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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5093 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 97 of 102 17 August 2011 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey there, what's great for a snack and fits on your back? Just wanted to say I enjoy your log and am reading it. I guess I'm in the same boat with my Japanese right now. I took a year off of studying, and now I'm kind of at a loss as to how to approach conversation...and now that it's been so long, all of this performance anxiety about it has set in.
Don't give up on your Japanese. I think you'll be surprised once you start using it more actively how much passive vocabulary pops up from places you didn't even realize existed- the potential is all there. I'm finding that out now, as I practice self talking more often. Words are popping up from god knows where. And I can guarantee, based on the Japanese exchange partners I've had so far since I started, all of them have been worried and felt awkward about conversation too. One pen pal claims that Japanese just doesn't have any good phrases to break the ice with (compared to English), so introducing yourself in Japanese feels more formal (even among native speakers), and it's harder to casually approach a group of people you don't know. 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 98 of 102 29 August 2011 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you starrye for your comments. With luck, I will consider them and actually start trying to actively use Japanese (and French too..).
There has once again been a small lull in posting, compared to the previous weekly schedule that accompanied glorious days of study. I have been keeping up with Anki at least, and I have been doing some French things (though not too many). No extra Japanese, yet. I believe my infatuation with French has died down for the moment. Perhaps I can fill the void with Japanese now. That would be ideal, I think. I've been listening to some of my Japanese music the past couple days. Music is really a lovely tool for language learning, not really for the language exposure or grammar study or anything like that, but for the cultural exposure, the presence of a foreign culture in a form of beauty that reminds you that the language you seek is part of a culture that has beautiful things, and through the music you can attune yourself to a part of that culture and feel it and love it as a part of you. Which is motivating. I would like to formulate a plan for Japanese in August. However, I'm finding doing so rather distasteful, which is a bit odd. I hope I can come up with something. I believe I may have let it go for so long that now it feels too hard and excessive difficulty tends to be unappealing. So I'll probably just ease myself into this with a softball goal of 'do anything with Japanese' each day, at least to start. Whenever I wax poetic in these logs, I wonder if I wrote something profound or if I was sniffing glue without noticing somehow. Anyone's guess, really. 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 99 of 102 31 May 2012 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not dead.
Although there's a general rule that when I'm not posting here, I'm not studying, but that hasn't been entirely the case for the entire number of months. I've actually done some good things. Through the end of last year (as my logs tell me), I never really got around to doing so much with Japanese. I did find a penpal that was helping me a little with Japanese in exchange for help with German, but I didn't put much into the Japanese work. Actually, I wasn't doing much of anything at all in Japanese with the exception of diligently doing my Anki reviews. Which I didn't really enjoy, at all. It's one thing to do flashcards while doing other stuff besides, or maybe for short periods that can be all you do to maintain your progress. But if that's all you do, then you realize eventually that there's just no point. You're SRSing out of habit, not to achieve a goal. I haven't done any Japanese Anki work since February. Which means, actually, I haven't done any Japanese since February. Which means I quit studying Japanese. It's kind of interesting how it happened, at least for analysis. I became rather busier starting in February. I still kept up with my reviews, though, for a while. I missed a day or two at times, but it was pretty regular still. Rather than get bogged down in details, though, there was a minor technical hurdle as I switched computers that I sort of put of correcting. First a week, then a couple, then... I realized that not only did I really not want to deal with the backlog of cards, I felt very freed when I decided I wouldn't do them. They had become such a chore. (For information purposes, the "technical hurdle" was just a very minor obstacle dealing with transferring files, which when I finally got around to it a few months later, took about two minutes, and was as easy as I knew it was.) It was good to quit Japanese. I will stand by this decision. Why did I feel better to quit? Let us use one of my trademark (not actually trademark) analogies. She had intrigued me at first glance. And, through continued sightings, continued to intrigue. So I decided to get to know her. But she was hard to impress. I could see she was worth knowing, though, so I made every effort. Sometimes we had fun