Summary: Rainy season has officially ended here in Japan, and now it is time to enjoy the free sauna that is the Japanese summer. If you are not familiar with the summers here, I would advise you to avoid them. It is incredibly hot and humid. It's a great time to stay indoors and crack a book or two (or head to the beach). I'm still rolling through Harry Potter. I've hit a bit of a rough spot in the middle of the book where there is less dialog and more descriptions of scenes. This makes it a bit tougher to read, but still pretty manageable. I'm pretty darn close to finally making it to halfway with StickyStudy. I'm finding it more of a useful app to get some exposure to key vocabulary than actually learning it, at least at the N1 level. I feel like the review algorithm is a little off. Lately, after it has shown me the new cards for the day it will show me one card that I have mastered. More often than not I can hardly recall the word that I supposedly 'mastered'. I wish it reviewed these more often. I don't think this is too much of a problem for the smaller decks, but for the large (3300+ words) N1 deck it doesn't work so well. The other thing I've been working my through is So-Matome N1 Listening Comprehension. This book contains some really tough listening exercises. Sometimes I feel they are tougher than the actual exam, which is a very good thing. It has turned out to be a lot better practice than I thought it would be. I've found that sometimes I will listen to a piece and have no clue what they are talking about or only a faint guess, but when I read the script I can answer the questions somewhat easily. This is big indicator that my listening skills aren't up to the level they should be. My reading and vocabulary is pretty good, but I need to improve listening if I'm going to pass. Are we There Yet? We've all heard this question right? Or we might have even asked it ourselves on one of those long road trips where you've managed to go through all your video games, movies on your iPad and have simply used up all the topics of conversation that you managed to think of. I used to ask myself this question about Japanese a lot. Am I done studying all the material I need to know for 三級 (old N4)? Do I really need that extra book to practice grammar and vocabulary? Is it really necessary? One of the most common questions I get from readers by email is if I do book X, Y, and Z, do you think I will be ready for the N4 in December? What book do I absolutely need to pass the test? These are all very valid questions. After all, it is important to have a goal, and know when you have achieved that goal (or when you are ready to try to achieve that goal by taking the test). That is the whole reason why you set SMART goals to begin with right? Well, there are two different approaches to studying Japanese as I see it. And both have their advantages and disadvantages. The first one I'll call 'language hacking' and the second one, let's call that one 'mastering the language'. Language Hacking Japanese This is the approach that I used to follow in my early days. I used to study everything, but only review the things that I missed or I needed to know to get by. Essentially I focused on essential grammar structures and key vocabulary that I needed to know and didn't bother trying to learn absolutely everything. This saved me a lot of time with studying, and I was able to start speaking and having somewhat decent conversations with the language. I made a tremendous amount of mistakes, and I still wonder how I managed to pass 三級 but I did. The important thing was that I was usually understood (after a few tries) and so it didn't really bother me that much. The only problem with having all these mistakes was that when I got a more strict teacher here in Osaka. She was constantly correcting me, and I realized I wasn't exactly as well-spoken as I once day-dreamed I was.
