Undecided yet if I’ll participate (probably will), and what kind of goal I want to set. 
I am noticing, however: it seems like @cat is sneakily trying to get me to form an actual listening habit over all these months. Absolutely disgusting. How much is Big Listening paying you.
9 Likes
Day 1:
First chapter of また、同じ夢を見ていた, it’s split into 2 parts.
Total time: 49minutes
I actually think I understood a lot compared to when I tried it as part of the bookclub. I’m probably at the stage where I could now read it and understand the gist of what’s going on instead of just getting a few sentences here and there.
Uncounted content:
another 5 hours of Game Gengo’s grammar explanations. I’m finding these good to listen to while doing other things but helping me brush up on my understanding and I wonder if that’s what’s kickstarted my sudden shift in understanding while listening.
Another hour of reading and listening to Shin Chan and his antics in game.
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I’ll do 60 hours, Japanese. Please.
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Day 1 was a bit of a bust, but I did make the effort.
I reinstalled the Speechling app specifically to use the “listening practice” function while I was running errands, and then I remembered why I keep uninstalling it 
The listening practice is supposed to be just a continuous stream of (Japanese sentence) (pause to think about it) (English translation) (Japanese sentence repeated) (next Japanese sentence), which I think would be perfect for drilling in the background while I’m out… but if you aren’t on wi-fi, the app pauses after every audio clip to save data, so you need to keep the screen alive and manually press play every couple seconds to keep listening, making it useless for background listening away from home.
Instead, my errands were to the tune of Yamanote Line train stop announcements, because it was the only Japanese audio I could think of to search on Youtube while I was walking 
Tomorrow will have more substance, though; on Wednesdays I’ve been catching Murder, She Wrote | L30?? on NHK BSP4K and the nostalgia is nice enough that I keep tuning in even though I understand all of 5% of it. And Speechling also has dictation practice, so I may get some use out of it yet if I feel like doing drills that are more active-listening.
9 Likes
happy october everyone! i’m happy to see so many people, and especially so to see quite a few korean learners too. i peaked back at august and september’s korean learner numbers, and so far october has doubled the previous highest number (2)!
for this month, i’m going to be a little stricter with myself with rules because with adding japanese to my 30 hour total, it should be easier. i’m very picky with what i listen to and watch, so i could potentially listen for 15 hours of each language and hit my goal. with that being said, i will not be including listening with korean subtitles to my tally this month. i’m not sure if that’ll hinder how much listening i do overall though, since i find myself getting bored fast if everything is going in one ear and out the other. i will, however, be allowing myself japanese subtitles as i familiarize myself with how the language sounds. i’ll rid myself of that luxary once i get past that super beginner phase.
today i listened to ep 66 of 디디의 한국문화 팟캐스트 for a total of 43 minutes. i found this episode to be especially interesting since it’s about how she learned english and japanese by herself. i most certainly did not understand most of it during my first listen without subs, but i went back and listened to some sections with korean subtitles so i could understand a bit better. i may even do a third watch/listen when english subs are added or a script is released… these types of videos are my favorite these days. i love a good “how i learned X language” video – they’re so motivating! but besides that episode, i didn’t do any other listening without korean subtitles. i didn’t do any japanese listening today either, and don’t think i will because i shockingly have evening plans today (when i would have otherwise planned to do some more listening).
today: 43 minutes
total: 43m / 30h
7 Likes
Day One
Today I did 30 minutes of Korean listening (+10 minutes of shadowing) and 30 minutes of Japanese (+20 minutes of shadowing).
I listened to MBC’s 라디오 북클럽 podcast which I always find very healing since it has soft music and everyone talks very gently. I hate content like that in English or Japanese but somehow in Korean it hits just right. 
I also got into some basic Korean shadowing today, which was more like me just babbling along and repeating things here or there to practice pronunciation and intonation. Korean is the only foreign language out of the 3 I’ve learned as an adult where I have not spent significant time in the country, so outputting feels almost impossible with my current input focused methods. I’m curious if shadowing and repeating things will help with that feeling. I feel rather stable in my accent and pronunciation thanks to loudly singing along to kpop in my car whenever I drive just about anywhere though (how could anyone not??? Susususupernovaaa) 
Switching over to Japanese and doing shadowing after Korean was amazing, though. I felt like a super saiyan and it was almost like I was suddenly speaking a native language since there was so much more ease in hearing and being able to repeat stuff. I could repeat back nearly everything at real time and stumbled way less that before, even in tricky things like “られる” that get me usually. I think part of the boost comes from the week or so I took off for vacation, but it’s nice to feel that my brain consolidated the things I learned and I am not back at zero. Really really happy with my results for only doing a mere six hours so far! 
12 Likes
Since it was the first of the month, I spent a bunch of time faffing about setting up new spreadsheets for tracking instead of, you know, actually doing the listening. But I did watch 3 episodes of subbed anime today. It’s not quite bedtime yet so I might make that a 4th this evening, depending on if I decide to read more or watch more tv.
