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Goals

I was able to complete all of my goals for this week. I finished listening to both Harry Potter books in Japanese and have almost finished listening to the first book for a second time. I also surpassed my goal by finishing Les Ames Vagabondes ahead of schedule.

I plan on listening to both Harry Potter books in Japanese again and hope to complete half of my listening for Les Ames Vagabondes for the second listening time.

Japanese Progress

I should have put this at the end of this blog entry but I am excited that I'm starting to experience this so early in my Japanese Listening-Reading. On Friday I noticed that I am starting to hear words that I don't know the meaning to but am beginning to recognize as words I have heard before among the babble of other words; this milestone didn't happen until I was on the third of fourth book of the Twilight series in Swedish and German. On to my notes for this week...

On Monday I began "traditional" listening-reading with ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) that is to say I sat at a desk with a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in English and a copy in Japanese. I also have the audio for the book in Japanese. With both books opened side by side, I read in English then pressed play on my iPod to begin the Japanese audio, then read along with the Japanese text and finally paused the audio at the end of each paragraph to repeat the process.

Monday was probably the most difficult day in terms of syncing the audio with the text in my mind as I read. I finished a chapter each morning, as noted in my Tweets on the right. Later in the day, I listened to the audio book without text to follow along. Furthermore, when possible, that is when I had privacy, I shadowed the text. I think anyone coming from how-to-learn-any-language.com will know what shadowing means; however, for those who aren't aware of shadowing, I will give my interpretation of it in an upcoming video.

Following the audio without a translation was hard on Monday but seemed to get better on Tuesday. On Wednesday and Thursday I definitely felt much more comfortable with the audio and was able to follow the storyline better, not that I actually understand much; however, I'm starting to associate words with general meanings and I'm able to recognize character names and place names better.

Since I haven't finished listening-reading the first Harry Potter book in Japanese yet, I don't have time to read the second book while I listen to the audio in Japanese... So I used chapter summaries from SparkNotes.com From my first listen to this book in Japanese, I was able to follow along pretty well — though this could be that I have already read this book so many times in different languages that I can recall when certain events are supposed to occur. In any case, the chapter summaries are providing the insight I need, at least for this stage of listening and reading this book.

I would like to mention a strange phenomenon that I noticed with Japanese that I had forgotten with German and Swedish… During the day I'm starting to get phrases pop up in my head in Japanese. It's similar to the feeling one has when one has a song stuck in their head. I don't know if the phrases actually mean anything because I don't understand it. Another strange thing, that really isn't so strange is the way I can remember where I was and what I was doing when listening to a particular chapter, though I don't think this has any effect on helping to remember the audio itself.

French Progress

My French progress appears to be neglected; however, it really is because there is not much to report at this point. I am progressing at a nice and steady pace… I feel as though I'm getting close to natural listening, but I won't say that I have achieved it until I am absolutely sure. I think French comprehensibility came so fast because of my knowledge of Spanish, English and German.

Side Notes:

Although Listening-Reading is the primary focus of this blog, I believe it would be a disservice to those looking for solid experience with Listening-Reading to ignore mentioning that when available I watch movies and television shows with my family in foreign languages. There is no concrete schedule to our watching habits and we hardly ever watch only German or Spanish programs, my daughters absolutely love Dora the Explorer and ¡Go Diego Go! I try hard to log anything watched on the twitter feed to the right but I may miss some logs. Pressed to give a log of hours per week would probably yield about four hours spent watching Japanese, German, Spanish or French each. (We don't have many family movies in the Swedish department)

Wow so your family watches foreign movies with you? You must have a patient family if they are willing to watch a foreign movie they don't understand- do you put on English subtitles?

Patient family indeed! 5 hours a day for months/years listening to and reading a succession of incomprehensible languages. I'm guessing digitlhand is either retired, unemployed, a trustafarian or doesn't live with his children. :-)

Would it be too personal to ask what your motivation is digitlhand? Are you seeking to test the limits of the method? Wishing to be fully multilingual? Enjoying the process...??

Quote:You must have a patient family if they are willing to watch a foreign movie they don't understand- do you put on English subtitles?

My daughter's are really young, four and two years old, so they'll watch anything as long as it is a cartoon. My wife doesn't mind because we both feel that they benefit from it. Though, I don't want to discuss this too much as it will take the thread off topic.

Quote:Would it be too personal to ask what your motivation is digitlhand? Are you seeking to test the limits of the method?

I am definitely testing the limits of the method with Japanese, it's one of the reasons I am doing Listening-Reading with it before other "easier" to learn languages. To be perfectly honest, it's going just as smoothly as German and Swedish. Though, I should keep quiet until I can say that without a doubt.

Quote:5 hours a day for months/years listening to and reading a succession of incomprehensible languages. I'm guessing digitlhand is either retired, unemployed, a trustafarian or doesn't live with his children. :-)

I wish I was retired or trustafarian and as stated above I have two young children, so I don't have time... I make it. I wake up at about 5 am each morning to start my studies. Any listening that I do is when I'm doing something else, I never have the luxury of sitting down and just listening to foreign language audio, unfortunately.

