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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 433 of 706 30 January 2014 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
vonPeterhof, thank you very much! I had no idea that kitsunekko had subtitles for those shows. It seems that Maruko-chan and Sazae are more family-oriented shows, therefore they don't seem to be "cool" like other anime and J-dramas that are popular among Japanese learners. A couple of years ago I used to watch those two shows with the subtitles on (technically, closed captioning), while sitting at our computer desk. Whenever I heard or saw a new word, I would type it onto Notepad, and when the shows were over I would look up the words. I learned a lot of new words that way. I shouldn't have stopped. I was frustrated because there were some words that I could not catch. And while the closed captioning was on, if I didn't hear the word pronounced, I had no idea how to type the word, especially if I didn't know the kanji. I shouldn't have worried about the words I didn't catch, and instead be happy about the words I did catch. Every word is a step in the right direction. Yes, if you have any recommendations for any shows like that, vonPeterhof, please let me know! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 434 of 706 30 January 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
USING NATIVE MATERIALS - THE ANSWER (BWAHAHAHA!!!!!)
It didn't take me long to decide what to do. If I gave up all native material and just did DLI all the time, I'd be bored stiff! While DLI does give me a good grounding on grammar and some useful vocabulary, and while the drills are good for speaking, the subject matter is often boring, and I don't see the colloquial language anywhere else. I thought about just getting a more contemporary textbook, but you know, that didn't work well for Japanese. Getting more into native material is helping my Japanese a lot, so why not do it for Portuguese. I need to do The Compromise, i.e. just be more selective in the material I choose. If something is too hard or too boring, toss it aside. Don't worry about throwing away something hard or boring, but don't stop looking for interesting native material. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5156 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 435 of 706 30 January 2014 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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kuji, a few notes before I read your final post:
a) Your plan is ok. If you only do your plan, you'll make progress both at Portuguese and Japanese. It's noticeable how much you progressed. b) Your question was how to better use the quality time you had which wasn't predictable. What I suggested was that you did things different from the plan, and one possibility would be to work on native materials EXTENSIVELY, that is, without worrying about looking up words etc. c) When you watch an anime and feel like you're not studying, indeed you are not, but you are LEARNING. When you spot an unknown word out of the blue, that leaves room for the next time when you'll be able to focus on other words, because you'll already know these ones you've spotted. This goes on till fluency. The same principle aplies to reading. d) So, at those extensive study moments, let go the feeling of control, of understanding everything. You may choose non-critical material. For example, I wouldn't like to spoil some of my favorite French novels by not reading them intensively. So, I leave the lesser enjoyable ones for this dirty job. e) And don't give up on native materials for Portuguese, please =D It's working for you. Your weekday's plan is ok and what comes next at home is just "um plus a mais", as we joke here, and you're supposed to have fun. You see my speech is a bit of a compromise to iguanamon's. I wrote it step-by-step just so I could organize the ideas better. It's not set at stone, it's not an order or whatever =D Just skimmed at your final posted and there's something I'd mention: drilling is likely to stop at higher intermediate levels. You'll get repetition through simple usage, as you become able to take larger chunks of native materials without feeling burnout. I can't mention how many times I've seen introduction dialogues that happened at the Georgian series I'm watching, and it's so like the way I expected it to be, with Gamarjoba's and stuff, that it's all crystalized (but not fossilized, hey!) now. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 436 of 706 31 January 2014 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
First of all, thank you for your long reply, Expugnator! That was very helpful. My biggest problem right now is my tendency to completely doubt and question my plan when I have one bad day. My plan might work for a few days, but then if I have one or two days when things don't go well, or when I come across material that is just frustrating, I easily think, "This is all wrong! What am I doing wrong?" I need to be more patient and more flexible in dealing with the unexpected. Also, I need to trust in my plan and not give up on it, at least not until there has been a long time period of it not working. In other words, JUST RELAX.
This is excellent! I really need to keep this in mind sometimes. I guess because I don't see instant results. But you are right about being more aware of words I've seen before.
I can't wait until I get to that point. Although I have come far in the last two years, I'm still not at a nigher intermediate level in Japanese, so I'm not at that point where I can take huge chunks of native materials without feeling any frustration. I'll just keep running the marathon and making progress day-by-day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 437 of 706 31 January 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I need to write less about my doubts and problems, and more about what I actually do every day, so....
