digitlhand Wrote:Are any of Hemmingways books translated into Japanese? If they are no longer under copyright can we record our own audio of the Japanese translation and share it? I have someone that will record audio for me.

If you're gonna do that I would have thought a native Japanese author would be better... failing that The Great Gatsby translated by Murakami would be interesting.

I don't know anything about copyright mind.

A problem I am encountering is that I will pick up a word, but I will forget it after a few pages. The amount of vocabulary I have picked up so far is really small. Maybe 10 words which is pretty awful considering I put 10 hours in already. I'm still going to use this method, but so far it has been disappointing.

I am not sure if you are just starting out that you should use this method.

I think Hemingway's works will be in public domain next year in Japan. He died in 61' and it should be 50 years after the author deceased. It will be another 20 years in the States. Not sure about other parts of the world.

This is for the original texts, and the translations have their own copyright, so it depends on when the translator passed away. Probably not many, if any, will be in public domain in the near future.

I've just started experimenting with this method using French (a language I have no knowledge of). Not sure if I'll have time to keep it up with much intensity but I'll report back with my progress. I'd say after about 2 hours of listening to L2 and reading L1 I've picked up maybe 20-30 words and am recognizing a lot more if I include cognates. I don't know about Japanese, but the French and English versions match up very nicely, with one sentences spoken for each sentence written. Keeping pace has been no problem.

@Lyulf
That's disappointing to hear, but I think it's probably normal to be forgetting a lot of words at first. It's repeated exposure over extended periods of time that will cement them. I suspect there is also a gestation period so although it might seem you're not learning anything what you're hearing now will just takes time to sink in.

Listening-Reading completed this week:

French: 3 1/2 hours of L1 Reading L2 Listening
Japanese: 9 hours of L1 Reading L2 Listening; 20 hours of L2 listening

French
French is coming along very nicely. Unfortunately I was not able to get in more than 30 minutes of Listening-Reading on about three days this week; I woke up too late and since my Japanese comprehension is so much lower than my French it takes precedence. I am happy to say though, that I've reached Chapter 13 of my second read of Les Ames Vagabondes by Stephenie Meyer. Using the L1 Reading L2 Listening step has been very beneficial for my vocabulary acquisition, I'd say I'm understanding about 95 percent of the audio in French using this step. I wish there were some milestones to report but there really isn't. It seems like I'm on a steady climb in building my French vocabulary.

Japanese
I am happy to report that my vocabulary is growing at a faster pace than I'm used to with Listening-Reading. I remember phonetically knowing many words in my first few weeks of German and Swedish Listening-Reading but not knowing what they actually meant in the target languages. I hadn't tried the L1 reading L2 listening method with these language so all the vocabulary was learned completely from context. I would be worried about whether or not I'm actually learning the words that I hear while L1 reading L2 listening but I only can enjoy this activity for about a maximum of two hours a day. I "passively" listen to the Japanese audiobooks on my iPhone about 4 hours a day and can recognize most if not all the words I have learned from L1 reading L2 listening. I wish I could give a solid estimate as to how many words I have acquired in Japanese; however, it's really impossible to say.

Le Petit Prince, also available in audiobook format in Japanese, is a nice short story that I had the pleasure of reading in English this week. I plan on listening to it the next few days in Japanese. I'm debating at this point on whether or not to start listening to another audiobook, besides Harry Potter. This is not really due to boredom but a drive to prove that Listening-Reading can work for Japanese.

Lyulf Wrote:A problem I am encountering is that I will pick up a word, but I will forget it after a few pages. The amount of vocabulary I have picked up so far is really small. Maybe 10 words which is pretty awful considering I put 10 hours in already. I'm still going to use this method, but so far it has been disappointing.

I am not sure if you are just starting out that you should use this method.

Hi Lyulf, thanks for posting your progress and experience.
Although I can assure you from personal experience that you haven't really forgotten the words you learned, you haven't made enough connections in your brain to output them, remembering a words is part of output. The more you hear the words — more time spent listening (passively counts) — the easier it is to remember them. I've noticed that the whole time I'm doing Listening-Reading with every language I've tried I always doubt whether I'll be able to understand all the gibberish. For both German and Swedish, I felt like I had a really small vocabulary, but then everything seemed to come together and all the vocabulary I had forgotten started making sense.

nadiatims Wrote:@Lyulf
That's disappointing to hear, but I think it's probably normal to be forgetting a lot of words at first. It's repeated exposure over extended periods of time that will cement them. I suspect there is also a gestation period so although it might seem you're not learning anything what you're hearing now will just takes time to sink in.

