Japanese Pimsleur Progress Report
- Thread starter Fantt
- Start date
Ben W Bell
先輩
- 13 Sep 2004
- 135
- 3
The British edition is slightly different to the US edition, and the notes in circulation pertain to the US edition. The differences are very slight however, mainly pertaining to nationality related issues (pounds/dollars, English/American etc)
Ben W Bell
先輩
- 13 Sep 2004
- 135
- 3
Canterbury, Kent ni sunde imasu. Anata wa?
Ben W Bell
先輩
- 13 Sep 2004
- 135
- 3
Ha, I'm a Comber lad born and bred, but living in England now.slider said:Belfast, Airurando ni sunde imasu.
Comber, Kita-Airurando.
slider
先輩
- 6 May 2005
- 37
- 0
Happy days Im living in Newtownabbey at the moment however moving to Lisburn in the very near future. How do you find peoples reactions to you learning Japanese ie friends and family. Im having my back ripped out of me at the moment...lol.....
O-shigoto wa nan desu ka.
what do you do for a living ?? *says sorry to admin for going off topic*
O-shigoto wa nan desu ka.
what do you do for a living ?? *says sorry to admin for going off topic*
Last edited:
Ben W Bell
先輩
- 13 Sep 2004
- 135
- 3
I have the notes for Japanese 1. 2 and 3 would be great.
scottrat1963
後輩
- 19 Jun 2005
- 1
- 0
the whole purpose of pimsleur is to listen and repeat,,,to learn the language the same way you learned your native language... i think it is a good method but,,,,i noticed some editing mistakes very early in the series and stopped using it....the best way is to have a teacher....a lot of textbooks have errors or don't use the exact sentence pattern for all of the sentences in an excercise...so you won't know if you are making a mistake...if you try to be sef-taught,you can run into a lot of mistakes...
I was very disappointed to learn they don't use all native speakers, but I still find it very valuable, especially since I live in a location where native teachers are just not available if one works during the day and cannot take classes during normal weekday college class hours.
- 21 Jul 2005
- 1
- 0
Suspicious
Bit by bit, huh? So, when is the second bit coming out?
Kazeki said:
Bit by bit, huh? So, when is the second bit coming out?
Ben W Bell
先輩
- 13 Sep 2004
- 135
- 3
thebestknockout1 said:
When he said bit by bit, he literally meant one computer bit at a time. We should have part two by 2017
The7thSamurai
Master of the Universe
- 4 Feb 2005
- 765
- 27
jadepearl said:
Lesson 3? Ah, those were the days (only about four months ago in fact). I'm up to lesson 17 of volume II. I can say a lot now, but still there is so much more to know, as Pimsleur moves quite slowly and is very repetitive (which is why I like it). I actually moved to Japan 3 weeks ago and have found what I've learnt from Pimsleur to be invaluable when requesting things at a shop/internet cafe etc. For example, asking if they have something in store, asking if we have to pay now or later, what time they're open until, asking someone on the street where something is, asking someone about their family - how many children they have, how old they are etc., asking people what they do, where they work etc. etc. One problem that I've noticed is that my listening is terrible. I turn on the TV and can't understand anything except for a few random words here and there. This is probably because Pimsleur's doesn't train you to listen, only to speak. I haven't done anything yet to improve my listening, I'm waiting until I get to the end of volume III before I take the next step in my Japanese study - probably improve my knowledge of grammatical forms as well as more kanji as I need to know 300 of them for the JLPT test I'm taking in December.
Now that I'm in Japan and have a fair bit of time over the next month, my aim is to do between 2-4 lessons a day, which means I'll have the whole thing completed in about 3 weeks. It's hard sometimes though as some lessons are much tougher than others. Lesson 17 in volume II, for example, I am finding quite tough as it has introduced a lot of new vocab and new sentences (i.e. the "doko no" form which I can't understand - it's ok, was only introduced to it today! As well as the plain "~ing" form, i.e. ~te iru, ).
