tangleweeds garden path log

[tangleweeds]

My copies of Japanese: The Spoken Language and JSL's Japanese transcript arrived last week, so along with みんなの日本語 I'm now enjoying having two different books entirely in Japanese, each with a comprehensive English language transcript and grammar supplement.

JSL's Japanese language transcript is actually not meant for the student at all, but for native speaker instructors. But my familiarity with the corresponding student materials helps me decode+remember what each line of the Japanese text says, and follow along while listening to the (extensive) audio. I'm not using this course as it was meant to be used at all, but what I'm doing is interesting and rewarding.

I'm slow as a schoolchild sounding out words syllable by syllable, but whoa check it out! I'm reading Japanese!

[tangleweeds]

So I share an old friend's very small house, so small that I don't have a desk to work at, only competition for space on the (very small) kitchen/dining nook table. I have a comfy chair for settling down with the laptop or a book, where writing by hand possible but non-ergonomic. Since I learn well via handwriting, this has been a recurrent bottleneck in my study flow.

Meanwhile I had a talk with my roommate about how he needs more time home alone, so I've been seeking out places to study in the early evenings, to let him chill out alone after work. This is a city famous for niche coffee roasters, but I've had trouble finding a place open past six pm, which is too early for my purposes (what's wrong with these people?). So I was wondering, "But where do the students study?" when it hit me: the local university's library. I used to take out lots of books when I was a student, but I had never studied in the library, having had a sweet study space at home plus a puppy in need of company.

Well they haven't improved the deadly institutional lighting in the past 20 years, but there's now a kiosk inside serving entirely drinkable Stumptown coffee. There was no shortage of study carrels on the quiet floors, which pleasingly turned out to include the linguistics and foreign language sections, though I ended up forgetting to explore them. I got much more done than I ever do at home, because there was nothing to distract entertain me but my multilingual penmanship pdf printouts, and reading JSL's Japanese transcript and doing drills while trying not to peek at the textbook's English or romaji (only had to once!).

I've checked out getting official library privileges and it looks straightforward, though rigidly bureaucratic as expected from a state institution. Checklist the requirements, show up with sufficient to redundant documentation, and be prepared to wait. I'm going to go ahead with that, as I had a nice time studying there last night.

I must be mellowing in my old age, because I enjoyed seeing all the studious young people (or cheerful ones departing afterward). Our society can get so separated by age group, but at an urban university, there's enough diversity that I was hardly an anomaly. Over the evening, two different studious young women chose to share the opposite side of my carrel, despite numerous other options, so perhaps my grey hairs gave me a reassuring aura of purpose.

[tangleweeds]

So I've decided to do my first 6WC, in Japanese. My language studies have been ambling along in a very relaxed way, but now I'm curious to see what some serious effort brings. The 6WC effort to maximize my study time and efficiency also dovetails beautifully with my plan to head out to the university library often, to give my roommate solitude.

I've visited the library a few times now, and generally had about two hours of study stamina, which currently includes time to stretch and/or walk around every 20 minutes. The first milestone I want to achieve is to accumulate a two full hours of actual study per visit, not including break time. I think slightly longer breaks may be needed to increase my active study stamina, though. A couple of times I did meditative breathing exercises, and those were very helpful, so I want to remember to include more of those.

On the time tracking front, I've revamped the time logger categories on my phone, trying to KISS. There's one for each textbook (みんあの日本語 & Japanese: The Spoken Language), one for work on kana and one for work on kanji. Plus I made a category to track how much time I'm spending on the forum. Unfortunately I'm a very slow thoughtful writer, trashing more than half of what gets typed, so time flies around here.

[Sooniye]

I just want to wish you best of luck in 6WC! I'm also participating, hoping it will give a nice boost.

[tangleweeds]

So my specific 6WC challenge is to work on literacy in Japanese. I get lots of audio input while doing the many audio-lingual style drills from JSL, because the answers are all in the audio files, nowhere else. I speak the answers to the drills when I'm home alone, though I "speak" silently inside my head when doing them via earbuds in the library. All of this to say, I'm not stressing out about my listening and speaking skills because my Japanese classes were all speaking and listening, and simply reviewing their audio brings so much back.

