As usual, it's been a while. Whoops. Between covid and life as usual it's been difficult for everyone, and this blog is mostly for my own purposes anyways so I'm not too worried about it.
Anyhow, I've taken all the Japanese courses available at my local community college, so until I figure out how to take the next class up somewhere else, I'm just trying to retain what I've learned and maybe add a little at a time. The lack of formal classes makes it a bit hard though.
One of my ideas to cement things in my brain is to basically create some teaching and practice material from my textbooks and notes. One of the things I want to do is to make some vocab packs for Anki, or maybe chapter packs that have the vocab, grammar, as well as kanji, for each chapter. Someone has already uploaded a spreadsheet file with all the vocab from textbook 1 onto reddit, but there's a few mistakes, as well as things I want to add (like pronunciation mp3s from Forvo).
The other thing I wanted to do is to make a resource directory with links to all the useful pages I've found to go along with each chapter. One of the big parts of this particular project is the addition of links to specific episodes of a Japanese language podcast that I've found helpful. (I think I've mentioned Nihongo con Teppei before: beginner website, mid level, YouTube, you can also find it on Spotify and Google podcast I think). That podcast focuses most on natural speaking for listening practice, so the vocab and grammar is a mix and will be applicable for multiple chapters. Thats actually a good thing tho, since listening to it multiple times and getting familiar with it is great practice.
Now with me actually parsing it out.... Well, I'm kinda hoping someone has made a transcript for a lot of the episodes, since that'll make it a lot faster for me,,, but if I can't find anything I'll just have to go through and carefully listen to them one by one. Which will probably be better practice for me in the long run, lol. I'm finally on ADHD meds again, and I actually kinda enjoy tedious jobs like this, so I'm hoping to actually get somewhere this time...
As for languages other than Japanese, there's a little hiccup, but also perhaps a solution. Due to class sizes and Prof schedules, it seems like Class 1 for both Korean and Chinese are only in the fall. So, I missed that. I had been hoping to take Chinese in the spring, but it looks like I'm going to have to wait until next fall. Now, Korean, on the other hand, I'm at least a bit familiar with (due to teaching myself a little while in high school), and it turns out that the textbook/workbooks used for Classes 1&2 are different, and not expensive (compared to Yookoso)... So. I ordered the books for the first class and am going to try to go through them on my own and test out of Class 1 so that I can sign up for Class 2 in the spring. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a gamble with the timing. Turns out that you can only test out of a class during certain periods of time, and it's closed until the first week of next semester. So I have to make an appointment for like, the first day of the semester for the test, and then hope that there's still a seat open in one of the class 2s for the semester. So I have about 2 months to study for that. I'm more worried about being able to get into the class than the actual test tho, haha. I do know the professor, tho! I had her for one of the Japanese classes. IDK if she remembers me, but it'll be easier on my part at least since I'll be more comfortable. I'm just worried about accidentally calling her 先生 instead of 선생님,,, agdkwjwk
Really looking forward to taking up language learning seriously again, though. It's been a while. Weirdly enough, I'm especially looking forward to comparing Korean and Japanese grammar. Grammar has always been my least favorite part of language learning, since English is so backwards compared to a lot of other languages it's hard to make my brain put things in a different order :/
