few questions

School has started back and I have decided to get TEFL Certification in the next month so I can stack my deck a little before I apply for JET in September. has anyone out there done this? is it easy? It sounds to me like a hoop that you have to jump through to get better odds of acceptance. I really hope that I am not just trowing away my cash and I get some insight from it. Oh ya, for those of you who live or have lived in Japan, how long did it take to get use to speaking Japanese or at leaste comfortable with normal every day tasks such as getting food, and how much Japanese training did you have before you went?

Cramming my brain

So I have been using Smart.fm, the site that contains the IKnow study program. But I have run into an impasse. The program gives me like 12 words a day to learn and I have been having a really hard time trying to keep up. 12 words doesn't sound like a lot but that is 84 a week, 336 words a month. Now this is a little bit of an exaggeration because there are only 200 words in each unit and I only work on one unit at a time. More over after I finish going through all the 200 words the program will continue requiring me to learn and relearn these 200 words until I have gone over each one several times over a recommended month. so really its like learning 6.7 words a day but not really. Ok back on track... My problem is that I am not that great at straight up memorization so does any one have some suggestions on study methods (other than flash cards, I use them constantly) that may help me out? Thanks a lot!

exam results!

Yay I passed my first Japanese exam with flying colors! five pages and a Hiragana chart in 50 minutes and I received a 93.25% woot Ill take what I can get! so now it is time to start the next half of my semester with a bang and work with the Iknow.co.jp site. I would like to finish one section of the Japanese 2000 series by the end of the semester. It is only learning 200 words oh and I would like to finish the Katakana section on it as well because I think I have my Hiragana down fairly well. But just to be sure I will finish the Hiragana practice on the site. I'm about 50% done with that and should be finished by next week.

Japanese Midterm

yesterday I had my Japanese midterm and I am not really sure how well I did on it. I thought that I would blow the test away the night before but when I started to do it I began to have second opinions. The answers seemed to come easy enough. I hope that my second guessing is just lack of confidence. I guess we will have to wait and see. On the bright side at least I now know what the lay out of my sensei's exams are so I will be better prepared for the next one.

Thinking in Japanese

It is really surprising how much you can say with only a few words in your repertoire. I have been attempting to make sentences with the words that I currently know and in doing so I not only found out what words I need to learn next but I get a great boost of confidance that I may be able to comunicate enough to eat or communicate on the most basic levels if I make it to Japan.

better than Anki

There is a seemingly better flash card generator based on the same principles of Anki, but it has made the cards for you. The web sight Iknow is really cool it has a lot of lessons not only for Japanese but for several other languages as well. In the lessons are the words, an audio pronunciation, pictures, scentances and other stuff. It is also based on memorization curve like Anki but in a nicer package. Oh and the best part is that it is free.

Anki

I have been reading many blogs to learn about studying Japanese as well as JET and other things that interest me. While reading the blog Hopeless romantic The blogger suggests several study methods that I think will be really useful one of these is a method of learning kanji, when I get it and use it for a while I will write a small review on it to tell you all what I think about it. But for now I am going to talk about a really cool program that he suggested, Anki. This program is great! it is used to make flash cards that adhere to research concerning memory studys and the amount of time that you should wait between reviewing older material. Basicaly if you know some information on a flash card well, then the next time the program uses that specific card will be in the more distant futre than the cards that you have more difficulty with. The best part is that it is free! but there is a place to donate and I would recomend that everyone does because this is made by an individual and not a corporation and the product will surely become a valuable tool in your self study regiment. So go out and try Anki! It is a great program.

Japanese progress

It has been a month sense I have started going back to college to learn Japanese and I must say that I love it! It is such a logical language. So far I think I am keeping up fairly well with the curriculum and i have been studying other aspects of Japanese in my free time so hopefully one day my several ways of learning it will converge and I will jump ahead of my current standing as a Japanese 101 student. I have employed several methods to study outside of class. I have been using Rosetta stone software to learn straight up expressions and sentences. I spent some time reading the Japanese for Dummies book and though it was fun and it helped a little. More over I bought a Nintendo DS and the Japanese Coach game. It is really great to learn tons of vocabulary and I can use it anywhere which is a huge plus. I watch anime with no subtitles just to listen to them talk and then I re watch it with sub Oh yah and I make note cards ... hundreds and hundreds of them :( I think at the rate that I am going, if I can keep up the pace, I will be ready to apply for the JET program next December. Often times I think about the large amount of money, effort, and time that I am putting into this and I wonder if I am foolish for doing so just on a bet that I may get in to the program. Its very discouraging to think about it so I usually put it out of my mind and think about alternatives if I don't get in. oh well here are some pictures of my study material as well as a look at how some of my hiragana is going. I personally think it has improved and looks much less like a 5 year old's hand writing and more like a 13 year old's hand writing. I am getting better at recognizing the writing but I still have a long way to go be for I stop sounding like a hooked on phonics commercial.