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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 649 of 706 22 January 2015 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Wow!
I did not expect the response I've received from everybody here. A lot of things to reply to... Just a moment...
Ah yes, the Hidden Moments chapter! That's a great book, by the way. The thing is, I do utilize my hidden moments when I'm away from home (I do Anki reviews during lunch breaks and while waiting in the lobby at the fitness center, for example), but I didn't think I would have to do them while at home as well. I've always had this romantic notion of sitting down at a desk with some books and a dictionary or computer, and "getting my hands dirty" with some hardcore studying. I don't know... maybe I feel smart doing that or something. I'm not sure why I have that sort of ideal in my head, but I do, and the fact that I can't really do that is frustrating. But I think I have to change my ideal. Learning languages is not about sitting down at a desk and studying. This is one of the hardest things I've had to get out of my head, and I've known this for years. As for early rising... I tried that before, but what happens is that when I try to wake up early, the alarm wakes my wife up as well, and she becomes angry. So then I tried setting the alarm on my cell phone to vibrate, then sticking it into my pillow case. It worked to wake me up, but the mattress moved and the bed creaked when I got up, and that woke up my wife. And then if I was able to gently get up without waking her up and go to the living room, the light from the living room made its way to the bedroom and woke her up... let's just say it's a bad idea for me. :) However, instead of early rising, I could probably do late falling or late go-to-bed-ing or whatever you want to call it. I could probably stay up another 30 minutes and go to bed at 10:30. The problem is that I'm concerned about not getting enough sleep. I've found that eight hours is a good number for me. I go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 5:45 the next morning, so I don't even get eight hours usually.
I didn't mean to make you concerned, Serpent, but I didn't say I'm always tired. I'm just always tired after work. It's not a health issue; it's probably a work issue. I use a lot of energy at work, and I probably don't realize how tiring it can be physically. I thought that getting eight hours of sleep would help with that, and while I feel refreshed the rest of the day, I still get tired after work. So there's not much I can do about that. Plus, I'm 36, and I'll be 37 in May. I'm old. I probably need to take afternoon naps like my grandfather did. :) As for Japanese recipes, I cook using nothing but Japanese recipes. We have a collection of cookbooks that I use. That's one reason it takes me so long to cook; I'm trying to chop vegetables, measure ingredients, and look up unknown kanji at the same time. I've learned a lot of new words that way, and some recipes I've completely memorized, so that's helpful. But sometimes my wife will e-mail me a recipe from work, and I have to look up some new words.
I tell you this... if you are single, get as much language learning in as you can! Or get a wife like emk's. :)
Cleaning the rabbit cage with a water hose would be handy... if the rabbit cage weren't in my living room! :) And we do have a dishwasher, but I only use it once a week to save money on water and electricity. Yes, we are very frugal. It's a good idea to listen to the radio or some audio program or a podcast while doing chores. I'll try doing that, but I already do some listening when I'm away from home. I worry about not having a diversified routine every day, but that is probably something I shouldn't worry about, considering my circumstances. Beggars can't be choosers.
Ha! It would be nice if she learned languages. Well, that's not completely fair. I suppose she does keep up with her English. She watches American dramas and talks to me in English all the time. But she did all of her formal learning for years before she met me. I do most of the chores because my wife works longer than I do every day, has a bigger salary, and while my job is more physically exhausting, hers is more mentally exhausting (i.e. stressful), so I try to help out. Plus, she's busy at home, too. She's having a hard time trying to figure out what to wear for our friend's wedding on Sunday, and she's searching online stores a lot. She's also looking for great deals on airline tickets for our planned trip to Portugal in December, and how to best maximize our mileage plans (she's great with that). And yes, the rabbit was her idea. Personally, I would have preferred a cat. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 650 of 706 22 January 2015 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Ironically, if you make your lunch breaks more relaxing, you might be able to feel less tired on your way home (and use your commute more efficiently). Consider just listening to Brazilian music or reading Twitter, that kind of thing. I used to feel bad about the not so hardcore activities, but I've accepted that I need them to relax and avoid stress. It's just important to keep those activities in L2.
Aw, I love how more and more things are so natural that you don't even bother to mention them. I bet those American movies have Japanese subtitles too. (or if your wife is insulted by the idea, you can use Portuguese subtitles) Also, you don't need to give up on your ideals or follow them completely. That's so all-or-nothing :) Just trick your brain a bit and give it only as much as needed. For example, you can work through the recipe while sitting at the desk, maybe add some important words/expressions/kanji to SRS and then cook without getting distracted. (if you find new stuff to look up, underline it and look up later. same can apply to your reading during the commute) Edited by Serpent on 22 January 2015 at 1:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 651 of 706 23 January 2015 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Mmmm, that's a good suggestion, Serpent. I didn't think about that. Anki can be kind of hardcore and intensive. Perhaps doing it at work is not the best of ideas, especially if the idea is to save some energy for study on the commute home. Now that I think about it, there are probably some things I can do at work to save energy and relax.
