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TAC Team あ: Luai’s Climb to Trilingualism | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 49 of 68 30 July 2011 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perhaps we need to have a TAC Team あ Japanese vocabulary challenge?
I really envy your opportunity to take an intensive Japanese course like that and I'm really glad it's shown results for you. I think the last 3 or 4 chapters of Genki II have some of the most important elements in them for understanding the basics of Japanese grammar, but it's all tucked right at the end (and I still haven't automaticised any of it although it helped my passive understanding in a big way). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 50 of 68 09 August 2011 at 3:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes indeed, and I've already started seeing those forms pop up in my encounters with native material. Just the
other day when I sold an item on the Japanese fashion game Poupee Girl, the buyer messaged me "買わせていただき ます！" for example. I'm kind of annoyed they were shoved in at the end though, as we didn't get as much class time to practice them and really drill them into our heads. Of course, they were quite selective anyway about which things got attention in class. なら, for example, was never used again after the chapter it was introduced in. As for the vocabulary challenge, I kind of like that idea! I have a few ideas about how to cram vocabulary that I'd like to try out, and besides which I've heard the textbook for next semester's class is very vocabulary heavy, so that might be appropriate! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 51 of 68 09 August 2011 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
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And now for an update:
Japanese Everything's coming along fairly well here. Classes ended, I took a day off to chill, and now I'm building up steam again. I began working through my RTK backlog today. I have a new plan to tackle the cards I fail frequently- I'm going to look up vocabulary containing those kanji, write them out repeatedly, and stick them in anki. The writing drill and the frequent exposure to the kanji in a sensible context should help it stick. Unfortunately so far there's a problem- it takes me about 35 minutes to do this for just 5 kanji and I already have 50 failed cards to go through! I'm going to have to get faster or just drop this idea. I was hoping to use it for all my new kanji too. I started reading Yotsuba for real a few days ago and got about halfway through the first volume (out of ten). However, I haven't had a chance to read it since then. I hope to find the time tomorrow. It's very enjoyable and right at my level. I really think it's a good choice for "extensive reading" as opposed to "intensive reading". My current anki count is at 322. German I started this two days ago and I think I'm making good progress! So far I'm part way through Michel Thomas disk 3 and I've just begun FSI lesson 1. FSI is really intense (over 60 words in the first lesson?! ouch) so I think I will spread each lesson over many days rather than trying to power through it in one sitting. Right now the approach I'm trying is to introduce myself to the material the first day- listen to the first recording, study the vocab, read the grammar notes- and then do drills the second day (and possibly a third day if necessary). Then I think I will do a brief review of the last lesson before beginning the next one. Michel Thomas is of course pretty easy. Nothing to say there really. I have not been getting much listening in, however; I find it a little bit energy-draining to listen to a constant drone in a language I don't yet understand, so I've been avoiding it. I may make an attempt to find some TV shows or movies soon. Unlike my previous experiences, I feel very uncertain about my pronunciation in this language. French I've only just begun my review of French today. I got through a review of the first 20 Assimil lessons, just listening to them. I plan to start looping just 3 or 4 lessons over and over, in batches, to really get them in my brain. I also want to start doing new Assimil lessons and FIA again. And I got through my anki backlog and am back on track with that. I also began a sentence deck that I think will really help. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 52 of 68 05 September 2011 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Whoa, it's been a while! I feel so sad when I realize I really only had one update involving German... which I've
had to temporarily drop. XD I don't feel too bad about it though because really, I just don't have time or energy, and at the moment my priorities have shifted.... although one of my new priorities does also give me another reason to learn German! I'll get to that in a moment. I started my fall semester about two weeks ago. I have a linguistics 100 class, Japanese 401, physics 01, and an english seminar. I'm really enjoying my classes, but the workload is pretty grueling, even though it's the minimum credit level. There's a huge amount of homework. Besides that, I've just moved into my new apartment, so there's a lot to get used to and I'm under a lot of stress from that. More importantly, though, something big has happened in my life! I've really hit it off with my linguistics professor, and she let me know about the Center for Language Study at the University. See, Penn State doesn't have a linguistics department, which is why they don't have a linguistics major, but they do have a big interdepartmental program, and a lot of really excellent research is being done here. Even more excitingly, they have a five year grant to send undergraduate students abroad to foreign partner universities to do research- real linguistic research- with the guidance of a mentor in the field. I have my sights set on the Max Planck Institute in Germany, hence my renewed desire for German (although I still have to leave it on the back burner for now). So right now there's a lot of planning.... I have people to meet, research credits to schedule, applications to fill out... I have to work in a lab with a researcher at Penn State for a year to qualify, so I'm trying to get to work with the one true neurolinguist at the university, the only one with an actual neuroscience background, because that's my area of interest. I also plan to go abroad to Japan next fall semester so I don't intend to apply for the research abroad program until next year, but instead I have to work on applying for the Japanese study abroad program! So