Sometimes you Just have to Jump and See where you Go.
The new year across all cultures is a natural boundary, a signpost in your life. Whether you are a big fan of goal setting or not, you can’t deny that New Year’s day is a pretty big marker. And in a lot of ways it helps to mentally refresh yourself and let go of some of those things that aren’t helping you anymore, and to free yourself up to do something else.
This is one of the major reasons people tend to set goals during this time. If you are thinking about setting a new goal for yourself, make sure it is a SMART goal. If you set goals for yourself last year, now is the time to do some analysis. Did you met those goals? Why or why not? What can you do differently for next time (ie this year)?
Goals are important, but why not take this opportunity to try out something completely new? The longer you study something, the more important it is to mix it up. Some things that work really well when you are just starting out with a language might not work as well as they used to. Some things that were impossible before might be possible now. You’ll never know unless you try.
Native Materials
I think when you first start using native materials, they can be pretty intimidating. For example, when I started on Harry Potter it took me a good 20 minutes to get through the 1st page. That’s a long time! And it’s hard to get any real value out of spending that much time to read so little.
But, slowly, I eventually managed to get my pace up to something a little more respectful. I think in the end I was doing about 6 pages in 20 minutes. It took a little practice, but not forever.
So, I encourage you to at least give native materials a try. Try out the first couple pages of a book and see how much you understand. I’m sure you’ll be surprised how much easier it is than you think.
Give it about 3-4 weeks and see if you can keep it up. Just 4 weeks, that’s not so bad is it? And now is a great time to start the habit because the test isn’t coming up for a little while longer (11 months for some of you). So, you can’t use the excuse that you are trying to focus on the test.
Being Nervous = Growing
You usually feel nervous when you are doing something new and strange to you. And I believe that if you are doing something new and strange to you, you are most likely learning something. Either you are learning what works for you, or you are learning what doesn’t work for you. Either way you are making progress, so I think it is important to do something that makes you nervous.
For example, are you afraid of getting on Skype with a native because you think you can’t hack a conversation? Why not at least give it a try before you completely abandon the idea? What have you got to lose? Sure, maybe you’ll lose a little time, but I think it is a valuable investment you can make. And most of the folks I’ve talked to online are very welcoming and friendly, so give it a spin.
If you are in Japan, I encourage you to do a little window shopping. I challenge you to go to your closest store and try to ask the clerk a few questions about something in the store. After all, it doesn’t cost anything to talk. It’s a free lesson!
Your Turn
What crazy thing are you going to do this year? Challenge yourself with something new. You’ll find that you are capable of a lot more than you think. Come up with a crazy idea and then commit to it by putting it in the comments below.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you soon!
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I’m giving reading books a go. Starting with a children’s version of Alice in wonderland. It’s very slow going but ill get there
Awesome! I actually think Alice in Wonderland was the first book I read in Japanese too. haha. I seem to remember a lot of 擬音語(giongo) or onomatopoeia, basically sound words like fuwafuwa. 🙂
Good luck, read it little by little is my advice!
I’m going to actually learn how to write kanji, something I never thought I would/could do. I’m studying for the N3 this July and it is just killer trying to remember the kanji just by looking at them. I know if I actually wrote them they would imprint in my brain…I hope! Great blog by the way, it’s so helpful to share info on the test! Thanks a lot!
No problems Janice. I wish you luck with the kanji writing. Do you use some kind of touchscreen device? Or the old-fashion way?
Thanks for the compliment. If you are in to writing kanji, I recommend skritter.com (kind of expensive but good for writing) or kanji kentei books/software is also good if you happen to be in Japan.
Do you want to actually write it or ‘touch’ write it on something like a DS or iOS/Android thing?
Hi!
Akemashita omedetou! I would like to try reading a book too, but I know only 250-300 kanjis. Not sure it’s enough though… Do you think I should focus for now on learning as many kanjis as possible or take a leap and try reading a book?
Thank you for all your precious advises!
Hmm, that’s about where I tried to slowly make my way through a few books. If you get books aimed at elementary school kids, they will have furigana above all the kanji. The Disney series of books (like this one) where they basically turn a movie into a book are really good for this because they pretty much match the movie scene for scene. I read a 2 or 3 of those. The first one took an enormous amount of time (6 months? a year? can’t remember), but then the second one took almost half the time. That first book is always a bit slow going. I would concentrate on just one book not studying anything else, but I would make it part of your routine.
Also graded readers are perfect for this, here is one that is about your level. A little pricey, but I went through 2 or 3 volumes of these too. Well worth the time.
Well, I don’t know if I’ve passed the N4 yet, so I’m a little wary of moving onto native material at this stage! 😀
However, I’m trying to copy-paste a few lines from NHK Japan’s news site or other sources and use a furigana web-service to read the passage. Sometimes, all I read is the words: the meaning of the sentence overall is lost on me. But I worry not; even slow, impaired reading will allow you to read faster in the future and thus be quicker at parsing together the whole sentence in one easy go. I’m trying to read Kenji Miyazawa’s 貝の火. I’m able to make some amount of progress (a couple of pages in half an hour), but I’m not able to wrap my head around the story completely; it feels like I follow at times and then lose track of what’s happening.
In any event, I’m powering on! I’m not attempting the N3 in July (assuming I pass the N4 that I took in December), so I’ll plenty of time to improve my reading and learn the materials required for N3.
Have you tried using rikai-kun (for Chrome) or rikai-chan (for Firefox). It will help tell you the pronunciation and meaning of a lot of the difficult words so you don’t have to copy and paste.
Anyway, at first native material is really difficult and intimidating, but it slowly gets easier and easier, and then you start to read things at about the same speed as you do natively, which is an AMAZING feeling. Good luck!
I also want to read Harry Potter. Is it hard? 🙂 My level in japanese is a bit more than pre-intermediate, but not intermediate yet… I had N3 in December but I think I failed because I wasn’t ready. Anyways, my global task is to improve my speaking and listening by summer 🙂
By the way, I remember when I was intermediate in English, I took The Lord of the Rings… It was tough at first, but when I finished reading all books, I was no longer intermediate :))
I would say Harry Potter is suitable for someone who has passed (or has come close to passing) N2. It is aimed at a slightly older audience (age 11~18 I think) and so the vocabulary is a little tricky. If you have read the book in English (or your native language), it would be a huge help because it involves a lot of descriptions of situations that aren’t exactly everyday (magical potions, and trolls and things), so it helps to have a good idea of the story.
In my opinion it was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but a lot of fun to read.
Thanks for your response! Yeah, I read it in English. To be honest, I’m a big fan of HP, that’s why I was thinking about reading it… :)) Anyways, I guess I have to wait a bit before taking it. Can you recommend any simple books for my level? (no higher than N3)
Thank you!
I always recommend to types of books for the N4ish N3 level, graded readers and movie novelizations.
The graded readers will be easier and adjusted to your level, and be easier to get through (but will still include new words you don’t know) but a little expensive, the movie novelizations will be cheaper, more difficult to read, not have an audiobook, but will be more fun/interesting to read and will give you a bigger sense of accomplishment (although it might take you 6 months to get through one).
I started out with a few graded readers and then graduated to native books later. Mostly because you can get through graded readers pretty quick so they can be pretty motivating.
Hi Mac,
I am starting native material this year for my N3. I picked up this book called 真夜中の図書館 and took 4-5 days to complete one chapter in it. I used a dict along the way too. Pretty enjoyable in my opinion as I am finally able to read simple novel