5am... that's dedication. Do keep us up to date on your progress, I think you've piqued the interest of a few of us.

I think one challenge you may face is the large amount of kanji your brain needs to process and store. You may get your listening up to a good level, but speaking, reading and writing and going to lag. You are getting some reading exposure of course, and I'm curious to see how you'll handle other texts without furigana (the hiragana written next to the kanji).

Quote:I think one challenge you may face is the large amount of kanji your brain needs to process and store.

I definitely understand this, though I am starting to recognize many Kanji at the beginning stages.

Quote:You may get your listening up to a good level, but speaking, reading and writing and going to lag.

If that is the case, I really don't mind. As long as I can get my comprehension level high I don't mind; I don't have a particular reason to learn Japanese at this time, so reading ability isn't as high a priority to me right now. I believe that Listening-Reading should help take me far, though that of course remains to be seen.

Quote:I'm curious to see how you'll handle other texts without furigana

The Potter text that I have is the version without furigana, I prefer it as I rather not use a crutch at this time, though I hope I don't offend anyone with the use of the word crutch.

At the beginning, how did you keep track of where you were in the text relative to the audio?

bladethecoder... here is my setup,

Listening-Reading - 1 hour a day, more if I can, with Japanese book and English book on a desk, iPod with Japanese audiobook
Pure listening - 4 to 5 hours a day, without text, just iPod

Listening-Reading - I lay the two books side by side on my desk so that when I start reading they're on the same chapter. I read a passage in English, this may be a whole paragraph or just one sentence, if it's too complicated... and then I turn my attention to the Japanese text and press play on the iPod until the passage is done being read by the narrator, I then press pause on my iPod. Next I read another passage in English, and again turn my attention to the Japanese text afterward while listening to the narrator in Japanese.

Pure listening- I just press play and keep up with the story from memory, this means that any new words I learned while Listening-Reading are reinforced, they help keep me in place; furthermore, any Character names, place names, or English loan words — there are a vast number of them when you come from an English book to Japanese — mentioned all help to keep me where I am at in the story.

I hope that helps explain the process bladethecoder.

Thanks for the info; that's a good summary. Not what I was trying to ask though.

Quote:I turn my attention to the Japanese text and press play on the iPod until the passage is done being read by the narrator, I then press pause on my iPod.

I was wondering about the specifics of this step. I'd end up in the wrong paragraph and be unable to find the place again.

Quote:I was wondering about the specifics of this step. I'd end up in the wrong paragraph and be unable to find the place again.

I have lost my place before, what I do in those cases is read a little bit ahead, maybe two or three sentences maybe a little more... I'll read a line in Japanese so I know what to look out for and then wait till the audio catches up. I don't have trouble finding my place as the hiragana and katakana have become much easier to follow now.

I practised for a while with this document (and Librivox audio), which very helpfully has numbered paragraphs =P
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Langu...LangID=jpn
I think it's actually starting to work. I had trouble even following song lyrics before, and that doesn't seem so difficult now. I see what you mean about following the kana.

I wonder what would happen with Chinese ;)

I imagine Chinese might be easier after the initial Hanzi shock wears off, many hanzi pronunciations are predictable and many would be repeated throughout a page, so those pronunciations would be acquired fairly quickly. On top of that each hanzi represents one syllable, at least in traditional characters, so once one gets the rhythm down it's just a question of making sure you focus and don't lose your place until one has the 100 most used hanzi to keep your place later.

I'm no Chinese expert so the above text is an educated guess.

This post relates to a step I have apparently been missing in the Listening-Reading method. This may be due to the fact that I started Listening-Reading German a few months after reading the original thread on how-to-learn-any-language.com. Volte, on the forum of the aforementioned website, said that I may be doing something wrong if my audio input wasn't that comprehensible after 20 hours. This made me go back to the original thread by siomotteikiru, the author of the thread itself, and I found that I missed the most important step of the process, according to her.

The third step described by siomotteikiru as I understand it involves listening to your target language while reading in your native language. The process is supposed to be repeated about three times. This is the link to the original Listening-Reading thread itself, where what I just mentioned is described by siomotteikiru herself.

I decided to give this part of the method a try last night and this morning with both French and Japanese. I didn't know if I would be able to keep up with French and I thought it would be impossible to with Japanese. Turns out I was completely wrong. I am easily keeping up with both Japanese and French. If I lose my place which happens every ten minutes or so because of a simple distraction, I am able to find my place in a matter of seconds.

The results remain to be seen. Things at this point look very promising... more to report in two weeks. My goals for this week have changed for both French and Japanese. I plan to Listen to my target language and read in English at the same time for the remainder of this week and the next and report my findings. I will still continuously listen to Japanese for five hours per day but I'll try to do this method at the same time when I can. French will be done with this method, I'll try to squeeze in an hour or two per day.

Interesting to say the least. Will keep track and may attempt in the future.

digitlhand Wrote:The third step described by siomotteikiru as I understand it involves listening to your target language while reading in your native language. The process is supposed to be repeated about three times. This is the link to the original Listening-Reading thread itself, where what I just mentioned is described by siomotteikiru herself.

