#language learners talk to me about Anki | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rigelmejo · 2 months

Text

audio study methods

Still working on that 'lazy' study plan post, since I am just not satisfied with any chinese grammar guide summaries online enough to recommend them as a small grammar intro. If anyone knows of any good 'grammar overview summary' articles or sites for chinese grammar, please let me know. (I like AllSetLearning's Chinese Grammar Wiki but it is huge and in depth and not something I'd recommend a learner 'just read through' on month 4 of learning, and the grammar guide summary site I used as a beginner that was very easy to read through in a few hours... no longer exists)

So in the meantime. Not a grammar study tip, but a general 'lazy' option for language learners who (like me) can't focus on stuff like anki, or just don't want to. I go more in depth about using audio lessons and audio flashcards on other posts, and on the lazy study plan post i'm drafting, but the short of it is: you can listen and learn while doing your normal daily activities. That's what makes the study method so convenient. You don't have to squeeze in any extra time, or change your daily life schedule to make time for chinese, to use audio lessons and audio flashcards.

You simply find some times during the day when you'd either normally listen to audio in the background (like if you listen to music when commuting or shopping, or if you listen to podcasts when working, or if you listen to youtube while exercising or browsing social media). As usual, the more time the better as you'll make faster progress if you study 1-2 hours a day or more. But anything is better than nothing. So lets say you commute to work 30 minutes in morning and evening, there's your hour of studying audio. Or you go for a walk at lunch for 15 minutes, and browse tumblr for an hour scrolling (that's 1 hour and 15 minutes of study). It's very easy to fit 30 minutes of audio study into a day, and it's fairly easy to fit even 2-4 hours of audio study if you're so inclined. I usually do 30 minutes - 2 hours of audio study some days, since when I walk I decide if I feel like listening to a youtube essay or chinese or japanese stuff, when driving I decide which I feel like listening to, and I want to listen to something in english 2/3 of the time.

How do you use audio study material? Well, the easy way is you just press play on it, let it play in the background while you do other stuff, and that's it. If you tend to avoid studying new stuff (like me), then I recommend PRIORITIZING listening to NEW AUDIO every time, until you get into the habit of listening to NEW stuff to learn. Then you can re-listen to stuff sometimes, as review, especially when you're doing activities you have less attention on audio during. So for example: you'd listen to new audio on the commute or when walking (when you can mostly focus on what you're hearing), and then re-listen to audio as review while working or scrolling tumblr and reading english (activities where you pay more attention to other things besides audio).

What can you listen to?

There's audio lessons - which would be something like ChinesePod101 (Immersive Language Chinese in the Hoopla library app), Coffee Break Chinese, youtube videos where teachers talk in english and explain chinese as they teach it. These are good for study material, because you comprehend what you're learning due to the english explanations of every word and grammar point you hear. These are good for beginners, because you will understand everything you're listening to, and learn new words and grammar, thanks to the explanations. The drawback with audio lessons is they require the most focus.

There's learner podcasts like TeaTime Chinese and Slow Chinese, these are more often ENTIRELY in chinese. So these are better for practicing comprehension of stuff you've studied elsewhere, rather than for learning new things. You can learn new words and grammar from these, but if that is your goal then re-listen to learner podcasts a decent amount (5-20 times or more until you can't guess/figure out any more word meanings).

There's audio flashcards (which I love). These are sentence audio in english, then repeated in chinese. The order may vary, the chinese may be repeated more than once. These are good for beginners and upward, because you get a translation of every single thing you hear in chinese. You can pick up new words and grammar from audio flashcards. Audio flashcards require less focus than audio lessons, because you can learn from sentences while you pay attention and then if your attention drifts you can just focus again to the next sentence you hear and continue learning. The drawback is there are no explanations for which word specifically translates to what, some translations are not literal, and there's no explanation of why the grammar is the way it is. Audio flashcards require the listener to try and guess what means what by exposure to chinese sentences and their translations. So it's harder than audio lessons in terms of explanations, but easier than learner podcasts. Audio flashcards are the best substitute for traditional flashcards or SRS apps like anki, if you're trying to improve your vocabulary by hundreds of words ASAP. Audio flashcards are dense with new vocabulary (usually 1 new word or grammar point per sentence you can learn), so you'll learn more words than you would with an audio lesson that is paced slower with more english explanations or a learner podcast which would ideally be mostly words you know and only 20% or less new words.

There's Spoonfed Chinese Anki audio files (which I recommend since these start out very basic and increase in difficulty while also repeating words a lot so you can review, they're shared on reddit if you search, or ask me), if you search 'chinese english sentences' on youtube or bilibili (i've done this with chinese japanese sentences on bilibili) you'll find videos like this where you hear audio english then audio chinese. Old glossika cd files are basically this structure as well, which you can find the audio files of for free online or free in libraries (I'm using the new glossika app for japanese but I'm hesitant to recommend the modern app courses as there's significant errors in japanese so I'm not sure how good/bad the chinese one is). If you're a beginner, then the audio flashcard material you pick won't matter much as you need to learn a few thousand common words first which will be in most materials you find. But if you're an upper beginner, you may wish to prioritize finding audio flashcards with MORE unique words, more sentences, or may want to transition to using learner podcasts more for new vocabulary. If you aren't running into at least one new word for every 5 sentences you hear in audio flashcards (and ideally one new word for Every sentence), then that audio flashcard is way too easy for you and you know enough words to move onto new study material.

