Job Discussion Forums

[Apsara]

Do they include political terms at lower levels on that site? If so, that might be silly. Otherwise, you'll reach that level eventually and then that kind of word being included won't seem silly at all.

[wintersweet]

iKnow is really scattershot with its vocabulary. If it weren't for having a bit of a background in Chinese I'm not sure I would have lasted more than 10 minutes with it.

As it is, I really think vocabulary drills are pedagogically questionable, so I'm not using it a whole lot. But it's worth poking at just because it's got more going on than most of the other available free sites do. If it clicks for you, great. Back to my leveled readers for me.

[elkarlo]

[Apsara]

"Insurance" is a basic word that you'll be needing to know once you live in Japan although it may not seem so important now. I don't think "Prime Minister" is that far off target for your level either- Japan has a Prime Minister and you'll find that whoever he is at the time he comes up in conversation fairly often- especially the current one

[Squire22]

I'm currently studying for level 2 of the JLPT and have found that by studying the kanji fairly seriously my vocabulary is expanding at a fairly fast rate. There are of course many vocab words you learn but may never use, as mentioned before though, when they do come up in conversation you will remember them the next time.

I use word cards for verbs and grammar points. It's true that there are many ways of saying the same thing, just as there are in English, even if you don't use all of them, knowing them is important so that when you hear other people use them, you know what they're talking about. I've also found that a variety of learning techniques has helped me, sometimes I just can't be bothered with word cards or a textbook, and prefer just a listening excercise, or a Snoopy book which is bilingual (I have many of these).

I still struggle when conversations are going on with no context. If I know what is being discussed I can get the general gist of the conversation, if I don't know what's being discussed, I'm completely lost. I have therefore found the expression "何について話していますか？" incredibly useful.

And obviously being in Japan helps an awful lot.

[Apsara]

Good luck with JLPT2, Squire22. Are you going to go for the July exam this year or are you waiting until December?

[Squire22]

Thanks Aspara, I actually sat Level 2 in December just gone, seriously early for me as I took level 3 just the year before. So I'm really only hoping to get around 30% when I get my result this month, and the plan was to take it again in December by which time I should be ready to get the pass mark. However recently I've been studying the kanji pretty hard and that's propelling me forward quite nicely and the grammar is coming slowly so we shall see. If I think I know it inside out then I'll try for July but I won't kill myself to get there.

My biggest let down is always the listening section. It's so difficult when you only get to hear the conversation/speech only once, and then even worse when you know the answer to the question, but of the four choices they give you, you don't recognise any of them because they reword the answer.

How about you Aspara? Have you made the leap from Level 3 to Level 2 yet? What's helping you to get there / What helped you to get there?

[Apsara]

I sat and passed Level 2 in December 2007 and am actually working towards Level 1 for July- I am going to have to do some serious study between now and then to get my kanji and vocab up to that level though!

Listening is actually the easiest part by far for me due to length of time in Japan, having a Japanese husband and working in mostly Japanese-language environments. I'm actually embarrassed I didn't do Level 2 years ago- I was just too lazy to bother taking it.

I found reading (manga- not Dragon Ball type, more "everyday life"-type manga, magazine articles) helped the vocab stick for level 2 as there was some context for the words. Grammar I just had to do practice exercises over and over until I started to recognise the sentence patterns that commonly came up. I didn't spend much time on keigo as it is so complicated and only actually comes up in one or maybe 2 questions on the test.

I watch Japanese TV to help with listening and kanji- I know those quiz/variety shows can be painful, but the helpful thing is that they often subtitle some of what the tarentos are saying- great for both listening and kanji! ONce you have a handle on that level of Japanese, start watching the news- you'll be surprised how much of it you can understand once you have the level 2 vocab under your belt.

[Hoser]

This has been thread has been extremely helpful, thank you! I'm also pretty much finished with Genki II (a fantastic textbook in my opinion) but still going back over the chapters doing review. I had no idea that the Japan Times had done something for the more intermediate range. I glanced at the sample on Amazon. I would have preferred if it followed the same format as the original Genkis (I prefer getting grammar explanations in English) but what can you do about that.

