Summer update

I was supposed to update regularly – what happened to that plan? I guess life happened.

I was not able to keep to the schedule I planned in March, when I last wrote here. Only now did I finally cover all of N5 kanji, grammar and vocabulary. But I gess it’s my own fault – on one hand I didn’t really have time or motivation, and on the other hand – I decided that I will know kanji for every N5 word. Crazy, huh?

But I did cover all the grammar points. At first I only read and tried my best to memorise all my grammar notes, as well as all the grammar notes from Genki I. And I thought I had it down fine. But then I took the mock exam. And apparently I suck at grammar! I only had about 75% at it, which is NOT GOOD considering I can actually read everything and understand it. Grammar questions at the JLPT can be very confusing, huh?

So I decided to enter all the example sentences into Anki as a cloze deck – I would have to actually work on it to get a sentence I wanted.

And it worked! On the second mock exam I got 98%. Finally.

What’s next? I guess JLPT N4 is next – in other words:

1. Memorise all vocabulary from Genki II
2. Add the vocabulary from Tanos
3. Work on Kanji
4. Remember the grammar points (and sample sentences) from Genki II
5. Supplement it all with all the sample sentences from DoBJG

Whish me luck!

Back on the road

To be honest – it’s not the first time I have posted here. But it’s been almost 5 years since my last post and so – I have decided to redo the whole blog-thing I had here.

I believe I should start from the introduction. I started studying Japanese in high school, 8 years ago. I have diligently studied it for the whole high-school period of 3 years and passed N3 exam in 2011, after I finished school.

Later I started my beloved university. I always loved studying so I picked the most time-consuming major I could find. Which just makes me a masochist, doesn’t it? Anyway – my major was not truly HARD, but God, it was truly time-consuming. For most of the last 5 years I spent at least 40 hours a week in classes – my lightest semester had 32 hours of compulsory classes. And now I sound just as if I’m giving excuses… and maybe I am?  Due to all this I have neglected studying Japanese. I read things every once in a while, but I realised that while I can UNDERSTAND the gist of the novels I read, I can’t truly READ what them. Just as an example:

先入観. I know it means preconception or prejudice, but is it さいにゅうかん, せんにゅうかい? Or something else? In fact it’s せんにゅうかん. They all sound similar, don’t they?

And now, that I am about to graduate from uni, I decided to finally do something about this whole mess. I want to pass N2 exam in summer 2017. Why so long? That’s the time I want to PASS it. By summer 2016 I want to be at N3 level or something around that. After this I want to learn everything I need to know for N2 by winter 2016 – after this? Immersion and tons of reading. I wonder if it can be done this way.

So how will I start to do it?

1. Redo all kanji, grammar and vocabulary for N5 and N4 – I will use Genki I and II, Nihongo Challenge and some of my own old materials. I assume this would be the part where I would be simply ‘reminding myself’ of what I actually knew all along.
2.  With this step I assume I will study form scratch. Even though I passed N3 I would by no means say I was ever at N3 level – I think it was some sort of a miracle. So step 2 would include studying from Nihongo Sou Matome and Shin Kanzen Master books.
3. The last step includes Nihongo Sou Matome and Shin Kanzen Master books yet again – just on N2 level instead.

Wish me luck. I will be posting my progress, tips and thoughts as I go along.