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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 305 of 706 24 September 2013 at 3:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Lately I've been making "language islands", as described in Boris Shekhtman's book How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately. I bought this book in August, and I've been trying to make room for "island-making" in my study regimen.
If you are not familiar with the concept, islands are basically blurbs of language on a certain topic that you have repeated over and over to the point of memorization. When you are having trouble during a conversation in your L2, you can use these islands to get back on track, or you can use them to enhance your conversations. The book is a short book, but it is really awesome and seems to have the potential to add a lot to my language knowledge. Anyway, I've only made two islands so far: one in Japanese and one in Portuguese. Both are just a short introduction about myself. The island in Japanese, specifically, was very easy to write, with me being intermediate level, and the only time I had to check the dictionary was for the words "beginner" and "intermediate", for talking about my language level. (I'm surprised that I didn't know those words.) Then I had my island corrected on Lang-8.com, although there were very few corrections. And yet, despite the ease of making the island, I found that I had a lot of trouble speaking it at a native pace with proper pronunciation. I practice telling my islands during the only time of the day that I am - with the exception of my rabbit - completely alone: when I come home from work and I have about 15 minutes before my wife comes home. I'm cooking at that time, so I don't have 100% concentration. But it's enough. I tilt my Android Walkman against the wall so that I can easily glance at the PDF, and I practice while I cook. That seems like a very, very efficient way to get some good, controlled speaking practice in. But as I said before, I'm really disappointed with the trouble I've had telling the piece at a native pace with decent pronunciation. My speaking needs a LOT of work. I think my output, in general, needs a lot of work. My language regimen is heavily weighted towards input activities: reading, listening, textbooks, etc. I hardly do any output exercises: writing, speaking. My Japanese speaking practice is limited to the short conversations I sometimes have with people at work during the week. Those are good and helpful, but I think I need some controlled practice as well. ("Island-practicing" during cooking time will be a big help for this.) And I need to write more. I said that writing the Japanese island was "easy", but it was easy in the sense that I almost never refered to the dictionary. The words were already in my head. But it took a lot of time to think of those words - at least compared to thinking of words in my native language. I think writing every day will help reduce the amount of time that I need to pull words and phrases out of my head. So, my new goal is to write everyday. I'm going to keep a journal, and I'm going to aim for six sentences a day in Japanese, and three sentences a day in Portuguese. I could probably do more sentences per day in Japanese, but it takes time to think of words when I am writing them. Plus, if I make my goal somewhat easy, I have a good chance of doing it every day. Once I establish some sort of consistency, and once I find myself writing faster and faster, then I will increase the amount of lines I write. 4 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 306 of 706 26 September 2013 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What an ambitious goal! Wishing you all the best and looking forward to hearing about
your progress. It is still not suitable for me at today's schedule, though it is a must for B1+ languages. Sometimes you get astonished at how much of the language you can use in daily ordinary conversation. I'm sure that even though my knowledge of Chinese or Georgian doesn't allow for me to read a book in those languages, I can actually interact with native speakers on them to a much better extent. That is to say, I've learned enough of the simple, daily interactions and the vocabulary that is still missing is not of the most essential one. 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 307 of 706 27 September 2013 at 5:23am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for your post, Expugnator. I have to say that, since posting that, I have met my daily goals only once. I still haven't been able to make it a habit yet. I make it a point to write in Japanese first, then do a Portuguese entry, but some days I don't get to the Portuguese, and even on those days sometimes I don't finish writing a Japanese journal. I'm hoping that writing will help activate more of the vocabulary that I have in my head but have trouble putting into use when talking with people. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 308 of 706 17 October 2013 at 12:25am | IP Logged | |||||
As for your writing goal, you're very welcome in the consistency thread :) You don't need to post updates every day. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 309 of 706 29 October 2013 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, this is definitely a non-language issue, no doubt. In fact, I think this has been at the heart of all my study problems since the summer. I think there are more people on the train, and I'm just now realizing it. Perhaps my area of Osaka is rapidly growing. I wouldn't be surprised; condominiums are sprouting like weeds around here. I'm not able to sit down during my afternoon commutes like I used to, except on rare occasions. That means I can't open a large book or a notebook and read/write. I rarely sat down in the mornings before - which was okay because I do DLI Portuguese drills in the morning and I don't have to sit down for that - but now the morning trains are more crowded. The big problem is that there seem to be more students on the trains - junior and senior high school students - and some of them are very loud. It can be hard to concentrate and think of conjugations when schoolgirls are shrieking 10 centimeters from your nose. I'm working on changing my routine. I need to find some really passive activities for the train, such as audio that I can listen to and not need to concentrate too much on. And I really, really need to make myself study more at home, especially Japanese. I've been tempted by the consistency thread for a long time. I'll join one of these days. :) Edited by kujichagulia on 29 October 2013 at 2:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 310 of 706 29 October 2013 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ohhh loud people are horrible! Use either earplugs or earphones! I used to be able to read on the metro only with instrumental music on, now I'm less picky but I do need music.
But also, as you can't optimize other people, optimize yourself. The more stressed you are and the less sleep you've had, the more you'll react to distractions. 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 311 of 706 30 October 2013 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, you're probably right. I've been getting only 7 1/2 hours of sleep a night lately. I should probably get 8 or 9. I haven't been stressed lately, but my wife has been stressed a lot for a variety of reasons. That may affect me somehow. You mentioned physical activity before. At first I thought, "But I work out five times a week." But perhaps I'm working out too much? I do seven different aerobics classes a week, plus a Zumba class and weight training. Maybe I'm too tired to study languages after that. But I do need to get rid of this gut. Edited by kujichagulia on 30 October 2013 at 2:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5639 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 312 of 706 30 October 2013 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
There is such a thing as over-exercising. It happened to me last year when I was trying to gain 10 lbs to my frame, but I ended up losing 15 pounds because I was exercising too much, not giving my body enough time to recuperate. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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