn Japanese. This mainly means
being active and on the lookout. Don't know that word on the ad in the train? Look it up. Have a boring business-meeting in Japanese? Just abuse it as a language lesson. Obviously this mainly applies if you live in Japan, but there seem to be quite a lot of people who successfully keep their brain on standby. Although to be honest it gets harder and harder as time passes. You slowly get used to seeing things, and even though you don't understand them you kind of think that you do and you stop questioning your actual knowledge...
2) When looking up stuff, also go the extra mile and try to memorize it if you deem it useful. My workflow was that I'd usually look up a word in imiwa (iPhone app) and then save the word to a list called 'daily encounters' if I felt like the word is useful. If I was dubious, just save it in 'learn upon 2nd encounter'...
Then every evening I'd have like 20-30 new words and then export them to the PC and import them to Anki. You'd be surprised how much easier it is to pick up those words compared to ones that just come from some random word list.
3) Integrate learning into your daily routine as unintrusively as possible. When I first started working as an intern, I was just too tired to for studying. And even though I wanted to, somehow the days just passed without me doing anything at all.
So I made it a habit to walk to work and go through an Anki deck while doing that. That already gave me 2*30mins of vocab study every day. At work I always wrote down new words and went through them during lunch break.
If you can't integrate study activities into daily life, chances are high that the day will just pass without you having studied anything at all, even though you actually wanted to and promised yourself to do so.
4) Stop making excuses for yourself if you don't understand something. It just doesn't help and only kills a chance to learn something. Also, don't become self-complacent.
5) 'Live in the present'. I don't really feel entitled to give this advice as my discipline is terrible, but anyways: If you don't understand the usage of some word, want to know x and y etc: Find it out on the spot. I used to always tell myself that I'd look it up later etc, but how often do you actually do that..? Never, exactly.
Learning materials that helped me:
1) RTK I. Rushed through it in 3 months. Although that was probably too fast, I'd definitely do something similar again as it just takes the fear out of the kanjis and you can start learning and profiting from them from the start.
2) 'Kanji in Context' Anki Deck with audio. I actually bought the books, but haven't actually really looked at them. However, someone on this forum made an excellent anki deck with all the sample sentences and vocab including audio. So if you already know the kanji (e.g. from RTK) you can go through this stuff with anki on your mobile phone even while walking without coming across as extremely weird
3) Shinkanzen master grammar N3&N2, dokkai N2. Quite good in my opinion, especially as the transition is rather smooth. The N3 grammar book has both Japanese & English translations, so you can get used to the terms and prepare yourself for the Japanese only N2 grammar book.
One warning though: Don't waste too much time&energy on the JLPT specifically. Unfortunately the Japanese learning industry has a terrible obsession with it (because Japanese learners also have and it therefore sells well I guess). But there is a world outside of the JLPT...
4) Anki (obvious)
5) Imiwa (iPhone android dictionary)
6) Epwing2Anki (by cb4960. THANKS A LOT!). Pain-free creation of anki flashcards.
This is about all I can come up with for the moment. If there are any further questions, I'd be happy to answer them - hopefully faster this time.
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Boring personal stuff coming up now - you've been warned!
JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Can I ask if you already speak another language, other than English?
I come from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, so I grew up speaking Swiss-German, which is a rather bucked up and strong dialect of German. Ever since school I've been struggling to learn the proper German with varying degrees of success. They also forced me through 8 years of French, but I successfully managed to avoid learning it (I once learned from my wise elder brother that french is stupid and therefore one shouldn't learn it..
). I did however learn English at school and Swedish during an exchange year there. Furthermore I was forced through 5 years of Latin at school. While I don't really have a lot to show for it anymore, that probably helped somewhat, as it was mostly grammar and I learned how to tear apart sentences and so on.
JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:And I'm really interested in when you "started."
In my opinion there is not that much point in bookkeeping, but I understand that it is obviously somewhat relevant in order to make extraordinary claims
. As I decided to go to Japan for one year in June 2012, I obviously felt like I should learn some things before going there in the beginning of October 2012. However, exams at university and writing my final thesis kept me occupied, so I hardly got anything done. So while I technically knew maybe 50 words before coming to Japan, I count the moment when I arrived in Japan as the real start, seeing as one can learn those 50 words in about a weekend.
ps: really like your writing style/blog, JapaneseRuleOf7! Entertaining!
