Sunday, April 23, 2006

Arrrrghhh followed by minor hairpulling!

I'm dreaming Kanji, I'm eating Kanji and I'm breathing Kanji , but still it seems I'm not remembering Kanji!!

Am trying to catch up with my Japanese before heading off to the land of the rising sun (and more importantly to my supervisory meeting on Tuesday ;-) and it's going slow. At the moment I could quite easily pass level four of the Japanese proficiency exam, but he wants me to pass level two come December!!! For those of you who don't know, the Japanese language proficiency exam is a standardized test administered all over the world at designated locations in December each year. It has 4 levels, somewhat confusingly counted backwards so that level 1 is the most difficult.

My problem is that I learnt Japanese my way, i.e. talking and communicating, which means my sense of grammar is way behind whilst I can happily chat away and actually be understood. Taking the online versions of the test it would seem I'm somewhere between level 3 and 2 in reading and understanding, which is great but however when coupled with the fact that I repeatedly get under 50% score on the online versions of the grammar part of level 4 is rather alarming!!!

So,..... The emphasis at the moment is upon studying the Kanji, the multiple meaning letters of Chinese origin and trying to get a feeling for the grammar by writing out texts and practice sentences... So until Wednesday I'm only allowing myself 30 mins of computer time day so bear with my bloglessness..
Meanwhilst I'll leave you with this ;-)

6 Comments:

At 6:40 am, Blogger Darien Fisher-Duke said...

If you do well on your test--and like mystery novels--I'll be happy to reward you by sending you a list of my favorite japanese mystery novels (that is, novels in english featuring detectives working cases in Japan...) :-)

 
At 6:43 am, Blogger Darien Fisher-Duke said...

Well, I guess it's not really a test on Tues., but good luck anyway with your meeting.

 
At 1:28 am, Blogger Lola said...

Good luck.

I finished San-kyu several years before but failed the Ni-kyu by more than I care to remember. There is quite a jump between three and two and then the jump to one is incredibly hard. My friend who took one said that the dialogue was about preparation of corpses before burial when she took it.

 
At 8:00 am, Blogger Syneta said...

Innilega til hamingju með afmælið!! Betra seint en aldrei;)

Gangi þér að læra og ég skal senda þér alla mína japanísku-orku :)

 
At 4:43 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

iss, þú rúllar þessu upp!

 
At 12:12 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bara að láta vita að ég var að skoða kveðja frá Danaveldi Halldóra Valkyrja !

 

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