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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4948 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 313 of 706 30 October 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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kuji, I think you might want to have a look at this post Edited by Expugnator on 30 October 2013 at 7:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 314 of 706 31 October 2013 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You're probably right. Although it would be great if I did lose 15 pounds of fat! I find that I do lose weight, but I lose muscle, not fat. That's why I do the weight training. The likely problem is that I do too much aerobics. My body is probably used to the same thing every day, so I'm tiring myself out but not losing any fat. A variety of activities during the week would probably be more effective - and better for my language studies, if I can reduce the activities and still lose fat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 315 of 706 31 October 2013 at 10:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I somehow just noticed that you're living in Japan. And you're an English speaker struggling to learn
Japanese. Btw I doubt you're losing muscle and not fat. I think that's just really hard to do unless you're quitting steroids or some such thing. The body loses fat before muscle I'm sure. Unless you're getting old... Anyway. I was wondering if you're writing your Japanese on Lang-8 or what? I think that it's great that you're gonna be writing in Japanese regularly. If you keep it up. I have only done it in spurts myself. I'm convinced it's really helpful though. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 316 of 706 01 November 2013 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think that it is unfortunate to be a native English speaker living in Japan and wanting to learn Japanese. English is taught in all the high schools, and it is basically the only foreign language that matters here. So when people come across a native English speaker like myself, they see it as their opportunity to practice English, and it can be a real struggle to make them speak to me in Japanese. Of course, there are also people that don't speak/don't care for learning English, but those people tend to be either not interested in foreigners, or are not very patient with my Japanese mistakes. That is my experience, anyway. It seems to me that foreigners in Japan who are not native English speakers pick up Japanese quicker than native English speakers. Combine that with the fact that I have the status of being an English teacher, and I'm being paid to speak English to students and teachers at the high school where I work... it can, believe it or not, be a lot of hard work in Japan to find situations where I can have someone conversate with me in Japanese and be patient with my mistakes. If you ever come to Japan for the purpose of becoming fluent in Japanese, don't be an English teacher.
Maybe it is because I'm old (I'm 35), but it is definitely possible to lose muscle instead of fat when you are trying to lose weight - especially when doing a lot of cardio activity. It is usually not an issue, though, if your diet is good (eating a lot of protein, etc.) or if you are also doing exercises to build or maintain muscle.
Nowadays very little of what I write goes up on Lang-8. I used to write with the purpose of putting everything on Lang-8 for correction. But that didn't work for me. I often want to write stuff that I don't want anybody else to see. Nothing lewd or vulgar or anything like that, but maybe I want to write about something stupid a co-worker did that day. I don't want to post that up on the Internet. My co-worker might be on Lang-8, too. Or it could accidentally end up public. So what happened was that I was waiting until interesting things came up in my life - which doesn't happen often - while at the same time being suitable enough for me to comfortably post on Lang-8. That was not enough practice for me. I wanted to have the freedom to write whatever I want, whenever I want, enough to get some consistent and meaningful language practice, and also have the freedom to keep it private. Of course, the big issue is mistakes. But now I don't believe that I need to have every single mistake I made corrected. Occasionally, I will post a diary entry on Lang-8, if I feel comfortable enough to make it public, and get some corrections. Otherwise, I think that as long as I'm getting enough input - reading, listening to radio/podcasts, exposing myself to native language - any mistakes I make will correct themselves over time. The point is just to write, write, write, and not get slowed down by worries over mistakes. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4948 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 317 of 706 01 November 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Then why not make up what you have to write, kuji? Come up with situations, invent
characters. You may do that and still not write fiction, stories, you may keep it to dialogues on daily activities. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 318 of 706 02 November 2013 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I suppose that's a good point, Expugnator. I have the ability to take real life events, and use them as a basis for fictional dialogs. I should use that ability. Great idea. Plus, it helps me for the upcoming challenge! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 319 of 706 14 November 2013 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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An update - actually, a list of various points and things like that:
