#don't feel like you have to use the detail I did uvu

[solivcgant]

slaps my url and a cookie down

SEND A URL AND I WILL ANSWER THE FOLLOWING;

Do I Follow Them?: yes, more supernatural muses to remind eiji his life is anything but mundane

Why Did I Follow Them?: i cant remember ouo but i do remember seeing your return post recently and naturally had to supports 

Do We Role Play?: yes, but we can always rp more now that eiji knows doris is a cafe owner who games

Do I Want To Role Play With Them: of course! soon eiji will go annoy both doris and lilim 

An AU Idea For Our Muses: stealing from your wanted plots you posted a while back, but it stuck with me heh. i'm not sure of all the details yet-- but eiji is very protective uvu;; so naturally he will do his best to protect in anyway he can.. and then if he does do something that gets him hurt doris (or lilim) can show off their powers and kick butt. ψ( ` ∇ ´ )ψ showing eiji magic exists and that they don't need someone to protect them uvu #selfsustainingladies

A Song For Our Muses: 「magic」 - mrs. green apple. perhaps i cheated.. but the song fits.. and the title does too. heh. but i feel doris would use her magic just to make days in the cafe more exciting once she's able to share. いいよ もっともっと良いように, いっそ楽しもう Magicで日々を

Do I Ship Our Muses?: cries. i think we'll have to see how the chemistry with eiji flows first ouo for now he's just that random cafe customer who plays games cries.

What I Think About The Mun: i am happy to see you return! we haven't spoken very much oof since your return, but that's okay. it's still nice seeing a familiar url on the dash. i do like how your writing clearing differentiates between doris and lilim! i think finding your muses voice especially on multiuse is rough. but you fond a good balance! i hope we can talk more ooc soon and plot or just throw our muses at each other to see what they get into next.

Overall Opinion: a good dual-muse blog, both muses are complete opposites but still very fun to interact with. or in my case read interactions bc i haven't reached out as much as i should-- i think its a fun take on 'hiding' their identities while acting as regular humans for our interactions. bc we all know doris could tell eiji she is an archdevil, and he'd go 'in your graveyard game--?'

Blog Rate: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 1∞

[rigelmejo]

My chinese knowledge is both much (to me who was once struggling to comprehend anything) and also so very very little (the reality of learning languages is there is Always more... in one's native language and all others studied)

This is just me rambling so feel free to ignore uvu alrighty let's get into it. So I learn with the goal of reading in my target languages (usually that's my main motivation initially). So over the years I've figured out, what works best for me is SRS or studying a list of 1000-2000 common words (or reading thru a textbook/taking a class which covers this much or part of it), reading through a grammar guide summary (not to memorize but just for an overview of what to be aware of and consider looking up more later when I see it in practice and get confused). And optionally, looking up the basic ways to say someone present-tense verb, past tense verb, future tense verse, to be and to have verb conjugations. Because these particular features are helpful to know if I want to try chatting/writing with people later.

Sometimes I use different materials to cover the stuff above, but I'm usually doing the stuff above. For example for french: I learned basic past, present, future, basic conjugations from a French class and pronunciation, 1000 common words from a word list, and read a grammar guide summary my first few months. Then I read 300 pages of Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature which helped a ton (and still helps) for learning through context. About 5-6 months in I started reading articles, nonfiction, Wikipedia, graded readers, looking up a handful of words in a translator per page. About a year in I could forgo the word look up and just pick up words from context, about 1.5 years in I could move from graded readers to novels, and at 2 years I stopped studying as far as reading goes - by then I could pick up anything I wanted to read in French and it was doable. I noticed at 2.5 years in etc that reading got easier/felt faster and like less effort, noticed stuff id only managed to follow the main ideas or before i could now follow Most Details too. But after 2 years reading was like English in that I could improve just by doing it more, and it was good enough to do what I wanted. So after that I studied other things in French every so often (pronunciation, listening, grammar a few times for productions sake and I'll definitely need to AGAIN at some point).

Chinese study went similarly. Surprisingly to me, progress reading wise actually followed the same timeline. I'm maybe 2-2.5 years into studying now and I'm probably at a point I could abandon all word lookup, learn only from context (I did this at 1 year in French but cognates helped... in chinese I still had more hanzi to learn 1 year in), and get by knowing at Least the main idea of most stuff I want to read. So now I mainly just read to improve reading, like with English and French. Like French, my main focus when I study now is pronunciation, LISTENING (I want to be able to follow audiobooks better), reading Speed, and one day eventually improving production skills.

My point with all this is like. Well 1. I learn by doing mostly, and that activity I do is Read (also watch shows and listen and browse the internet but reading is probably over 50%). 2. I have a super high tolerance for ambiguity. I think the higher your tolerance for ambiguity, the "easier"/more tolerable you will find learning by doing.

So with extensive reading (reading extensively with no word lookup and picking things up from context), most people comfortably do it when they comprehend 98%. That is like me reading a sewing article - i don't know all the words, but I know enough words to figure out some sewing terms from context. Think of any novel you read in school where you picked up the word melancholy or desolate from context of a scene. Graded readers, for language learners, are designed to hit as close to that comfortable spot as possible.

People can actually still learn some new words/grammar from context clues at lower comprehension levels. 95% comprehension is comfortable enough for a large portion of people, and I've seen studies where even down to 90% comprehension some readers can tolerate the ambiguity and still have enough comprehension to learn some new things from context. They may not necessarily be comfortable at 90% comprehension but some people find it tolerable. (I think the lower limit may have been 80% on some study but it's not comfortable generally for most people). Usually 90% comprehension materials are used for intensive reading, using short texts where people look up a TON of words. Usually we read 95% comprehensible or more when we are reading "comfortably" (think an adult reading in their native language a reading material at their reading level, although not necessarily in a topic they're super familiar with - so me reading about some law proceeding with a lot of technical jargon).

