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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 673 of 706 10 April 2015 at 5:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I hope it's a good one. I've done only one class so far, but the students definitely have a higher ability of English. And I'm definitely encouraged not to use any Japanese in class, for the students' sake - which is sad for me. :) I'm also busier at this school, so it's unlikely that I'll have any time to spare for any personal language-learning activities until summer/winter holidays.
First, about the library, I haven't met the librarian yet. Hopefully he/she is as nice as the one back at my old school. :) And it's funny you bring up my using Japanese. I've been trying to use Japanese with whomever I have a chance to, and I'm sure I make a lot of mistakes, but the teachers here seem somewhat amazed that I can speak Japanese, because they tell me that it's so good. I think they're just trying to be nice since I'm a new teacher, but I prefer to think that I've gotten a lot better since I began working at my old school. :) 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 674 of 706 10 April 2015 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oops, Serpent, I didn't talk about my commute. My commute has been cut in half, or more than half in the morning. Instead of 40 minutes on the train both ways, I ride the train only 15 minutes in the morning and 25 minutes in the afternoon. So I can't place that much importance on studying during commutes anymore. The morning train is quite packed, so I can't really do anything on my iPad. I'm probably going to limit what I do in the morning to activities involving audio/listening.
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| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 675 of 706 19 May 2015 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey Kuji!
How have you adapted to your new commute and school? Do you like it there? How's the study coming along too? :) 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 676 of 706 30 June 2015 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hey yuhakko! Sorry for the late reply! As you can imagine, it took me a while to adapt to my new situation. Adjusting to the new school was tougher than I thought, but what suffered the most was my language study. I know it will sound like a bunch of excuses, but anyway here goes... The biggest reason why my language learning got off track was because of the change in my daily commute. Before, it took 40 minutes on the train each way to and from work. That time became the foundation for my language studies. Compared to studying at home, where I get easily distracted, on the train I was somewhat free from distractions, and I could get studying done. And those 80 minutes were enough to (slowly) build my Japanese and Portuguese skills each day. Now I have a 15-minute ride in the morning and a 20-minute ride in the afternoon. Moreover, I can still study like before in the afternoon, but in the morning I have to take an extremely crowded and uncomfortable train. I feel like a sardine in a can every morning - not exactly great conditions to pull out my iPad and read. Any studying on the morning commute is now limited to audio, and right now I'm filling that time with native podcasts and listening reviews. So that is what I'm doing now, but before I was quite tired during my commutes because all of the changes related to my job were mentally taxing, and I couldn't bring myself to do any studying most days. It wasn't until the middle of June that I started studying on the train again with any consistency. Of course, now that my train time has been cut by more than half, there is more of a need for me to do more consistent study at home, and I need more self-discipline for that. I want to study for a certain time period each day, but I haven't reached that point yet. That is my next step. Anyway, to answer your original question, I do like teaching at the school, and the students are great, although it is hard to work with some of the other teachers there. 1 person has 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 677 of 706 30 June 2015 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Changes do take our mental energy in the beginning, kuji, that's normal. Luckily you set yourself back into the mood for studying. At your stage, I'm sure only those minutes of audio will do something. I wrote a few times at my log how I find 'unfocused' listening important for getting used to native speed, noise etc. I sometimes noticed my comprehension increased when I just listened to the audio on the background a few days, alternating it with paying full attention at the audio and video.
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 678 of 706 02 July 2015 at 5:47am | IP Logged | |||||
Hey Expug! Good to hear from you again. Yes, I'm noticing that, too. The past week or two, I've been listening to some native Japanese podcasts in the morning. To be honest, while I can often get the gist of what they are talking about, I certainly don't understand a lot, and it can sometimes feel like an exercise in futility. But I've noticed a small increase in my listening comprehension the past few days. Perhaps just listening to Japanese a little more has made my ears more attentive to the words I hear around me. I think one of my biggest problems with Japanese is being able to comprehend what I hear at natural speed. Sometimes I just don't know words, but sometimes I miss words that I do know because I didn't "hear" them. I suppose that is going to come only with practice, so the more listening I can do, the better. It's funny... I often have Japanese TV on at home, I hear Japanese spoken at work and around Osaka... and yet I get a listening boost after listening to native podcasts during my commute. That I don't understand. When the podcasts are playing in my headphones, I'm usually doing nothing else except looking out the train window or walking, whereas when the TV's on at home or when I'm at work, etc., I'm usually busy doing something else. That might have something to do with it. 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 679 of 706 02 July 2015 at 6:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting... I just read a post in Expugnator's log (post #217 and, to be fair, Iguanamon's translation in #218) about how when we try to set goals for ourselves, we tend to concentrate on the future and neglect the Now. It makes me think about a struggle I have when learning languages, or doing anything that requires effort and patience.
I like the idea of achieving without goals. It seems to be a stress-free way to go about things, and I can enjoy more what I'm doing right now, instead of deeming what I'm doing at the moment insignificant because I haven't yet reached a goal. So sometimes I think about just throwing away any goals I've written down and just do something in Japanese and Portuguese. But for me, that approach can also lead to laziness. I notice that if I don't set any goals for myself, I'm more prone to not working as hard on something, or more prone to taking breaks from doing something, and more prone to procrastination. If I set a deadline, or a daily or weekly goal, and keep track of what I'm doing, I can see where I've slacked off and make the necessary adjustments. But the flip side is that it is stressful, and it makes the task seem more like work. Once I find a happy medium or a workable balance between the two extremes, I think my language learning will go very far. 2 persons have 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 680 of 706 02 July 2015 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I tend to think that laziness doesn't exist. It's simply a negative view of what's a very natural response to a lack of motivation and a perceived (immediate) uselessness of the task.
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