Yea you are most likely right

digitlhand Wrote:Hi Lyulf, thanks for posting your progress and experience.
Although I can assure you from personal experience that you haven't really forgotten the words you learned, you haven't made enough connections in your brain to output them, remembering a words is part of output. The more you hear the words — more time spent listening (passively counts) — the easier it is to remember them. I've noticed that the whole time I'm doing Listening-Reading with every language I've tried I always doubt whether I'll be able to understand all the gibberish. For both German and Swedish, I felt like I had a really small vocabulary, but then everything seemed to come together and all the vocabulary I had forgotten started making sense.

I think the problem the first time through was that I could barely keep up. I would either be too many sentences ahead or too many sentences behind. The first thing I noticed the second time through HP1 is that it was much easier to stay on track. On the second time through I can match up with the audio much better. Before I couldn't tell when he would finish a sentence and start the next one. Now I can actually hear the slight pauses before he starts another sentence.

Funny thing is I never knew the word magic/wizard the first time through. I would always forget it even though I kept hearing it over and over. Now I'm pretty sure I know what it is. Its weird how you pick up vocabulary. The words just sort of pop up in my head, and I go ok now I know gin means silver. It was weird when I figured that out because it was in the middle of a paragraph, and I was ahead of the audio by a few sentences. When I heard the word gin I immediately went to the word silver. So weird

I feel like my listening skills have improved at the very least

I experience the same thing in learning words through Listening-Reading... I really wish I knew the brain science behind it but some words like goblin are learned after one or two listens and then other common words like 'must' take several goes.

digitlhand Wrote:I've noticed that the whole time I'm doing Listening-Reading with every language I've tried I always doubt whether I'll be able to understand all the gibberish. For both German and Swedish, I felt like I had a really small vocabulary, but then everything seemed to come together and all the vocabulary I had forgotten started making sense.

That's reassuring. I'm trying LR with French using Le Petit Prince, and other than a couple grounding words(prince, little, flower, planet...) I can't make out anything. I only went through it once, but it's discouraging to not be able to make out some other sounds at least. I haven't given up yet, of course!

I'm glad the LR method had finally migrated to this forum. It's been mentioned a few times in the past, but it's never really caught on until now.

yukamina Wrote:I only went through it once, but it's discouraging to not be able to make out some other sounds at least. I haven't given up yet, of course!

Yes, although it's been discussed that learning another European language related to English is easier to Japanese, it's still another language. I can assure you that once you've 'tuned' your ear to French, you'll notice an immense number of words that are closely related to English, in some cases bizarre ways. Le Petit Prince is awesome! I just read it in English a few days ago and plan on using it for both Japanese and French. Keep us informed on your progress in French, I'm sure many would like to try learning a side language while learning Japanese.

I started LR-ing in Japanese a couple of days ago with the Little Prince. It's a nice book to use as a warmup before moving on to more challenging texts. I've listened to the audio before in the past, but this time I'm trying to shadow along whenever I can, which I've found really helps me maintain my concentration.

sheetz Wrote:I've listened to the audio before in the past, but this time I'm trying to shadow along whenever I can, which I've found really helps me maintain my concentration.

I've found that I maintain better concentration when shadowing as well.

I'm about half way(middle of chapter 11) through HP1. This time it's much easier to follow along, but I still tend to get lost on long sections when I don't recognize any words. I'm picking up new words at about the same pace as the first time. First time through I was almost always ahead or behind by 3 or four sentences. Now I am within a few words most of the time.

I tried to just listen L1 read L2 one paragraph over and over again, but that method bores me. It's more fun for me if I just read the entire thing. I think it is going to be a while before I can start to recognize individual words.

Just stumbled across this public domain audiobook project site. Don't know much about the quality, and the Japanese collection is minimal, but still... Seems pretty useful for all languages!

http://librivox.org/

k.

I'm experimenting with text2speech using the third Harry Potter book; so far, it seems okay. The audio quality is nowhere as good as I would like but I want to see how I fair with at least two reads through the books. I'm definitely excited that I can understand a lot of the audio I'm listening to, even though I didn't have the English text while I was listening. I'll report how I fair the next two days.

Now it's time for my update. Although I am not picking up new words at the speed I would like it is so much easier to follow along now. So far the big improvement for me is being able to follow along. It has almost become effortless. Some parts still give me trouble, and if I am not in the right mind I tend to daydream which makes it harder to follow. This week I will start passively listening to the HP1 audio book. For the first couple of times I just wanted to read L2 listen L2 before I started to try different things. Almost finished HP1 for the second time(less than two hours to go)


digitlhand How fast are you picking up words? So far I have only learned about 20 words. Like I mentioned earlier my biggest improvement has been my ability to keep up with the audio.

