The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

[Serpent]

Awww not too late, especially as in Russia we celebrate Christmas on January 7th
Your post wasn't boring at all. I'm glad you've managed to cut down the stress levels!

[PeterMollenburg]

Hi Kuji,

A quick post... Serpent directed me this way and I've found what I've read of your log quite intriguing. I was going to do my usual long winded post, but I decided to delete it. I was waffling a lot.

To cut a long story short I have had very similar issues to you. Over-perfectionist approaches to learning French interferring with being able to get any real flow occurring. In 2014 I was entering every single new word I came across in my courses into my flashcard deck. I passed 10,000 words and it seemed that I was still entering a hell of a lot of words (I thought it was going to slow down at some point, and maybe it was going to, had I kept going). 2015 I cut back. This year I've realised it's still not worth it even with the improvements. When i think back many years ago to French and particularly Spanish studies prior to using SRS I had much better flow and I think it was a better approach to study.

Now, like you have been doing Kuji, I'm attempting to bring back some flow. I'm putting my SRS aside completely and ensuring I have a good mix of both intensive and extensive activities.

Good luck Kuji! Keep up the good work!
PM

[kujichagulia]

Hi Kuji,

A quick post... Serpent directed me this way and I've found what I've read of your log quite intriguing. I was going to do my usual long winded post, but I decided to delete it. I was waffling a lot.

To cut a long story short I have had very similar issues to you. Over-perfectionist approaches to learning French interferring with being able to get any real flow occurring. In 2014 I was entering every single new word I came across in my courses into my flashcard deck. I passed 10,000 words and it seemed that I was still entering a hell of a lot of words (I thought it was going to slow down at some point, and maybe it was going to, had I kept going). 2015 I cut back. This year I've realised it's still not worth it even with the improvements. When i think back many years ago to French and particularly Spanish studies prior to using SRS I had much better flow and I think it was a better approach to study.

Now, like you have been doing Kuji, I'm attempting to bring back some flow. I'm putting my SRS aside completely and ensuring I have a good mix of both intensive and extensive activities.

Good luck Kuji! Keep up the good work!
PM

PM, I'm sorry it took me so long to reply to you. Thank you for the post! Yes, I'm guilty as well of being an over-perfectionist. More specifically, I'm guilty of always saying to myself, "I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and it's going to be awesome!" And then it goes badly either because it wasn't worth it or it didn't go as I envisioned.

I'm still trying to find the right balance in my language studies. For example, I stopped doing intensive activities for a short time and just did extensive activities, because intensive activities were really frustrating me. However, I'm finding that I actually enjoy some intensive activities. Contrary to what I've written before in this forum, I actually like looking up new words and "putting together pieces of the puzzle" when reading. The problem is when I do too much. For me, those kind of things are best done in moderation. Sometimes I need to put down that book or article and do something else. I also don't like to leave things unfinished, though, so what happened before is I would continue to read, trying to reach the end, looking up words the whole time, until I burn out. Lately, though, I try to limit myself to how much I do in one session.

As for SRS... well, I haven't put it completely aside yet, but I don't really care for it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I do Anki sessions when I feel like it. I know it goes against the idea of using an SRS piece of software: for best results, do daily. But I'm not worrying about it now. I still jot down new words I learn in my notebook. I found that when making Anki cards, I often got a deeper understanding of words and phrases, because I was looking through dictionaries, searching for examples, writing notes on the cards, etc. So I continue to do that, even if I'm not actually putting the information into Anki.

* * * *
I'm pretty happy with where I am right now in my language learning. I used to worry about things like getting in the right amount of reading, writing, listening and speaking practice, multi-track methods, learning rotations and schedules, what to do on the train/at home, etc., etc., etc. Now, my goal is just to do something everyday, and do what you want. Not very complicated, is it?

Not to knock the multi-track method (if I have time later, I'll post the link where iguanamon described what the multi-track method is... or maybe somebody will, uh, come and post the link for me? It's also talked about in Barry Farber's book How to Learn Any Language.)... I think it's great, which is why I've tried to do so in my language learning the past couple of years. However, when I'm struggling to just get stuff done, the multi-track method might not be so good for me.

I have a pretty good flow going at the moment. There have been a few scandals here in Japan in the world of politics and entertainment, and I see the stories on TV and it piques my interest: "What... why is that cabinet minister resigning? I don't understand!" So I grabbed some Japanese articles and I've been reading them whenever I have time. I'm not worrying about anything else. If I can't read the article, for example when on a crowded train, I'll pop in my earphones and listen to something... even if it's in English! The thing is, concentrating on one thing at a time helps me keep my interest in that thing. I find that if I'm trying to do too many things at one time, I lose interest in all of them. If I get tired of reading the articles, I'll do something else.

I also got back to doing Portuguese DLI lessons. I went back and started Lesson 39 over. I want to finish Volume 4 before moving on to something else. I have a lot of reading material saved up for Portuguese, so need to worry about where to get materials for a while.