**** I've talked before about how I can't study on the train like I used to. I'm currently shifting my "train time" focus to things like listening to podcasts/audio, Anki reviews, articles (with the words already looked up) in PDF form that I can read on my Android, writing journal entries/dialogs on Google Keep, etc. My aim is to do more "textbook" work at home. I was aiming for 30 minutes every night for Japanese textbook/grammar/looking up new words and phrases from my notes. But I've found it to be difficult. I don't know if it is from laziness, too many distractions at home, or simply because I'm not used to it and it's not a habit. I know it takes me a long time and a lot of willpower to create new habits. Whatever the reason, I'm now going to aim for 15 minutes a night. That is not ideal, but 15 > 0. **** I have a Japanese listening review playlist that I listen to during walks, and right now it contains all the audio done so far from my textbook, An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and some dialogs from JapanesePod101.com podcasts. But - and I mentioned this before - the IAIJ dialogs are really boring to me (albeit helpful at times), and I really don't have many JapanesePod101.com dialogs on the playlist (I get them from their free podcast feed, and they don't release a lot of intermediate podcasts free). To get more audio, I thought about taking a little audio from a native podcast. There is a podcast on my music device called HOTCAST that I've had on my device for a year now. They talk about food products and stuff like that. Basically, when I don't feel like doing anything else, I'll play a HOTCAST podcast and just listen, even though I hardly understand what they are saying. Recently I thought, Why not grab a minute or so of audio from the podcast, look up all the unknown words, then put that minute of audio in your review playlist? That's a great idea, actually. But I had trouble finding some of the words I heard, because they were not so clear. So I asked my wife, who is Japanese. But even she had trouble with that. It turns out that the people on the podcast don't speak so clearly, or they use a lot of slang, contractions, and the like. For example, the word ichiou (一応), which means "just in case", was pronounced ichou. It took my wife a long time to understand that ichou is ichiou. Now, if my Japanese wife has that kind of trouble with that podcast, then why in the world am I listening to it? So I'm podcast-hunting. I'll probably go back to NHK News or something like that. Yeah, news vocabulary is more difficult and probably more boring. But at least it is clearly pronounced. Edited by kujichagulia on 14 November 2013 at 1:40am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4629 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 320 of 706 19 November 2013 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Another update:
***** Japanese I'm in the middle of Chapter 13 in An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. It's slow going, because now the only time I study IAIJ is for 15 minutes at home every night. That is enough to do one or two of the 13 or so grammar exercises in this chapter. Once I finish those, then it's on to the reading and reading exercises, then the listening exercises, then the review, then Chapter 13 is finished! Then I'll have just two more chapters to go before I can throw IAIJ away! My current Japanese routine is like this: I do 15 minutes of IAIJ a night at home. During my commute home every day, sometimes I read an article/comic book, or listen to a JapanesePod101.com podcast, or write a dialogue, or silently speak/memorize a previously written and corrected dialogue (which are great for this challenge). During the walk home from the train station in the evening, I listen to a Japanese audio review playlist. I do Anki reviews during lunchtime at work. If I have any extra time at home or at work, I'll go online and find something to read, or do some Anki input. So far it's going well. I'm finding that part of language learning, at least for me, is psychological. I made it a goal to fight through the distractions and study 30 minutes a night at home. But it was really hard for me to even begin studying - perhaps because I feared I wouldn't be able to do 30 minutes? So I reduced that to 15 minutes. Now I open my book and get 15 minutes done quickly. Last night, I even did 20 minutes. It seems quick and easy. Maybe 15-20 minutes is my "sweet spot" for book study at home. ***** Portuguese I'm currently doing DLI Portuguese Basic Volume 3 Lesson 28. I do DLI study Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays during my morning commute. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I try to write a dialogue, although more often than not it turns out to be just a few questions and answers. No problem; any writing is good writing. If I don't feel like writing, I'll read an article or similar PDF on my Walkman. During the walk from home to the train station, I'll listen to a Portuguese audio review playlist. That's pretty much it for my Portuguese studies. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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