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日本語 and me the next round TAC 2012 Team い | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 265 of 333 15 October 2012 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I've been thinking a lot about my motivational issues over the last day or so and I think the problem is that my ambitions, my expectations and my energy are all out of step with each other. Ambitions don't have to be a problem if I see them as something very long term and general. Expectations have to be managed somehow, however, which is difficult when you are a perfectionist like me. And as for energy, well, my energy level fluctuates according to both external demands (e.g. day job) and physical condition (e.g. how much sleep I've had) and I just need to learn a little bit of self acceptance I think. As much as I love the idea of getting really awesome really quickly in Japanese, French and German, it's just not going to happen. If I had the resources to quit my day job and pay someone to sort out things like cleaning and cooking it might be possible, but I can't count on a lottery win to help me achieve my goals!
To that end, I kind of regret both signing up to do the JLPT N2 and the higher intermediate French class at the same time. I was very close to just giving up on the French class completely by the end of this afternoon but I forced myself to go anyway, and I'm really glad I did. I've paid nearly £300 for the lessons and if I stop going I will lose the money. But the teacher is actually really good, probably one of the best I've ever had. So I left the class feeling quite enthusiastic, but also knowing that the best thing to do for the rest of the week is to pack away French and focus on really improving my Japanese in the time available. I can brush up my French with a little homework and grammar study over the weekend, but it needs to be limited to no more than an hour or two. This way I can keep up with the class, although I will not excel at it. It will be a waste of money in a way, but not as much of a waste as if I stopped going completely. And it still fulfills the goal of getting me out of the house one night a week after work! The other thing that bothers me is how much of a draw French can be from my Japanese. I think it's well documented on HTLAL that for a lot of people studying two languages from scratch at the same time is a bad idea. Well, I'm finding studying two languages at an intermediate level is also not working out so well either. It's very hard to separate them out in my brain. If I concentrate myself on French to a deep enough level that I feel like I'm making progress, it feels like the price is that a certain level of spontaneity is lost from my Japanese. I then need to warm up my Japanese again, and once I've done this, I feel like I've lost any progress in French. If I could dedicate a couple of hours a day to each language, maybe it would get easier, but with my current lifestyle this is simply not possible! It's not so much an issue with German because at this stage I don't expect any degree of spontaneity at all so it's much easier just to keep it in a separate box in my head with much lower expectations. Actually, I barely touch German at the moment anyway. I always feel a bit sad about this. My trip to Germany this summer was the best trip abroad I've ever had and in the back of my mind I have a little fantasy that if everything goes wrong with my life here in the UK, I'll try running away to Berlin instead... So anyway, as far as my motivation is concerned, I think I know what I need to do. Firstly, accept that I can't do everything all at once. Secondly, accept that my German isn't going anywhere special any time soon. Thirdly, accept that although it probably was a mistake to sign up to French class, now I've paid my fee I need to turn up and do my homework. Fourthly, accept that in order to get French and Japanese to play nicely in my brain, I need to put most of my spare energy into Japanese and maintain higher expectations of myself in Japanese and lower expectations of myself in French. Because ultimately, getting the N2 and then hitting an unofficial B2 level in Japanese is much more important to me than getting better at French. I think it's tough that the intermediate phase of Japanese is just so long. I often read on here about how you are supposed to reach a magic phase as an intermediate where you can just happily grow your language slowly through native materials only. I feel like I've been an intermediate for absolutely ages, but this native materials only approach will still not work for me! The other thing I need to do is learn to switch myself off from too much naval gazing. If I'm writing long posts (like this one?), refreshing the Active Topics page so often there are no new messages appearing, window shopping for textbooks or fantasising about study plans and schedules, I need to just step away from the computer and do something completely different (and probably not language related). I do kind of regret not getting more into languages back when I was younger and life was simpler. I regret being a lazy teenager and not taking enough interest in French despite having chosen it as one of only three subjects I studied for A level. And I regret not picking up Japanese when I was a student and had too much free time and more of an interest in anime than I do these days! Oh well, the past is the past and it's a waste of time to dwell on it. I just have to make the best of the time, resources and energy I have available to me here in the present. So maybe it's time to set a few revised goals: 1. Pass the N2 and feel able to claim B2 in Japanese by summer 2013. 2. Pass the French class. 3. Enjoy knowing some tourist German (i.e. plan another trip), but don't expect any more progress for now. 4. Use these reasonable goals to manage my expectations and reduce the amount of time I spend naval gazing! (5. Be prepared to revise goals should lottery win actually happen...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 266 of 333 16 October 2012 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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It spite of not having a job, I haven't gotten much studying done lately either. I spend most of my time wasting it. I have no idea where it goes; it just goes. So winning the lottery might not help. It is frustrating that one seems to be in an eternal state of intermediate. I use native materials some, but it's slow going and I still need a lot of proper study if I want to get anywhere. The problem is, I've kind of gone off proper study at the moment and I'm not even doing much reading or TV.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 267 of 333 16 October 2012 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well winning the lottery might help me get a year of intensive lessons in Japan. Who knows, that might help me break the intermediate barrier! It's quite scary how quickly the hours can fly away though. I'm trying my best to try and split my free time between deliberately being productive and deliberately relaxing. It's great when you relax properly, but not so great when you only half relax because you feel like you should be trying to be productive (but are actually failing miserably).
