Language Journal: June 3rd 2019
Well, the thought which is provoking today's entry is: native language resources remain the hardest thing for me as a casual learner to get down.
It took me the better part of a week to get through the last volume of イカ娘 in my collection. I probably would have labelled it a beginner's book. But, then I got ボルト in my latest batch of manga, and I expected it to kick my square in the nuts. I mean, it is loaded with crazy ninja related words which have no practical value right?
Well, I'm not totally wrong. And yet, in one fairly short sitting I devoured half the book.
I have no clue what the difference is. As best as I can tell, the number of words per page is about equal. I would say ボルト certainly has less pages with text heavy sections. But, while those exist in イカ娘 they are the exception rather than the norm.
And, we're also not talking about interest level, or familiarity or perceived ease. Sure, there will be some bias I cannot fully account for. But, with イカ娘 I was really just blowing through it, and only looking things up when I was totally lost, or when a word I felt I understood popped up regularly. With ボルト I'm actually looking up a lot more words.
Yes, that does mean I'm more engaged in the content. But, engagement doesn't necessarily translate into performance. Since I'm stopping to look up words more regularly it should be slowing me down. But, I didn't spend a ton of time reading yesterday. I was truly motivated to wrap up イカ娘 because I'm not a huge fan and I always get a new one only to realize I hadn't finished the volumes of that I already had.
In summary, despite the fact that I feel like ボルト should be harder/slower, that is not turning out to be the case at all.
My suspicion is that the grammar is what is less complex. Maybe closer to the level of オレンジ. Maybe even easier. So, even with the odd word which needs translation, my overall ability to read it is much faster.
But, this is the crux of the problem. I have no way of knowing what resources are at which level. Both イカ娘 and ボルト are I believe 少年 manga. オレンジ may be 少女. But, one of my 少年 manga is at or below that level, and one feels very much above it. I try to blame イカ娘s difficulty level on it being a comedy, but it is more situational comedy and not word play. I don't find it conceptually challenging at all. And I think I get the jokes.
Anyway... yeah. That is where I'm at.
My writing technique helped. But, mostly what it has helped with is forcing me to focus more. I haven't had any thing really worth spending the effort on in the last few days. Maybe when the deck runs dry I'll start again, or throw in the 10k deck. Though, honestly, probably the best thing would be to find an engaging way to work native language materials into custom decks in a more efficient way.
It took me the better part of a week to get through the last volume of イカ娘 in my collection. I probably would have labelled it a beginner's book. But, then I got ボルト in my latest batch of manga, and I expected it to kick my square in the nuts. I mean, it is loaded with crazy ninja related words which have no practical value right?
Well, I'm not totally wrong. And yet, in one fairly short sitting I devoured half the book.
I have no clue what the difference is. As best as I can tell, the number of words per page is about equal. I would say ボルト certainly has less pages with text heavy sections. But, while those exist in イカ娘 they are the exception rather than the norm.
And, we're also not talking about interest level, or familiarity or perceived ease. Sure, there will be some bias I cannot fully account for. But, with イカ娘 I was really just blowing through it, and only looking things up when I was totally lost, or when a word I felt I understood popped up regularly. With ボルト I'm actually looking up a lot more words.
Yes, that does mean I'm more engaged in the content. But, engagement doesn't necessarily translate into performance. Since I'm stopping to look up words more regularly it should be slowing me down. But, I didn't spend a ton of time reading yesterday. I was truly motivated to wrap up イカ娘 because I'm not a huge fan and I always get a new one only to realize I hadn't finished the volumes of that I already had.
In summary, despite the fact that I feel like ボルト should be harder/slower, that is not turning out to be the case at all.
My suspicion is that the grammar is what is less complex. Maybe closer to the level of オレンジ. Maybe even easier. So, even with the odd word which needs translation, my overall ability to read it is much faster.
But, this is the crux of the problem. I have no way of knowing what resources are at which level. Both イカ娘 and ボルト are I believe 少年 manga. オレンジ may be 少女. But, one of my 少年 manga is at or below that level, and one feels very much above it. I try to blame イカ娘s difficulty level on it being a comedy, but it is more situational comedy and not word play. I don't find it conceptually challenging at all. And I think I get the jokes.
Anyway... yeah. That is where I'm at.
My writing technique helped. But, mostly what it has helped with is forcing me to focus more. I haven't had any thing really worth spending the effort on in the last few days. Maybe when the deck runs dry I'll start again, or throw in the 10k deck. Though, honestly, probably the best thing would be to find an engaging way to work native language materials into custom decks in a more efficient way.
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