I guess it has taken me quite a while to get up to the point I'm at. Apart from not having much spare time before coming to Japan, this is probably becuase I like to spend a lot of time studying the grammar when a new grammatical form is introduced. For example, I'm still trying to come to terms as to why "ookiku naramashita" means "became big" when for so long I thought that replacing the last "i" on an adjective with a "ku" turned it negative. After researching I have found that this is not the case with the verb naru (or narimashita), meaning "to become", as changing the "i" to "ku" can also illustrate that a process over time has taken place (i.e. to "become" big). I think this is right?? If someone wants to correct me then please. Anyway, I'm rambling...
How about we try and get this thread moving again. Who else is using Pimsleur and how are you finding it? What are you up to, and if anyone has completed up to the end of volume III how do you consider yourself now? As for me, I'd really like to know what other (more complex?) gramatical forms you learn in volume III.
Cheers,
Bucko (which, as a Japanese person pointed out, sounds like "baka")
theknife
後輩
- 16 Aug 2005
- 11
- 0
Hey everyone, this is my first pop here. Anyway, I have received the Pimsleur 1 Notes (Original Work) that seems to be one of the hot topics around here and have posted it to my website.
mp3japan.flywebs.com
I am on lesson 24 of unit one and I plan on making an attempt at rendering notes in a fashion similar to that of the previous unknown author for unit 2. I, by all means, expect to fail because it will be unlikely that I can understand what they say well enough to spell it. Nonetheless, if anyone has started and given up on the project, or just has a list of words that they use in unit two, I would appreciate the documentation that has already been rendered.
-theknife
mp3japan.flywebs.com
I am on lesson 24 of unit one and I plan on making an attempt at rendering notes in a fashion similar to that of the previous unknown author for unit 2. I, by all means, expect to fail because it will be unlikely that I can understand what they say well enough to spell it. Nonetheless, if anyone has started and given up on the project, or just has a list of words that they use in unit two, I would appreciate the documentation that has already been rendered.
-theknife
The7thSamurai
Master of the Universe
- 4 Feb 2005
- 765
- 27
chocolate said:
No, I don't have that problem at all. When I listen I have Jim Breen's Japanese/English dictionary website open, so when I hear a new word I type it in and read the full definition. If I don't type it in correctly I use other possible pronounciations until I find the correct one (although if you don't know how hiragana/romaji works then this'll be tough, see below). By the stage you're at it's also an idea to study up grammar, particularly occasions when you would use 'wo' ('o') instead of 'ga', and occasions when they say 'n' rather than 'ga', or when the 'wo' is sort of hidden, like in 'shigoto wo shimasu' (it sounds like a long "shigotooo shimasu" but isn't at all, and it's important to know that it isn't). Also, it's an idea to learn hiragana so you can spell out words correctly in English. For example, in hiragana the word for "today" is spelt "kyou", but in English, or romaji rather, you can spell it "kyoo". If you don't know the correct spelling then you won't be able to use a dictionary properly. Hiragana is really easy, it took me a few hours to learn them all. You don't even really need to learn them all too, just how they work. For example, the word for "is closed" sounds like "shima-te" but when you type in hiragana you need to know that there's a double-t in there to spell it correctly, making it shimatte, or, しまって and not しまて (shimate).
On the subject of Jim Breen's Japanese dictionary (URL: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html), I highly recommend that you learn how to use it properly, spend a few hours just fiddling around, it makes life so much easier. And write down the vocab and phrases too, it helps big time for me.
If you've been listening by ear the whole time it's likely that you're mishearing many words (I do when I don't have a dictionary on hand), so I think it's really important that you can visually see the word being spoken.
That's all for now. I'm up to unit 24 of volume II, can't wait to finally get to volume III. I'm going through it pretty quickly at the moment, hopefully will finish vol II by Friday!
Gambatte yo!
