日本ごの ゴール さん

Between now and the end of the semester, there are a number of elements of my speaking and listening that I would like to focus on improving.

Goals:
While I believe that I have made major progress toward using the correct pitch pattern for vocabulary words, I know that I need to continue to work on this aspect whenever learning new words.  I feel that correct pronunciation is vital to sounding natural when speaking to native Japanese speakers.  During my shadowing exercises I have also noticed that when I speak quickly, I tend to add an odd emphasis on elements of the sentence that I think that I may forget or say incorrectly.  I would like to work on keeping my speech pattern natural sounding, even when speaking more quickly.  In addition, during some of my conversations with my 先生, it has come to my attention that I sometimes use the wrong pitch for a particle following a noun.  I intend to focus on using the correct pitch pattern for particles that come after commonly used vocabulary in order to continue my progress toward natural sounding speech.  As far as listening goes, I have noticed that whenever I come across a word that I don't know, it tends to throw me off and I don't understand the portion of the sentence with this word.  I would like to work on discerning the meaning of unknown vocabulary through context rather than allowing them to distract me from the rest of the sentence.

Activities:
In pursuit of the goals listed above, I intend to continue many of my activities from the last goal cycle.  This includes regularly attending the Japanese language practice to practice speech and listening in an informal setting, carefully listening to the way that my 先生 pronounces vocabulary in class, shadowing for two fifteen minute session each week to work on pitch and listening speed, and shadowing small party of the occasional anime episode.  In addition, I intend to go to office hours once per week to focus on more specific pronunciation issues, such as particle pitch and raising intonation.  I believe that office hours are a great way to get individual coaching on the ways in which I can best improve my Japanese speech.

Even with the semester winding down, I definitely want to learn as much Japanese as I can in the next few weeks!