right, so if you can't read the subject, it says "I've got to write an essay in Japanese, what should I do?"

My goal is to get into Bunka Fashion School, and I need to do these three things:

1. 面接『めんせつ』 - interview
2. 読解『どっかい』 - reading comprehension
3. 小論文を書く - write a small essay

I'm doing the AJATT method, and I'm completely done with JLPT Level 3. I'm self-studying JLPT Level 2, and I'd say I'm about a Beginner in an Intermediate Level. So what should I do to improve my Japanese essay writing? Write an essay everyday in English and translate what I want to say in japanese? I'm currently putting in every useful/interesting/helpful sentence A Dictionary of Intermediate japanese Grammar, and so far it7s really helping. Golden Week is coming up, and I hope to finish the whole book up and then read it for fun. Vocab is being picked up as I go along, and surprisingly, my retention for vocabulary is pretty good. Is it just a matter of time?

(I have 5 months until the interview/testing... and yes, I am learning/practicing/reviewing everyday)

Read small essays, esp. in your field. It might be like the short readings in JLPT, or the ones in textbooks like New Approach.

Familiarize yourself with the specialized vocabulary in your field. I find the Japanese Wikipedia indispensable for this.

If you have a Japanese teacher/tutor, write essays before your session and sit down together so s/he can correct them and make them more nature. I used to do this at Yamasa and it helps a lot.

Is this an essay for your application, or written in a testing situation?

EDIT: Also, learn transition words to make your Japanese flow (isn't there a book by this title?). You should copy a basic structure from a sample essay and then plug whatever you're writing into that structure-- it's hard enough to be creative in your native language, and having a good form (three point, five paragraph, whatever) will help a lot.

If you can manage to write an essay every day then (a) I take my hat off to you, because I couldn't keep that up and (b) you're pretty likely to get better at it. I agree with billyclyde that you want to find somebody who can read your essays and correct them for you -- that way you get feedback rather than just repeating the same mistakes. I'm not sure I'd start in English and translate, though -- why not just write them in Japanese to start with? :-)

PS: I think that なくちゃ as a contraction meaning 'have to' has to come at the end of a sentence, so if (as in the title) you're putting something afterwards it has to be なくちゃいけない or equivalent. Google claims 121,000 results for "なくちゃいけないけど" and only 48 for "なくちゃけど", most of which have punctuation in the middle (eg "なくちゃ。 けど、"). I could be wrong, but that seems pretty suggestive to me.

Anyway, good luck with getting into the school!

pm215's totally right about NOT writing the essays in English first. It'll only trip you up, and adds extra work. If you can't say something in Japanese, you can't say it.

Not too sure about the [kana]nakucha[/kana] bit, though.

なくちゃ＋なんだ＋けど　 is how to use it in that example.

Is that the fashion school in Shinjuku? One of my friends went there. Just in case you didn't know already, it sounds like it's pretty tough going. My friend did a lot of all-nighters getting projects done and so forth. I've heard that the work load is severe. Good luck to you.

In terms of writing essays, I'd take some sort of class. Either a private one or a group one with the theme of writing essays (I took a group one like this). As was said above, you need guidance from a native and you need to practise and get feedback.

I'd also practise the other two components as well. Especially the interview.

yorkii Wrote:なくちゃ＋なんだ＋けど　 is how to use it in that example.

Thanks (makes mental note).

yorkii Wrote:なくちゃ＋なんだ＋けど　 is how to use it in that example.

Actually, after confirming, it turns out that you don't say that either. Only なくちゃいけないけど is correct it seems.

In my mind, the justification for why inserting なんだ is incorrect, is that なんだ or なんです comes after な adjectives and nouns only. なくちゃ is a contraction of なくては and is neither of these.

wrightak Wrote:

yorkii Wrote:なくちゃ＋なんだ＋けど　 is how to use it in that example.

Actually, after confirming, it turns out that you don't say that either. Only なくちゃいけないけど is correct it seems.

There are some (not a great many, but some) google hits for "なくちゃなんだけど", so maybe it's in the category of "wrong but 'natural' mistake", if you see what I mean.

wrightak Wrote:In my mind, the justification for why inserting なんだ is incorrect, is that なんだ or なんです comes after な adjectives and nouns only. なくちゃ is a contraction of なくては and is neither of these.

My original impression was that when you use なくちゃ to mean "must" what you're effectively doing is stopping halfway through a sentence and leaving the いけない part unspoken. So (unlike a dropped clause) you can't put anything afterwards. (There's a similar effect with ~しないと , I think.)

Not that it matters much how you rationalise these things; the result is the same.

pm215 Wrote:My original impression was that when you use なくちゃ to mean "must" what you're effectively doing is stopping halfway through a sentence and leaving the いけない part unspoken. So (unlike a dropped clause) you can't put anything afterwards. (There's a similar effect with ~しないと , I think.)

しないといけない and しなくちゃいけない are both said often so you can definitely put something after なくちゃ and ないと. You don't have to cut off the いけない. And as I confirmed, you mustn't cut it off if you want to continue the sentence. You can also replace いけない with ならない and keep the same meaning.

You can also replace いけない with だめ too. In summary:

verb (negative stem)
+
なくては、ないと、なくちゃ、なきゃ
+
いけません、いけない、ならない、だめ

Are all valid and in (pretty much) descending order of politeness. And if you want to add けど, you need to include all three.

I think we are in furious agreement ;-)

billyclyde Wrote:pm215's totally right about NOT writing the essays in English first. It'll only trip you up, and adds extra work. If you can't say something in Japanese, you can't say it.

I disagree.

