春休みチャレンジ: Progress 2

Yesterday I started building my on-yomi deck.

I put int the kanji from Chapter 1 of the Genki Kanji book.

I already know these characters, but I still don't know all of their readings.

Everyday I plan to add 1 chapter of kanji into my deck. 

I'm not sure if I should study kun-yomi reading at the same time.

I feel like I'll jumble them up if I do.

I reviewed radicals in Anki, and I was surprised to see that I enjoyed it!

The thought of learning radicals seemed like a bore, but I'm having fun learning what each radical means. Some I can see what they represent, but others not at all! 

I'll be honest for a moment. I'm enjoying this challenge so much that I studied kanji instead of doing my assignments. ^^;; I forgot how much I enjoyed learning Kanji. I wanted to stay up late and keep studying. But I'm not a night person and I was nodding off. One of the best things to do for your study is to get a good nights sleep.

Today I worked a dreary shift. When I got into my car the first thought was, "I want to go study Kanji". This made me so happy. Usually I think about what show I want to watch. I am feeling quite exhausted but I didn't want to go to sleep without doing some studying.

First I reviewed radicals from the Textfugu deck. So many of them I recognized right away. It feels great when your mind brings back what you've learned. So my review was pretty quick. I then went to the other radical deck. I am now confused because some of the radicals in that deck have very different meanings. The radicals also have so many different ways of pronunciation. Is it important to know the names of the radicals? Should I bother learning them or just stick to knowing what they mean? I don't know.

 I looked over my book and it explains that I only have to memorize the 16 radicals to know the kanji of that book. I will add these to my on-yomi deck as extra cards. They will be the main ones that I need to know, but I do not want to stop learning the rest of the radicals. 

I added chapter 2 into my on-yomi deck. Radicals are definitively easier to learn ><. I'm wondering how one knows when to use on-yomi or kun-yomi when reading a new word. I vaguely remember Mattias from tias90 channel talking about it. I will have to re-watch his Kanji tips video. I remember taking notes. I'll have to find my notebook in my mess. ^^''

I haven't had time to use Ering's challenge site or write journal entries for my challenge. I'm not going to be hard on myself though. A part of these challenges is for me to learn how to juggle school, work, and Japanese. I have to pick and choose what learning materials will be best for that day.

That's all for today!

皆も頑張ってくださいね。

冬休みがチャレンジ: Progress 4

I've been wanting to post this for awhile.
The first week of January I went to a museum with my older brothers.
I took the chance of the one hour ride to study.
I studied vocab and grammar.
I was pretty surprised I could focus when my brother blasts music to the max in his car.

During my lesson I was more open to speaking,
but I still stuck to phrases I'm too comfortable with.

I added more vocab to my memo.
For some reason 顎、同僚、and 煩わしい have in planted in my brain from studying.
I think it's because it's from practicing speaking and not from my textbook vocab list.
I've been wanting to download the Anki app to my iTouch so I can carry my Anki decks with me,
but it's a tad expensive. Till I have the money for it I downloaded a SRS ap called iAnki.
It's not as great as Anki, but it's the best SRS app I've used so far.
(I've used some other ones so far that were terrible!)

Also, my Darling is a Foreigner DVD and manga arrived. I really enjoyed watching the movie.
The male character is a language otaku, so I can relate to him a lot. I got the book in bilingual form.
It's too advanced for me I think. First I'm reading it in English for pleasure, and then I'll be using it
in my Japanese lessons as my reading piece.
So much fun!

I'm slightly bothered because my school is starting a week earlier than I thought.
So my challenge will be ending this Thursday.
I think I'll have to make a new challenge for Spring semester.

How is your challenge going?

P.S Please comment if you have any ideas on how I can improve my blog.