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TAC Team Sakura 2013: Luai’s "Bad Brains" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5613 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 1 of 6 07 January 2013 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Last year ended on a sour note for me. It's the first time I haven't finished out the year on TAC. I had to abandon
my log because shit hit the fan in my life and I just did not have the time or energy for languages. I won't get into everything that has happened, but suffice it to say, I'm slowly phasing languages back in and feel confident enough to make this log. I don't expect this year to be a big progress year, but keeping track on this log will help me to at least make SOME progress, and that's enough for me. Right now, I'm learning a lot of other skills that are a lot more relevant to my life- social skills, finances, basically how to be independent- and most of all, learning to plan, to stay motivated, and to keep in control of my life. I'm on new meds (Effexor), and they are helping. I really feel like I'm getting better. There are many big hurdles ahead and I may go through periods where I don't have time for languages, but they should be short, I think. Next fall I'll be returning to college; for now, I am starting a job in the exciting world of data entry. ;) Actually, boring and tedious though it may be, I enjoy that kind of thing so it's a good job for me. I just hope I can handle the long days. Fingers crossed! Here's some of what I hope to accomplish in languages this year. They're not really goals so much as guidelines, because it's too early to say how much I'm going to be able to do. - Study a lot of vocabulary, sourced mainly from native materials but also some directly from JLPT lists - Study kanji extensively, possibly with multiple methods so the damn things finally stick - Experiment with a few new self-study sites, find a daily routine I feel comfortable with - Read regularly in Japanese- sometimes stopping to add vocab, sometimes not, depending on how I feel - Try to slowly add in more and more, building study habits - Dabble in other languages some (maybe finish michel thomas German, for example) That's pretty much it. I will sometimes talk a little about my life and what else I'm doing to get well, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum unless specifically asked. Long story short, I'm trying to sleep better, eat better, exercise more, and practice positivity and mindfulness. I'm using the website SuperBetter to help. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6405 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 6 08 January 2013 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Welcome back!
We all (except maybe kraemder) disappeared a few times last year. It's perfectly OK to come back whenever you feel up to it. And you can write about whatever you want. I whined about the mean people at work (who didn't want me there after finding out I was a crazy autist) all year long last year. I'm glad your medication is helping. So is mine, I think, or maybe it's just that outside of this site, I have virtually no human contact. Sorry about SuperBetter. It didn't work for me at all. It seemed to just make me even more depressed. I think it's better for me to just disappear into my hobby rather than focus on the depression. Anyway, good luck with your Japanese. If you're at a high enough level, you can just watch a mindless drama or something when you don't feel up to anything else. That's study too. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5613 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 3 of 6 08 January 2013 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks Brun Ugle! It's ok, superbetter isn't for everyone. It's been helpful for me as a motivating factor, although I've had to toy around a lot to make it work for me. As for mindless drama watching, that's probably the majority of my study time. ;) Sadly though I seem to be running out of interesting shows to watch! I'm bored sick of the standard rom coms with the cookie-cutter plots, and I haven't been able to find many shows in my favorite category- mystery, or better yet, supernatural mystery. Not to mention when I DO find something to watch, half the time the video player won't run on my computer, or takes hours to buffer. >.<; 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5613 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 4 of 6 05 February 2013 at 12:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think I'm going to be able to start regularly updating here now. I haven't been doing much Japanese up until
now, but my life is finally settling into a routine again, and most of the major upheavals are over. My family is in Seattle, and I have started working at a data entry position, annotating videos of people shopping in grocery stores with information on their behavior (i.e, how much did they buy, how long did they look at the shelf, where were they standing, etc) for a corporate research group. It's a really nice job- a quiet, relaxed workplace with minimal socializing, generally friendly and kind superiors, and a well-defined, easy, tedious task. I'm just struggling a bit with the length of the work day and how early I have to get up in the morning. I've been doing really well with life responsibilities and self care lately, too. I've doubled my fruit/veggie intake, and I'm exercising regularly; I'm eating more food; and I'm doing more relaxing hobbies and such. I've also kept on top of chores and hygiene tasks for over a week now. But the best news with regards to this forum is this: I have a regular time set aside for Japanese study and two japanese studying friends to