29 January 2008

I'm making a renewed push with the Japanese - I think it must be something about this time of year! Actually, thinking about it, it's 5 1/2 years since I started learning Japanese now, and I know recently I have settled into a little trough - a mixture of enough to get me by at the office, and enough to communicate with Japanese friends. It's been a long time since I really studied for the sake of it.

Now, however, I seem to have a fair bit of time on my hands, and it would be nice to crack on towards a slightly more versatile level of communication - particularly at more formal levels. I'm going to be focusing on three main areas:
(1) 敬語, my beloved. I have always slacked off about this but really it's just like a language of its own, with certain patterns for certain situations. I can learn these, and be confident about using them in situations where everyone else is! I have a really great textbook and CD set to start me off.
(2) 語彙 - my vocabulary is just far too limited, and my talent for using words I already know to explain things (so useful as a second year JET!) means I never really bother looking words up, let alone trying to remember them! I feel a rolling vocab list coming on!
(3) 漢字 - I used to love studying these, learning to write new ones, trying to remember the stroke order etc. - so this is just for fun! It's back to the yellow books we go...

I'm going to be focusing on this throughout February with the expectation of seeing some progress by the end of the month.