Does anybody know if that textbook is available at say Kinokuniya in Shinjuku? I used to buy books from Amazon with my Canadian credit card and it was great back when $1=125 yen but now that it's the opposite I think I would rather just purchase the books with straight up cash

[elkarlo]

[elkarlo]

[elkarlo]

To Aspara and Squire. I really don't understand where the placement tests levels are. As I've met people who past 3 and I had more ability than they did. Seems like it is more of an arbitrary lisitng.

http://www.kansaigaidai.ac.jp/asp/03_academics/02/01/01.html
I was in level 2, and I am in level 3 somewhere now. I think those are a bit more precise, and a better judgment. Can you tell me where you are on that list? Also as a 3 on that what placement level would I be?


Sorry I'm Hist major/curious type.

[Apsara]

I have no idea about the Kansai Gaidai placement levels, they aren't used as a standard measure of Japanese ability in Japan- I assume they use their own system. Squire22 and I were talking about the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, JLPT (sorry if you already realised that- I wasn't sure from your post). As you may know, it has 4 levels, 4 being the lowest and 1 being the highest. It doesn't test spoken Japanese, so you may find that you have a higher level of spoken Japanese than someone else at the same level.

I assume you would probably be close to passing JLPT level 3 from what you have said. There is an enormous leap from level 3 to level 2- so big in fact that from next year they will introduce a new level in between and the current levels 3 and 4 will become 4 and 5.

What I was saying with words like Prime Minister and insurance is that once you are in Japan, your priorities with vocab kind of change to reflect every day life here. At university I never learned words like rice cooker, cockroach or unburnable garbage, but they were words I heard very soon after arrival (garbage separating is a constant issue here- every city/ward has it's own regulations and woe betide you if put unburnable garbage in with the burnable). Insurance payments are something you will be making once you are living here, so I think it's a reasonable word to include even at lower levels for people living/planning to live in Japan.

[Zzonkmiles]

I passed 2-kyu of the JLPT in December 2006. I scored an 80% on the vocab section. I already mentioned my listening and grammar advice earlier in this thread. But in terms of vocabulary, I did a lot of memorization of the kanji compounds presented in Spahn and Hadamitsky's "Kanji and Kana" book. It's a simple book that has all the official kanji and about 4 or 5 useful compounds for each one. It's not sexy, but it definitely worked for me in terms of vocab. The vocab follows no particular theme and provides no context, but if you want to learn random words like 遠心力 (enshinryoku--centrifugal force) and 窒息死 (chissokushi--asphyxiation), Spahn and Hadamitsky is the way to go!

[JL]

I'm going to take a different tack that most of you guys have been pursuing. Elkarlo, if you're going to touch down in Japan in about a month, I say it's high time to start ramping up your practical listening comprehension skills. Frankly, the vocabulary and grammar will come, as long as you do stick with it. But the biggest obstacle to engaging with Japanese, and immersing yourself into the language and culture, will be your ability to discern what is being said to you, and being said around you. Where exactly do you live? Is there any Japanese t.v. or radio programming for a few hours a day? When I lived in L.A., there were terrestrial t.v. broadcasts of Japanese programming for a few hours each day. The same for the radio. Also, you may have video rental shops for Japanese expatriots in your area. We have several here in Vegas, and there aren't even that many Japanese living here. Rent some Japanese serial drama installments and settle in with a bowl of popcorn. See if you can follow the plot's basic jist of "who is in love with who, but cheating with so-and-so."
YouTube might be useful too. Here's a commercial I know you've seen in English, in the States. Here's the J-version. The spoken Japanese is pretty clearly spoken. You can stop and start the vid as often as you need to until you can make out what is being said. Watching and listening to stuff like this should really help train your ear. Not to mention you will learn practical, everyday Japanese this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifs32w8sVgc&NR=1