Here's a lousy phone picture of my study materials:


Tonight, though, was rough. I only had the energy to concentrate for about 15 minutes at a time, before needing to stretch and swap what I was working on for something fresh. Other nights I've been good for 20 minutes between breaks. I was in the library for an hour and a half, but only got 63 minutes of real work done. No JSL, just みんなの日本語 and writing kana. For some reason, I find ひ the hardest character to write.

[tangleweeds]

My 6WC challenge got off to a slow start, with the first three days spent fighting off my roommate's cold (but I won). Reviewing my time tracker, though, those first days weren't as bad as I thought. I got in about 2 & 1/2 hours over 3 days, though since feeling better, that's been my daily minimum. Friday was my best day, at about 3 & 1/2 hours. Today was a 3 hour day, which is my goal.

I've been surprised how much better I remember to track study time, now there's a bot to report into and a scoreboard to watch. I used to be very academically competitive, to the extent that my health suffered badly, so I had to retrain myself to mellow out. Fortunately I'm now content floating around the 2/3 point on the scoreboard, but it still motivates me to start my phone's time tracker each and every time I crack a book, pull out a worksheet, or login to anything educational.

That 3 & 1/2 hour Friday, I stumbled into what might be my optimal study schedule. At home I feed my addiction to glowing electronics, and study Minna no Nihongo via Skritter and Memrise. But a big factor in my library productiveness is to leave the computer at home, and concentrate on old-fashioned books & paper while I'm there. Social media can be a big distraction on the computer, plus I appreciate the information density in books. Internet resources recognize the tl;dr effect, so they tend to gloss over the tough stuff and oversimplify.

Speaking of books, I'm enjoying the textbook aspect of both Minna and JS. They have so many more drills/exercises than the standard self-study course. I've found many self-study courses' minimal exercises frustratingly trivial, testing little more than whether I had my eyes open while reading the book.

[tangleweeds]

I've been using and enjoying Skritter enough to sign up when my trial ran out, though $15 per month bites my limited budget. Over the last few days, something clicked in my brain, and I'm now much better at remembering how to write new kanji. Not that I'm great at it, but it's become do-able. When I first began, kanji escaped my brain the moment I looked away from them.

Skritter has premade kanji lists from Minna no Nihongo and Basic Kanji, among with many other textbooks, and a radicals course too, so I'm using those. There's nothing for Japanese: The Spoken Language, though, as it doesn't do reading or writing. So I'm creating my own list of the kanji used in the Japanese supplement for native instructors. http://jisho.org/ has been helpful finding the dictionary form of verbs, since early in JSL everything is in the polite -ます form.

It's been surprisingly easy to use the Japanese supplement as an adjunct to the drills, replacing the corresponding english+romaji version in the textbook, since recognizing kanji is way easier than writing them. But the english/romaji textbook is still essential when studying new dialogues, linking fresh vocabulary to its kanji, and of course for studying grammar.

I'm still getting huge satisfaction by being able to read my lessons in the all-Japanese volume of Minna no Nihongo, along with the JSL supplement. I'm reading real Japanese! Woo-hoo!

[Sooniye]

Sounds like you are getting along well with Japanese! It's very interesting to read, since I plan to restart studying Japanese someday.

[Melaleuca]

Hey tangleweeds,

I also love colour coding! Saddly the post-it flags in Aus don't come in great colour combinations, but I decided against getting them off amazon. Will make do. Did you say something about erasable highlighters?

I'm also hoping to get into Irish for musical reasons! But I'm still at the chosing first texts stage. I've got the Living Language pack out from the libary to look at.

I like your approach to language learning!

[tangleweeds]

The erasable highlighters are from Japan, made by Pilot, and the erasable line of pens is named "Frixion". The Frixion line includes erasable writing pens, markers for drawing, as well as the pastel and fluorescent highlighters that I like. Here's links to what I have
http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Frixion-Fluorescent-Erasable-Highlighter/dp/B003B63J1C/
http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Highlighter-Frixion-Light-SFL-60SL-6CS/dp/B00F6N56F0/
Unfortunately I don't know where besides Amazon to get them, none of the office supply chains around here nor the university bookstore carry them.