I had an obnoxious feeling earlier though watching YouTube. My partner clicked on a game dev video from Masahiro Sakurai and even though he was speaking super clearly I understood almost nothing without reading the subtitles 
So still a ways to go. Let’s go 60 more hours of listening for October. 
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Any chance you could get a link for that?
1 Like
So far 6 hours done. Did Season 2 of Teasing Takagi-san and two episodes of Queen of Villains. All the names in Queen of Villains is a little much for me because I am bad with names and the speech is a bit too quick for me. An interesting show for sure, but its coming off about as tough as Dungeon Meshi.
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Team spreadsheet 
Not doing any tracking for this challenge, but making spreadsheets is like half of my “study” time Great way to stay motivated!
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While I don’t know if the video @shitsurei watched was from this channel, this is a good resource regardless:
He also has an equivalent English channel.
3 Likes
Here is the specific video I watched from the English channel, but I think @eefara’s link is more useful. Gonna bookmark that on my Japanese only YouTube channel I have and then never watch them bc I don’t know wtf he’s saying
*nodding so hard I get whiplash*
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Okay, I think I will try this month. I’m feeling kind of tired of listening to audiobooks, so I’m going to try to focus my time on anime and drama CDs. 
I’d also like to update my progress here a bit more. I didn’t really do so in September, so I’d like to start trying to do so again.
My goals:
- Finish ゴーストハント (10 episodes remaining)
- Finish プリンスオブレジェンド (1 episode remaining)
- Watch one more disc of D.Gray-man (eps 27-33, specifically)
- Listen through all of three different drama CDs
I’m thinking I’ll try for another pure hours goal in November; I do like having something more concrete to aim for like I’ve been doing for Sep/Oct, though.
eefara’s home post
 |
Oct |  |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05  |
06 | |
| 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22  |
23 |
24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 |
31 |
: I watched an episode of something- : I listened to (part of) a drama CD
- : I listened to something else
: I listened to one of my goals + something else!
(Calendar stolen from the Listen Every Day Challenge on WK.)
Listening Log
Total time: 2h 33m
Audiobooks
My Audiobook (Only) Journey | Japanese list by eefara | Natively
10/22:
https://learnnatively.com/book/2f20d58780/ - 26m
10/22:
コンビニ人間 | L29 - 14m 14s
10/30:
コーヒーが冷めないうちに | L27 - 35m 20s
Drama CDs
10/5:
氷の魔物の物語 - 1h 17m
Podcasts
TV/Anime/Movies
Youtube
Numbers for calcs
1h 17m + 26m + 14m 14s + 35m 20s
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Wow, it does feel like we have a ton this time around! Glad to see all the Korean learners! 
6 Likes
I’m also a spreadsheet person, but I have yearly rather than monthly ones so it’s a big thing for me in December setting goals and deciding what I’ll track. It’s fun going back to ones from a few years ago and seeing how I color coded back then and what I felt were important metrics to track 
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I’m currently setting up monthly ones because my goal for the end of the year is to set up a SQLite database and move my tracking there. Then I can go Full On with my data in the way that I want to analyze it. Having a monthly sheet means that I can iterate on what I’m tracking because after a month of doing it one way or another, I get a feel for what will or won’t be annoying in the long run.
So team spreadsheet evolving into team database
5 Likes
Day 2:
Listened to chapter 2 (25 & 1/2 m) and both parts of chapter 3 (23m and 26 & 1/2 m)
Total for today: 75m
I again listened to some more Game Gengo grammar videos for N5 grammar. It’s refreshing stuff but I do feel like these are actually helping me to read and listen better even if they are just in the background and not full focus.
5 Likes
Watched an episode of the Japanese dub of Murder, She Wrote | L30?? today. No subtitles, and for the whole ~45min episode the number of lines I caught could be counted on fingers. Everything else was brain static.
It’s disappointing not being able to follow along with what’s happening at all or guess at whodunnit, but at least with Angela Lansbury on screen it isn’t outright painful and it doesn’t feel like as much of a waste of time as my listening efforts usually do. I have no experience or standards for this kind of thing, but it seems like a pretty well done dub, too; 森光子 as Jessica in particular has a very clear voice and matches the lipsync and mood very closely, so the dubbed nature of it isn’t distracting at all until a side character comes in. The only barrier in understanding really is just my lack of listening ability ):
7 Likes
1:25 today across a bunch of anime and a bit of my audiobook.
I apparently went into magical girl withdrawal this evening (it’s been a whole week since I finished Wedding Peach) so I started ハートキャッチプリキュア! S1 | L30??. It’s supposed to be the best of the PreCures and gets suggested as the place to start with the series. It was not at all what I expected. Both the art and the animation is stylized in a way that makes it really interesting and different than a lot of other magical girl or even anime. Dunno if I’m in for the whole thing but I’m sold for a while at least.
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Thanks for mentioning this! I was always curious about Precure but all I know about it is that it’s basically the biggest magical girl franchise out there, which makes it confusing to figure out where to get started. (If I ever do add it to the “to watch” list that never gets watched)
4 Likes
