I've been in Japan for a year and a half. I have passed JLPT2 and took a 2002 JLPT1 test provided at school and passed with a 302. The problem is, I plan to go home but I don't want my Japanese to become really bad. I'm not really too worried about speaking abilities for myself, just for understanding.

Is there anyone else at this level of Japanese or higher and is trying to keep it up or improve it outside of Japan? How do you go on about doing so? How many hours do you think you need a week just to maintain this level? (Hopefully under 3? =S)

Doing sentences seems like child's play when you can read books. Should I just stick to that? Like every other day read for 1 hour? Do you think that'd be enough to slightly continue to advance or slowly forget?

Watch news, movies that have more difficult language. Read books and advance. No matter what you do, try to use harder and harder material as time goes by. I really boosted my english that way.

AND

AJATT of course

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...d-foreword

hope it will help,

Rene

Doesn't his method pretty much go over learning sentences? I don't think it's necessary at this level. Also being immersed in Japanese stuff which I already have been for 1.5 years and want to move on while taking a little bit of my time to maybe maintain it and whatnot

raseru Wrote:I've been in Japan for a year and a half. I have passed JLPT2 and took a 2002 JLPT1 test provided at school and passed with a 302.

I hate you

raseru Wrote:How many hours do you think you need a week just to maintain this level? (Hopefully under 3? =S)
[...]
Like every other day read for 1 hour?

I don't really get why you don't want to spend more time using your Japanese knowledge to enjoy stuff. I assume you worked hard to get where you are now. It's time to reap the rewards. You can just read lots of cool books, manga and watch doramas, anime, play video games. All the good stuff is yours, now!

That's not work, so it doesn't matter how many hours you spend on it. The more the better.

Well I do plan to use it for my own interests as well, but I don't consider watching a movie or something in Japanese as studying because it really isn't anywhere as helpful as seeing text and looking it up. A book/manga is of course decent study material though

I'm also currently reading Berserk (in Japanese of course) as we speak lol

Thing is, I'm returning to college and I'm going to try and major in something that is going to require a lot of my time so I won't have too much time left. Plus I plan to learn Korean now (Korean gf), so my time is rather limited

raseru Wrote:I'm also currently reading Berserk (in Japanese of course) as we speak lol

Well, it's not that bad then. I think the key is that Japanese should stay a part of your daily life. As long as it is, I don't think you should have any trouble maintaining your level.

Wait a minute, you're at an advanced level of Japanese and you want to stop or at least do the "minimum"? I'm with the others, can you at least back up a bit and tell us how you got there. Cause that sounds really cool.

As for maintaining, do SJSOTT (Some Japanese Some of the Time). Just have 30% of your random songs be Japanese. 30% of you're internet time on Japanese sites (easy if you set up leech blockers). 30% of your shows, movies, books are Japanese.

Just set it all up so you're not thinking about it (random on your media player works wonders).

Oh, and if you did your learning with an SRS, just do all the reps but don't add anything new. In time, you can skip days (like all reviews once every three days or every week or two).

At this point you should be able to just maintain and develop your Japanese by reading what you're interested in. Presumably you started studying with some goal readings in mind?

Reading and watching TV is a great way to maintain, but it misses the final aspect of language: Output.

I would have to say the answer is to keep in touch with Japanese friends by both email and phone. If necessary, make new ones.

Since nobody mentioned it yet, how about laddering Korean using your Japanese skills? There should be plenty of resources aimed at native Japanese speakers learning Korean.

Delina Wrote:Since nobody mentioned it yet, how about laddering Korean using your Japanese skills? There should be plenty of resources aimed at native Japanese speakers learning Korean.

That's what I'm doing at the moment. Works pretty well as Korean grammar and vocabulary are easy to learn in Japanese.. I guess.

raseru Wrote:Doing sentences seems like child's play when you can read books. Should I just stick to that? Like every other day read for 1 hour? Do you think that'd be enough to slightly continue to advance or slowly forget?

It depends on what you want to do. If you just want to "maintain" the level you are at, then no, there is no need to do sentences. Just keep reading and you should be fine.

If you want to improve your level, SRSing is always a valuable tool. There will always be words you don't know, and the quickest way to go about getting them into your head is putting them in an SRS.

I've been in Japan for a few years, and honestly I realized that getting to a higher level of Japanese has nothing to do with being in the country (barring speaking, perhaps). It's a matter of reading and vocabulary, and you can achieve this just as easily in your home country as you can in Japan.

I wasn't quite at the same level as you (passed JLPT2 fairly easily just after I came back from Japan in 2005), but I'm guessing the principles are about the same. My experience is fairly straightforward -- the areas of your Japanese that you practice will improve; the areas you do not practice will get worse. So mostly I've been reading novels, and I'm noticeably better at those (much less need to resort to the dictionary, at least on the easier stuff). On the other hand I was looking back at some JLPT2 tests the other day, and some of the grammar questions were still not trivially easy (a combination of the fact that what I'm reading isn't the sort of newspaper/serious essay style that has that sort of grammar, and that I haven't been doing anything that would test being able to produce it with the right tense/particle/whatever). So I'd disagree a bit with samesong about "just reading" -- I think at higher levels it's worth thinking about what breadth of material you're reading...