It feels really good! I hope this will last. I will keep you updated.

[tangleweeds]

As for SRS... well, I haven't put it completely aside yet, but I don't really care for it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I do Anki sessions when I feel like it. I know it goes against the idea of using an SRS piece of software: for best results, do daily. But I'm not worrying about it now. I still jot down new words I learn in my notebook. I found that when making Anki cards, I often got a deeper understanding of words and phrases, because I was looking through dictionaries, searching for examples, writing notes on the cards, etc. So I continue to do that, even if I'm not actually putting the information into Anki.

This is so similar to how I use Anki! I do it only when I enjoy it, and yes, I'm misusing it to learn things, not to remember via SRS. I remember with way less frequent reminders than SRS wants to give me, anyway. My audio editing and labeling, and card creation can often be enough learning experience that I never have to activate many cards -- I learned sufficiently by making them.

Not to knock the multi-track method <snip>I think it's great, which is why I've tried to do so in my language learning the past couple of years. However, when I'm struggling to just get stuff done, the multi-track method might not be so good for me. <snip> I find that if I'm trying to do too many things at one time, I lose interest in all of them.

I get decision fatigue when choosing between too many possible activities. It works best when I ruthlessly prune my "currently active" bookshelf, and prune it often. When energy is low, I can use up so much choosing what to do that I don't have enough left to accomplish what I've finally chosen.

[iguanamon]

Welcome back, Kuji! Good to see you here again.

When I was actively learning my languages, I didn't do everything at the same time. When I first started out I would hit the course hot and heavy for about an hour, with DLI it was about one lesson per each five days. Then I would devote 10-15 minutes to figuring out a text. Sometime during the day I would listen to the news with a transcript, if I had one. In the evening I might take another look at the text again or listen to the news with the transcript. I always got in my course work. After my course, it was my tutor and grammar book I worked with that helped me to make sense out of what I was reading, hearing, speaking and writing in the real world. It all works together.

The multi-track approach isn't about perfection and overwhelming yourself, it's about making your own connections and seeing vocabulary in context. Sure I would look up words when I had to, but I also would try to figure them out in context. Having a parallel text, with a faithful translation, makes that so much easier to do. That, in a nutshell, is how I can get by without using srs. There's a time and a place for intensive work, for me, it's just not all the time. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see folks making, getting bogged down and not moving on. If you don't move on you don't get the advantage of seeing vocabulary and constructions coming up again and again. It takes time to get the balance right. Once you do, you can really start rolling, in my experience.

Now, I don't need to use any courses because I am beyond that stage with my current languages. I just read, listen, learn, write and speak when I get a chance.

When I wrote the multi-track approach post originally, it was a time when the forum was in a cycle of- course, course, course. Then I would see posts from people who had exhausted their courses ask: "What do I do now? How do I use native materials? I tried listening but they speak too fast. Reading isn't pleasant, I have to look up too many words", etc., etc. So by doing the hard part earlier in the process, training listening, working with parallel texts to train learning to read and getting that synergy effect going, it was no problem for me to transition away from courses once I finished or came close to finishing them.

Again, it's about finding a happy medium. You have to find the mix that is right for you. Just try not to go from one extreme to the other. When you are missing too much to make sense out of something in native materials, as long as it's short, sure, do what you have to do to make sense out of it. Just don't obsess over it. Move on.

I'll be re-writing my multi-track post soon.

[kujichagulia]

@tangleweeds - It's amazing, isn't it? There are words which I looked up the definition, examples and other notes for, in order to put them into Anki. I never did put them into Anki, but I remembered the words and how to use them!

@iguanamon - Thank you for your input. I figured I probably had the multi-track approach all wrong. I think I was trying to do the multi-task approach. No wonder I was frustrated! I think the multi-track approach still works even when I am doing one thing at a time. I can do some course lessons for a few days, for example, and when I'm done, I can listen to some audio or some other different activity. Of course, at times when I am not able to work on a lesson, I can do something else, like you mentioned.

[kujichagulia]

Okay, a quick update on what activities I'm doing in my L2s.... written Iversen style!

[JA] ここ日本には女性のテレビのタレントのベッキーが最近騒動の渦中にあって、私はなんだか面白いと思ったので、ヤフーニュースの日本語の記事を読んでいます。それを読んで、意味を分からない単語を辞書で調べて学びます。 そのあと、「小説を読もう！」で見つけた無料のオンライン小説を読むつもりです。
[EN] Lately in Japan, a female TV personality by the name of Becky has been caught up in a big scandal, and for some reason I've found it interesting! (Do I secretly like to see people suffer? ) So I got an article from Yahoo! JAPAN News and I've been reading through it, looking up and learning words I didn't know before. After that, I plan to read a free novel I got from a site called Shousetsu wo Yomou! (in Japanese). It's basically a site for web fiction; writers put their writing on the site free for people to read, and I'm guessing in turn they get their name out there, building up their fan base, with the hope of becoming famous and charging for their books, but that's just a guess. I'm not sure about the quality of the novels there. However, it hopefully will be a good way for me to really break into reading novels on a regular basis. I'm still wary about paying money for novels when I am not sure if reading novels in Japanese will be interesting for me.