I'm crazy busy. I'm also trying to meet people in the program, and attend their lecture series, and so forth, so my schedule is REALLY full. So language-wise I have little to report. Just this: 1. My Japanese class this semester is super intense and the textbook is very dense, really packed with info, so I have the POTENTIAL to gain a lot from it.... if I can get a handle on the huge amount of study time I need to really get it all. That said, the class time itself is mostly useless because I only get to say one or two sentences each class, and at this point listening to the teacher has little value for me. It's mostly only useful as a motivator and to get feedback from a native speaker. I also ran into my old Sensei at the grocery store.... and did ok talking, I think, although I panicked a little and forgot my social niceties. But last time she saw me I could barely string a sentence together so I think the improvement was pretty good, especially for an unexpected, unprepared-for conversation. 2. I got to actually speak Esperanto a little! My roommate's sister is the one who introduced me to the language and she taught it to her Mexican boyfriend, as well, so when they come over to visit I try to speak it a little with them. Last time I managed to last maybe a whole five minutes, and discussed the linguistics program at the university in eo. I think I need a lot more practice to be able to switch into eo (I try to insert Japanese a lot) and to keep going as well. I will try to last longer next time they come over! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 53 of 68 05 September 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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So a little while back I promised to write a post (or two) about the ways I cope with my Executive Dysfunction,
and in particular, my inertia- which is a feature of many disorders and also just a normal stress reaction, so it's something a LOT of people have to deal with on a semi-regular basis. Right now I'm under an ENORMOUS amount of stress and there are many demands on my time and attention, and I'm not coping with it super great, but I'm making it through, and that's a LOT better than I would have done just a scant year ago. When I was in high school, I could barely complete my assignments, let alone do anything else in my spare time. Over the course of a year, however, in the absence of school work, I committed myself to making coping mechanisms so I could do more, and do it better. This is the fruit of my labor- a process for developing routines and sticking to them. In this post, post one, I will simply describe the process by which I come up with new coping methods. The next several posts afterward will deal with the specific methods I developed, why they work, and how to implement them. So there will not be details about the methods themselves in this post. So! Here's how, in broad terms, to solve your mental problems: 1. Identify your obstacles. This should always be the first step of everything! It's really critical. The more detail you can go into in cataloguing your problems, the better. Sometimes just knowing something is a problem makes it get better because you work on it subconsciously, but even if you're not so lucky, you need to know what you're dealing with before you can set out to fix it. I'll enumerate some of my problems to give a sense of what I mean, because I really think you need to get specific- "I get stressed and give up" isn't good enough. Here's a few: - If the task is too big or the list is too long, I become overwhelmed. - I am easily kept from beginning a task, but once I start I can usually finish it without distraction. - (related to the last) I become easily confused about how to begin a task and need to be led into it. - I can only "take a break" from a commitment for a maximum of three days before it becomes too difficult to begin again, and it then takes two weeks to re-form the habit. So you see, these problems are each reduced to a small, easily handled problem that can have one simple solution, and then I do just that- solve each one individually. I should probably mention I take a highly analytical approach to pretty much everything ever in my entire life, so this is a very heavily analytic method. 2. Pick one problem and ask, "why?" Not every problem really needs this step, because some (like my #1, "easily overwhelmed") are self-explanatory. The task is too big for me to handle so I get overwhelmed and can't do it, not much more to say about it. However, for some it's crucial. Let's take "easily confused when beginning a task". Why on earth does this happen to me? It turns out to be a fairly complicated process! Hopefully your problems won't be so difficult, but never fear, if you can identify even ONE part of the cause you can begin to fix it. So, why can't I start tasks? There are a couple things happening here: - Two kinds of inertia. One is an internal inertia- this is the most common kind of inertia. It's a mental effect where it's just hard to get moving, it's hard to convince yourself or will yourself into doing things. The second is what I call "Spatial Inertia". This is when the SPACE you are in causes you to feel depleted of energy and unable to act. We know from psychology that certain spaces become mentally associated with certain feelings or tasks based on the experiences we have there; if you are especially sensitive to this, it can strongly affect your ability to act in certain ways in certain spaces. - Distraction. This is a more "normal" problem! It's really easy to be on your way to do something and get distracted by something else. - Laziness. Let's face it, we all prefer not to do difficult things if we don't have to, right? ;) Fortunately this one's pretty easy to get over. - Disorganization. I have a mental list of things to do in a day, and it's not easy to keep track of. Deciding what to do when and keeping that in my head while I go about it is hard. Fortunately this too is an easy one. 3. Come up with possible solutions. Now we're getting somewhere! Take the problem part by part and brainstorm solutions. In my case, the easy ones are distraction and disorganization. First I tackled disorganization. For me, a simple two-part to-do list is the main solution. Part one is a list of what I want to do NOW, in chronological order. List two is things I have to remember to do every day and long-term things I don't want to forget I have to do eventually, but am not doing today. Because it's on my computer I can re-arange to my heart's content, and since I automatically open my computer whenever I drift