2024/10/14:
TL:DR - Made some good listening progress, starting to get back to practicing Kanji/ writing and started back on みんなの日本語初級 blue series. And, increasing my listening goal from 40 hrs to 80 hrs this month since I’ve already hit 50 as of yesterday.
I feel like I have made some small leaps and bounds in understanding on the listening side of things. Finding it easier to figure out what the sounds of words are even if I don’t know the actual meaning of the word spoken. Sometimes I can also guess at the word meaning from the context, not often but enough for me to see a difference in my overall understanding.
I’m finding it quicker to pick up on words that I know without having to pause the audio. And I 'm recognising more words by just hearing them.
I haven’t done a lot of reading over the last several weeks since becoming unwell, but I feel that I have made up for this with listening. I’ve continued with passive listening as well though I’m not tracking that in the October challenge. I have managed to rack up 50 hours of active listening in the space of 2 weeks (10 hours more so far than I intended for the whole months) only due to the fact I have spent a lot of time resting and trying to recuperate and being unable at times to focus on reading from a book for more than a few minutes.
The last few weeks I have gone back over all the grammar in Genki book 1 & 2 (read through, listened to a bit, with some writing out of the answers if I wasn’t speaking them instead), rewatched the Game Gengo grammar videos for N5, N4 & N3 grammar, gone back through the Kanji text book for みんなの日本語初級 red book, and started the Kanji textbook for みんなの日本語初級 blue book (I’ll be starting the main blue textbook from tomorrow again so fingers crossed I manage to finish it this time instead of getting only a few sections in and finding it too difficult).
I’ve been writing more across the last week and finding it easier to answer the questions from Genki books as well as reading the Kanji in the みんなの日本語初級 Kanji textbooks (even without the furigana) and was able to write out almost all of the 243 Kanji in the Kanji textbooks so far (220 studied from the red Kanji textbook and 23 from the start of the blue Kanji textbook) without checking stroke order first or checking answers. I felt this was pretty decent considering I haven’t written much by hand the last few months. I’m also hoping to get back to writing to my penpals again since I’ve been unable to while so unwell.
I’ve continued with my lessons and language exchange, there’s also another meet up in a few weeks (hoping I’m not still contagious or feeling so unwell by then), and hoping to get a bit more practice in if I’m able to go.
Plans for this week;
- Continue to work on my listening trying to get a few hours in each day (wondering if I can get 80 hours completed this month, double my original goal).
- Start working through the みんなの日本語初級 blue textbook.
- Continue working through the blue みんなの日本語初級 Kanji textbook.
- Continue reading ふらいんぐうぃっち book 13 (started reading this the other day and finished chapter 1).
- Hopefully finish ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 book 4 (only one chapter and the epilogue to complete).
- Continue with my lessons and language exchanges.
On a different note, I am tempted to join the Korean side of Natively as well (so might have to switch this to the all languages topic), seeing how far I could get by with just reading. Obviously, for the moment this would not be serious study like with my Japanese but just small amounts to see how I find it since the written language has interested me for a while. I seem to like alternative writing systems (I was studying Ancient Egyptian at one point as well and will pick it back up again at some point ).