You know, I tend to forget about the things that I do do in Japanese because they're just a part of life for me, so I don't really think of it as "language time", but I suppose it is. I'm not really thinking, "Let me use Japanese recipes so that I can study Japanese." I'm thinking, "Let me use Japanese recipes so that I can eat delicious Japanese food/it's cheaper to get ingredients for Japanese food in Japan/etc." So it's really easy for me to forget that I'm getting Japanese practice because I'm not in a "study" mindset. It's just what I do; I mean, that's what people in Japan do, right? They cook with Japanese cookbooks. It makes me wonder what else I'm doing in Japanese that I'm not aware of. When my wife watches her American dramas, sometimes she drags me to the couch with her to watch them, because for her, it's more fun with someone else. We always watch those dramas undubbed, but with Japanese subtitles. So I pick up a few words every now and then. I learned 皮肉 (hiniku - sarcasm) that way. Too bad Japanese TV doesn't care about Portuguese. I have yet to find a program on Japanese TV that uses any kind of Portuguese, other than five minutes of news from Bandeirantes TV in Brazil on Saturday mornings, or the occasional travel show episode to Portugal.
This is another mentality that I need to get rid of, this "all-or-nothing" mentality. I've always been like that. Life is so much more flexible than that. Thanks, Serpent! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 652 of 706 23 January 2015 at 2:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Okay, here is another of my nighttime activity logs, from last night (Thursday). I highlighted language activities in dark blue to point out my attempts at using my time more efficiently.
5:15 PM - Arrive home; feed the rabbit 5:20 PM - Wife comes home unexpectedly early; we cook together (well, mainly her, because I had to stop a few times to make sure the rabbit didn't try to pee on the couch). During cooking, I have some bossa nova playing in the background. 6:00 PM - We eat dinner 6:25 PM - I finish eating, and I'm thinking, "Let me get started on the dishes so I can have some 'language time' later." But my wife says, "Why the rush? Let's have dessert, and we can start chores 20 minutes later." So we do. And while we have dessert, I relax and actively watch 20 minutes of the evening news. For 10 minutes I listen without looking at the TV, and I'm astonished at how much clearer words seem than when I'm looking at the TV screen. 6:45 PM - Begin chores. I used the dishwasher (yay!), washed and hung up laundry, helped my wife clean the rabbit cage, and prepared my lunch for the next day. I took time from chores occasionally because the rabbit wanted to play his favorite game; Chase or Be Chased. I also took a shower and enjoyed a hot bath during this time. The whole time, I alternated between Japanese and Portuguese radio - at least until my Android Walkman ran out of battery while I was in the bathtub. (The battery is very bad nowadays; I'm looking into getting a new device.) 9:00 PM - Yes, an hour for language time! But I get a chat invitation from a friend of mine who is now in Australia. She's coming to visit Osaka for a week and wants to get together with the old gang again. So for 40 minutes I'm chatting with her and the rest of the gang, having fun and deciding what to do when she gets here. 9:40 PM - I realize that I need to re-subscribe to some podcasts on my Walkman, because the podcast app became corrupted somehow and I had to reinstall it. So I hunt for some Japanese and Portuguese podcasts (Cafe Brasil is still active? I thought it was done) and add those for listening sometime. I had Brazilian radio on at this time. 10:00 PM - Bed. But before that, I looked at an old Japanese conversation I had written some time back and did some speaking practice for about five minutes. Not bad. Quite different from my Monday schedule. As you can see, when all the chores were done, I had the possibility of one hour of "desk work" or intensive computer work, had my podcasts not been corrupted and my friend from Australia not contacted me. I think I panicked on Monday when I wrote my post. The fact is, I have a lot of time at home, but it doesn't come in a "neat package". It's not consistent; it's not "2 hours every day." Some days I have very little time, and some days I have a lot. I just need to be flexible and prepared to take advantage of time whenever I get it. Edited by kujichagulia on 23 January 2015 at 2:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 653 of 706 26 January 2015 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Might I suggest a waterproof device :-) Seriously, I can definitely recommend the "hidden moments" idea. I do usually get some time to do "Intensive" study each day (some of whihc then seems to disappear into HTLAL :-)) but even so I find those "hidden moments" to be very useful. I can't remember the last time I went to the supermarket without Japanese ringing in my ears, I listened to Japanese while fixing the inner tube on my bike the other day and so on. It's a shame that you get very little time to sit down and study "properly", but I find that if I sit down and study like that for an hour a day I still complain that it was "only" and hour a day and not two (or three ...). Overall I've come to the conclusion that learning a language takes years and doing (say) five hours a day of studying won't shorten the overall time it takes to become fluent, it'll probably just punctuate it with a few periods of "burnout"! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 654 of 706 28 January 2015 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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@dampingwire - Thank you for the encouraging words.
