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| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 49 of 102 19 June 2010 at 11:00pm | IP Logged |
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I've gotten really bad at this.
I ended up taking another unplanned break from this endeavor. Over the past few days I've gotten back into, catching up on my Anki reviews (I had over 500 a few days ago, but I should be caught up today) and resuming media viewing. If nothing else, I've been reminded of the fact that writing kanji becomes more enjoyable the sharper the pencil used. (Fine tipped pens may also provide enjoyment, but I prefer to leave that to speculation.) Among statistical notions: I've achieved my first card with an interval surpassing two years (four), although this happened a while ago and I didn't notice, so rather that I achieved a second is the current milestone (goods), these such events occurring more frequently were I to more often grade cards as easy when I ought. Secondly, I am on the 42nd page (side) of the notebook I use for my kanji reviews (college-ruled notebook, none of the wide-ruled rubbish), these pages following the gridded sheets I used beforehand, the number of which I counted once and forgot, but it is quite a hefty stack. Having bested 27000 reps, this is only to be expected, given that I average certainly better than two and still likely at least three three drawings per rep, especially if the learning period is factored in. Perhaps at some point, perhaps when I quit reviewing these (or something, I don't know) I will burn all these pages, illustrating both the magnificence of my conquest and my contempt for nature. I'm reaching the point of thinking that perhaps, even if the method I am attempting works in principle, that it is not a method that works for me personally. While media watching is all well and good, and definitely something that I would not exclude from any regimen, it doesn't seem like something that I can manage to do to exclusion for the period of time necessary to be effective. While this may indicate simply a personal shortcoming which is being scapegoated onto the method, the fact that I balk at any attempt I've made to stick to it for an extended period of time suggests that the method itself may be incompatible. Perhaps I ought abandon this quest, instead incorporating a moderate amount of video watching into a more varied and somewhat more traditional plan, leaving a full video-only notion to a different language that would be picked up more easily. (The problem here being that I've dipped my tendrils into most of the easy targets at one point or another, thus running the risk of uncertainty due to contamination. Having studied German and other Germanic languages kind of muddies the whole branch, too.) I'm not going to give up quite yet, but I'm entertaining the thought. Switching tactics seems preferable to abandoning the language in any case, given the enormous amount of time I've sunk into this already, although I would not argue against it if one made a case of throwing good time after bad. Not that the time has been wasted per se, but more the sentiment of investing more simply on the weight of past investment is what I intended. One thing is probable, which is that I cannot make the decision while or soon bordering on a period of inactivity. This would make it appear that I had been beaten or grown weary. I must decide in a moment of glory, where it is clear that it is not the heavens that rule me, but rather that I reign supreme over them and all within and that it is only in my benevolence that I choose not to destroy all that oppose me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 50 of 102 27 June 2010 at 5:06am | IP Logged |
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My month has been productive starting the 15th, as I've averaged 80 minutes per day of video since. I've 95 hours total recorded, so I'm probably going to reach 100 hours by the end of this month, boosted by the recent burst I've been having. Yes, I should have reached this point several months ago. But I didn't, so slag off.
