digitlhand Wrote:Part of the reason I'm using L-R for Japanese is for experimenting with learning styles. I used L-R to learn German and Swedish to a very high fluency level.

I am very interested in seeing it work with Japanese.
What is your current level of Japanese? Have you finished RTK?

Also interested in your exact approach, e.g., Listening in L2 and following along in text in L1.

I did RTK a few years ago... maybe 4 or 5 years ago... I don't remember much as I never did it the correct way. After reaching natural listening in Japanese, I will probably redo RTK.

As far was what I do... it varies day to day depending on my schedule... as for right now this is what I am doing....

Morning - wake up - listen and read with japanese audio, japanese text and english translation
throughout the day - listen for 4 to 5 hours of book 1 and book 2... it's the only Harry Potter I have...

When I finish the listening-reading the first book, the regiment I do in the morning... I hope to do that with the second book.... I'm assuming I will rinse and repeat until I achieve natural listening, which will most likely occur in three to four months.

I forgot to mention that I've finished listening to the first book already and have started the second book. Since I don't have time for reading the second book in English right now, I am relying on chapter summaries on sparknotes.com

If you want to know if I'm lost while listening... I'm not... Character names, english loan words and the narrators voice changes keep me in place.

Quote:What is your current level of Japanese?

I'm a beginner in Japanese. I have never studied its grammar nor had any contact with it. I am familiar with Hirigana and Katakana; but don't know all the characters.

What is the exact process you follow? I'm reading a chapter in English, then reading the Japanese while listening to the Japanese and then once I finish the book I plan on reading the English while listening to the Japanese. Is that right, or am I missing something?

I'm interested to see how you go, because I have my doubts. I can follow the narrator because I've studied Japanese for a while and can read the book comfortably on my own- but there are parts where he speaks really fast- especially when he's doing some of the characters. I can't imagine trying to follow along with him when I was a beginner. We've kind of had this discussion before on this forum- that it's not input that's so important, but comprehensible input that's important. I can't imagine using the L-R method for Japanese without a relatively firm grip on grammar and a large dose of vocabulary. I think it might benefit someone who's gone through Kanji Odyssey 2001 successfully.

The L-R method is supposed to take you from nothing to near-fluency, at least to the level where you can learn words from written or spoken context with ease. An early stage in the process is being able to distinguish words spoken at native speed and follow the spoken language at high speed (although with little to no comprehension). If you read the links about the listening-reading method, it's all explained.

If it seems confusing it's not your fault... I am doing many different things at once. Perhaps if I lay the tasks out parallel it will make more sense... Remember I am doing all these daily.

Task #1 (Priority 1)
Listen to Harry Potter (Japanese) for at least 4 to 5 hours a day... that means listening to book 1 and 2 from beginning to end as many times as I can. I'm hoping to achieve natural comprehension by about 150 to 250 hours. This task will take me almost 3 months to complete.

Task #2 (Priority 2)
Listen and Read the Harry Potter text in Japanese. This is where I have the English text side by side with the Japanese. I read a paragraph in English... then read listen and read a paragraph in Japanese. This task is much slower and requires time for me to sit down at a desk and trudge. I don't have an exact number of times I will repeat this perhaps two or three times per book. At the rate of an hour per day it will take me two weeks to complete each book, which also means 3 months if I do 3 reads.

Perhaps a video will be beneficial.

quick note... for example I've learned that this:
言った (it ta) I think?

Is used when someone said something. So I assume it means said... It occurs almost all the time. So I learn that very quickly. Same process happens for many different words and phrases, eventually I learn their meanings and it all adds up to a fluency vehicle that starts rolling faster and faster.

Interesting. I'll try to keep an eye on your blog but be sure to come back here and report on your progress- we're always interested in finding something that works. Just to be precise- you're expecting to be near native level fluency at the end of six months? (at least for speaking, reading and listening)

The first book is 10 hours, assuming the second book is about the same, that means you'll listen to each book about twice a week if you listen for 5 hours a day, 7 days a week. Over three months you'll listen to each book over twenty times. Can you really handle listening to the same thing over and over for 3 months? Doesn't it get tiring and boring? I guess that's kind of the point though- you know it like the back of your hand.

And yes, 言った means said.

edit: also- if you have a parallel translation I'd love to get a hold of a copy.

Captal, thanks for your interest. I apologize for not mentioning my end goal at three months... I don't expect to achieve native fluency in six months, heavens no! Haha, my goal is to achieve natural listening and hopefully a decent ability to read. As far as speaking goes, well, I don't expect much at all, since I'm not going to be focusing at all on speaking, beside shadowing the text, that is.

