Life, (Japanese) Language, and Wordplay.
Twitter!
Love it or hate it, it’s playing a big role all over the internetz right now. This is a short post about 5 ways you can use Twitter to get better at your L2. Any of you language learners who already have a Twitter account are most likely already doing some of these things, but you should read it anyway. Then get back to your L2.
Some amount of time ago, I was sitting in front of my laptop. I had just finished my SRS reps for the day, and I was frustrated.
“I still don’t know anything!”
“I can’t say what I want, when I want.”
“I still freeze and stumble over my words.”
“Will I ever understand all of this?”
Yes, I was being really dramatic. For some reason, I just suddenly lost it. I was ready to give up.
Continue reading “【日本語】The First and Last Time I Ever Questioned My Progress”
The 多読 Contest is officially over!
I had a lot of fun reading this past month, and I have noticed vast improvements.
You can check out the results here.
Just a few more days until Tadoku!!
Tadoku (多読) is basically extensive reading. There is a very good summary about it here.
I’m really excited for this competition. I don’t expect to place very well, especially considering there are well over 70 participants, but that’s not the point of the contest (at least not for me). I just want to get into the habit of reading Japanese everyday, and I think doing it for a month will be long enough to make it a habit. Perfect. I went to Kinokuniya a few days ago to buy some manga, so I’m really excited. Flipping through the pages, I found that there is furigana for all of the kanji, which is both good and bad, I think.
Well, I’ll see you in February, assuming I’ll be too busy reading to do anything else. Except eating and sleeping. Maybe showering. We’ll see.
Happy New Year/Holidays/Tadoku
I decided I would make my transition into using monolingual sources for my Japanese acquisition. It’s only been a few days, but I think this is the way to go. It just feels really good to look up a definition, see a line of kanji, and say “I can figure this out.”
Hello all!
I have joined the legion of people who use immersion as part of their language learning routine. I like to call them the Immersioneers. And as a direct result of this change, I’m finally taking everything more seriously by, of course, having more fun. After all, that’s the best way to learn, right?
I also realized why my progress in Japanese had felt so unsatisfactory. I was only learning in class, and only studying what I “learned” in class.
Studying Latin didn’t really give me a chance to try out immersion as a learning technique, so this is my first attempt at such a technique. (Actually, I guess Korean was my first attempt at immersion learning, though I’m only realizing it now as I type this…) Anyways, to the point!