I have even managed my (elsewhere set) goal of getting my reviews done each day and watching some amount (this wasn't well-defined, but it's been accomplished to my satisfaction), despite a full day without electricity (also water). This, and the longer period without internet, resulted perhaps unsurprisingly in a general burst of productivity in which I did a number of things that needed to be done a long time ago and read a book that I've had for several years but not read (Writing Systems by Geoffrey Sampson; recommended). At the point of my return to my Anki reviews (several days before my previous post) I switched the time per session of Anki from two minutes to a hearty three. This change is good. It does not seem to result in any decrease in ability; I do not fatigue, it seems, in this third minute. It allows the reviews to go overall more quickly since I otherwise do something else in between sessions, do this reduces interim time spent. Not that this is incredibly important, since I rarely have even ten minutes of reviews per day. I've been contemplating, although not too thoroughly, on spending roughly one entire day doing nothing but Japanese tasks. This falls apart, however, when I only allow myself to watch stuff in Japanese, since there's pretty well no way I'd be able to pay attention for that long. What I'm saying is, I would get bored. I have considered adding in audiobooks. What will this do? That's a great question. I don't think it will do much of value in alleviating boredom if I'm to focus on the audio the whole time, since I would likely have difficulty maintaining focus (which is really the same problem). Now, I could try the whole listen-reading follow in English with the Japanese audio. But, I don't think I can do that unless I decide to get off the sauce, the sauce being the "plan" of "study" which I am "following" (I really, sincerely mean all of those scare quotes). I tried this for a bit with Swedish. It was actually pretty interesting, I don't think it was in any way harmful, and it certainly left me with Swedish floating in the head. So I may consider this, although I will likely not give up the current method of study until at least the end of the month, or possibly the 15th of the next. I'm feeling like not at all at the moment, though, which is the sort of thing that happens when I enjoy what I'm watching. I am going to continue to maintain, although I do not read the logs of others particularly often, that I have the bookiest of logs, which is to say, that which offers the longest average posts. Am I correct? I do not know, but I shall in any case continue to write as if I were paid by the word. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 51 of 102 01 July 2010 at 3:24am | IP Logged |
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I read through my log; a fitting thing to do sometime around its 50th post and my completion of 100 hours of video. Also, I can't find the complete file I used to document my Heisig battle, just one that's only partially complete (through about 20 days) and I kind of wanted to reconstruct it the best I could.
It started a while ago, it seems, this log. I'm sure I'll mark it's two years if I notice it. (Also, I've been here for a real long time, it seems.) I've had nearing a full year to devote to my task of watching Japanese--albeit with some diversions in the path of Japanese. I noted that as far back as Oct 7 2009 I apparently was expressing concerns extremely similar to those I brought up quite recently. I have continually made allusions to my lacking ability at time management, with the silent effects of such lingering in the long periods of no posting occurring this year. I've taken some breaks from Japanese in order to solidify gains or just get away from it a bit to focus on something else. Never have I successfully reentered the language as planned, either delaying such or failing to maintain my return for a reasonable length of time. Additionally, I've noted several time-constrained goals I've made. None of these worked out right. Do you remember DECEMBONANZA? Because I don't really so much, considering I didn't really do anything for it. (I also noted that I had stated it as a "final push" before possibly giving up. Yeah...) My various pleas that I would do X time per day for N days? One would sooner trust a starving pigeon with a loaf of bread than those claims. As far as my records go, I haven't had more than 24 consecutive days of video watching (and that's ignoring two 0 days in the middle of there), although that was quite a productive stretch. (Actually, this technically fulfilled a ~20 day goal. And I never even noticed!) I'm currently on a 15-day streak, though. To fulfill the related goal, it must remain unbroken until 15 July. I once expressed a distaste for record keeping. I now believe it is the only thing sustaining me. Although I would never would have said no to having free statistics and data. Temporally related, although I haven't looked at any of my Tae Kim stuff in nearly five months, and didn't look very long at it then, I remembered the reading for 高速道路 upon seeing it (or more likely based on the association with highway). I don't think this is important, but can't see so much harm in it. I hit 50 hours of unsubtitled video at roughly the end of January, after four months of record keeping. I hit 100 hours now at the end of June, after an additional five months. Which means my pace has decreased. This isn't good. A lack of internet, either through misfortune or contrivance, is good for productivity. Yeah, I'm real shocked. (But ashamed that I am not a responsible internet user.) Possibly the densest time for posts was during a period from January to February, which happened to contain my longest (and best) video streak. I was aware of some sort of correlation between posting often and doing good--it's somewhat counterintuitive, but makes sense if you take into consideration that I become ashamed with my inability to do simple things that I say I'm going to do. I think I might try to see if I can get the reverse causation to work, which is to say, by posting constantly, will it make me do more? What have I learned from this retrospective? - I am not, nor have I really ever been, confident that this method suits me. - If I plan a break from the language, I should alter those plans. - My time management does not live up to my expectations, it never has, and I've never managed to do anything worthwhile about it. - If I set a goal, it's meaningless after about a week; if I happen to continue after that, it's just plain luck. - I am slowing down, a trend that would be best stopped. - Posting correlates roughly with succeeding. - My posts haven't seemed to vary in length over time (i.e., the average seems not to have varied significantly). I don't think this post is as much of an outlier as it should be. I'm going to think about this here for a bit. Then I can come back, make some further observations, and quite possibly set some goals that I apparently won't keep. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 52 of 102 04 July 2010 at 10:10pm | IP Logged |
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Since I wasn't incredibly disappointed in the month of June, I'll offer up my statistics for the month.
