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Boring Language? | ||
Tags: Burn-out | Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6192 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 16 18 July 2009 at 5:18am | IP Logged |
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Has anyone ever found that a language they were studying became boring and uninteresting to study? Or a language that started out that way and never got any better as you went along?
For me Japanese used to be an interesting and entertaining language both to study and to speak, but for some reason these days, as much as I want to recover what I forgot and learn a lot more about it, I can't stay immersed in my studies like I could in the past. Learning new words feels like a waste of time and hearing and speaking the language has become dull. This isn't good as I live in Hawaii and knowing Japanese can raise one's desirability in the job market and increase one's pay as well. However with Korean I can go on for 3-4 hours with few breaks before losing interest, but that's because I spent so long working on it. Speaking has only become more and more interesting as I understand more. I suppose changing my study methods is one way to reverse the problem but that still doesn't bring back the fun in speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6154 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 2 of 16 18 July 2009 at 5:31am | IP Logged |
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Find a good movie or a translated book. I felt the same way about Japanese after seasons of crappy anime; this season is probably one of the worst ever actually, but a good movie or book can raise my motivation for at least a month or so.
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| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6374 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 16 18 July 2009 at 5:43am | IP Logged |
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Yeah, it happens too often, but only with Spanish and French, the languages I'm most `advanced` in. I guess it's harder to realize you're making progression after you know the basics of a language. One way to get myself to continue studying is making a log here and feeling obligated to have something to write! I eventually get back to liking the language again.
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| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6724 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 4 of 16 18 July 2009 at 9:29am | IP Logged |
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If you don't have strong reasons for wanting to learn the language, then I guess this wouldn't be uncommon to experience. Maybe you should really look again at why you started to learn Japanese and why you want to learn it now?
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 16 18 July 2009 at 12:32pm | IP Logged |
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This is probably what they term a "plateau". As goosefrabbas says, there comes a point where you don't seem to be making any progress and it's very demotivating. Any progress you do seems insignificant against everything you've done and everything you've still got to do. I imagine it's even more frustrating when your comparing yourself to some vauge notion of "good enough for work".
There are various things you can do to try and kill this feeling: 1) Watch/listen to something you tried watching/listening to back when your Japanese wasn't as good as it is now. Notice how much more you understand than you used to. 2) Try different materials. I don't know what you're using, but whatever they are, it may be that they aren't very effective. (Caveat emptor: but new materials may be quite boring as you might have to retread the same ground because of the course layout.) 3) Change the focus of your studies. As the samurai used to say: "from one thing, know ten thousand things". If learning new words feels like a waste of time, it's maybe because each word only teaches 1 thing. Place more focus on "productive" features, ie things you can do lots with. If you don't know all the verb conjugations, learn the last few -- then you'll know 10,000 new things. Learn more about word-building using prefixes, suffixes and infixes -- each of those is 10,000 things, becuase you'll hear them stuck on words you know and you'll start to understand why words mean what they mean, and you'll be able to understand more words on first hearing (you'll also be able to make comprehensible guesses at words you don't know, but you won't always be right). 4) If all else fails, take a break. Give your brain a bit of time to settle. Sometimes starting a new language helps your brain sort itself out better -- I've said before how when my Spanish and Gaelic plateaued I spent a morning working through the start of the MT German course and it was like oiling the rusty bits of my8 brain -- everything started working again after that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6270 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 6 of 16 19 July 2009 at 12:01am | IP Logged |
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I find some materials just aren't as interesting. I love Japanese, but don't fancy reading a news paper or a podcast. Even if I'm feeling a bit tired of things, I find I still love the flow and vocab use of nice fiction/novels.
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| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6192 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 16 19 July 2009 at 12:26am | IP Logged |
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Hahaa so far I think my situation is unique in this thread.
goosefrabbas: Japanese isn't my most advanced language. In fact, my Korean vocabulary is at least twice as large and I know far more grammar. Katie: my original reasons for learning Japanese was because I wanted to know about the culture. I was half on the "Japanophile" bandwagon; the only thing keeping me from it was listening to endless Japanese music and watching anime. Now that I've conversed with literally thousands of Japanese people at work in Japanese, lived in a Japanese dorm for a semester, and vacationed to Japan, I've learned enough about the culture to realize it's not for me. Even the so-often-worshipped Japanese female is often unappealing to my eyes. So what are my reasons for learning now? I'm regretful to the language that I've neglected studying it for almost 3 years. It feels like something of a younger brother I'm out of touch with, but really, that is the ONLY reason I have at this point. So I certainly don't have much motivation, as a language isn't a physical thing I can see or hug or talk to like I could a sibling. Cainntear: My Japanese certainly is not at a plateau. with only around 1600 words in my vocabulary I have a long way to go before I feel like I'm at a plateau. Just going by my previous conversations in Japanese I can feel that I'm still climbing the very cliff that will lead me there. And I've had a 2 1/2-year break from studying, and 10 months from speaking. Started dabbling in Mongolian earlier this year. Yukamina: Unfortunately there are no materials other than textbooks that are appropriate for me. I'm good enough for a full-on conversation for an hour but I can only read about 500+ kanji. Woe is me for Japanese. Korean only becomes more and more interesting as I study it and interact with Koreans. What I may begin doing is just memorizing word lists and doing a small amount of supplemental reading so I can study it in a much shorter time span. I had enough exposure to Japanese in the past that I could memorize 10-15 new words a day every day that would stick for months even without use. I don't want to give up the language, but like I said before there's really no good reason for me to learn it at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5915 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 16 19 July 2009 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
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If you don't have any reason to learn it and you don't want to then for god's sake stop. You're not gonna like it more just by making yourself study it more. You could carry on trying to find a reason to continue studying it though, you might find something that revives it for you.
I'd say take a break not just from studying the language but from feeling guilty about not studying it. Do something else. Then, in a while, when you're neutral about it again and not feeling like it's the younger brother you kinda-maybe-sorta wanna beat up just a little but know you should love, THEN start thinking about studying it again, but not before. Why spend time learning something you don't enjoy, is all I'm saying. Plenty of other enjoyable languages to study, so focus on those until the japanophilia hits you again, if it ever does. If it never does, it doesn't matter. Lots of people never learn Japanese and that's ok. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful |
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