No, as far as speaking, I think there is no way around it, it just comes with time. I don't expect to be able to have a normal conversation with someone in Japanese for at least a year or two. But, what I hope is that once I achieve 'natural listening' ability as I have for Swedish and German, I can enjoy anything I want in Japanese, in 3 to 6 months time.

The books will get boring, I had much more media with German and Swedish. I had the entire series of Twilight, Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings, so I never really repeated with them; however, I do rather enjoy Harry Potter, so I'll be okay... 3 months will fly by in no time.

digitalhand Wrote:But, what I hope is that once I achieve 'natural listening' ability as I have for Swedish and German, I can enjoy anything I want in Japanese, in 3 to 6 months time.

The books will get boring, I had much more media with German and Swedish.

oooh, where did you find this german-english media?
You've all of a sudden piqued my interest into trying this for german

Quote:oooh, where did you find this german-english media?

I don't want to take this thread off-topic, so if you'd like email me and I'll give you as much information as I can.

Can you define what "natural listening" is? I have an idea, but I would like you hear what you consider it to be.

digitlhand Wrote:After reaching natural listening in Japanese, I will probably redo RTK.

Hi digitlhand.

After you reach natural listening (I'm also unsure what you consider this to be ), what are your plans to further your knowledge of Japanese past RTK? Will you continue to find parallel text & audio or will you use other resources / methods?

I'm also interested to see how your progress goes over the next few months. Good luck!

Quote:Can you define what "natural listening" is? I have an idea, but I would like you hear what you consider it to be.

I'm sure we all have our own individual meanings for it, my own experience with L-R has been that once I pass a certain number of hours, I stop translating words and sentences in my head and I understand what is being said... Besides that, I can obviously hear individual words in real time, I'm not trying to listen closely to what is being said (at first this was really hard for me in Swedish).

I don't mean to say I understand everything I hear, by no means can I do that with German even now, I still learn new words everyday and every hour; however, the best way I can put it is, I feel like I'm listening to a conversation in which if it were in English I understand what is being said most of the time, but new words that I don't know pop in all the time.
Does that help?

digitlhand will you share your parallel text? Did you make it yourself?

Quote:digitlhand will you share your parallel text? Did you make it yourself?

I don't use parallel texts... I use the books side by side, I bought the physical books and have them open side by side.

Sorry. I know parallel texts exist for Harry Potter in Japanese. I did look for them but found that books side by side is sufficient.

For anyone who wants to try L-R, I put together these files for Alice in Wonderland and Kenji Miyazawa's 銀河鉄道の夜.

Alice
http://rapidshare.com/files/372580163/Alice.rar.html
Online version of text: http://mastarpj.nict.go.jp/~mutiyama/ali.../alice.alm

銀河鉄道の夜
http://rapidshare.com/files/405788319/MilkyWay.rar

Thanks sheetz.

Did you ever find audio for the other Potter books, 3-7?

I should warn those willing to try L-R that you won't see big progress until you are at least 100 hours in, from my own experience.

Japanese audiobooks for HP3-7 were never made. In fact, it seems like 99% of Japanese audiobooks are for stories written over 50 years ago.

Edit: That site with the parallel texts I linked to also has Botchan, for which there are lots of free recordings available. And I made a parallel text of The Little Prince, which is in the Free Audiobooks thread. I've really wanted to give L-R a serious go, but there's just not a lot of comtemporary literature in audiobook format, and I'm too lazy to make parallel texts.

Does anyone know where I can buy/download Japanese ebooks of the first two Harry Potter books?

edit: got them, thanks to a generous forum visitor.

digitlhand Wrote:Captal, thanks for your interest. I apologize for not mentioning my end goal at three months... I don't expect to achieve native fluency in six months, heavens no! Haha, my goal is to achieve natural listening and hopefully a decent ability to read. As far as speaking goes, well, I don't expect much at all, since I'm not going to be focusing at all on speaking, beside shadowing the text, that is.

Sorry digitlhand- I was going off of mafried's quote below when I made the assumption you were going for fluency in six months:

mafried Wrote:As for being time consuming, people have gained fluency via L-R in months, far faster than Khatz did with the methods advocated on this board. Of course it remains to be seen how useful L-R is for very distant languages like Japanese. But I wouldn't dismiss out out-of-hand. Alyks advoated a similar approach many years ago before he left the forum.

I also saw similar quotes in some of the material in the links that were posted ("become fluent in weeks/months!")That's why I was initially pessimistic. Your goals seem much more reasonable and I wish you the best on your journey- we'll all be interested to see the final result.

Blahah, A quick search for an innocent thread discussing Japanese novels may reveal a combination of letters and numbers that have unique properties to help acquire such things in an electronic format. So I hear.

For those interested in following my progress, is there a place on this board you'd like me to post or is my site fine?

If you posted updates in this thread it would be cool. Easier than looking in several places

I bookmarked your site. Either way is fine though.