back from being distracted, I always look at my list many times an hour. That automatic return to my computer is itself another coping mechanism I'll get to later. ;) I also came up with solutions for the other parts, but I didn't work it all out at the same time, because of step 4: 4. Carry out your plan in parts. This is the important part. DON'T DO IT ALL AT ONCE. If you try to implement ten coping mechanisms or habits at the same time you WILL fail. Do them one at a time. Do each one for at LEAST two weeks before you add another, and you may want to take longer. Why? Two reasons. One, you want to build a habit. That means you have to focus on it at the beginning. It takes work. You can't really divide your attention between too many new things, or it will be hard to make it feel like a normal part of your routine. Two, you should be paying attention to the result. If it's not working, you'll probably know by the end of two weeks, but only if you're paying close attention to whether or not you are correctly following the plan and what affect it is or is not having on your life. 5. Repeat ad. infinitum, while building habits and adjusting. While you do need to make these methods habits (if they work), you also need to be flexible. Something might work for a year and then not work anymore; you need to be flexible enough to change your methods when they fail you. I'll also talk about habit building in more detail in a later post, but there's lots of information about that available online, too, if you want to read about it now. I just have a few additions that I use to build habits that I rarely see listed anywhere else, so I'll cover those in another post. So that's the basic process. I'll flesh it out in later posts with specific recommendations for specific problems, an explanation of habit forming, and some recommendations for changing the way you think about things, your philosophy and so forth, to make it easier to do things. I hope someone finds it useful. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 54 of 68 26 September 2011 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Quick update:
I'm handling my Japanese class quite well right now and not having much trouble learning the new material. The textbook has a lot of reading material in it which is really good because reading is currently my weakest skill (since my speaking has finally improved to be on par with my other skills), and a small amount of writing practice although I think I would like more. I'm very pleased with the large amount of vocabulary I learn from each new chapter although I'm such a vocab hog, I think I may start seeking out yet more vocabulary. I'm not completely satisfied with my current approach to kanji studying and I feel like I'm not retaining them as well, so I need to change that up somehow but not sure yet what I'll do. I'm also adjusting, slowly, to the new living environment and the rest of my classes. Last week was really bad- I missed a few classes due to illness and fell way behind in my work- but I'm mostly caught up and feeling much more stable, and have a renewed firmness of resolve when it comes to my studies. I think I may even be able to add in some French review and/or RTK sometime soon. My physical health is doing ok. My diet got crappy again since I'm living on my own and don't have my parents to reliably cook meals for me. No where near as crappy as a typical student diet, of course- I just don't eat that much junk- but I'm falling back on carbs again when I need proteins, veggies, and fruit to stave off my hypoglycemia (if that is indeed what it is- still no diagnosis). I have however been doing better on the exercise front. Sleep is still a huge problem. Esperanto, French, and German are all pretty much on hold which is ok by me because I'm just happy to see my Japanese progressing so well. I've found that I haven't lost that much in my other languages anyway. I will try to find time with them as I get everything else under control. I'm also planning to meet up with other esperantists later in the fall, including Sprachprofi, which I'm really excited about and I hope I can really get in some good speaking practice and activate some passive knowledge. My big exciting thing for today is that I recently went to speak to an advisor about study abroad in Japan..... and it was all in Japanese. It was probably about 45 minutes, maybe only 30, but there was almost no English at all (only when I asked what words meant and she couldn't think how to describe them in Japanese), and I think I really impressed her. I impressed myself! I was able to respond very quickly most of the time and even when my grammar was a bit off it was understandable, and it was right more often then not. My biggest problem was stringing together longer thoughts. That, and my still-very-limited vocabulary. She didn't tone it down for me at all- this was full-speed, mumbled Japanese with normal use of vocabulary, meaning there was a fair bit I didn't know yet, but when it obstructed the meaning I just asked her to explain what it meant and it all went quite well. I even ran into one of my anki "leech" words and now will always remember it! ;) (that was 好奇心な, if you were wondering) I wrote down some words afterward that it would have been helpful to know- things I will need to be able to discuss my hobbies, my name (it's unusual and she wanted to know the origin and all I could say was 女神の名前です), and my hair, which is currently blue with a big red streak. What I loved about this encounter was that it proved what I'm doing is working fabulously well. Just three months ago I would have been lost in this situation. Now I'm definitely at basic fluency and comfortable speaking extensively in the language even if my range of expressions is pretty limited. I feel confident that I can get by in Japan already at this point and since I will have a whole year to fully prepare I know I will be very capable when I get there. I hope to be able to pass JLPT N1 next year at this rate. I think I'm between N3 and N2 right now. So with that boost in confidence in mind, I'm off to study for class! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 55 of 68 26 September 2011 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Wow! Sounds awesome! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 56 of 68 03 October 2011 at 7:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Your log is really inspirational!!
do you mind if i ask what the name of the book you use in your japanese class is? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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