WHAT I DID YESTERDAY (January 30th, 2014) AM COMMUTE (Portuguese) I continued with DLI Unit 4 Lesson 31. PM COMMUTE (Japanese) During my PM commute, I intended to start going through a Japanese folk tale I downloaded from Hukumusume... but I fell asleep in my chair on the train! That happens more than I care for, even though I'm getting eight hours of sleep nowadays. I felt great afterwards; I guess that's a consolation. AT HOME Instead of language study, I decided to take Expugnator's advice and think of a rotation for my "home time" as well. The list I wrote turned out to be quite long! I guess there are a lot of things I want to do. Anyway, if you are interested, here is my rotation list in its entirety (put into a quote box for ease):
Whew! Now, that is not a concrete order. It depends on a lot of things. For example, I obviously can't do Lang-8 activities or GLOSS or LyricsTraining if my wife is using the computer, so I may skip to something I can do without a computer. I can listen to radio on my Walkman, for example, with the TuneIn application, or watch YouTube videos. Now that I think about it, that rotation is heavily dependent on the computer. I probably need a "B" rotation containing non-computer-essential activities. Something to work on later. Another note is that I only have one and a half chapters to go in IAIJ, so that will be off the rotation soon. That will be replaced with reading comic books that I have obtained. Anyway, the rotation is a work in progress, but there it is for you. As you can see... no intensive Japanese study yesterday. I did, however, watch news during breakfast and dinner, and a little bit of a variety show after dinner. But that was all extensive. Edited by kujichagulia on 31 January 2014 at 2:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4655 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 438 of 706 31 January 2014 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've found it useful to have various activities available that take different lengths
of time (short and long, basically). If I have 15mins to spare then I'll run through RTK or maybe a little Anki. If I have 30mins to spare then I might watch an episode of a drama. If I have 90mins or so then I might try a film. I can fit a grammar lesson (from a book) into 30mins, the exercises might take another 15 mins (this is Japanese, so there will be exercises :-)). Similarly a chunk of the 日本語総まとめ listening exercises book can be 10-15 mins, or I can string a few together and keep going for an hour or so. Reading news articles takes me 20 - 40 mins per article. However, I don't mind being interrupted when doing those as it's not so hard to pick up the thread of where I was later on. So I can fit those in almost any time. So at the start of the week I make sure that I have materials available for each of those activities and then I fit them in whenever I have a suitable time slot. Obviously I want to do RTK and Anki at some point each day, but they don't need to be at a set time. By not having a pre-planned timetable ("it's 6:15, I'd better read 10 pages of such-and-such a book") I seem to be getting more studying done. Since I've started to organise things this way, I've found that I can fit in quite a bit more studying. As I'm seeing the material more often, it sticks more easily and so I'm working through the material more quickly (my reading speed and comprehension have improved noticeably in the last few months). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 439 of 706 31 January 2014 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Good advice, dumpingwire. I save audio for when I can't read or watch. When I can read, watch or speak- that's when I do those activities and not specifically listening. I used several 1 minute podcasts for short periods of time spent waiting. Vida saudável, via the Rádio Globo podcasts, helped me a lot when I was trying to train listening because I like to try to live a healthy lifestyle, I don't always succeed but that's another story. I'd listen to the audio several times in a day.
Kuji's walking is with a purpose, to get to work or home, in a large, crowded Japanese city and so, not very conducive to listening to TL. My walk is more relaxed, at a park along a beach on an uncrowded Caribbean island. That's where I do a lot of my listening, everyday. So, I get to improve my language skills and keep fit at the same time! A regular 45 minute to an hour daily walk is good for me in many ways. I long ago gave up casual radio listening to anything in English in the car. I listen to TL podcasts, Spanish on the radio, or TL music. The NHK World news in Portuguese was a big help in the beginning because of the transcript. Daily listening, with the transcript as a check was highly useful. Working with even just the main story and the transcript (and if, needed finding the English or Japanese version on their respective sites) would be something that could be short, intensive or extensive. The problem in choosing native materials for me, is not finding something I like, so much as finding something I can tolerate. As long as I know that it is helping me to progress in the language, my tolerance level can be rather high, as long as the content is short in duration. I keep my eyes on the prize. Edited by iguanamon on 31 January 2014 at 3:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 440 of 706 31 January 2014 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@dampingwire - That is an awesome plan. I think for people like us, not having a pre-planned schedule is the key, because we need to be flexible. We need to have a plan and to not plan, both at the same time.
Especially at home, I don't know if I'm going to have 2 hours, 1 hour or 15 minutes sometimes, or if I'm going to have the computer or not. I would if I lived alone, but I don't, so I must be flexible. I'm finding that planning a rotation helps me to be flexible, yet allows me to get all the things I want done done. I tend to do Anki during the odd minutes I have available during other times - when I'm waiting for my wife at the gym lobby, waiting in line at the supermarket, etc. @iguanamon - An unexpected podcast link! Thank you! Another tool for the arsenal. You lucky dog, you get to walk leisurely on a nice tropical island. When I was a high school student in Hawaii, I used to get away from home on Saturdays, go to the nearest beach and just walk with music and headphones. Imagine how good I would be now if I were listening to language tapes instead. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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