Anyway, things have not been too bad today. I managed to put off doing anything with French or German. I tidied my desk and organised and labelled all the various notebooks I've assembled for different purposes and languages. And then I sat down and watched the first episode of a drama that is running this season. I thought it might be nice to actually follow a drama as it is broadcast rather than years after the event as I usually do. Anyway, I watched it without any subtitles and managed to get the gist of most of it. Some bits I couldn't understand at all, some bits I could work out from a few words plus context, and some bits were no problem whatsoever. And then I discovered I could download some Japanese soft subs for the show. So I started tinkering with the .srt file in notepad and realised that it would be pretty easy, technologically speaking, to create my own English subtitles. So that's what I've been doing for the last 45 minutes. In that time I managed to subtitle a whole 1.5 minutes of the show. Goodness knows how some of these fansubbers turn around their subs so quickly. But just doing my 1.5 minutes or so was really good fun, and something quite different to the kind of activities I usually do. If I stick at it, who knows, in two months or so I might have the first episode completed! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 268 of 333 18 October 2012 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Have you thought of breaking them down into smaller parts? Like "I should finish one lesson each week" or "I need to write a lang-8 entry each day" at least seem to be good. Remember to keep some time for other stuff like sleeping/commuting and what not. Well, I think they shouldn't be overwhelming anyway.
What do you consider better? Thinking that you should brush up your French someday but not learning it, or thinking that you shouldn't have tried to brush it up but learning it? Of course the former one would allow you to learn virtually more than if you chose the latter one, but then French would be fading away somewhat. I think there'll always going to be some bad feeling, but you need to consider the whole image. Think of it like although you lose some Japanese learning time, you gain some French learning time. To me, it seems like an equilibrium.
What are your low expectations of learning German? Do you have an exact aim (like being able to chat about everyday stuff with ease)? Maybe something like "I need to learn more than 4 hours German each week?"
Why?
Why don't you check for new messages once/twice a week? You could subscribe for reminding of new messages, too. Why don't you buy the textbooks? There wouldn't be anything to think about buying-wise if you bought them (at least that's my hope). Why don't you just try to learn as much as you can (while allowing yourself time to eat, make your make-up and what not, not thinking that it's a waste of time to eat, etc.)?
What do you teenagers' life suppose to be like? Do you suppose that period of time to be lived in such a way that it makes your future the best? (Like you learn Japanese to C1 in high school so you can get a job, or have more time in the present to learn some other languages, whatever.) Or do you suppose it to be lived to the former present's sake? (Like studying for exams, watching anime, etc.) As for me, I don't want to believe that I have almost no life till I move to New Zealand, get a good job there and have a nice family with children. I probably have more time to do stuff now (learning languages, watching anime, wasting time, lol) and I should probably socialise so I can read body language and what not. Anyway what I mean is that life is not all about developing your skills, and the time wasting could probably be categorised as relaxing (at least I'm not too anxious when I'm searching for some textbooks). By the way I think it's awesome that you revise your goals sometimes.
Please don't stop writing long posts, I enjoy reading them. :)
How nice!
If you like to use Rikai or Perapera, you might want to download Notepad++ and run the script of "<br/>, down arrow, home" from before the first character position for as many times as many lines you have. Then save the file as .html. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 269 of 333 18 October 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Yeah, I think there is quite a difference between short term goals such as the ones you suggest, which can be quite useful (see my experiments with the Consistency Thread) and the big ambitions, which I think are best kept fuzzy otherwise they become totally overwhelming!