help me stick to it! We're getting together every Sunday at noon from here on out. I met with one of them yesterday, and it was very productive! We chatted just enough to satisfy my need for social support, but mostly we worked on our own study needs. Occasionally she asked me for help- she's about halfway through genki 2 right now, doing review. The other friend is also at a very low level compared to me. I expect to be helping them much more than they help me- but that's ok, I mostly just want someone to kick my butt so I actually do some japanese work. So yesterday, I spent about 3 hours on Japanese, including anki reps, new vocab, checking out a new site ("reading the kanji" (unrelated to Heisig) - I like it so far), picking out some new kanji I wanted to learn from my new vocab, and reading a short story from one of my books. The story makes me especially proud- it's the longest I've read yet, and I read the whole thing in one sitting. It's "Kamisama" by Kawakami Hiromi and is (basically) about going on a picnic with the bear who just moved in next door. Yes, a bear. I liked it. The book I have it in is called "Read Real Japanese" and besides having an incomplete parallel translation (they left out the simple stuff and only translated unwieldy and difficult parts; I don't like it as much as full translation but oh well), it also has a section in the back of the book containing cultural and grammar notes on each story, and a dictionary tailored to the stories. I wish it actually had separate vocabulary lists for each story, but I suppose the dictionary is enough. I haven't used those parts yet, I just read straight through yesterday; but next time I find time for studying, I plan to go through the notes and put some vocab into anki. Speaking of which, the vocab I entered yesterday came from a tumblr I've been following for a while. A user called Zekkouchouchou posts daily vocab words from his own reading, and breaks down the kanji, explaining their meaning and giving other vocab containing them. I had hoped following him would encourage me to add a word to anki every day, but it never did, so the other day I went back through some of his recent entries and added some of the more salient words. It's a nice mix of simple and complex, common and technical, polite and slang. I mostly avoided the overly technical words unless I felt sure they would stick. I've been building up quite a pile of technical terms I can't remember properly and never really learn- what anki calls "leeches". I've been cleaning them out of the deck lately. I'll learn them when I actually need them, and I'll learn them in context. That's probably the only way to make them stick. I picked up some nice new words though. "Statute of limitations", "sodomy", "horse racing", "daffodil", "stickiness", etc. I should have mentioned, my "avoid technical terms" thing doesn't apply to anything that might come up in a crime drama! I love crime dramas, so I'm always looking for vocab that will help me follow the complicated legal talk, hence why I picked up that first one up there. Anyway, I really felt fantastic after completing all that work yesterday, and I feel like my passion for japanese has been rekindled! I'm really looking forward to these weekly sessions, and in the inbetween time hopefully I can keep up with anki and find some spare moments for study here and there. I'll keep you all updated! Edited by Luai_lashire on 05 February 2013 at 12:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6405 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 5 of 6 09 February 2013 at 8:43am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
A good sort of job for people like us. I'm trying to find one myself.
Helping people feels good though, doesn't it? And even if you aren't getting help from them, teaching something to someone else really helps solidify it in your own brain and to notice details you might have forgotten or never noticed before.
I haven't used it recently, but I used to use it a lot. It's pretty good, I think.
That's great!I've found one advantage to the 6WC is that I haven't had much time to be stressed. Having a hobby to focus on, even for just a few hours a day, is very beneficial. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5613 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 6 of 6 13 February 2013 at 12:50am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Another week, another update! Last week, I managed to get in a little bit of Japanese study here and there. I
read the grammar and culture notes that go along with the story I had read the previous weekend, "Kamisama" by Kawakami Hiromi. They were an interesting mix of very basic stuff and new, challenging things. Once I get my anki sentence deck back under control I might put in some sentences from the story to help me learn some of the new grammar and vocabulary. I also started using another new site, Wanikani. It's in beta currently. It's affiliated with tofugu and textfugu. I like the set up, and it has a better system for actually LEARNING kanji, whereas the Read the kanji website is more for reviewing them. I'm not sure if I will continue both, but I may. They have totally different learning orders for the kanji, so the overlap at first may not be that big. This weekend, I caught up a bit more on various reviews, and did a little L/R of Harry Potter. I started at the beginning and didn't go any further than I had already read before, as a review. It's been a while since I last worked on it and I haven't been keeping up with anki, so I'd forgotten a lot of vocab, but seeing it in context brought a lot back. I now feel ready to move forward. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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