Language Journal: May 1 2018
Today was a breakthrough day of sorts. The sample set is small, and perhaps meaningless, but the feeling of achievement is real.
While going through my new flashcards in Anki today I encountered spoken words I had never heard before. And I was able to start guessing at their meanings with varying degrees of success. Well, perhaps, varying degrees of failure is more accurate.
It was a while ago that this happened with reading for the first time. I had learned most of the 常用 kanji meanings and was able to see a new word in Kanji and guess at it's meaning. But, since I hadn't gather much vocabulary and hadn't practiced the readings, it was basically just guessing at what it meant. Not how it was read.
In the past few weeks, I've started becoming proficient at guessing how to read Kanji words as well. At present, the scope of the Kanji I'm good at like this is rather small. But, today was the first time I was able to take some sentences I had never heard before, and with words I had never heard before (or at least didn't recognize initially) and start to guess at their meanings.
Several things are happening here. My vocab is (painfully) slowly getting to a point where I recognize MOST words in SOME sentences. My grammar knowledge is at a similar point. And now my knowledge of Kanji readings it progressing as well. So, now, when I'm hearing a new sentence (if it is simple enough for my skill level) I'm able to pick out most of the words and identify the word boundaries for the words I don't know. From there, I'm able to guess based on other words I know, possible Kanji for the sounds I'm hearing in the words I don't know, and thus, possible meanings.
It isn't like I'm some master though. Most of my guesses are misses. But, what is important is that most of my guesses for the Kanji are at least valid readings of those Kanji, which means that both the readings and meanings of the Kanji are taking hold in my brain. And, I was right, at least about some of the Kanji in some instances. In many cases, I'm able to think of more than one Kanji and even ponder which one makes sense in the context of the rest of the sentence. In other words, even when I'm failing, something remarkable is happening. I'm able to start inferring meaning of words I've never heard.
What I'm most excited about though is, many of my errors came from choosing the wrong Kanji out of multiple I knew because I had missed multiple words and simply didn't have enough context. In other words, it is all downhill. As I learn more vocabulary I'll learn more readings for more Kanji at the same time I'll learn more words. As I learn more words, I'll be able to extract more contextual information from future new sentences. The more context I can extract, the more accurate my guesses will become.
I have a long way to go. And I still need to eventually work on my own sentence formation. But for now, this is an exciting breakthrough for me.
While going through my new flashcards in Anki today I encountered spoken words I had never heard before. And I was able to start guessing at their meanings with varying degrees of success. Well, perhaps, varying degrees of failure is more accurate.
It was a while ago that this happened with reading for the first time. I had learned most of the 常用 kanji meanings and was able to see a new word in Kanji and guess at it's meaning. But, since I hadn't gather much vocabulary and hadn't practiced the readings, it was basically just guessing at what it meant. Not how it was read.
In the past few weeks, I've started becoming proficient at guessing how to read Kanji words as well. At present, the scope of the Kanji I'm good at like this is rather small. But, today was the first time I was able to take some sentences I had never heard before, and with words I had never heard before (or at least didn't recognize initially) and start to guess at their meanings.
Several things are happening here. My vocab is (painfully) slowly getting to a point where I recognize MOST words in SOME sentences. My grammar knowledge is at a similar point. And now my knowledge of Kanji readings it progressing as well. So, now, when I'm hearing a new sentence (if it is simple enough for my skill level) I'm able to pick out most of the words and identify the word boundaries for the words I don't know. From there, I'm able to guess based on other words I know, possible Kanji for the sounds I'm hearing in the words I don't know, and thus, possible meanings.
It isn't like I'm some master though. Most of my guesses are misses. But, what is important is that most of my guesses for the Kanji are at least valid readings of those Kanji, which means that both the readings and meanings of the Kanji are taking hold in my brain. And, I was right, at least about some of the Kanji in some instances. In many cases, I'm able to think of more than one Kanji and even ponder which one makes sense in the context of the rest of the sentence. In other words, even when I'm failing, something remarkable is happening. I'm able to start inferring meaning of words I've never heard.
What I'm most excited about though is, many of my errors came from choosing the wrong Kanji out of multiple I knew because I had missed multiple words and simply didn't have enough context. In other words, it is all downhill. As I learn more vocabulary I'll learn more readings for more Kanji at the same time I'll learn more words. As I learn more words, I'll be able to extract more contextual information from future new sentences. The more context I can extract, the more accurate my guesses will become.
I have a long way to go. And I still need to eventually work on my own sentence formation. But for now, this is an exciting breakthrough for me.
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