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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 561 of 706 18 July 2014 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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A quick update - everything is going well. I've been making an effort to simplify things not only in my language learning, but in life. The website Zenhabits has been a major find for me. I think I have a lot of clutter in my life, and that affects my language learning as well. I'm finding that the less clutter I have in my life, the better my language learning is.
To that end, I've also been working to simplify and streamline my language learning. I've made my rotation system simpler. Still multi-track, but I've pruned some things and focused on others. Unless you want me to, I'm not going to go into detail about it, because I tend to use this log a lot to do that sort of thing. But I'm finding good results so far. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 562 of 706 18 July 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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End of the day philosophy had that much impact on your studies? I've thought of the same philosophy pretty
much after every gym/running/bike workout. I always think how much effort it takes me to go do that and how I've never regretted exercising once in my entire life no matter the circumstances. I can't say the same for Japanese though. Sometimes I stay up late studying and the next day I think I should have just gone to bed. If your changes work out for you after a few weeks then I'd be interested to hear about it. I make changes a lot but they often don't stick so if you feel they're still good after a bit I'd be interested. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 563 of 706 18 July 2014 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@kraemder - No problem. I'm a little cautious right now, because I've written about changes before and they haven't worked out. I'm going to wait and see how this turns out. But it's nothing groundbreaking, just a simpler way to go about my studies. I hope my cautiousness isn't causing everyone to think that I have an awesome way of learning a language, because I don't! :) But if you are interested, I will write about it after a month or two.
I think I approached language learning the same way that I approached everything else in life. I tended to attack problems with brute force in order to get quick results. For example, if I lose my keys, I'm not doing anything else until I find them. A few weeks ago, I found that some ants had set up a nest in one of my potted plants on the balcony, and we live on the sixth floor! Everything else in my life had to be put on hold while I tried to find out how to get rid of them. I tried pesticides, soaking the entire pot in water for hours, etc., etc., etc. I tried all kinds of things. In the end, in order to save the other plants on the balcony (not to mention preventing the ants from coming into our condo), I had to just throw the entire plant away. But before I reached that point, the whole ordeal was a bit stressful. I was angry because they decided to nest in my plant, and was dumbfounded by the fact that they made their way up to the sixth floor of our building. And once, while I was on the balcony attacking the ants, I snapped at my wife when she wanted me to come inside and help her with something ("Why can't you do it by yourself?"). That is just an example of how little things tend to stress me out, and it's something that I really need to change. That Zenhabits blog talks about "letting go", and that's something I've been practicing lately. It was the same with language learning. I was "attacking" my language learning with a lot of things: textbook, grammar, Anki, podcasts, watching TV, listening to music, reading articles, Self-Talk, keeping journals, etc. All were very useful. But I was frustrated at how slow I was learning. Why is it that I've been studying Japanese for two years - with all these activities, techniques and methods - and I'm still a B1? I thought. That just added to the risk of burnout for me. But the one thing that would speed up my language learning is the one thing I can't use to "attack": time. Now, I think I have plenty of time to study a language each day, especially if I use "dead" times during the day to get more study in. But even with that, I don't have the hours upon hours that HTLALers like Stelle, James29, outkast, and others have every day. I don't have the right situation to do online language exchanges, either. Those people have a distinct advantage, and I shouldn't be comparing myself to them in the first place. (This is why I say HTLAL is both a blessing and a curse. I read other peoples' logs, and I wonder "Why can't I do that?", and I get frustrated. That is why it's good for me to spend a couple of days away from HTLAL every now and then.) There's a limit to how much time I can give myself every day in Japanese, and Zenhabits talks about letting go of things you can't control. So I'm not going to worry about it. The fact is, although I'm progressing slower than I would like, I'm still progressing, and I'm probably progressing faster than I think. And that should be the main point. And I shouldn't worry about anything else. And while I'm at it, how about "pruning" the system that I have and make it easier to follow, and less stressful? So that is where I am now. I'm still learning at the same pace that I was before, and that is perfectly okay, because I am learning. And yet, I feel liberated somehow. EDIT: I'm sorry if I sound like a Zenhabits evangelist, and I don't agree with everything I've seen on that blog. But a lot of the advice I've found has been helpful for me. Edited by kujichagulia on 18 July 2014 at 7:13am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 564 of 706 22 July 2014 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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UPDATE
