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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 113 of 706 04 March 2013 at 6:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I'm done with the "weekly review" thing for the time being. I'll probably return to that in the future, but I'm taking a break from it for now.
Long ago I started this log talking about motivation. I've come a long way since last summer, when I started writing on HTLAL and talking about how I needed to learn Japanese, but didn't want to. Thanks to the helpful people here at HTLAL, I was able to get the motivation I needed to carry on. Inspired by everyone here, I was able to think of and search for ways to make Japanese work for me. I'm not that much interested in the big Japanese cultural triad of anime, manga and J-pop (although for manga, that might be changing), but of course Japan is diverse, and its people have a lot of interests. It's just a matter of matching those interests to my own, and finding material I like, and people to share it with. In short, I've come to like studying Japanese, and I'm starting to like the language itself. Now, with motivation out of the way, I stand here, sword in hand, ready to take on another demon: discipline. More specifically, discipline on the weekend. I have large blocks of time during weekdays to study. There's my transport to and from work, when I have at least 40 minutes each way to study on the train. There's also the 20 minutes I have for walking each way, which I can use for listening. Between nightly chores and bedtime I can squeeze in another hour at most. It's very structured Monday through Friday, and I'm a creature of habit. I like structure. My weekends are not structured - at least not in nice blocks of time like my weekdays. I'm pretty busy during the weekends - chores, hours at the gym, shopping for the week, going to lunch with family members, etc. I have time for study, but because of circumstances that time is usually scattered throughout the day in roughly 15-minute chunks. It's pretty hard for me to sit down with a textbook or read something on the Internet for 15 minutes, then have to interrupt my flow and stop. So I need to find more creative ways to study during the weekend. DLI drills are pretty good for 15-minute chunks, but I want the majority of my time on the weekend to be for Japanese. I just may have to discipline myself and learn how to study in 15-minute bursts with a textbook... or without. It doesn't have to be a textbook. I just need to study. So there is my latest challenge. Stay tuned, and watch as I slay the dragon! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 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 114 of 706 04 March 2013 at 10:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Aw, but Japan is also all the "intellectual" stuff. Haiku, Murakami, karate, ikebana, sakura, kimono, calligraphy... that's what comes up in my mind if I think of Japan. And hi-tech things. Surely there must be something beyond the popular triad that interests you?
As for discipline, try timeboxing. Although if you don't have uninterrupted time, that's in fact natural timeboxing! I think most people tend to spend an hour or more with a textbook, but then be bored/frustrated and not use it for a couple of days. Use your gym time and chores for listening. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5776 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 115 of 706 04 March 2013 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah one of the best things about learning Japanese is that you can access Japanese culture that hasn't entered pop culture in the English-speaking world. There is no way you have to be constrained to anime etc.
I agree about the lack of routine thing. I always seem to assume I have more time than I actually do at weekends and then get disappointed when most of my time is taken up on things like chores, shopping, social activities or even just getting outside in the sunshine. But these things are important too! As you get better, it will become easier to actually relax with a book or TV show in Japanese - at which time learning and leisure start to merge in a wonderful way. Getting used to studying in 15 minute bursts is not a bad strategy at all. Personally, I find 15-20 minutes to be an optimum time span for intensive work anyway. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 116 of 706 04 March 2013 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@g-bod and @Serpent - Thank you for the replies! You are right - 15 minute blocks are pretty nice, now that I think about it. I need to just adapt myself to studying with natural timeboxing.
When I start something, I want to just keep going and going until I finish. But it doesn't work that way with languages. I will never be "finished" with Japanese, so why rush? Study 15 minutes, stop, then start again later on. No problem. Sounds good in my head, but can I put that into practice next weekend? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 117 of 706 07 March 2013 at 7:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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For the umpteenth time in the last year, I've reorganized my daily study schedule.
There is a saying in English: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." But for me, it's more like this: "If you fail to stick to your plan, stick it to your plan before you fail." So, I'm redoing things. I won't bore you with the details of my daily study schedule (altogether it's six pages in LibreOffice). And trust me: it's detailed. I'm juggling two languages and a host of activities (a text and a ***Pod101 podcast for each language, listening practice, writing practice, passive listening/radio, Anki, etc.), and trying to fit it into roughly 16 hours a week, assuming life does not get in the way (and it will!). I will, however, list some of my immediate goals. 1) Reduce my tendency to concentrate on textbook work, especially for Japanese. I've already talked about how much I dislike An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. Well, dislike is too strong, but the book does become boring quickly. If I didn't promise my wife that I would finish it in exchange for her letting me spend the dough to get it, I would throw it out the window today. But this week I realized that I don't have to do IAIJ every day, or for a huge chunk of time at a time. Do some IAIJ once a week, or do one section of written drills on a grammar point at a time (about 15 minutes) every now and then. If I get tired of it even then, switch it up and do something else, and come back to it later. No need to try to rush through the book. My wife, after all, didn't give me a deadline to finish it. 2) Consistently write, but write less. It is sooooo hard for me to consistently write stuff for Lang-8. I will write a few pieces in a couple of weeks, then stop for months on end. I think the last piece I wrote was in January, and before that September. I think this is because I try to write too much. Even a typical diary entry takes too much time for me at this point, because I have to look up a lot of words, and I am too slow to recall the words and phrases that I do know. I think the key for me to write consistently is to write just a little each time. It could be one sentence, or two, or three - whatever I can do in my allotted writing time. Then post it up later on Italki or Lang-8 for correction. I'm thinking that if I write only a few sentences at a time, it will become easier, and I can slowly add a few more sentences until I'm writing paragraphs during the same time period. 3) Learn what I want. This is related to point #1. I have held back from writing in Portuguese because I have not yet started learning past tense in DLI. I think they start talking about it in Lesson 17, and I'm still in Lesson 12. Now I'm thinking, why wait? If I want to learn and use past tense, why wait for DLI to teach it to me? DLI is not the master of my Portuguese universe! (By the power of Greyskull! Oops...skewing older. I'm sure nobody under 30 years old understands what I just said.) I can easily find past tense forms on the Internet and how to use them. Besides, as many users have stated here at HTLAL, using a variety of sources is better than just one, especially when considering how old the DLI Portuguese Basic Course is. Well, those are the points I'm focusing on for the next couple of weeks. I'll report back later on and see if they were effective. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6414 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 118 of 706 07 March 2013 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's me too. It is so frustrating to write anything because it takes so long. I also have a tendency to want to write about something interesting and not just how the weather is or what I did yesterday (usually nothing). And it's very difficult to come up with things to write about sometimes. So I frequently give up for months at a time.
My nephew used to love that show. He would always climb up onto things and yell, "By the power of Greyskull!" 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4960 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 119 of 706 07 March 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I need to learn how to use those blank 15 min spaces in my schedule, specially during the weekends. During the weekdays I have more than enough time for language activities. But then during the weekends I barely have time for Anki.
The most difficult thing to do is to find time for doing written exercises and for listening to audio, which is my main activity for languages such as Russian and Georgian. Also, for several of my resources I need access to both the tablet and the computer, so I can check the text at one and the translation at another, or the exercises at one and their answers at another. Even when it comes to reading I need an online dictionary. Therefore, the best thing to do on weekends is to do Anki or extensive grammar reading. So, I study mostly out of a fixed schedule and few books are elligible for such work. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5443 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 120 of 706 07 March 2013 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey, just wanted to pop in after our Twitter convo.
Have you considered using that book in a different way? If a textbook ever bores the crap out of me, I adjust the way I use it so that it doesn't become a chore to just open up the book. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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