Targets

Well, my original idea of going for the N1 or N2 level of JLPT by December has been shelved as a bit silly.  I'd still like to do one of the higher levels some day; July or December next year might be a more sensible target.  But I don't want to do any level of the JLPT which I'd have to struggle for; I want to achieve a level comfortably, without having to swot up on specifically test-related activities.  The test is a measure of achievement but isn't the achievement itself—I want to achieve reading and listening fluency (to a lesser extent writing and speaking fluency) and I don't want to have to teach myself to the test in order to pass.

I've been listening to quite a bit of Japanese radio over the last month or two, with virtually no comprehension but a bit of recognition of particles and verbs and numbers (telephone numbers being particularly easy to pick out, as announcers always read them in a certain rhythm, just as English-language announcers do).  I've never achieved decent listening comprehension of any language other than English, and I think getting good at listening will definitely be the biggest challenge.  Soonish, perhaps when I've more or less finished Teach Yourself Japanese, I'll start listening to easy-Japanese podcasts.

Rough plan for the next few weeks: try to finish Teach Yourself Japanese (I'm about a third of the way through; the rest of it will take tens of hours of effort but exactly how long will depend on how much backtracking and revision I do.  I want to really nail the grammar of the spoken language and get a useful starter vocabulary, but I won't be trying to remember every single word I come across).  Then start on Reading Japanese.  The first few chapters are all about the kana, which I've done before and which I've forgotten before; hopefully it won't take too long this time around and it will all finally stick.  There are lots and lots of reading drills and I'll try not to skip anything.

After then... we'll see.  I often flick through the awe-inspiring later reading passages in the Miller Japanese reader and tell myself that if I ever get that far, I'll definitely be able to call myself a reader of the language.  Miller claims as much in his introduction: ... when the student has successfully read the greater portion of the selections in this volume he may turn to other modern Japanese texts in the full expectation that he will be able to read them, and he should not be disappointed. I like such solid promises as it shows the author has given some thought about what he's trying to deliver, whether he achieves it or not.  So maybe I'll have a go at Miller, finally; alternatively I might have a go at working quickly through Bowring and Laurie, which I've been dipping into occasionally and whose style I rather like.  The advantage of having thrown the provisional schedule out of the window is that I've got the liberty to do what I want, rather than looking worriedly at the calendar and feeling resentful about not having progressed much with kanji yet.

Hmm, kanji.  While doing Reading Japanese I intend to have another go at Heisig, and keep it up as a side project.  The pure Heisig approach of learning all the kanji in one go before learning anything else turned out not to suit me; for all the liberty it affords the student I found it duller than actually doing the exercises in a textbook—probably this just shows that I'm undisciplined.