Rollcall Japanese SL 2010 =]

[ammuzusak]

Anyone know where I can get good resources for hikikomori? For detailed study ahaha

yayy I did hikikomori last year *hi5*. Best topic eva, although I got so sick of it by the end. If only I didn't get rid of that bookmark folder with all the resources I used =\ *tries to remember*

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/引きこもり
http://www.nhk.or.jp/fnet/hikikomori/ (this site is reallllllllly good, and I doubt many in the state would use it as it's in Japanese)
http://www.new-start-jp.org/　(Site about the "new start" program)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gIx6hZweHc (documentary)

I'll write more as I remember/track them down (why did I delete that folder stupid stupid).

Thank you so much!!!!

[IntoTheNewWorld]

np =]

You can also download all my prep for Hikikomori (8 pages of text) at

http://www.vcejapanese.com/downloads/

under "Detailed Study Sample"

[ammuzusak]

Awesome as. Btw, we have Keiko Aitchison teaching us wooo author of Kookoo Seikatsu and she full mentioned you and told our class to go to your awesome as website + whatnot! thanks for your help, seriously appreciate it ahaha

[menashiiii]

Awesome as. Btw, we have Keiko Aitchison teaching us wooo author of Kookoo Seikatsu and she full mentioned you and told our class to go to your awesome as website + whatnot! thanks for your help, seriously appreciate it ahaha

thats awesome keiko aitchison is your teacher!!! mass jealous! my teacher isn't the greatest...

[ammuzusak]

Awesome as. Btw, we have Keiko Aitchison teaching us wooo author of Kookoo Seikatsu and she full mentioned you and told our class to go to your awesome as website + whatnot! thanks for your help, seriously appreciate it ahaha

thats awesome keiko aitchison is your teacher!!! mass jealous! my teacher isn't the greatest...

haha nah we only had her for about a week and a half this year, last year had her for 6 weeks, only cause our teacher was unable to damn, need to get better at jap.

[RavenclawNerd]

*rushes into forum checking watch* oh god, I'm late!!
ha ha ha, I'm doing Year 12 Jap... I'm sooooo scared about the oral exam!

[IntoTheNewWorld]

*rushes into forum checking watch* oh god, I'm late!!
ha ha ha, I'm doing Year 12 Jap... I'm sooooo scared about the oral exam!

HI JAPANESE LEARNER.

don't be too scared for the oral exam =p It's overhyped. It's nowhere near as hard as you think.

The written exam however...hmm...

[RavenclawNerd]

ha ha ha, SURE the listening isnt that hard... knowing me, ill freak out and forget to use any grammar patterns...

okay, NOW i'm really worried... if you say the written exam is hard, then I'm completely screwed... didnt you get, like, a 50?
i do suck at listening though...

I like your site btw! i found it a couple of months ago (and actually found this site through it). i can definately see it being helpful...

[IntoTheNewWorld]

hm it's not so much that the written exam is hard, it's more that it's VERY easy to lose marks. On the Oral exam it's fairly easy (comparatively) to get high marks if you know what you're doing. For the written exam, even if you're really good at Japanese, you can still get owned. For example on listening you can miss one VERY SMALL DETAIL and lose marks. Same with reading and responding. They can take marks from anywhere. Like even with my 50 I still lost like 4.5/75 marks on the written exam. That might sound like quite a few lost marks, but seriously they can take marks away soooo easily, tight bastards.

EDIT: out of 75

[RavenclawNerd]

oh god, that sounds horrible! i hate VCAA sometimes...
ive heard some of the past exam recordings, and they do seem really hard... i think i would have only gotten about half of them right if the exam markers were being picky...
4.5/70 isnt very many marks at all! I think im going to have to put in a lot of work to get to that level... ha ha ha.

[ammuzusak]

oh god, that sounds horrible! i hate VCAA sometimes...
ive heard some of the past exam recordings, and they do seem really hard... i think i would have only gotten about half of them right if the exam markers were being picky...
4.5/70 isnt very many marks at all! I think im going to have to put in a lot of work to get to that level... ha ha ha.

Oh my god, we have been listening to the past listening exams and they are so bloody hard that I want to die. Like I CANNOT follow what they're saying and it is depressing me so much, omg. Don't know how I am even going to scrape a 30 in this subject at the horrendous listening and speaking skills I have. DAMN.

[IntoTheNewWorld]

oh god, that sounds horrible! i hate VCAA sometimes...
ive heard some of the past exam recordings, and they do seem really hard... i think i would have only gotten about half of them right if the exam markers were being picky...
4.5/70 isnt very many marks at all! I think im going to have to put in a lot of work to get to that level... ha ha ha.

Oh my god, we have been listening to the past listening exams and they are so bloody hard that I want to die. Like I CANNOT follow what they're saying and it is depressing me so much, omg. Don't know how I am even going to scrape a 30 in this subject at the horrendous listening and speaking skills I have. DAMN.