together, even though I didn't really know what was going on all the time. We hung out all the time; we were friends. I kept doing things for her, whatever was asked of me, trying to curry favor, so maybe she could finally tell me what was going on. I knew if I kept doing favors and sticking around, eventually everything would come together. But, eventually, our communication lessened. It got to the point where we didn't spend any time together at all, except when I was following her orders, still hoping that maybe in the future, things would change and we could hang out again, have good times, and still, that I might get to know the language again. But the time dragged on, and things did not improve. What had happened? She had ceased to be my friend and instead had become my master. It was only through severing the relationship that I could be free again. (Note: That Japanese is "she" is mostly arbitrary, but also because languages are feminine. German and French agree with me, in any case. Also, that's a terrible analogy. I should probably stay away from analogies based on personal relationships.) But, luckily for me, I stopped before I started to hate the language, so maybe one day I'll still go back. I actually would like to maybe. But maybe I need to take the above analogy to heart and realize she'll only hurt me again. Eh. Other languages have faired better. Although not so much recently, I've spent a good deal of time reading in French, having read at least 5 French novels, several of which were natively French. I think that the number of books I've finished in French is now greater than the number that I've started and not finished. That's pretty good. I've also read a complete book in German, which is the first time I have started and finished a book in German that I had chosen to read. I still need to read another to match the year's goal of two. (Yes, it's a really low bar.) I've also been able, due to a change in location, been able to participate in regular conversation practice, especially for German. It's quite nice to be able to do so. I haven't been logging any time spent on languages at all since February, which has both benefits and drawbacks. I'll consider logging again if I like; I had actually forgotten to even consider it. Now comes the question: what next? I have been trying to determine that for too long. Shuffling my feet, I guess, don't want to make a choice. Seems to be, that I'm choosing between Spanish, Swedish, and restarting Japanese. There's appeal to all of the options. Since I haven't formally weighed them, I may as well do so here. Spanish: This is possibly useful. But probably about as useful as any other language would be for me, since I don't encounter it in day to day life. It shouldn't be terribly difficult, having studied it in the past. I could hopefully stop having French clobber everything when I try to think anything in Spanish. But, I don't really have much of a desire to learn it. It'd be neat, and I'm not opposed to learning it, but it's just a lukewarm desire. Swedish: I've wanted to learn Swedish for years. I've made some preliminary sorts of efforts in the past, but nothing's come of them. It's a really fun language, I love how it sounds. I also harbor a fear that learning it will make its sound lose its magical appeal. This also probably wouldn't be a terribly difficult language, given my familiarity with Germanic, but it's North Germanic, so it's still new and exciting. Japanese: It's still as tricky as ever. But I could learn from my mistakes in the past. I could make sure it's about fun again. I could keep a consistent effort going. I don't have the same amount of time that I did in the past to devote to it, but it's possible that the scarcity of time could provide extra focus. I could try a new approach to it, besides. And I do miss it! Those delightful squiggles, the appealing intonations, the mysteries that are unyielding but seem as though they could give their secrets with the right prod. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess. (I may have mentioned this before, but I think I might actually fall in love with languages. It's weird, but really fascinating.) I feel like I need to try Japanese again. As crazy as that is. But I think it's what I need to do. Maybe I have a problem. Maybe Japanese really is my abusive lover, and I'm falling into a trap by crawling back. But maybe our relationship just hit a rough patch, and now that things have cooled off, it's time to patch things up. I'm going to come up with my plans for Japanese in the next few days. If I can come up with something reasonable, I'm going to do it. If I don't think I can rectify my past issues in a reasonable manner, then I'll have to let it go. Now I can go off and see what's been cooking in forums in the meanwhile. Before I carry on even further and give someone grounds to have me committed. 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 100 of 102 12 June 2012 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I have spent the past week getting my RTK deck current. It was at 960 or so at the start--somehow my reaction was "that's not so bad!"--and I got to 0 on Friday. Initially I was getting a lot of them wrong, but eventually I got back into things and they went quicker. Since then, there have been very few reviews, but it looks as though that's going to change considerably starting tomorrow. Nothing I can't handle.
