Japanese Update

It’s been ages since I posted anything so I hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas and New Year!

Over the holidays I’ve had more time to spend on my Rosetta Stone Japanese course.  I’m still finding it quite a hard language to learn but over the past few weeks I’ve been spending time on it every other day which is making me progress faster than when I was only working on it just once a week.  I’m not just going faster because I’m doing it more often, it’s because I don’t forget as much between each session so don’t end up having to repeat lessons more than once.

I think the immersion technique the Rosetta Stone courses works well and it’s good that the course focuses on trying to teach you the new alphabet so that you can try and read Japanese properly.  Lots of the symbols look really similar though (like the ones below) so it’s very difficult!  So far I’m finding that most of the exercises are doable but the hardest ones are when you have to say a sentence from looking at a picture with no letters or anything to prompt you.  It takes me far too long to work out what to say!  That’s something for me to work on……

Dodo-Pad Wall Calendar

I love my Dodo-Pad Academic Diary so was pleased to find out that they also make a Wall Calendar.  Each page has space to write down what’s happening for the next 7 days.  I think there’s enough space to write everything down but that would obviously depend on how much you do and how big your family is!  If you don’t have enough room, there is the option to hang the calendar in a different way so that you get two pages for a week instead of one page.  The calendar also has a forward planner which will come in handy towards the end of the year and an ‘Indispensable Data’ page where you can write down important addresses and phone numbers.  I love how bright and colourful the Dodo-Pad range is – every page has a different design, so makes organising almost fun!

Rosetta Stone Japanese

My Rosetta Stone experience of learning Japanese has been improving since my last post on the subject!  I’ve spent some time on the pronunciation and seem to be getting better at it so it’s not quite as frustrating any more.

I'd love to visit Japan - how pretty does this look?

When I started to learn French and German and school, the first things we were taught to say were ‘my name is…’, ‘I live in…..’, ‘I have… sisters’ etc.  I’m finding it slightly strange that this is not what the Rosetta Stone course starts off with.  Instead, the first lesson consists of learning a few random words such as boy, girl as well as sentences like ‘the man is swimming’ ‘they are cooking’.  There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to what each lesson is trying to teach you but then I suppose that is more like real life.  If you went to a country to learn a language, people wouldn’t talk to you in topics like in a textbook.  There are also some points in the first couple of lessons where I’m not sure if we are changing tense or if the sentence structure is just different and we are still in present tense.  I’m hoping that this will become clearer as I get further into the course.

I am still open minded as to whether it is possible to learn a language from scratch using the Rosetta Stone method but I’m having fun trying so I’ll keep you updated!

The Sound of Music

Last week I saw ‘The Sound of Music’ at the Bristol Hippodrome.  I’ve seen the show with a different cast in London but I think this one might have been slightly better.  Connie Fisher (winner of ‘How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?’) played Maria and she was brilliant.  She has a lovely voice and is a fantastic singer – I don’t think she hit a wrong note through the whole performance.  I was surprised at how good an actress she was as I didn’t actually watch the TV program so wasn’t sure what to expect.  She didn’t overact at all which is something that gets on my nerves a bit in some musicals.  The rest of the cast were great as well and I’d definitely recommend this version of ‘The Sound of Music’.  The only downside of the whole night was the fact that the seats in the Hippodrome can in no way be described as comfy! But then I suppose that’s what you get for buying the cheapest tickets right at the back of the theatre!

Good Food, Fast

All of the recipes in ‘Good Food, Fast’ (by the makers of Dairy Diary) can be made in 30 minutes or less.  It is a brilliant cook book with lots of colourful photos to inspire you to try out the recipes.  All of the recipes are easy to follow with no pointless waffle in the steps.  The book is set out well and even has a section on how to use food you’ve previously made and frozen.  It contains recipes for main meals, side dishes, puddings and biscuits.  You can get the book from www.dairydiary.co.uk or direct from your milkman for £9.99!

Learning Japanese

I’ve just spent half an hour starting my Rosetta Stone Japanese course.  It was so hard!  I don’t think I managed to pronounce anything right the whole way through the first section.  There are also 4 different alphabets you can view each word/sentence in which is just confusing.  Hopefully it will get easier when I get into it a bit but right now I can’t see how anyone can ever learn Japanese from scratch!

Mistress of the Storm

Mistress of the Storm, the first book by Melanie Welsh, is aimed at 9 – 12 year olds but I thought it was brilliant!  It is the story of a young girl who feels as though she doesn’t fit in properly.  After meeting a mysterious stranger all that changes, as she starts to learn about her family history and meets lots of new people along the way.  I’m not going to go into too much detail but let’s just say that it involves magic, smuggling and a very evil grandmother!  From the first page I was hooked and I think that most people would be.  I would definitely recommend this book for children and adults alike!

Rosetta Stone Subscription

My subscription to the online Rosetta Stone German course is up and I’m really disappointed – it has been really helpful and not in the least bit boring.  Their immersion technique worked really well for me and I feel like I know much more than when I started the course a few months ago.  I would without a doubt recommend the Rosetta Stone courses to anyone interested in languages!

How to Write an Impressive CV & Cover Letter

Today I’ve been updating my CV to apply for summer internships.  I’ve been using a book called ‘How to Write an Impressive CV & Cover Letter’ by Tracey Whitmore which has been really useful.  It tells you the different ways to structure your CV and what information to include.  It also has lots of examples as well as points made by experts about the type of thing they like/don’t like to see in CVs.  It seems to be aimed more at people who have had more work experience than me but there are some tips especially for students and people with less than 2 years experience.   As well as writing your CV, the book has information on job hunting and writing a cover letter.  I think the book will be more helpful in a few when my CV is longer but hopefully it’s done the job now as well!

Rosetta Stone German

I’m getting to the end of my Rosetta Stone online subscription now and I am really going to miss it.  It has been great to be able to practice my German every few days, even if it is only for 5 minutes or so and it has really helped me.  The main benefit I have found with the Rosetta Stone program is that is has helped me built my confidence with speaking.  Before, I would look at words and panic, not having a clue how to pronounce them, but Rosetta Stone has taught me to break the words down into groups I know how to pronounce.  It has been a kind of subconscious learning as there is no reading endlessly from textbooks!  The interactive nature of the program makes it a lot of fun to use and I my vocabulary has improved without me really trying that hard.

I would love to see whether the Rosetta Stone technique works when learning a language from scratch.  It has been immensely helpful in consolidating my knowledge of German and expanding my vocabulary but I’m not sure it would be quite so easy to use when you’ve never has any lessons in a language, especially one which is completely different to English such as Chinese or Japanese.  Maybe I’ll invest in a new subscription to find out……