I have always had a romantic vision of the perfect workspace: piled up on a dick wooden table, dozens of books bought in used secondhand bookshops, a notebook lighted up by the dim and dusty glow of an old-fashioned lamp that isolates you from the rest of the world and let the rest of the room..
Daily study: let’s remember Japanese names!
This week's good resolution is to stop procrastinating and finally start learning Japanese names! In fact, this is something I should have done much earlier. Last week, when I studied an article about ice hockey, I was both pleasantly surprised to see that I could understand it well and frustrated to not be able to read..
Motivation: got my first マイブック!
I got my first 「マイブック」, an empty book published by 新潮文庫 that offers you a page a day to write your own story, notes and thoughts. 「マイブック」has the exact same appearance than any other book published by 新潮文庫. I like the beautiful cover and the paper that may not be the best support to use..
Daily Study: adding patterns to Anki
As I am not studying JLPT materials or any other textbook, I have to find the new words I want to learn, by myself. My goal for 2018 was to reach 10,000 words by the end of the year, a plan that can be achieved only by learning 10 new words every day. I started..
Motivation: studying Anki
If you are learning a foreign language, you are certainly using a spaced repetition system (SRS) to memorise vocabulary. I personally use Anki and created my deck from scratch when I started learning Japanese. Today, it contains more than 7000 words and expressions and I can say that, contrary to any other material, this Anki..
Daily Study: working on input
The concept of "input" may be familiar to a lot of language learners, but I didn't know the word "input" until I discovered the website Antimoon. Antimoon gives advice to English learner, but of course, they can be applied to any other language. The authors of Antimoon stress the importance of input through several enlightening articles..
JLPT 2017 second test and beyond
Yesterday was finally the second JLPT test of the year. As I prepared a lot for it, I cannot but give my impressions on the test. Disappointed 😫 To be honest, I went to the test with a decent amount of self-confidence. I was particularly afraid of the grammar part so I worked a lot..
Things I want to do after the JLPT and planning for next year!
These last months have been almost entirely devoted to preparing for N2. I am very happy that I did it because it helped me improve my vocabulary and grammar knowledge with the result that I can read books in Japanese more comfortably now than I could this summer. I also worked a lot on improving..
Some last listening exercises before the JLPT
The Korean publisher Darakwon has an interesting series to practice the listening part of the JLPT. It is called 新일본어 능력시험 청해 콕콕 찍어주마. It exists for every level, but N4 and N5 are grouped in the same series. I only have the N2 book for listening, which is called: 新일본어 능력시험 청해 콕콕 찍어주마 -N2..
JLPT practice exams and drills
The JLPT is in 3 weeks now, I am making practice exams and drills.
Daily Japanese Study: JLPT N2, third month recap
October is almost over, and I have hoped that I would be left with only revisions to do (no new words or grammar) for the last month of preparation for JLPT N2. Well, I am more or less where I wanted to be. Let's turn back on what happened in October. Note: I started working..