[Anki note: Anki has my study time on my RTK deck calculated at 9.91 days. Nearly 240 hours just on this tiny facet. My Core2k deck, 5.83 days, or around 140 hours. Yes, 380 hours on these two things alone. I spent other hundreds of hours elsewhere. I cannot hold a basic conversation or read just about anything. Perhaps I need a post detailing the many, many time consuming mistakes I've made studying Japanese. But, it seems more fair to just let people read this log, waste a bit of their own time so as to generate a bit more empathy.] Otherwise, I've been spending my time trying to listen to some Japanese to reprime my ears a bit. I've also been evaluating my options. I'm still having difficulty deciding on my plan of action. I've been considering whether to go with a textbook (Genki), since that should be a bit more concrete and in a way, manageable. However, I seem to dislike the idea of that for reasons I'm not fully conscious of. I could try the Assimil that I was considering. I could try to go back over Core2k, with a different and hopefully better approach. My previous run through Core2k, though in effect successful, was not as effective as I would have liked. The problem: I had a good deal of trouble remembering what I was hoping to. Part of this was, I may have been in some cases too lenient on grading, in other cases, the word didn't stick for one reason or another. There were a lot of leeches suspended over time. I may have been asking for too much from each card--both a meaning and kanji. This goes against best practices for flashcard design. Maybe I could try to figure out some other format that will work better. I recently rewatched the TV show that I started on a Subs2SRS deck for. And, I found the first part--the part that I actually studied to any degree--somewhat understandable! That's pretty neat. So I would certainly like to start that up again, since it really does seem like a good idea. (It seemed like a good idea in the past, too. But it's very time consuming.) I wrote last time that I had to convince myself I wouldn't make the same mistake I did last time, that I would figure out what exactly went wrong and correct it. Specifically what went wrong, was that I stopped doing anything fun or helpful. It was just Anki reviews. More generally what went wrong, was that I was studying without a sense of purpose. After finishing Core2k, I no longer had any goals set for myself. I was just "studying Japanese". Without any clear goals, I had nothing to aim for. Why should I do any study, and even still, of what, if I had nothing I was working toward? Obviously, this is something that needs correction. Clear, attainable goals are necessary to continued study (not that unattainable goals don't have their purposes). Therefore, I will be devising, in conjunction with the establishment of my actual study plan, a set of goals for me to work toward. Shorter term goals I expect will be focused on doing or completing certain study tasks, e.g., Study X words daily, Finish studying Monolithic Study Aid Y. Longer term goals will exist to ignite my sense of purpose and provide specific target language activities that I'd like to achieve, like reading a book or understanding some amount of a TV program. These will be necessarily more difficult to define in some cases, which is okay for the longer term goals by my estimation. I will have some goals ready soon, at which point, I'll have a clear motivation for learning Japanese. I'm not sure I've ever had one of those before! (Note for posterity: this is apparently the 100th post in this log. A fitting tribute to my legacy, that there is a lot of chatter and little action, yet promise of action to come. 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 101 of 102 26 March 2013 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||
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I seem to have gone a while without posting. This is not because I've been in a coma, although it is possible I slipped into a coma without my knowledge and the rest of the world conspired to act as though that time had not passed, such that I would be unable to notice it. A bold theory, but reasonable and well-grounded.
I ultimately did not re-continue with Japanese. I didn't even get around to coming up with any longer term goal, so I guess it didn't matter much. I'm not so bothered by giving up on Japanese--I'm more bothered at how poorly I went about it for such a long time, bothered at the wasted time. No matter! It's all a bit wasted, anyway. If I ever have a need to actually learn Japanese, I suppose I'll remember some of what I studied already. I've in the interim carried on at weekly language tables for French and German. The French tables have been more entertaining in general, I would say, although I think that's partly because there are more regular attendants, so there's more varied conversation. I've also done a bit of reading in French, too. I feel like I've in a certain way abandoned my German--in some ways, I believe my French now surpasses it, as my French has strengthened and my German, limited to this singular weekly use, has atrophied. I might consider correcting this, but I may not. Eventually, I suppose I will; for now, I'll content myself to the weekly usages. Of late, Spanish has regained my interest. I'm consider what study method I'd like to attempt for it. It won't be a fair judge of the method regardless, as I did study it in the past, but I could still do something fun. I can often get the gist of written Spanish with a bit of effort, but obviously that's no high standard. I'm still considering an approach I've contemplated for a while, which is to memorize a bunch of simple translations for common words upfront, then do basically whatever I would try to do (likely a bunch of reading and the like). I'm not sure if that's the best way to go, but it would be interesting, in any case. I also wanted to study Spanish about six months ago before dropping it then, so I don't know if this is going to happen at all. Whenever I consider going for another language, I always guiltily contemplate my less-than-outstanding skill in other languages; I could spend the time of a new language improving those, couldn't I? It's an instinct that has won over the past year or more, as my time has been more limited and my awareness of the required expenditure has been heightened. I'm currently in the planning stages of a trip to France later in the year. It won't be for as long as I'd like, but that's why I'm probably going to stick with the one country and not also visit Germany. But we'll see, I guess. It may be strange that I'm more concerned about improving my language abilities than seeing interesting things, but they're certainly compatible goals. The aim is to enjoy the time in any case. I suppose that I've not been writing here since I haven't been doing much particular study. Just here and there, whatever sorts of things. I think that's fine, although it does show somewhat that language learning has become a less dominant hobby. I enjoy doing too many different things, and have not enough time between them. I suppose that's life. At least I'm not dead. Those people have all sorts of free time that they can't do anything with. Think how many languages George Washington could speak if were diligent in his studies between his death and now! So very tragic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5955 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 102 of 102 26 March 2013 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
Holy macaroni, Nuclear Gorilla is back!
More than reasonable. I've found they always screw up some small details, ya just have to look hard enough. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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