[PT] Para o português, no trem estou fazendo Lição 39 de DLI Portuguese Basic Course. Também começei a ler uma radionovela de Deutsche Welle titulado "Fábulas Africanas." Acho muito interessante!
[EN] For Portuguese, on the train I've been doing Lesson 39 in the DLI Portuguese Basic Course. When not doing that, I've also started reading a radionovela from the Deutsche Welle Portuguese website called "Fábulas Africanas." This one will be a collection of African fables. I already find it interesting.

[kujichagulia]

[JP] はぁぁぁぁぁぁぁ。。。　「小説をよもう！」に手に入った小説はやっぱり難しすぎた。　私の意味の知らない単語はいっぱいで、その上に私にとってその物語の方は難しすぎる。残念ですね。　私は本当に日本語の小説を読みたいだけど。　とりあえず、福娘からの童話やNHK News Web Easyの記事読もうとする。それを言っても、｢シャーロック・ホームズ」の物語を青空文庫からダウンロードして、いつか読む。

[EN] Well, that didn't go well. I started reading a novel I got from Shosetsu wo Yomou!, but it was too difficult. Not only did I have to look up so many words, but the story itself was just too far over my head. I checked the summaries of some of the other popular novels there, and I think the novels that are being posted there are more "literary" than I can handle; at the moment, I need something written in everyday language. I really do want to read more in Japanese, and I want to get into reading novels. For the time being, though, I'll read the fairy tales at Hukumusume and the articles at the NHK News Web Easy website. The NHK site is exactly at my level; for every article I read there, I have to look up only two or three words. The Hukumusume tales are more difficult, but each paragraph is not chock full of unknown words and phrases like the book I was reading from Shosetsu wo Yomou.

Despite that, I downloaded some Sherlock Holmes stories from Aozora Bunko, a site that has e-books that are in the public domain. I've never read Sherlock Holmes in any language, and I've been wanting to for some time. I also got The Little Prince from that same site, and I want to get it for Portuguese as well.

[kujichagulia]

As I stated in this thread about whether or not extensive reading works (HINT: it seems to work very well!), I've fallen back into the hole of spending way too much time looking up words, analyzing sentence patterns, and trying to understand every single thing in a text, and I feel it's holding me back. There is a time for intensive reading, but I read somewhere that at least 80% of my reading should be extensive. It's time to commit to doing carefree extensive reading once and for all!

With that in mind, today I started reading one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, A Scandal in Bohemia, in Japanese. I made it through the first two pages. The first two paragraphs, I highlighted every single word/phrase I didn't know, but didn't do anything else. However, it was really hard to understand what was going on in those paragraphs. Something about what Sherlock Holmes thought of a woman called "that woman." I caved in and allowed myself to look up seven seemingly important words, and it became a tad bit clearer, but not much. After that, I read the next paragraph or two. Something about a woman... and Holmes' observations... and how this isn't a story about personal expressions... and an investigation... and "my" wedding, which leads to the question: Who is "me"? Who is telling the story in the first person? (Don't answer those, by the way. I want to find out for myself by reading. I think I know who it is, though, just based on what I know from TV, what I heard growing up, etc.)

After a while, I stopped highlighting every unknown word, and I started highlighting unknown words that either (a) repeated themselves, or (b) I've seen before, whether in this book or elsewhere, such as TV or other texts. I would definitely like to look them up, but I've held off doing so for now. I'm thinking of waiting until I get to the end of the section, or stopping to look up words when I've collected five or ten of them, or something like that.

So far, I've read what comes to six pages on my iPad. And... I haven't got much of a clue about what's going on. Holmes and a woman... an investigation... somebody's wedding... mystery... the results of something. Watson (that's who's telling the story! I knew it!) walks into Holmes' room, Holmes walks in, stands in front of the fire, and asks Watson about something. That's about all I understand. There is a lot about the story so far I don't understand. However, if we are talking about moving on, letting the snowball roll and accumulate more snow and get bigger... if we are talking about progressing... under my old, intensive system, I wouldn't have read six pages today. The Books app on my iPad says A Scandal in Bohemia will go 86 pages. At this pace, I'll finish the short story in 15 days. Not bad. I've never read something that long in Japanese, so that would be a milestone. I'm liking this so far!

[Rotasu]

If you have an android device, you should check out Jade Reader.

Your experience makes me what to start cracking at Calling You even though I don't know enough grammar for it xP

Also might want to check this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/2dpsrv/reading_strategies_vocabulary_acquisition_without/