Total: Anki - 304(5h4m); Video - 960m (16h0m); Total - 1264m (21h4m) Avg/day: Anki - 10.13m; Video - 32m; Total - 42.13m Starting at 06/15/10: Total: Anki - 304(5h4m); Video - 960m (16h0m); Total - 1264m (21h4m) Avg/day: Anki - 19m; Video - 60m; Total 79m (1h9m) So, for the second half of the month, I did well. I have continued as such. I'm not likely to have as much Anki time this month (since I haven't been neglecting it), so I'll have to get more video in. I think tomorrow I might spend the entire day in Japanese. I'll at least push to get a lot in, I think. I don't have anything in particular planned, but seems like it's something to try. I've been contemplating starting RTK3, or at the least, going through the supplement that was put out recently for new general use kanji. This is much better than the other idea I was toying with a bit, which was to try out Remembering the Hanzi. That would have been a bad direction. As tempting as it was to get the whole first lesson and then probably a bunch more free. In any case, knowing any more kanji in this fashion isn't going to help me any time soon, much like the kanji I've learned haven't done me much good lately. But, I could handle a few a day without difficulty, and then when I get around to actually doing something, they'd be there. Eh, maybe I'll do it. For this month, I'm hoping to do better than the last. That is all. Much better would be dandy, but more important is the regularity. Daily work is good, and probably better than binging. (Although a long enough binge might be worth a period of inactivity, I'm not really going to try for that.) I could probably engage myself well enough listening to a Japanese audiobook if I followed along with the Japanese text. Perhaps I'll do that. I haven't eaten any interesting animals lately. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 53 of 102 11 July 2010 at 4:14am | IP Logged |
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I have continued to succeed at doing things. Which is good.
I've already surpassed this month all but one month's total for video. This is technically sad, but fine. Maybe I can still do better. Although I am having all sort of thoughts about other languages. I don't know the extent to which I should indulge this, but I'm not against doing so. I might be able to just watch a few movies in other languages to quell it, which I would classify as getting off easy. Remains to be seen. Of course, I could just ignore the urge and wait for it to go away, which it probably would. Might not, though. I have made my decision (although no further action theretoward) that I intend to listen to a Japanese audiobook while following the Japanese text. I will categorize it seperately from my video total, although would likely include it in a total exposure value. This exposure value is the one that I'm interested in mostly, any way. There really are at a least a couple things I'm testing here. The first, regarding to whether TV watching can lead to some adequate form of language learning. I believe that this has been shown to be the case elsewhere. Second, to see how important the "comprehensible" part of "comprehensible input" really is, and if it is necessary. There are probably other things I'm neglecting. The comprehensibility, though, is certainly an interesting one. Because despite the 100+ hours spent, I still can't understand so much. It becomes so tempting to try to reason out what words mean, but that's clearly wrong: I'm thinking in English, the words are in Japanese. Japanese words don't mean anything in English. (Except for loanwords, but they're bound to have different meanings in English than in Japanese.) I can very well see how the process is supposed to work, even if I cannot well see that it is working. I looked through my previous months' logs. I hadn't realized until now just how inconsistent I had been with my Anki reviews. I knew I was doing poorly with the video, but I still had generally favorable thoughts towards my Anki activity. So, while I think this is likely to be a lighter Anki month than previous ones, I can't really tell due to the lack of good months on record. I don't know that this was a particularly useful update, but which are, really? It's just random unsubstantiated thoughts of extremely limited appeal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 54 of 102 20 July 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
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Sometimes I wonder how long it will take until I get any measurable results. I suppose I already have attained some 'benefit', in that I am usually quite capable of determining what the syllables spoken are, and I believe I also have a good handle on word boundaries. I personally, for no rational reason, believe that 300 hours is an important mark which may signify some sort of newfound ability. But it would just be a fraction of the goal I have set. Which is 1000 hours. Which at my rate will take a while. So, I guess I am quite patient, although in other contexts I would not likely suggest this.
