Began to Study a New French Dictionary

Larousse Maxi Poche Plus Japonais

On September 11, I finally finished learning French vocabulary from my Larousse French-Chinese dictionary, after about a year and nine months. I’ve been learning French off and on since 2003, but compared to my English and Chinese, my French lags far behind in overall proficiency, both in comprehension and in speaking and writing skills.

Based on my estimate, I have learned about 15,000 words in total from this dictionary. I can feel that my listening comprehension has substantially improved—notably, I can now understand about 80 percent of the newscasts on France 2, the state broadcaster. That’s a big change compared to before, when I could only understand about 50 percent.

Consciously studying vocabulary is definitely an effective method to improve your proficiency in a foreign language, so I’m really glad that I have gone through this painstaking journey of studying an entire dictionary. However, now that I’ve finished this process, I feel that my method hasn’t been particularly efficient—at least for the first four-fifths of this project.

First, I didn’t use a spaced repetition system when reviewing the words I’d learned. I reviewed only those dating back to ten days and not beyond, causing me to forget more than half of the items after a couple of weeks. Second, for most of this learning project, I looked up every single word and phrase that appeared in the pages I studied, making me conflate important items with unimportant ones.

As a result, I wasn’t able to retain most of the words I’d learned in my long-term memory. The loss was so extensive that I’ve decided to study another dictionary to make up for it. This time, I’ve decided to learn French words using my French-Japanese dictionary, also compiled by Larousse.

What makes this new project different from the old one is that I use the Anki flashcarding app from the beginning, enabling me to review the words following its spaced repetition algorithm. I review every item at least seven times—spread out at increasing intervals over 30 days—to help it stick to my memory. This is much longer than my previous limit of 10 days.

Also—perhaps more importantly—this time I’m much more discriminating in deciding which words to learn and which to ignore, so as not to overcrowd my limited memory space. Specifically, I’ve made it a rule to study no more than one word on every page of this dictionary, forcing me to learn only the most essential words appearing with high frequency in spoken and written French.

This highly selective approach will enable me not only to focus on important words, but also to progress much quicker in the dictionary, boosting my motivation to keep studying. Though I’ve only been working on this new dictionary for 17 days, I’ve already covered more than 6 percent of the total, indicating that I can cover the entire volume in a little over nine months—much faster than my previous learning project lasting 21 months.

Besides its spaced repetition system, another beauty of the Anki app is that it allows to embed audio and picture files in each flashcard. Instead of creating a flashcard for a headword in isolation, I create one with a whole sentence containing that word, embedded with a corresponding audio file generated with the ElevenLabs app. With this new method, I can make sure to memorize words with the correct pronunciation.

When I started learning French vocabulary in earnest, my goal was to become a fluent reader in French, not a fluent speaker. However, recently I’ve begun to think that being able to speak the language fluently can definitely facilitate the growth of your vocabulary, so you can’t just focus on one aspect of language learning and overlook the other. Practicing pronunciation while learning words is vital for effectively improving your comprehension skills, and I’m grateful to modern technology for making that possible.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll keep studying French—perhaps indefinitely, as long as my interest in this language persists. I’m fully aware that becoming good at French will serve no professional purpose for me, unlike English or Chinese. However, understanding this beautiful language and appreciating the culture behind it can enrich my life in ways that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. To achieve this goal, I’ll keep learning French words with diligence, dedication, and determination.

Will I Take the Japanese Judicial Scrivener Exam?

司法書士試験-仕事を辞めずに一発合格する方法

Yesterday, I read at a nearby café a book written by a young Japanese woman named Yayoi Kawashima (河島弥生), documenting her timeline of preparing for and passing the Japanese Judicial Scrivener Exam within a relatively short period of one year and eight months—while working full-time.

This exam, a national accreditation, is reputed to be very memory-intensive and extremely difficult to pass, normally requiring around 3,000 hours of study. If you can dedicate 15 hours of study per week, it’ll take you 200 weeks—almost four years—to pass the exam and be certified as a judicial scrivener in Japan. It is administered once a year and has a pass rate of around 5 percent.

This makes the case of Ms Kawashima a remarkable example of highly efficient exam preparation. As I’ve been interested in taking this exam for some time, I read her book with great interest and finished it in one sitting.

By the way, in case you’re wondering what a judicial scrivener does, they are authorized to perform a wide range of legal procedures, such as real estate registrations, company registrations, and inheritance-related asset transfers.

Since you need to be accredited to conduct these tasks, there is limited competition within the industry. Furthermore, the cost of setting up a judicial scrivener office is relatively little—all you need is a laptop, Internet connection and a printer—and you’re not even required to have a dedicated physical office, if you can set aside a room in your home to run the business and meet clients.

Due to the recent economic downturn in China triggered by the burst of the real estate bubble, numerous affluent Chinese entrepreneurs have been scrambling to protect their wealth by transferring their financial assets, setting up businesses, buying real estate, and even sending their children to study in prestigious schools in Japan.

As a result, there has been a growing demand for judicial and administrative scriveners who can speak Mandarin to serve a Chinese clientele. As someone who speaks Japanese, Chinese, and English fluently, becoming a judicial or administrative scrivener in Japan is definitely something I could consider as my second career after I retire from my current job in Singapore.

Returning to this book, Ms Kawashima has some interesting insights to share for exam preparation. Although in terms of the absolute duration, her preparation period of 20 months is much shorter than the average, the intensity of her study is definitely remarkable—she dedicated at least 20 hours per week to studying, meaning she spent pretty much her entire free time, foregoing all sorts of entertainment and relaxation.

Ms Kawashima’s level of dedication was such that she specifically chose an exam venue more than a hundred kilometers away from her home that was inside a hotel rather than a much closer venue on a college campus.

There, she reserved a room for the five days leading up to the exam so she could do her utmost to prepare and make sure to arrive at the exam center on time. Obviously, her efforts paid off, enabling her not only to pass the exam, but also to pass it with flying colors, ranking 13th out of the 13,372 participants.

As for me, I don’t consider myself to be particularly efficient when it comes to exam-taking. However, given my extensive experience of trials and errors in the past 15 years or so, I’ve learned to improve my preparation methods over the years.

The prospect of taking a major test like the Japanese Judicial Scrivener Exam sounds, while daunting, like an exciting challenge to me. I don’t know whether I’ll really end up taking this exam, but I’ll keep an open mind and eagerly face up to the challenge when the opportunity presents itself.