How to approach Japanese as a HSC subject? (1 Viewer)

[Yours-]

I love learning Japanese, but I don't really understand how to improve at it in the context of improving my marks. Vocab memorisation seems a bit redundant - My school follows Wakatta and we do a vocab quiz about once a week for the new vocabulary we learn. However, I'm not treating this really as a HSC subject - sure I'm getting classwork done but unlike the sciences and maths I haven't really set aside time in my week to study Japanese.

If I set aside some time, how can I:
- Improve my speaking (i scored like 13/20 for the first exam)
- Practice writing evaluative/persuasive texts? And would my teachers mark them? (Do they have time for that kind of thing)
- Find audio to practice dictation to?


And are finishing textbook exercises useful in consolidating grammar or is it more valuable just incorporating them into my writing?

 

[d.goomeister]

Have a go practicing with your friends, set a weekly time or multiple times where you will meet up and practice speaking. Speaking and listening is the number 1 way you can improve at a language from what i've heard.

 

[Masaken]

I love learning Japanese, but I don't really understand how to improve at it in the context of improving my marks. Vocab memorisation seems a bit redundant - My school follows Wakatta and we do a vocab quiz about once a week for the new vocabulary we learn. However, I'm not treating this really as a HSC subject - sure I'm getting classwork done but unlike the sciences and maths I haven't really set aside time in my week to study Japanese.

If I set aside some time, how can I:
- Improve my speaking (i scored like 13/20 for the first exam)
- Practice writing evaluative/persuasive texts? And would my teachers mark them? (Do they have time for that kind of thing)
- Find audio to practice dictation to?


And are finishing textbook exercises useful in consolidating grammar is it more valuable just incorporating them into my writing?

i did japanese continuers for hsc in 2022, and i used wakatta as well. as someone who did accelerated (and i'm assuming you are accelerating japanese too because you're graduating next year but you're talking about treating japanese as a hsc subject for this year), try not to fall into the habit of not giving it the time it deserves as a hsc subject. i fell into that trap (especially since most of my prelims were in lockdown) with the rationale that "it's just one subject" "most people in the cohort if not all get b6s anyway" "everything is straightforward in class" and it became a lot harder for me to catch up because since it's a language, you need to work on it consistently and put in the effort to understand every aspect of it as every part of the language is the foundation for the next part. it is possible to make a comeback though i ended up getting a b6

• funny enough i also sucked so hard at speaking (the second hsc task was speaking and i'm pretty sure i got around the same mark as you) but then i realised that if i didn't buckle up and start putting in effort i was going to be cooked. i ended up getting i think an 18/20? i don't remember but it was defo an improvement. for speaking improvement, try to make generic flashcards based on the potential topics they could ask you - on the back of the flashcards write up dot-points in japanese summarising what you could yap about in response (eg. for a card labelled 'Family' => the dotpoints could be 'parents, older brother, younger sister' (answering the q directly), 'live in a small free-standing house' (expanding on the answer), 'saturdays => watch movies together' (adding a higher-order sentence)). the next is having consistent practice speaking with people asking you questions that could be asked in the exams and you responding (it'll sound clunky at first but you'll notice the improvement). my class actually did have weekly speaking practice but i didn't really take it seriously. when i did start taking it seriously and even practising outside of class to catch up i noticed the improvement decently quickly
• for writing => print out the official writing booklet for japanese and use that for practice. for persuasives try to use more persuasive language / grammar structures (i don't remember much anymore but i know one structure i used was なくちゃ / てはいけない - you must / must not). evaluative means you use your own judgement, so use evaluative language / your own thoughts ( と思う is a start but pretty sure there's more effective evaluative language examples in wakatta) every time you're explaining something. it also doesn't hurt to ask your teacher to mark them (they probably would, especially since it's your hsc). wakatta also has some pretty good phrases / idioms in its reading texts in the textbook that aren't compulsory to learn but can be used to help express your judgements/thoughts (i remember using the japanese expression for 'killing two birds with one stone' either in my hsc or trials which i took from a wakatta text)
• to improve dictation, get started with the audio from the japanese beginners from nesa's collection of past hsc papers. since japanese beginners has simpler vocabulary and grammar it's a lot easier to start from there to purely improve your dictation. once you've done that you could try one of the older japanese continuers hsc papers
• the textbook exercises for wakatta i found were pretty good for consolidating grammar, but that's just for consolidating. to be able to confidently use them you should try to integrate them into your writing pieces