Have had just no time for Chinese recently, and little inclination to try to squeeze language study into the odd spare moments that I do have...
Watched this film last night and was rather cheered by how much of the dialogue I could match up with the subtitles. Even though I haven't done any Japanese in the last several weeks, the knowledge is still rattling around in my brain somewhere.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Monday, November 14, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Letters From Iwo Jima
Just watched it. Good stuff. (I'm trying to remember the last Clint Eastwood-directed film that I saw... could it actually have been In The Line Of Fire, 20 years ago? Time flies.)
Could I comprehend much? Not really; caught a few simple verbs, nouns, particles and numbers. I seem to be getting into the habit of forgetting to listen very carefully to the dialogue and looking at the scenery to see which kanji I recognise; eg, the 兵 on the armband of the Kempeitai which I sort-of-recognised but couldn't quite place.
Heisig seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit this week; I'm getting less neurotic about trying to do some Japanese every day since it's now pretty clear that I won't have got my act together enough by December to attempt one of the highish levels of the JLPT, so that will have to wait until next July, or maybe later, so the JLPT-in-five-months strapline at the top of the blog might get sheepishly removed or amusingly subverted soon. I do want to sit JLPT at some stage but I don't want it to become an end in itself; I don't want to be spending most of my learning time specifically targetting the sorts of vocabulary and grammatical issues that turn up in JLPT. I want a good reading ability in Japanese and good listening comprehension, but I'm primarily judging myself against my ability with authentic Japanese material rather than exam materials.
Could I comprehend much? Not really; caught a few simple verbs, nouns, particles and numbers. I seem to be getting into the habit of forgetting to listen very carefully to the dialogue and looking at the scenery to see which kanji I recognise; eg, the 兵 on the armband of the Kempeitai which I sort-of-recognised but couldn't quite place.
Heisig seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit this week; I'm getting less neurotic about trying to do some Japanese every day since it's now pretty clear that I won't have got my act together enough by December to attempt one of the highish levels of the JLPT, so that will have to wait until next July, or maybe later, so the JLPT-in-five-months strapline at the top of the blog might get sheepishly removed or amusingly subverted soon. I do want to sit JLPT at some stage but I don't want it to become an end in itself; I don't want to be spending most of my learning time specifically targetting the sorts of vocabulary and grammatical issues that turn up in JLPT. I want a good reading ability in Japanese and good listening comprehension, but I'm primarily judging myself against my ability with authentic Japanese material rather than exam materials.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Summer Wars
Didn't get around to studying any of Heisig today, but I did finally get around to seeing Summer Wars. I'm doubtful of claims of how good watching foreign media is for your foreign language study in your very early days of study... watching it in Japanese with English subtitles, I could just about pick out a few particles and simple adjectives and verbs from the soundtrack, but that's about it. A good film though. A knowledge of Koi-Koi, which I don't have, would have been useful to me when watching it.
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