/alpha/ - Self-Improvement and Motivation

is this site/app/whatever really THAT good?

>>24
I think it's really good, considering that it's free. I'm using it to learn Dutch.

The trick is to learn a little every day.

memrise and the michel thomas pack you can find on the internet with everything they made except turkish advanced

spanish, french maybe chinese later… hell i even know a bit of somali

Moved to US from other country, had to learn english. It was hard for the first couple of years, now I even think in english sometimes.

I learning english, is to useful when it come to business so is for that.

Japanese, when I'm done I'll work on Chinese.

As for as progress I can pretty much fluently understand most of the JLPT 5 listening practice and read almost all of grade 1-3 kanji, with an additional chunk outside of that of about 150, possibly more.

Feel free to rate my progress.

BTW I'm not using Duolingo since I don't own a smart phone.

>>51
What materials did you use to learn jp?

BTW you don't need a smartphone for Duolingo, it's principally a website.

>>53
I flip flop between everything. If I could go back I would have focused much more on listening practice. I'd reccommend listening to JLPT listening practice sections thoroughly, and relistening to parts you had difficulty, to hear in closer. Anime is also decent listening practice, mainly because it typically uses highly common language. Look for anime marketed for teenagers of children.

MyKikitori also has a bit of good stuff. And this and the other videos on the channel are good for very basic grammar practice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIEOchMNm1E)

For Kanji I reccommend going through kyouiku ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Diku_kanji ), but don't follow it to strictly. Allow yourself to learn kanji from a grade your not up to yet if you see it commonly. JLPT lists are probably fine too.

I wouldn't take anything I say with really any credence because understanding JLPTN5 is really not much of a credential, unfortunately.

>>14
German. I was born is Switzerland but we moved to Turkey when I was child.Because y relatives live there and I think chances of finding job will be higher. After that I want to learn Russian for same purpose.

I'd love to learn Chinese but if I do that, I'd like a recommendation for a technique from someone who learned it well. It seems like there are a lot of books and recordings out there that are part of series that are used to teach Romance or Germanic languages which don't really work when you bring them to Chinese (for example, Rosetta Stone). I've seen some good books but Chinese is obviously something you need to learn to listen to, having all those tonal cues in it. I think this would be a good choice for a language because China is becoming way more significant lately.

>>202
I studied abroad in China for a bit. It's definitely a great language to learn for intellectual enrichment, but in practical terms whatever I learned ended up being pretty useless, and I've since forgotten most of it. Unless you plan to settle down long-term in China or do serious business there, it might not be worth the effort. I didn't want to do either so I kinda feel like I wasted my time.

It's not even like Japanese or Korean which at least seem to have the benefit of countries that export lots of entertaining movies, shows, literature, animu and all that. Chinese culture still feels pretty closed off.