Language Journal - June 15th 2018
Learning a language is a pain in the ass roller coaster ride.
Before you start you feel like an idiot. If you're willing to give it a couple hours, at the end you'll think it is simple as you're confidently constructing simple sentences with simple words. A few more hours and despair returns as you hit irregular verbs. You get a bit better and feel good. You find more grammar and despair. And the cycle continues.
Where I *think* I am with Japanese is; listening is slowly improving. Reading is still light years ahead of everything else. And speaking/composing sentences is the furthest behind.
That being said, I don't think I'm particularly bad at any of them. I've started sending my wife random texts in Japanese. I'm trying to send her at least one a day about something going on in the day. I also try and translate random thoughts and sentences and some of those I text her as well. It is going much better than I thought it would. Many sentences are requiring very little thought and I get something that at least Google translate well enough on the first pass.
Some times the sentences take longer to form and/or require tweaking. But, I'm usually able to do the tweaking on my own at least. Which means I know the grammar rules, they just aren't second nature. Since I can usually fix the sentences on the first try though, I tend to think that for the sorts of sentences I'm making, it is getting fairly close to second nature.
All of this leads me to my next point. I want to start de-emphasizing grammar in my learning for now. Reading and listening are my strong suits. And they aren't bad strong suits to have. What I'm finding is that while there are a LOT of grammar and grammar like things in Japanese, they are very standardized. I just need to know that they exist and be able to identify them as grammar.
My argument here is pretty simple. While I need to learn to form sentences and speak (to reach my goals) I also need to be able to consume level appropriate materials where the grammar is used. When I know all or most of the words I can pick out where the grammar is. And I can usually guess reliably at the rough intention of the grammar even without knowing it. If my vocab isn't there though... I'm totally lost.
I also want to pick up my French a bit more. Relaxing on myself on grammar will allow me to reduce my Japanese workload and focus on vocab. Once it gets a little rarer to hit a word I don't understand I'll start trying to plug in more formal training on the grammar.
Before you start you feel like an idiot. If you're willing to give it a couple hours, at the end you'll think it is simple as you're confidently constructing simple sentences with simple words. A few more hours and despair returns as you hit irregular verbs. You get a bit better and feel good. You find more grammar and despair. And the cycle continues.
Where I *think* I am with Japanese is; listening is slowly improving. Reading is still light years ahead of everything else. And speaking/composing sentences is the furthest behind.
That being said, I don't think I'm particularly bad at any of them. I've started sending my wife random texts in Japanese. I'm trying to send her at least one a day about something going on in the day. I also try and translate random thoughts and sentences and some of those I text her as well. It is going much better than I thought it would. Many sentences are requiring very little thought and I get something that at least Google translate well enough on the first pass.
Some times the sentences take longer to form and/or require tweaking. But, I'm usually able to do the tweaking on my own at least. Which means I know the grammar rules, they just aren't second nature. Since I can usually fix the sentences on the first try though, I tend to think that for the sorts of sentences I'm making, it is getting fairly close to second nature.
All of this leads me to my next point. I want to start de-emphasizing grammar in my learning for now. Reading and listening are my strong suits. And they aren't bad strong suits to have. What I'm finding is that while there are a LOT of grammar and grammar like things in Japanese, they are very standardized. I just need to know that they exist and be able to identify them as grammar.
My argument here is pretty simple. While I need to learn to form sentences and speak (to reach my goals) I also need to be able to consume level appropriate materials where the grammar is used. When I know all or most of the words I can pick out where the grammar is. And I can usually guess reliably at the rough intention of the grammar even without knowing it. If my vocab isn't there though... I'm totally lost.
I also want to pick up my French a bit more. Relaxing on myself on grammar will allow me to reduce my Japanese workload and focus on vocab. Once it gets a little rarer to hit a word I don't understand I'll start trying to plug in more formal training on the grammar.
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