And as wccrawford points out this applies on the output side of things too: stop practicing speaking and you're bound to get rustier...

The other thing is that when you get back home, especially if you're going from having been studying at a language school or otherwise relatively 'full time' to doing something else (like having a job!) then it's quite easy for the number of hours you spend on Japanese to fall off a cliff...

pm215 Wrote:So I'd disagree a bit with samesong about "just reading" -- I think at higher levels it's worth thinking about what breadth of material you're reading...

It's going to matter what he is reading, but I consider reading essays, editorials, and newspapers "just reading", as in, not putting in a conscious effort to mine new words, learn new readings, etc.

As other suggested, try to read as much as possible (books, news online, etc). Watching Japanese TV online or also listening to podcats will also help retain and maybe even learn new words.

A few Japanese radios have such podcasts available for free.

I used to listen a lot to podcasts in French, German and Swiss German (mainly from Swiss and German radios - I am from Switzerland) when I was commuting more than 2 hours a days in my Tokyo days. It really helped me a lot, since I had few chances, even in Tokyo, to speak the languages. Also, I found that podcasts helped me keeping in touch with trends from back home.

Now, I live in the Japanese countryside and have difficulties finding time to listen to podcasts, even on the computer. Although I am usually always at home, life is very busy with family obligations, work, some volunteering etc.

I can do two things at once, but NOT listening to a language and reading in another at the same time. :-)

PS: really, how did you get to that level in 1 1/2 year ? what was your starting level ?

samesong Wrote:"just reading", as in, not putting in a conscious effort to mine new words, learn new readings, etc.

Ah, right, I see what you mean now; I agree with that.

hhannahhjp Wrote:I can do two things at once, but NOT listening to a language and reading in another at the same time. :-)

I remember listening to J-pop once while doing Spanish homework, looking up the vocabulary in German and using an American textbook. I felt so cool in a silly way. ;-) It definitely compensated for the lack of effectiveness.

Isn't it about lifestyle? If you don't need Japanese, then naturally you will forget it right. I think what you are worried about is not having much time to devote to studying Japanese right? I read nothing by Japanese while living here in Canada that I've noticed my English is not as smooth as before. Right now, I want to learn about FX(Foreign exchange) so I'm reading about it in Japanese. So I think it's not about maintaining, it's about improving.

I think you will either improve or start to forget some stuff. My suggestion is to read OUT LOUD. I think that's the most important thing. If you read out loud, you are working many parts of the brain. You are using your mouth, your eyes(to read), and your ears(to listen).

In my experience as a native German speaker studying at an American college (English being a second language), you can take long breaks from a language and it won't go away. Granted, when you go back to using a language that you haven't spoken in a while, it might feel a little rusty at first, but it's never to the degree where it doesn't come back within few weeks.

Anecdote: I took French in middle school up to lower intermediate level, and I thought I had subsequently forgotten all of it, but when I took a French course in college after five(!) years of not using any French at all, you wouldn't believe how quickly all the grammar and vocab came back when I looked at it.

So I guess the answer is, don't worry about it. If you enjoy reading Japanese books, it'll help you improve your Japanese from where you are now, but if you don't, there's no way your existing Japanese will go away.

On the other hand, experience may vary -- I took French for 5 years in middle and high school, then didn't do anything with French for 12 years, and now I'm taking a graduate reading course in French and it's like I've never taken any French before this quarter. 12 years is a long time, though.

I agree with yudantaiteki!
I'm a German native speaker as well. I took English, Spanish, French and Latin in school. I only can use English with confidence now ... over 10 years later.
I guess that's because I somewhat kept using / listening to English, but I neglected all the other languages (esp. Latin - I mean WTF!?).
I'm pretty sure, though, that I could refresh at least my Spanish knowledge pretty fast again.
I'm also afraid of losing my Japanese once I go back home (currently living in Japan), but I really hope that I just can continue using it on a daily basis somehow (x_X)

Hm, yeah, true. My Latin? So gone. ;-)

Mine too- took two worthless years of it and I think all I could ever say was "semper ubi sub ubi" and "mala agricola."

In my case it's even worse! I had it for 5 years (!) in school and still can't remember a thing of it!

I took and passed 2級 in December 2008, returned to the U.S. in May 2009, and just took 1級 a few days ago (I think I passed, but we'll see!).

I think my latent Japanese ability actually continued to improve after I returned (because I kept studying regularly), but I would certainly say that my spoken Japanese is a bit more halting than before. That change happened almost immediately after I got back, and it was frustrating because what was in my head was built up behind my sputtering mouth but just wouldn't come out right. My Japanese husband noticed it, too, so I'm not just being hard on myself.

I think it's kind of inevitable, because being immersed in a Japanese world promotes fluency just as much as your specific vocabulary and grammar knowledge do. I think it's just important to keep the aural inputs going - I talk to my husband every day, but everything else I do is English, and my environment is otherwise almost 100% English, which I think is the main problem. I should try to start listening to more Japanese music and podcasts, and maybe also start keeping a Japanese journal/blog.

Good luck!