STILL EARLY DAYS =]

Watch anime =] It helps, seriously. If you don't like anime, watch J-drama. If that is too time consuming, listen to Japanese podcasts on iTunes. You can change your iTunes store to iTunes Japan and you will be able to listen to real Japanese podcasts. This will get you more used to native Japanese speed.

I'm going to guess that the most likely reason you can't follow what they're saying is vocabulary. There's no way around the fact that a language is probably 10% grammar and 90% vocabulary. I find the best way to learn vocabulary is to read widely, and put the words you don't know into some form of revision system. This can be a note book, but I find it's better to put it into a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) such as Anki http://www.ichi2.net/anki/ If you keep reading and reading, and keep putting the words you don't know into Anki, you will be able to learn heaps of vocab =] It's also more fun (and effective) this way compared to just learning vocab lists. 

[ammuzusak]

oh god, that sounds horrible! i hate VCAA sometimes...
ive heard some of the past exam recordings, and they do seem really hard... i think i would have only gotten about half of them right if the exam markers were being picky...
4.5/70 isnt very many marks at all! I think im going to have to put in a lot of work to get to that level... ha ha ha.

Oh my god, we have been listening to the past listening exams and they are so bloody hard that I want to die. Like I CANNOT follow what they're saying and it is depressing me so much, omg. Don't know how I am even going to scrape a 30 in this subject at the horrendous listening and speaking skills I have. DAMN.

STILL EARLY DAYS =]

Watch anime =] It helps, seriously. If you don't like anime, watch J-drama. If that is too time consuming, listen to Japanese podcasts on iTunes. You can change your iTunes store to iTunes Japan and you will be able to listen to real Japanese podcasts. This will get you more used to native Japanese speed.

I'm going to guess that the most likely reason you can't follow what they're saying is vocabulary. There's no way around the fact that a language is probably 10% grammar and 90% vocabulary. I find the best way to learn vocabulary is to read widely, and put the words you don't know into some form of revision system. This can be a note book, but I find it's better to put it into a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) such as Anki http://www.ichi2.net/anki/ If you keep reading and reading, and keep putting the words you don't know into Anki, you will be able to learn heaps of vocab =] It's also more fun (and effective) this way compared to just learning vocab lists. 

Sigh, I LOVE anime! I just haven't been watching it much this year. Yeah, the main reason I would agree is vocab, but you know when they speak super fast and one sentence has like 7 grammar patterns, I need time to think about what they're actually saying and I just can't . And the other thing is, they will be like akejvblewvgkaehgv;kwhgjwkevj and I can't even scribble everything down in romaji fast enough because as soon as I start jotting someting down, they say something else that's important and I will just sit there and get depressed.

[IntoTheNewWorld]

I need time to think about what they're actually saying and I just can't . And the other thing is, they will be like akejvblewvgkaehgv;kwhgjwkevj and I can't even scribble everything down in romaji fast enough because as soon as I start jotting someting down, they say something else that's important and I will just sit there and get depressed.

Just don't think =p

At the start of the year I was like that too. I would start jotting something down, miss a word, think about that missing word then miss a bunch of keywords after that (don't you hate how fast they speak?). I found that just not thinking about it, and practicing with JLTAV/Leading Edge/VCAA helped a lot. By the end I could write down romaji damn fast.

[RavenclawNerd]

Oh my god, we have been listening to the past listening exams and they are so bloody hard that I want to die. Like I CANNOT follow what they're saying and it is depressing me so much, omg. Don't know how I am even going to scrape a 30 in this subject at the horrendous listening and speaking skills I have. DAMN.

I totally get what you mean... but we need to stay positive! Its not even halfway through the year, we still have like, 6 months to become awesome at Japanese!

STILL EARLY DAYS =]

Watch anime =] It helps, seriously. If you don't like anime, watch J-drama. If that is too time consuming, listen to Japanese podcasts on iTunes. You can change your iTunes store to iTunes Japan and you will be able to listen to real Japanese podcasts. This will get you more used to native Japanese speed.

I'm going to guess that the most likely reason you can't follow what they're saying is vocabulary. There's no way around the fact that a language is probably 10% grammar and 90% vocabulary. I find the best way to learn vocabulary is to read widely, and put the words you don't know into some form of revision system. This can be a note book, but I find it's better to put it into a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) such as Anki http://www.ichi2.net/anki/ If you keep reading and reading, and keep putting the words you don't know into Anki, you will be able to learn heaps of vocab =] It's also more fun (and effective) this way compared to just learning vocab lists. 

Thats the best advice I've ever heard! Now I have an excuse for using up all our internet watching J-Dramas and Anime! Its so addictive, I swear, I can never just stop at one episode! Except our internet is now so slow that it takes about an hour to load one 15 minute video...
I've been trying to learn vocab from reading Death Note and the first Harry Potter book in Japanese... but I've just been writing words down, and um... forgetting to look at them again. I think Anki looks much more helpful!