At the beginning of 2013, I made a commitment to focus on listening and improve that part of my languages. There were ups and downs, but overall I'm pleased with how much better my listening is in Japanese and Portuguese. Now it's time to put a priority on speaking - especially for Japanese. The best way to learn how to speak is to speak, and I haven't really been doing any speaking exercises. Obviously, being in Japan, I get opportunities to speak. I see and meet Japanese people every day. Many of them speak to me in English, but a few speak no English, and so I talk to them in Japanese. It is good practice, and it's fun, but real conversation with regular people is not the time, I think, to work on my weak points. I can't really take the time to look up new words and phrases, or repeat a word over and over and work on pronunciation and fluency, etc., during those times. So I'm thinking of ways to do speaking practice in between conversations I have with people - activities I can do on my own to improve my fluency. I have several ideas that I'm going to explore. One challenge is not getting too caught up in the process. I need to take some time to find activities that will work for me, but I don't want to get too carried away. I don't want to spend too much time thinking of the "perfect" activity, but I do want to find an activity I'll actually do regularly. Balance is key here. Anyway, this post is not very interesting, so sorry about that. But I wanted to post on this log my intentions of focusing on speaking for the rest of 2014, as well as some of my thoughts at the current time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 565 of 706 24 July 2014 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I haven't really updated what I've been studying, so... let me see what I can remember... JAPANESE I finished reading Sleeping Beauty. Since then, I've listened to a few JapanesePod101.com podcasts - some of the beginner ones. The grammar is quite easy for me, but I'm amazed that I learn one or two words in each podcast that I had no clue about. This proves that it's good to do even beginner-level stuff every once in a while. I still have the 15th and final chapter to do in An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, but lately I've been sort of lazy at home, and my Japanese time has solely consisted of watching TV. PORTUGUESE I talked before about how I heard from iguanamon that Deutsche Welle is going to end their Portuguese service soon. I want to get some of their "Learning by Ear" radionovelas before they disappear in January, but so far I've downloaded only two series. (DW doesn't make it easy to mass download those. The PDFs are quite simple to mass download using the DownThemAll extension in Firefox, but the mp3s are another story.) One of those series is "Futebol: Mais Do Que Um Jogo." I went through the first episode of that sometime last year, but I was still "green behind the ears" in Portuguese (is that the correct idiom?), and the pace was slow. But recently I downloaded the entire series, and now I'm going through Futebol 1 again. I don't know if it is because I am better at Portuguese now, or because I listened to it before, or both. But the episode was easier to listen to this time around. Anyway, for now, I'm planning to make this part of my regular cycle of train activities, which will go like this: DLI lesson > one or two days of some other stuff > an episode of Futebol > one or two days of some other stuff > rinse and repeat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 566 of 706 01 August 2014 at 3:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I just found this on the first page of your log:
Well, you definitely understand much more than 20% now, but is this issue still there sometimes? If it's ever a problem, try using materials with voices that sound pleasant to you :-) Also, I suddenly (!) got curious about your username. I mean I've always been, but now I'm too curious not to ask ;) Edited by Serpent on 01 August 2014 at 3:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 567 of 706 21 August 2014 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sorry I'm so late to reply to this, Serpent. I've been taking a break from HTLAL. The issue is still there. You are right in that all the Japanese podcasts I've come across don't sound that pleasant to me. It's not really the voices. I'm not sure exactly what it is. I get audio sometimes from a Japanese fairy tale website called Hukumusume, and I have no problem listening to those stories over and over... even though the production is worse than the podcasts. Maybe because the content is more comprehensible. Also, I've gotten tired of listening to the Portuguese podcasts, too. I should, in theory, understand more of those now, but nowadays I can't stand listening to more than a few minutes of them. I prefer listening to Brazilian radio.
"kujichagulia" is a Swahili word that means "self-determination". Have you ever heard of the African American holiday Kwanzaa? It lasts seven days, and each day has a theme, and the themes are in Swahili words. One of those days is a day to focus on "self-determination", or "kujichagulia". Anyway, I just thought the word sounded interesting, so I used it as my username. But nowadays I don't do Kwanzaa after I found out that the guy who created the holiday has some character problems. Edited by kujichagulia on 21 August 2014 at 7:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 568 of 706 25 August 2014 at 8:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I haven't been very consistent lately, and I think it's due to a lack of sleep. I've noticed that I'm quite busy every day. After work, I come home, cook, eat dinner, do housework, go to the fitness club for a couple of hours, come back, prepare for the next day, do some language activities if I have time, and before I know it, it's 10:00 and time for bed.
I suppose that sounds like a nice schedule, but the problem is that there are other things I want to do. My wife allowed me to get a new computer game this year for my birthday. Unfortunately, I enjoy it so much that I want to play it every day, and the only way to do that is to stay up later. I also have gotten into the habit of doing other things after 10:00: watching English-language dramas with the wife, playing with my rabbit, using the Internet and writing e-mails, watching sports, etc. (Of course, watching sports in my L2s is okay, but not if it interferes with sleep.) I get up at 5:45 daily, so this means I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. The result is that every day I feel tired and sleepy. That means it can be hard to do language activities on my train commutes in the morning and in the afternoon. I was guaranteed to fall asleep if I sat down on the train, but nowadays I fall asleep even if I stand up! My language progress has suffered as a result - well, at least my Portuguese has. And it's not just language that suffers. I feel more grumpy and I get frustrated and stressed more easily. So I've been trying to discipline myself to go to bed on time in order to get those eight hours I need. I don't have to eliminate those extra things I mentioned earlier, because they are a great source of stress-relief. I have time for them, but not every day. For example, computer game time used to strictly be Sunday afternoons (if nothing else was scheduled), so I'm trying to get back to that. I'm better off now than I was a month ago, but when bad habits settle in, it can take some time to get rid of them completely. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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