Well as a language learner, at least me when i learn 2000 words, you don't start off with 95%+ comprehensible native material. You have some graded readers (which may be 95%+ comprehensible) Then you have materials for native speakers which are mostly less than 95% comprehensible to you. Because you just don't know enough words for reading native material texts yet! You can solve this a few ways: 1. Read INTENSIVELY, looking up words you don't know often, trying to learn them asap, so you'll improve your vocabulary enough to start to find SOME material 95% comprehensible. 2. Do a middle ground where you only look up 1-20 words per page (whatever is tolerable to you) aka enough key words to grasp the main idea of what is going on. It's intensive reading but you cover more pages faster, and since you don't look every word up you will have some chances to guess meanings based on context. I mostly do this one, but I also do periods of Intensive Reading especially when I want to improve my vocabulary faster (aka quickly push up my reading level significantly). Now with this method 2, I find it's easier if you pick relatively simpler writing to start so that you can AT LEAST follow the main idea with the aid of your modest word lookups. If you can't follow the main idea, even with the help of 1-20 word lookups on a given page, that material is too difficult to learn from. Likewise, with option 1 if you are intensively reading something, looking up Every unknown word, and STILL can't understand the main idea - that material is too difficult for you to use, find a lower reading level material. 3. Read extensively only. This one is hardest, as you will first be trying to find ANYTHING that you can at least grasp the main idea of. For me in japanesr, after 2 years I had to study more SRS flashcards, learn chinese for a year, THEN I finally found i could read some manga and follow the main idea without a dictionary. With french, this would have actually been quite easily achievable if i simply read the graded reader Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature all the way to the end, then switched to French translations of simpler novels I'd read before in English (aka lower level reading material I had prior context for to help me guess meaning of unknowns).

The flip side of option 3? As you learn more, it becomes the "laziest" option in the sense it requires no tools, no pausing to the reading flow. It fries your brain the most, especially at first, because you're completely relying on yourself to figure stuff out. But if like me you hate flashcards/SRS/drills, then making option 3 feasible asap is ideal. So I try to get to option 3 quickly, and switch to the other two ways depending on if I think it will help (option 1 intensive reading boosts vocabulary FAST so it's a good boost to help increase reading level or do with a first chapter of a book to quickly learn all the authors particular common words, option 2 you get detail clarified whenever you want and make relatively speedy progress but without the constant stopping of every-word-lookup-intensive-reading. I do option 2 and 3 the most, and only usually do option 1 when I notice a huge weak point in vocabulary and am trying to fix it quick).

So, how to you get to option 2 or 3 asap, if intensive reading and looking up Every Unknown word burns you out/bores you/demotivates you etc? Consider if you can become more tolerant with ambiguity! If you can accept that it's okay if you don't grasp every detail - you might not know if the floor is green or black, if there's a ball or sword in his hand, bur you can tell X is in a room and sad and holding an object he plans to use against someone. Can you practice accepting that level of ambiguity? If so, I recommend trying to practice accepting ambiguity asap. If you are a new learner, do it 3 months in, 5 months into study, hell do it 1 month in (even though it feels completely brain frying to try to understand ANY bit of a paragraph in month 1). Just try to watch a 2 minute chinese youtube video, 5 minutes of a slice of life cdrama, try to read 1 paragraph of a cnovel you've already read the translation of in English. Try to read a page of a graded reader before you are at its level. It's okay to fail!! Try regularly, and be okay with failing, with not understanding. Feel the brain fry and give up when it's too much. But you will discover that what in month 1 you only recognized 四 and 是, in month 5 you recognize 是光明路四号 as an address, as a clause you know all the hanzi in. You will discover that the show you watched 10 minutes of in month 5 just barely grasping the opening was a robbery, in month 8 you can tolerate watching 20 minutes and realize it's a robbery of jewelry and a WATCH, and a guy catching them in the act! You notice very quickly how much progress you ARE making. It's really cool to see that progress! And as you kept trying to engage with content, you built up your tolerance for ambiguity. You will NEVER understand as little as you did in Month 1 or 3 or 5 again. Unless you start a new language- but now you know what that stage feels like and what progress increments to expect. By the time you get to month 8 and try to read a simple comedy manhua strip? You are brave and try immediately, because you were trying to read full on NOVEL paragraphs since month 3, subtitles since month 5, and these are just some simple everyday phrases with pictures to give you enough context that you barely even feel brain fried. Then it's month 10, and you don't even feel it's extra effort to engage with challenging stuff. It's just a bit slower going, since it takes you more time to comprehend the main idea enough to continue.

What I'm saying is, the more you build up that tolerance for ambiguity, then later when it IS time to read, watch, listen etc you have PRACTICED part of the task. The part of "tolerating the ambiguity" and managing to apply regular reading strategies to material. Some people wait til they learn 5000 words to start reading in chinese. If they really didn't read anything before, then they haven't practiced word parsing, recognition of grammar patterns, identifying key information, guessing from context clues, or the actual act of simply Trying to read content which is likely less than 95% comprehensible to you. So it feels HARD, even though based on their vocabulary it should not be as hard as it was for me at 2000 words. But they still have to catch upon the practice of just practicing reading the Skill, regardless of vocabulary/grammar knowledge.

If you can practice tolerating some ambiguity, you can see your understanding improve as you learn more, can practice skills as you go, and will find it less draining when you do have to get through the inevitable slog of Under 95% comprehension as you work as a language learner until you finally start getting to the point of target language materials being more comfortably comprehensible