I just started this step myself after reading a chapter in English and listening to a chapter in Japanese while reading in Japanese. I finished the first three chapters reading in English while listening in Japanese and I'm starting to wonder if Harry Potter is really the best material for the L-R method. The L-R thread talks about using material translated FROM your target language whereas Harry Potter is translated TO our target language. I didn't notice it as much when I was doing the first two steps, but now that I'm listening to the Japanese while reading the English, I can tell there are times where the Japanese is unnatural, or where they are forced to come up with a Japanese equivalent when there really isn't one. There is probably value just in the amount of vocab that will be picked up, but I wouldn't rely on Harry Potter for the most natural Japanese.

I also noticed that this third step really takes a lot of concentration, because the idea is that you read ahead in your native language and then listen in the target language to try and meld the two together. It can be hard to keep at it.

captal Wrote:I also noticed that this third step really takes a lot of concentration, because the idea is that you read ahead in your native language and then listen in the target language to try and meld the two together. It can be hard to keep at it.

I guess that is why you would want to do this over a series of books. Other than Harry Potter 1 & 2, which other books are available (have audio and translated into eng/jpn)?

brianobush Wrote:

captal Wrote:I also noticed that this third step really takes a lot of concentration, because the idea is that you read ahead in your native language and then listen in the target language to try and meld the two together. It can be hard to keep at it.

I guess that is why you would want to do this over a series of books. Other than Harry Potter 1 & 2, which other books are available (have audio and translated into eng/jpn)?

Not many, which is one of the problems. There are a few on the wiki, but nothing modern.

I wonder if L-R works if you only have two Harry Potter books. People usually stress that you need to have many different sources of input, but I would have thought that until you get comprehensible at Harry Potter 1 + 2, reading them over and over again would be just as good as reading other incomprehensible sources. I don't know much about the method though.

Very interesting. Just spent about an hour reading everything I could find on this method and the success people have had. I'm thinking about pausing adding new sentences to experiment for two weeks or about 20 hours.

My guess is that if you REALLY learn the material well you probably wouldn't need as many resources to reach the same level of proficiency as you would otherwise. I was thinking of maybe applying the "retranslation method," as described in this thread to HP 1+2 and seeing how that goes.

sheetz Wrote:My guess is that if you REALLY learn the material well you probably wouldn't need as many resources to reach the same level of proficiency as you would otherwise.

I would have thought you'd need variety of situations, Harry Potter has school, fighting, some sports etc. But I'd guess if you listened to news about the BP oil spill or watched a law drama I think you'd be lost. It's pretty good the HP has some keigo from the teachers and rough speak from Hagrid tho.

caivano Wrote:

sheetz Wrote:My guess is that if you REALLY learn the material well you probably wouldn't need as many resources to reach the same level of proficiency as you would otherwise.

I would have thought you'd need variety of situations, Harry Potter has school, fighting, some sports etc. But I'd guess if you listened to news about the BP oil spill or watched a law drama I think you'd be lost. It's pretty good the HP has some keigo from the teachers and rough speak from Hagrid tho.

And you wouldn't understand anything about astrophysics, ikebana, and sumo wrestling. But the point is to try and build a solid foundation which will enable you to easily acquire knowledge in those other areas.

captal -- if you're doing the traditional L-R (reading English while listening to Japanese), a work originally in Japanese would be best. If you're doing the related massive-exposure method (reading Japanese while listening to Japanese), a translated work originally in your native tongue or a language you know well would be best.

sheetz Wrote:

caivano Wrote:

sheetz Wrote:My guess is that if you REALLY learn the material well you probably wouldn't need as many resources to reach the same level of proficiency as you would otherwise.

I would have thought you'd need variety of situations, Harry Potter has school, fighting, some sports etc. But I'd guess if you listened to news about the BP oil spill or watched a law drama I think you'd be lost. It's pretty good the HP has some keigo from the teachers and rough speak from Hagrid tho.

And you wouldn't understand anything about astrophysics, ikebana, and sumo wrestling. But the point is to try and build a solid foundation which will enable you to easily acquire knowledge in those other areas.

I realise that but just Harry Potter is gonna give you far shakier foundations than using a variety of resources imo. It's not so much the vocab but the situations, HP is mostly kid-kid, teacher-kid dialogue. It lacks a lot in the way adults talk to each other (informally and formally).

caivano Wrote:I realise that but just Harry Potter is gonna give you far shakier foundations than using a variety of resources imo. It's not so much the vocab but the situations, HP is mostly kid-kid, teacher-kid dialogue. It lacks a lot in the way adults talk to each other (informally and formally).

Well, it should be patently obvious that one should use other sources. Of course you don't just read Harry Potter and quit reading books after that.

I know somebody who claims to have learned Cantonese by watching Kung Fu movies. Now clearly that's not true and he used plenty of other resources, but he did start off by watching tons of Kung Fu movies and can now communicate over a wider variety of subjects than just fighting techniques. But that's just how he got started, and once he got a solid footing he was able to quickly learn other things.