TAC 10/23-26/10

Had a busy last few days working on my Japanese I spent most of the weekend working on flashcards and reading my language forum surfing for more ideas to help me along my way. in total I'd say I spent about 6 hours doing that. Today I studied flashcards and read Textfugu (3 chapters) plus I looked did some more stuff with the forum. I also signed up for LingQ and did one lesson, adding the vocab to my stack of flashcards (56 cards added). In total I spent 6 hours studying today. So twelve in total.

Total study time the last 4 days: 12 hours
Total time studying: 22hrs

TAC 10/22/10 Post 4

Today I was a much more diligent student! I reviewed chapters 1-4 in the Basic kanji book and went over the flashcards for those chapters. I spent 1 hour and 45 minutes on that. I also went to the Japanese store in Beaverton and bought a cookbook in Japanese. I'm planning on picking out an especially tasty looking recipe and translating it to help me learn new cooking kanji/words!

Time spent studying today: 1.75hrs
Total time spent studying: 10hrs

TAC 10/21/2010 Post 3

Didn't get much done today, had classes all day. Spent 30 minutes on my flashcards and that's it. Very sad on the studying today. But I had midterms and a quiz in the morning so it was a long day. I'll try to get more done this evening and if I do I'll edit this post.

Time spent studying today 30mins
Total time spent studying 8.25hrs

TAC 10/20/2010 Post 2

Today I worked through 2 lessons in Basic Kanji. I learned the readings for the kanji 1-10 and 百千万円
年上下中大小本半分力何.  I made flash cards for all of their readings and studied them thoroughly. I spent 6 hours studying.

Time spent studying today: 6hrs
total time studying: 7.75hrs

TAC initial post

I am focusing on Japanese for this challenge. I am mid to fluent basic level at this point. I understand basic grammar ideas, I can read and write katakana/hiregana and I can pick words out of recordings of native speakers talking at normal speed. My goal is to land square in the advanced level. I would like to understand 60-70% of what I read (In Kanji), understand 30-50% of what is spoken and have a firm grasp of grammar by the end of this challenge. 

I plan to do this by following the books "Basic Kanji" vols 1-4 and textfugu. I will watch television in Japanese and listen to audio books. I will be using flashcards to help embed the readings that I will be learning in the Basic Kanji books. I plan to repeat lessons a lot because I want to make sure I have this down pat, and with that in mind I'm going to be using as many resources as I can, that includes Kanji dream, Anki, flashcards, NihongoUp and anything else I can find in the mean time.


The challenge officially starts on November 1st but I'm starting to log today.


Today I created 50 flashcards and spent 45 minutes using them to memorize the readings for the 20 kanji. I downloaded several audio books and spent 1 hour listening to books and music in Japanese.


Time spent Studying today: 1.75hrs

Total time spent studying: 1.75 hrs

Total Annihilation Challenge!!!

Sounds pretty awesome huh? I've been fiddling around on this forum that is specifically for people who learn languages as a hobby. One of the things that caught my eye was the Total Annihilation Challenge!! Sorry, it just sounds awesome, anyway... The challenge is supposed to help motivate people who are in a studying slump, super charge their study habits and hopefully become fluent in their chosen language in a set amount of time. The challenge on the site was over last year but I didn't think it would hurt to create my own challenge and follow the same rules. So here they are:

1. Participants must create a study log and report their study habits daily (including study time)
2. The first entry in the log must include the target language, what previous knowledge the participant has and how fluent they expect to become
3. As much information as possible about study habits should be included.
4. Any study methods can and should be used.
5. The challenge begins on November 1st 2010 and ends on January 1st 2012. (that's 14 months peoplesss study hard!)

So the whole point of this challenge isn't just to write down your study habits, it's to go above and beyond what you would normally do so that you reap the rewards of more intensive study habits. Like, if you normally study only 30 minutes a day, try squeezing in another hour with some flash cards instead of watching TV, or take those cards with you on the bus. ANYTHING to challenge yourself, push yourself further! So I'm going to post another post tonight that will include this information and it will be my start of the challenge.

Dun nun nuh nunnnn

Alright update! So this week I added 40 words to my anki deck, got a new book about verb conjugation and organized my Japanese learning apps. I also joined a pen pal site in hopes of finding a Japanese pen pal and I got a book about onomatopoeia.

Next week I want to add another 40 words to my deck and make another deck for verbs from that book. I also want to work on katakana memorization and forming sentences.