Increasing the amount of time I sit down at a desk and do actual study would definitely lead to burnout in my case. Half the battle for me, at all times, is avoiding burnout. So it's probably a good thing that I don't have much "desk time". What I need to do is use my "hidden moments" more effectively, and I think a breakthrough will come. You talked about how you don't even go to the supermarket without Japanese ringing in your ears. Other people have given their comments on using the bits of time they have throughout the day, and a theme appears. I don't need to be - and I shouldn't be - looking to increase the amount of time I study at a desk, but I certainly need to increase the amount of time I "live" my languages. I realize now that I'm woefully lacking in that department. This morning I read an old post of Khatzumoto's on his AJATT site (sorry, I can't remember the link now... oops). He had Japanese audio on 18-24 hours a day! He was listening to audio during breakfast, between university classes, bathroom breaks... even while sleeping! I can't do that many hours a day, but that underscores what I need to work on. I don't have nearly enough of breathing, living Japanese (amazing, considering that I live in freakin' Japan!) or Portuguese in my life. Getting more of that is the next step for me. Hey, there's my New Year's Resolution - about a month late! :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 655 of 706 02 February 2015 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Hey, 1000 posts for me at HTLAL! How about that? :)
(Wow... I never thought I'd be that guy...) I haven't done an update of my activities for a while, so let's see what I can remember... Japanese My activities for Japanese lately have all been focused on media (aside from Anki reviews, of course). Okay, let me rephrase that... the activities for Japanese that I am aware of. Geez, ever since Serpent made me realize that I was doing cooking in Japanese, I've been wondering what else I do in Japanese that I'm unconsciously not counting as "language time". Hmmm... I do small talk with some people at the fitness club. Uh, I read advertisements on the train. I watch the morning news and the evening news. I talk to students and teachers at work, and last Thursday I even had lunch with a group of freshmen girls in Japanese (which is not really my job; I'm paid to speak to them in English... but it was my lunch break, too), and of course I did cooking in Japanese (I found a nice lemon chicken recipe)... Now, for the deliberate activities. My train activities have been skeletal. I've pretty much given up on the afternoon commute; during that time I'm just listening to audio reviews or passively listening one of the podcasts I've downloaded. (By passive, I mean I'm not doing anything other than concentrating on what I hear. I'm not doing any chorusing or looking up words or anything like that.) This past week in the morning on the train, when I've had energy I've alternated between the You're In Love, Charlie Brown movie and a few articles. At home, I've been working through the weekly episode of an NHK anime called Danchi no Tomoo. It was recommended to me by someone at Lang-8 when I said I wanted to watch an anime based on real-life situations instead of samurai, girls with big eyes in pink dresses, kamehameha, or pocket monsters - you know, the kind of anime other Americans are interested in. And boy, what a recommendation! This show makes me laugh even though I don't understand a good chunk of it on first listen. For starters, the way the characters talk is quite funny to me. Anyway, I try to jot down any new words or phrases I come across that are interesting, and even record some audio into Anki, now that I've found a way to pipe the audio from my TV to my computer. The only problem with that is that I need to have both the TV and the computer - which is rare (i.e. when my wife is not home). If it's just the TV, I have to write down new words on paper, which takes some time, or take pictures of the TV screen (with closed captions) with my camera (actually, I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds like a good idea!). I've also been watching a drama called MaruMaruTsuma (○○妻), which comes on TV here. It's more difficult to understand than Danchi no Tomoo, but the plot is interesting. I watch it with my wife, though, so it's hard to pause it at times and jot down new words, so it's just an extensive activity. Portuguese Unfortunately, my Portuguese activity has been limited to the train - which is to say, I haven't done too much other than listening - podcasts and audio review. When I was in the mood, I also worked through a written synopsis of Portugueses Pelo Mundo - Osaka. The only Portuguese-related activity I did at home last week was preparing a parallel text for the 3rd and 4th parts of the Deutsche Welle Listening by Ear radionovela Futebol em Africa (yeah, I know there should be an accent over the big "a" in Africa... I can't type one at this computer). Actually, I'm finished with it, so I'm going to try doing it on the train this week. It took me ages to get through Futebol parts 1 and 2, simply because my Portuguese was not at a good level then. I think 3 and 4 will go faster. Edited by kujichagulia on 02 February 2015 at 2:41am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4770 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 656 of 706 02 February 2015 at 6:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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