When I was in Mexico, I felt I could speak Spanish pretty good. Every week I wrote a progress report (in Spanish) to the president, and evey week I thought I wrote it good. I watched my grammar. I made sure there were no spelling errors, etc.

Then, in a meeting, the president asked if I could write the report in Spanish and in English, so that he could practice reading English. No problem, I said (because English is my native language).

As I went about it, I wrote first in Spanish, then translated everything into English. In doing that, I noticed how horrible my writing was. Not that there were mistakes, and not that what I wrote didn't make sense, but that what I had written in Spanish were the very basic ideas of what I was trying to say, without the in-depth explanations or the flowing structure of sentences, or ideas that build on each other, and hold the next idea in suspense. Things like that.

And things like that are what make writing different from speaking.

From then on (until my Spanish was really good, and I was more comfortable with it than English), I wrote what I wanted to say in English first, then translated each sentence into Spanish. The difference was amazing.

Anyway, my point is that even though one is able to speak and converse somewhat fluently in a language, the written word requires more structure and logic, especially in the connections of ideas. And an essay is nothing more than ideas. So, Kumadondon, I think it is a good idea to figure out what you want to say first in your native tongue, and then translate all the thoughts over to Japanese, making changes here and there where Japanese has a better way of saying things, etc.

Good luck.

EDIT: Unless, of course, you can think in Japanese. If you can do that, ignore everything I just said.

I'm not sure if I agree with translating from English to Japanese (don't have a terribly strong opinion on it either way), but I do agree with MethodGTs general sentiments as far as practicing Japanese by writing Japanese. Repeatedly using the limited things you know is just repeatedly using the limited things you already know, it doesn't teach you anything. Which is why I'd advise reading as many Japanese essays as possible, to fill your head with examples of good Japanese essay writing. See how the Japanese get their ideas across in essay-writing, and you'll naturally emulate them.

pm215 Wrote:There are some (not a great many, but some) google hits for "なくちゃなんだけど", so maybe it's in the category of "wrong but 'natural' mistake", if you see what I mean.

if google gives over 200,000 hits, I think it's save to say that I'm right about the usage. If the OP wanted to put なくちゃ　and けど together as simply as possible adding old なんだ is fine. いけない or ならない are what is written in your "textbooks", but that's not the be all and end all of Japanese grammar...

wrightak Wrote:yorkii wrote:

なくちゃ＋なんだ＋けど　 is how to use it in that example.

Actually, after confirming, it turns out that you don't say that either. Only なくちゃいけないけど is correct it seems.

Who says so?

If you wanna be all technical about it, and say that "according to grammar rules of Japanese, なんだ can only follow な adjectives..." then that's all good, but I'm not revering to a book of rules, rather real discourse and usage from people.

It's like looking up something like "booya" in the dictionary to find the only possible usages that it has.

Why do we always have to discuss stuff like this over and over?!

yorkii Wrote:Who says so?

Natives. I didn't look anything up. I thought it sounded odd, so I asked Japanese people about it and was told that you don't say it. I'm just passing that info on.

I then thought about how to justify it because it helps me and I thought it might help others too.

Quote:Why do we always have to discuss stuff like this over and over?!

I find discussions about grammar points interesting and I know that others do too. Apologies to the original poster for going off topic.

yorkii Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:There are some (not a great many, but some) google hits for "なくちゃなんだけど", so maybe it's in the category of "wrong but 'natural' mistake", if you see what I mean.

if google gives over 200,000 hits, I think it's save to say that I'm right about the usage.

When I wrote that, it was based on a google hit count of a few hundred, not a few hundred thousand. Obviously I managed to misdrive google (maybe I typoed it), so sorry about that. Tens or hundreds of thousands is well into "right, or at least unexceptionable in casual conversation" territory (although I do note that "loose the game" gets 32,000 hits, so I don't take google counts too seriously :-))

Quote:It's like looking up something like "booya" in the dictionary to find the only possible usages that it has.

That's what I was trying to avoid with the google search -- right idea, shame I screwed up the execution :-(

...
yeah, this got out of hand.

But thanks to all who helped me with the essay questions!!!

MethodGT Wrote:As I went about it, I wrote first in Spanish, then translated everything into English. In doing that, I noticed how horrible my writing was. Not that there were mistakes, and not that what I wrote didn't make sense, but that what I had written in Spanish were the very basic ideas of what I was trying to say, without the in-depth explanations or the flowing structure of sentences, or ideas that build on each other, and hold the next idea in suspense. Things like that.

And things like that are what make writing different from speaking.

Anyway, my point is that even though one is able to speak and converse somewhat fluently in a language, the written word requires more structure and logic, especially in the connections of ideas. And an essay is nothing more than ideas.

It sounds to me like you're describing the basics of making an outline and learning how to write more than strategies for writing second-language essays. Of course, one should always plan an essay before writing, and revise it afterwards. I did so writing a couple of essays a week to revise with a tutor at Yamasa; I had learned by then not to write first in English so as not to get hung up on trying to say something I couldn't.

I can certainly see how writing first in English might help your Spanish, and vice-versa, considering how much the languages share. I learned about infinitives and the subjunctive mood in English from high school French, another close cousin. Japanese essays and prose are a whole other beast, though, with different rules and conventions. It's why we have cliches like "lost in translation."

Hey guys, I passed the exams with flying colors

Thanks, Fabrice and Heisig!

::puts on shades::

kumadondon Wrote:Hey guys, I passed the exams with flying colors

Cool; thanks for letting us know how it worked out.

"なくちゃなんだ" gives me 11 000 hits on google.
yahoo.jp gives me 10 900.

So yeah, I'm wondering how he got 200 000 hits.