The week was exhausting… Because I tried my hardest to use my target language and it takes a lot of effort. But the week has been full of positive encounters and it went ok!
You all have had a good langlearning week, I hope?
@Lazycog I’m reading the Cure Dolly transcript.
Thanks for sharing the link, that’s really cool! I started watching some of these before, but the voice was a bit challenging… Besides that, having text to quickly scan and skim can be a lot nicer than video a lot of the time.
Bad news hit me lately so just been sorta struggling to maintain streaks, let alone study.
This thread’s always a motivator, so might end up doing a bit more after I close out of this.
Just, yeah, life, I guess.Practiced my italian and spanish a little over the last few weeks and now I’m back trying to learn korean.
I seem to be on a bit of a roller coaster. There are times when my confidence goes right up, times when it is at the bottom, and times when it is neither. Each usually lasting about six weeks. I suppose I am in the middle zone right now.
I got 100% right on my last live test, however, which surprised me.
I also live in my target language country so I get immersion all the time whether I want it or not. Topically, I went through the medical system earlier this week and had no issues at all the whole time, so I’m at least functional in the language. I don’t know how you would measure that, though. It all happened effortlessly and I only realized the magnitude of it when it was over.
Further weaknesses identified:
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Although I “know” A1 stuff such as every pronoun (nominative, genative, accusative, and dativ), I’m “slow” to come up with some of them. (ihr vs ihm vs ihn vs ihnen). I’ve decided that adding these as one-way Anki cards is my best chance to drill.
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Although I can count to numbers up to 1-million in German, I’m also slow at it. So slow in fact, that reading the time (ex: 13:45) in a sentence interrupts me and forces me to start over. Its not sufficient to “merely” be able to read numbers, you must read them with such speed and accuracy that your thought process is not interrupted. Especially when working on harder grammar (ex: verb-last subordinate clauses, seperable verbs, dativ vs accusative details, etc. etc.).
The solution is just more Anki. Speaking practice identifies weaknesses, but its drills that can remove those weaknesses with more precision / speed than wholesale speaking practice.
EDIT: Speaking of Anki… with my focus on speed recently, I’ve pushed my average time from 11s per card down to 5s per card. It does require more focus though to go through the cards this quickly… but I’m better able to work with larger volumes of cards now.
A bit of a bumer note: the USA Snowstorm is forcing me and my teacher to meet over Zoom. It will be so much worse than usual, but better than nothing.
Nice job on the card speed! I always start my day with my reviews and I feel my days go smoother when I get through them quick.
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Something I notice is that when I see a text in a language I’m not comfortable with, I need a conscious effort to not skip it and try to translate and/or interpret. Now, wherever there is microblogging, I get the impression Japanese people just love to make small posts, and going by my subs/followed feed this past week, I noticed I was starting to slow down on the posts of the Japanese folks I follow, unconsiously trying to read what’s written.
Also though technically not studying it, some Italian posts appear in my feed every now and then, and also been noticing I’ve been getting more and more comfortable with the language, even being able to interpret a good chunk of the texts. To a smaller extent the same happens to French.
I notice myself skipping like that all the time. I follow a few Japanese accounts, and unless I’m making an effort, I just scroll right past those posts. Glad to hear you’ve gotten to the point where you’re more likely to read them than not!
Your brain will take whatever shortcut is easiest, and when you’re learning to read, that’s skipping past. Takes a lot of practice before you look at text and can’t not read it.
I think a lot about my experience learning to read English (native language) as a kid. How there was that big gap of time where I could read, but it wasn’t automatic. I’d play games but ignore most text. I see the same in my nieces and nephews when playing games with them. For so long, your brain decides the discomfort of reading is too much to be worth the dopamine you’ll get from the message.
I also think a lot about how I’ve heard that those uncomfortable moments, where you constantly want to stop, are the parts where you’re learning. Hope it pans out, because right now reading Japanese outside of learner content is always a struggle for me.
Something I found that would help me was a Norwegian police log/announcement feed a defunct bot here on the fediverse, and that I have since replicated it with another tool. They’re short, straight to the point, and help in the field I’m the worst at, vocabulary.
And recently, while browsing the /all page from my instance, I noticed there’s a bot for the Japanese branch of Yahoo News, and their titles felt like the Norwegian police log. I have no use for either, but hey, I consume news a lot already, so why not follow them? e.e
Also as you say, the brain likes shortcuts, so since news follow a similar structure pattern despite the language, it ends up being a comparison shortcut.
Also in case you’d be interested, the bots, both for microblogging platforms or adjacent ones:
@api.politiet.no.politiloggen.v1.rss@rss-parrot.net
@yahoo_news@misskey.io
Big win yesterday: I have now gone through every card in my N3 vocab deck (about 3500 cards). Exciting. Feels a bit intimidating stepping into stuff labeled specifically as N2 content, but my retention rate as been great. I’m ready. It’s the clearest sign yet that I’m more advanced with Japanese than I ever have been. Wrapping up the latest chapter of Tobira either today or tomorrow, too. Four more chapters to go.
Exciting!
Do you have particular study plans in mind post-Tobira? Diving more into JLPT-prep materials maybe?
I’ve usually seen the pipeline as kind of Genki > Tobira > now you’re intermediate, do Anki and consume content. But I don’t know, it’s still a long way away for me.
Yep, exactly, JLPT-prep. I’m going to grab Shin Kanzen Master, though I ultimately don’t know if it’ll be the right fit or not. My guess is once a student finishes Tobira (or Quartet now, I suppose), they pick a goal. N2 is the most common goal, I would imagine, so the student then figures out what part of the exam they need to focus on. For me, I know I’ll be okay on vocab and kanji, I just need reading speed and I especially need listening comprehension work. Beyond that, it’ll just be drills for the test format.
I think if one’s goal is just consuming native content, working in a job that needs Japanese, or just chatting with others, post-Tobira/Quartet is indeed when one starts a more self-tailored learning approach. I haven’t even started the “easy” native stuff like よつばと！or からかい上手の高木さん but it sounds like I’d be in a good position to do so maybe even right now if I wanted.