Yes, and this is the question I’ve been asking myself. If I had 20 hours a week spare, I think I could do both. But realistically I have around 10-12 hours a week spare, which is a perfect amount of time for…Japanese. The one important lesson I have learned about my French is that there is still rather a lot of it stored away in my brain. It’s kind of weird how when I’m in class sometimes things just come out my mouth and I think “how on earth did I know that?” So the choice is not so much between learning it or losing it, rather it’s a choice between improving it or not. And I think once I’m ready to accept staying at a certain level in my Japanese for a longer period of time, I’ll also be able to put it to one side and use those 10-12 hours for another language.
Again, if I had a spare 4 hours for German, I think I might be using it! I don’t need to be able to write a thesis in German or read great works of literature, but if I knew enough to make being a tourist a lot more interesting, it would be great.
I just don’t know enough stuff yet!
No, but instead there would be a lot to think about using-wise, which I think is actually worse. If I have a problem my first instinct is to buy something to fix it. But actually I’ve got enough resources for Japanese here at home to keep me going for quite some time and the real solution is not to buy more things, but to make good use of what I already have. Plus if I bought any more books I’d have to get a new bookshelf and then things would get really messy… I do still buy stuff occasionally but I take a lot more care over what I buy.
That is a very reasonable approach. The only thing that’s been annoying me is the amount that I can learn is less than the amount I would like to learn!
Well this is the crazy thing. Maybe it’s different in Hungary but certainly here in the UK you seem to have to make all these decisions as a teenager about future study and career options, and every decision you take will limit your choices in the future. But until you’ve actually done a certain job or really worked hard on developing a skill, how can you possibly know if you are going to enjoy it or not? In my case, I had to go all the way to graduating with a Bachelors in Music to realise that the subject did not actually suit me at all. I thought that it would be cool if I was an artistic and creative person, but this doesn’t fit my personality at all. So I didn’t really engage with the subject I’d chosen for myself and I certainly didn’t work hard at it. It’s only been in the last 4 or 5 years that I’ve really learned what my interests really are, what motivates me, and what my strengths and weaknesses are. I guess I’m just a bit jealous of the accomplished polyglots on here who realised over a decade before I did that learning languages to a high level is not only possible, but is also a very cool thing to do. I’ll never be able to catch up with these people :) But the past is the past and it cannot be changed. I can’t advise on what the teenagers of today should be doing with their lives because everybody is different. All I can do is use my own experience to influence the decisions I take now which will have an impact on my future.
Thanks! I guess you can consider this another one for your enjoyment! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 270 of 333 19 October 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I could change my mind till the age of 18, university-wise. Also, if I left the IT university for one with Germanic Studies after the first semester, I would've only "lost" one year, but I don't even know if I would've lost or gained. It's always easier to choose the path that looks easier and more fun, and it seems easier for me to get a job in NZ with an IT degree rather than a lingual degree, so I chose to leave for an IT college instead. We'll see what we can get out of our lives. :)
I don't know. Maybe one needs to be an apprentice for a while before they make the choice. Don't know if it's possible in the twenty-first century, though...
Oh, so that's how it is. Nice to hear that you're interests don't change over time. Edited by Takato on 19 October 2012 at 10:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 271 of 333 20 October 2012 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I think we are expected to specialise far too young in the UK. From the age of 16 you are expected to study only three subjects at school. What you can then study at university is severely limited by which subjects you picked. By only doing three subjects it means you study them in more detail, which is why most university degrees are only three years long here. But it forces us to make harsh choices too soon I think.
As for whether interests change? I don't know, maybe they do. Well, I was always interested in languages but didn't know how to actually study them. I am still interested in music but not in academic study or performance of it! And I've always enjoyed geeky things, the difference is that as a teenager I was ashamed of it whereas now I don't care so can (and do) enjoy it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 272 of 333 22 October 2012 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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週末は実家へ帰りました。弟と弟の彼女は１ １月から南アメリカへ一年間も旅行する予定 です。行く前、家族の集まりに出ました。最 近弟は熱心にスペイン語を勉強しているので 、私は嬉しいです。高校時代から、弟は絶対 に言語に興味を持たないと思いましたが、私 が間違ってよかったです。
私は今日ウェールズに帰りました。疲れたの で行きたくなかったのに、フランス語の授業 に出席しました。よかったです。フランス語 の先生はいつも張り切っています。私は毎週 授業の後フランス語を勉強したいです。相変 わらず、私はどうやって日本語、フランス語 、またドイツ語を勉強するか迷っていますが 、せめて面白いフランス語の授業に入ったと 思います。しかし日本語を忘れないように、 帰ってからランゲージ・ロッグで何か日本語 で書くことにしました。 1 person has voted this message useful |
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