Here's the deal: I'm a junior in high school and frankly, am bored to death with my classes. I'm taking all AP courses and such, and even though I'm taking the most rigorous classes available, its easy for me to make good marks. However, I find myself with countless hours of wasted time on redundant lectures which rehash the same moot points; the bottom line is I feel like I could be doing something more productive! In other words, I need a way to study Japanese in class! Headphones and audio are out and so are electronics: teachers want to at least feel like they have your full attention. I've tried taking notes in Japanese, but that failed miserably as I haven't drilled writing at all and don't really have a desire to. I've also tried reading a novel or two, but the main problem is my Japanese is not good enough to get by without a dictionary. Every two or three sentences I need to look up a word! I have a dictionary on my phone, but teachers would think I'm texting and take it up if I used it. I've looked at hard-copy dictionaries, but most are expensive and it would take a lot of time to look up each word in one of them. I'm completely at a loss, is there any way to study in school or am I doomed to endure another year of doodling and folding paper airplanes!??
Last edited by HououinKyouma (2012 October 13, 11:25 pm)
quark
Member
From: Canada
Registered: 2011-10-11
Posts: 201
When I was bored during my college classes, I would take out some graph paper that I had jotted my newly learned vocabulary/kanji on the night before, and would then practice writing them out. While you did say that you don't want to practice writing so much, it's a good way to review recently learned vocabulary.
Taishi also had a good idea in printing out an easy to read short story. You can read through it and highlight any words you don't understand and then look them up later when you have access to a dictionary. Then you could read the same story again a few days later and see if your comprehension has increased.
You could also try reading a novel aimed at elementary students. The Aoi Tori Bunko and Tsubasa Bunko books are nice, and they have furigana on all the words.
Do you think you could sneak in a Japanese textbook? If not, you could try photocopying it a chapter at a time and hiding it in your books, or you could print out Tae Kim's grammar guide to review during class.
Daichi
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-02-04
Posts: 450
You could also try reading stuff your already slightly familiar with. Like you could print out the script for the JDrama you watched the night before and read that in class. You probably could remember from context what is what, and if not, you could just note it down to look up later and move on.
You could also try one Japanese reading books that include a side by side gloss, like Breaking into Japanese Lit or Read Real Japanese Fict. That way if you need to look something up, it's already inside the book your reading.
How about getting earbuds that look like hearing aids, and claim you need them to hear, lol. I mostly kid but I've actually gotten away with having a single tiny inner-ear earbud in one of my ears before in class. Risky of course, probably don't wanna sit in the front row if you do do this. I think sticking with paper material is easier anyway.
tashippy
Member
From: New York
Registered: 2011-06-18
Posts: 566
I agree with Daichi, Read Real Japanese, by Ashby is a great book (i'm reading it now), and it includes translations on the page.
If you use Lang-8, you could print out a bunch of japanese users' journal entries (if they took the time to include a Japanese transcript of the entry) so you can correct their work and then study how they wrote it in nihongo.
maybe a little earbud over the back of your ear would be nice, but i suspect teachers really get mad about these kinds of things.
what about bringing short traditional poetry to class. you could spend ten minutes or more reading one 30 syllable poem, really get to know that poem and try to visualize the meaning, then after class you can look up the words.
you could bring manga to class, like shonen jump.
bring the lyrics to a song you listen to before class, study the lyrics in class, try to sing it with and without looking at the lyrics, then after class listen again and see if your comprehension has improved.
i'm just throwing out ideas, but it seems maybe you need more varied material, something other than a novel that you can't read yet. (key word: "yet")
JimmySeal
Member
From: Kyoto
Registered: 2006-03-28
Posts: 2279
In my experience, my teachers didn't mind that much that I studied Japanese in their class, because I still paid attention to everything they said and was one of the most participative students.
Maybe you're more talented than me, but I wouldn't have been able to do so trying to read prose. Somehting like that requires my full attention, so I would have wound up paying no attention to my teachers, or making almost no reading process.
In my opinion, something that can be done in small chunks of a few seconds, like worksheets or kanji writing practice, is probably the way to go.
Thank's for the great suggestions guys! I can't believe I never thought of just printing out some short stories. That way, I can just look it up any unknown words when I get home. Poetry sounds pretty fun too; I'll have to try my hand at that.
I guess I should explain what I meant by not wanting to practice writing. It's not that I don't want to be able to write in Japanese, its just so much harder to practice. With a production Anki deck (kana->Kanji or something like that) it would be easy, but w/o a computer I struggle to even remember which kanji make up 場所. I know quite a bit of vocabulary, but I can only write about 1/10 of those. I really want to get to the point where I can take notes in Japanese, but it looks really hopeless right now! Any ideas/tips?
I just thought of something that could come in handy in class. A few weeks ago, I printed out a kanji chart (The one I used was a chart with the joyou kanji in Heisig order) and brought it to class. It was just a list of all the characters, two pages in length. It actually helped a lot because if you forgot how to write a word, you could just skim the chart and, assuming you could read the word in the first place, identify the kanji through recognition. Although I think I need to print a chart with better ordering (maybe by radical or stroke count), just having it as a reference helped me immensely.
vileru
Member
From: Cambridge, MA
Registered: 2009-07-08
Posts: 750
If high school is that easy and monotonous for you, I suggest graduating early. Speak with the appropriate authorities, and find out how, or if, you can finish your coursework at an accelerated pace. If your school is uncooperative, consider transferring to a more hospitable one (however, since you'll be a senior next year, this is a poor alternative if you can't graduate by the end of this year). Although graduating early may seem overwhelming and far-fetched, there are countless examples of students who've finished high school early and moved on to more worthwhile endeavors (my favorite is Terence Tao, a Fields medalist who earned a PhD from Princeton at the age of 20).
Otherwise, I suggest bringing other study materials (textbooks, word lists, etc.) or asking your teachers if you can just stay in the library during lectures.
Last edited by vileru (2012 October 15, 4:26 am)
I also considered graduating early, but I did so too late. I only need 2 credits to graduate (English and Government) but the way my schedule is, I have to wait until next year to take those. I think NoSleepTillFluent has a point. I'm not in college yet, but even in high school I am very competitive with my grades (GPA race is crazy!) I try to do my best to pay attention in class and I don't want to study Japanese so hardcore that it interferes with my grades. However, I am always one of the first finished when it comes to in class assignments and some of my classes (AP Enviromental Science, Health) by nature have allot of free time. I know I could use that time wisely, provided I already have studied for tests, etc. Also, I think that getting to the level where I can take notes in Japanese would allow me to kill two birds with one stone: study for class and Japanese. However, until I'm at that level, I'll have to be satisfied with a few kanji scrawled in the margins of my paper as my studying.