I've tried that which I said I would try, which is following along with text while listening to the corresponding audio. For about three hours thus far, about a week ago already. This isn't very long, so I don't feel all that justified in assessing its worth. Initially I had some difficulty following along, but by the end of the three hours, I was able to space out while still following along. (This was unintentional.) It's hard to say if it's been helpful, it'd likely take longer to do that. In any case, I'll probably start doing it some more eventually. I've been having some difficulties keeping going over the past week, due to things I've had to do. However, I do not want to lose my streak. So, in the most desperate of situations, I'm glad I have some sort (20 minute) things to watch as well, even if they're not all that good. But they've saved me on a couple of occasions. One of which was because I fell asleep watching what I was going to watch. But I've gotten back to sleeping enough, so that's not so much of an excuse any more. I had set an informal goal to make sure I stay on top of Japanese for the period of June 16 to July 15. Seeing as that time has passed, it seems reasonable to speak of it. I have established a streak, thus far lasting 35 days, of video watching. Within this streak, only two days have I watched less than 45 minutes and and on nine days, greater than 100. I also established a single day personal best in this period of 305 minutes. Over the course of these 35 days, I totaled 2492 minutes, or 71.2 minutes per day. There were also 430 Anki minutes over this time, which would thus total 2922 minutes, or 83.4857m/d. These are pretty good numbers. (Also, I just noticed an error in my spreadsheet for roughly all months that may have caused me to misreport averages; this isn't so likely, though, since I usually calculate them by hand.) My current video total is 127h09m. I got an abacus by chance, and so I've been practicing on that. Cultural immersion, right? Okay, well, I just think they're neat. Lovely wooden thing. Plus I learned the Japanese call it a soroban. See, I'm learning vocab here. The hours I'm spending on my abacus are definitely competing for my study time, though. So, I guess I'm saying, I've been doing well and I hope I don't get too distracted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 55 of 102 28 July 2010 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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I am still carrying on my streak, which is a generally good thing. Although an overadherence to this streak could potentially prevent me from trying other things.
I've been thinking about Dutch lately. In part, because I can already figure out enough of the meaning from written Dutch without having studied it a lick, and in part because hearing it makes me laugh. I find it funny sounding in a very charming sort of way. I had it in mind to share my record keeping apparatus, which are perhaps not worth sharing. The main log I keep is a spreadsheet, using a separate sheet for each month. For entering data, it is divided into columns dependant on activity: Anki, Video, Other. (There's another column, but it's deprecated.) There are dates by row, and it should be simple enough to figure that I put in the minutes into the boxes. I've got some various automatically generated statistics, such as daily totals, totals by category, full total, an estimated total based on how the month has gone so far, and averages. I also generate hour figures for a couple of these. Speaking more of columns, there is one for a cumulative total and an average to date. Importantly, there is also a "Notes" column, where I indicate what I watched (usually just marked when I start/finish something) or otherwise did (particularly for the "Other" column, surprisingly enough). The program I use for this is OpenOffice's spreadsheet. I do not like working in big, slow graphical applications, however, and I have as yet been unable to find a console spreadsheet to my liking (and lack the desire to write one). Thus, I wrote a script to keep a different manner of log. When run with an argument, that value is added to a log file along with the date and hour. (The hour is important so that I can know which day it logically belongs to if it occurs after midnight.) When run without any arguments, it provides a total of all values in its log, as well as a conversion into hours. These scripts are very important, as it allows me a very, very easy and quick way of recording my activity, so easy that I am unlikely to neglect it. If I had to open up that spreadsheet every time, I'd harbor resentment if I even did it at all. Paper would also be an option, but this also gets me the totalling feature, which is quite useful to see. It's how I know, for example, that I've watched 8020 minutes of unsubtitled Japanese video. (I have three of these, corresponding to the three columns mentioned above. Although the video one predates the others by a great margin.) I'll look through these every few days--whenever I think to and feel like it, really--and add them to the spreadsheet. Having an easy way to record time spent as well as to see the total time spent is a pretty good thing to have. I recommend it. (But, I do love having statistics, meaningless or not.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6785 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 56 of 102 02 August 2010 at 3:04am | IP Logged |
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As the prior month is no more among us, the time lends itself well to present a eulogy on its behalf.