Attentiveness is critical. This is where I disagree with Khatz the most--truly passive listening does nothing. If you're distracted and daydreaming, you might as well not be listening at all.. I would recommend experimenting on how to stay 'in the right mind' for the whole session.

mafried Wrote:Attentiveness is critical. This is where I disagree with Khatz the most--truly passive listening does nothing. If you're distracted and daydreaming, you might as well not be listening at all.. I would recommend experimenting on how to stay 'in the right mind' for the whole session.

I wouldn't say it does nothing. It certainly doesn't teach you the language or anything greatly remarkable, but it does slowly train your listening skills.

I picked up Tales of Vesperia recently in JPN for the PS3, and I've been studying Japanese for about 2 1/2 - 3 months. I found that when I started playing it really wasn't to difficult to follow the text at the speed of the speakers. I couldn't understand very much of it, and I'm slowly catching more and more words the more I play.

But I found following the text at the speed of the speakers and being able to parse where the individual words are wasn't very difficult right from the beginning. And I've only fairly recently started on Core 2000, and other than that I'm still working through RTK. The only thing I've done when it comes to listening practice is passive listening. The only focused listening I had before Vesperia was the occasional anime episode.

Now I'm about 13 hours into Vesperia and admittedly I feel like my listening skills are getting better fairly quickly with all that focused listening + reading. But I think I would have had a much rougher time starting out with the game had I not passively listened for many many hours prior.

Obviously this is just a gut feeling. I don't know for sure if it helped or not, but I feel like it did.

mafried Wrote:Attentiveness is critical. This is where I disagree with Khatz the most--truly passive listening does nothing. If you're distracted and daydreaming, you might as well not be listening at all.. I would recommend experimenting on how to stay 'in the right mind' for the whole session.

Already figured out my problem. The problem is when I get bored I daydream. Two hours is my limit so far. Once I hit two hours I need to take a break and do something else for a little bit. I can't do this method when I am tired either. When I'm tired it's almost impossible to keep up. If I start to daydream now I just stop, and take a break for a bit. It goes like this read and listen for 2 hours play some scales on my guitar for 15 min rinse and repeat.

Edit: Not focusing was a big problem for me the first time through. Some of it was because of frustration, and some of it was due to boredom. Right now I have found a nice pace I like. For beginners try not to get frustrated. Just realize that you are only just starting out. Eventually you will be able to follow along.

Interesting. 2 hours is just about how long I can play Vesperia before I start wanting to skip text and get back to gameplay. Once that happens I just turn the game off as well.

Wow I wouldn't consider that a problem anymore--I wish I could study for 2 hours straight. My brain starts to hurt after 30 minutes.

Jumping off what you said, I found my first attempt at reading without resorting to a dictionary to be painful, tedious, frustrating, and slow. My mind wandered *a lot*, now that I recall. But I resisted the temptation to skim ahead, and stopped instead when I got bored. Eventually my frustration at not making progress (because I kept stopping because my mind was wandering) caused me to force myself to pay attention, and that's when I really took off.

So yeah, my experience matches yours, Lyulf.

On how-to-learn-any-language.com, I read that doing L-R for less than 2 hrs/day is basically pointless. hmm... I do about an hour/day, since that is all the time I have. Is it really pointless? I myself don't know yet, as I have only spent a little more than a week on this method, but have learned much new vocab. Comments?

Lyulf Wrote:digitlhand How fast are you picking up words? So far I have only learned about 20 words. Like I mentioned earlier my biggest improvement has been my ability to keep up with the audio.

That's a hard question to answer @Lyulf, I don't pay close attention to how many new words I learn per day sorry, I wish I could give you a better answer.

brianobush Wrote:I read that doing L-R for less than 2 hrs/day is basically pointless

I did only 2 hrs/day with French and found it really helpful. I don't think it's pointless at all, it just takes much longer to internalize the language as a lot of fresh vocabulary and new words one might almost learn are forgotten.
I can only do about 2-3 hours of 'active' L-R per day. The rest of the time I have my headphones on and pay attention whenever I can.

Lyulf Wrote:Just realize that you are only just starting out. Eventually you will be able to follow along.

Yes, this starts happening once one gets in their groove. I started Le Petit Prince in Japanese today with no text to help and found I could understand a large portion of the story. It wasn't all noise :-p

Care to check the size of your vocabulary?
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/mtg/goitokusei/goi-test.html

Mac users may need to switch your browser's Text encoding to Japanese - ISO2022-JP.

masaman Wrote:Care to check the size of your vocabulary?
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/mtg/goitokusei/goi-test.html

Mac users may need to switch your browser's Text encoding to Japanese - ISO2022-JP.

That wasn't much help... 1,700 ??? I don't think I have that big of a vocabulary yet... maybe between 500 and 1200 but it's just a guess. I really don't know :-(