I did not miss a day, in ways of video or of Anki. My streak is thus at 47 days for video, 48 days for Anki. These are good things. July was not fantastic, or at least, not fully satisfying, and I think I could do better. Nevertheless, I averaged 74.55 minutes of video per day, for a total of 2311 minutes (38h31m). Anki time was 9.81m/d, total 304m (5h4m). Time spent reading with audiobook, 10.58m/d, total 328m (5h28m) done on seven days. My video average is my best achieved for a full month (the others are inconsequential). What could I do better? More. I view this, and have treated it if not consciously, as a game of quantity. More time equals better results. More time over a shorter time is better. More, you see. However, I have been thinking back to my idea of speeding up the material. Increased density should increase results. It may also, in the case of reading along with the audiobook, stop me from starting to drift off every 15 minutes. So, I believe I will incorporate this again. I will likely only speed up repeat viewing of video, however, which seems quite reasonable. (In fact, I believe this was my idea before, even if I forgot to implement it.) I do have a bit of a dilemma, with regards to my record keeping: do I record the video's length, or the time spent watching? I believe in the past I opted for video length, which is simpler to do (I don't have to calculate how long it actually took). But there is something in being able to know how much time I spent. There is actually an interesting dichotomy here, where I view my spreadsheet log as more of the time I actually spend and the individual log as the length of the materials. Perhaps I should come up with a way to include both, but I don't want to add complexity if I don't have to. I suppose this is the curse of keeping data: one can never be quite certain they're keeping the right data unless they're keeping all of it. And that is quite a lot of work. I will probably stick to the old way, that is easiest. But I will make a note in my spreadsheet that I watched in an accelerated manner. Yes, will quite do. I've been contemplating various unusual methods lately. I do not know if or when I should try them out, although as I will not interfere with the principles of my Japanese studies, so must I test several of these on other languages. But when, if, these are all matters that would need be settled. One thing that interests me would be to use some method of altering dominant brainwave frequencies during video watching to see if there is a beneficial effect. I recall seeing a study that suggested a positive effect on learning after inducing an alpha state. I have unfortunately not, to my knowledge, been able to deliberately influence my brain waves by a means seeming conducive to this end. It is however a notion I shall keep in mind. Another of interest has been the so-called Heinrich Schliemann method, involving the memorization of large amounts of text in a target language. I do not believe my memorization capabilities are up to snuff outright, but as I've detected such a lack in this area, I have begun, albeit in limited fashion, to attempt the memorization of various items in English as a potential prelude to doing so in foreign languages. Another case of "we shall see". Finally, the notion of actually speed reading in a language. There are two ways I'd like to try this. First, on a language that I can read, but slowly (which would be French or German), the idea being that covering more material will make up for the lack of full understanding. This is roughly how I go about it now, but it would be much faster; as is I already don't bother to look anything up and don't focus on analyzing grammar or things like that. The other variation I would want to try would be to do this is in a language I don't really know at all (although presumably one which uses a Roman script), the idea being to see if my brain will use whatever sort of voodoo magic it has to figure things out. This seems less likely to yield notable results, but it's wackier and more interesting. I may begin with the first variation shortly, if I can gather up the materials and will. I will likely do this with French, to continue the habit of ignoring my German, which has likely atrophied. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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