Audiobooks and audio dramas - use these like learner podcasts, listen to ones you can comprehend the main idea of, and then re-listen until you can't guess/figure out any more new words. If you're not very good at listening comprehension (like me lol), then you may want to listen to a given audiobook/audio drama file 3-5 times before deciding if you can comprehend the main idea (and use the material). When my listening skills are rusty, or just in general since my listening skills are bad, it can take me a few times of listening to recognize words I 'already know' and then a few more times of listening for my brain to put the words i recognize together into 'comprehending' what was communicated. So if you can read better than you can listen, you may want to listen 3-5+ times to a new audio file before deciding if you can follow the main idea or if it's too hard. And if you can READ the audio drama transcript, chapter text, but cannot understand the audio file? Then it probably IS at a good level for you to listen to, you just need a lot more practice hearing and recognizing the words you can read. So re-listen.

All of these listening study methods are good for:

Adding more study time into your day, since you can do them while doing other things.

Learning new words and grammar, when you don't have the time (or don't want) to spend time dedicated mainly to focusing on your study material.

Learning new words and grammar, if you don't use flashcards or SRS like anki but want the benefit of learning lots 'faster' than you would if you only picked up words during active study time (active study time being when you ONLY are focusing on study activities: like reading chinese, watching cdramas, chatting/texting people, and looking up words)

#audio flashcards #study method #study methods #audio lessons #audio drama #audiobook #chinese studyblr #chinese langblr #rant #i am my own guinea pig for testing how well these study methods work #and i can say personally? audio flashcards work SO fast for me and so much better than anki (anki is great but i cant focus on it)#and audio study methods in general work for me even when i'm doing other stuff at the same time. making it the easiest #for me to reliably do on a daily basis. since theres almost always Time to do listening #my chinese listening comprehension has increased a lot just in the last MONTH of listening to so much audio #as has my japanese surprisingly.#despite glossika japanese app course being 20% messed up. i'm noticing i can follow the main idea of like #Final Fantasy X audio and Death Note audio now #which is fucking wild to me

6 notes · View notes

corvid-language-library · 8 months

Text

Language Learning Log 2024 Week 4 (21/01 ~ 27/01)

Photo: Still absolutely in love with the snow! I went for a walk around Kajo Park and took this photo of the moat the day after a snowstorm.

Japanese

Listened to the radio

Renshuu app

Reviewed vocab with anki

Started reading Japanese Stories For Language Learners

9x Jujutsu Kaisen episodes

Minna No Nihongo unit 6

Migii JLPT app

Idodori app

Kanji dojo app

Norwegian

3x journal entries

1 unit of Enjoy Norwegian

Made & queued more Norwegian Word of the Day posts

Chatted for 2 hours with a friend

I'd been feeling pretty demotivated about Japanese because I felt like I hadn't made any progress for months, but I finally started watching anime again and managed to catch quite a few words, and sometimes I could match up the translated subtitles to the Japanese words. I also went back through the anki decks I made for the N4 and realised how many of the words previously graded E or F I now know without really thinking.

Of course, there are still plenty of words I struggle with. But I'm getting there. Maybe by the end of next month I'll be able to move on to learning N3 properly. I've already started on N3 kanji (and, by extension, some vocabulary). I really need to focus on grammar though honestly.

I made a start on Enjoy Norwegian too, again. I've had this textbook for a long time and I keep saying I'm gonna actually use it and then I forget lmao. Unit 1 was pretty easy so I mostly just read aloud and answered questions aloud, focusing on pronunciation.

And then I had a 2-hour conversation with my Norwegian teacher. I booked a 1-hour lesson even though he said I didn't need to pay him, he just missed me and wanted to catch up. We've become pretty good friends honestly which is kinda cool, and we only stopped talking because I had to go to bed.

Last week's goals:

Learn the first bridge + second verse of 少女S - I'm more or less there with the first bridge (although I need the lyrics sometimes) but the second verse still needs work

1 chapter of Minna No Nihongo - Yes, I completed ch 6

At least 1 HIIT session and 2 stretching sessions - I did yoga twice, two HIIT sessions, went for a walk and did some dance. Go me!

Finish January's beginner Norwegian crash course + another 2-3 of February's WOTD posts - I queued half of the remaining posts and another week's worth of February's posts. Truly an ADHD mood lmao

This week's goals:

Learn second verse + bridge of 少女S

1 chapter of Minna No Nihongo

1 unit of Enjoy Norwegian

Finish queuing January's content + another week (up to day 21) of February's content

At least 4 stretching sessions/yoga + 2 other kinds of exercise

#progress report #language learning log #japanese langblr #norwegian langblr #langblr #language blog #learning languages

13 notes · View notes

languagestudymaterials · 11 days

Text

How to learn new words in your target language

Read about my personal experience here

Vocabulary, or linguistically speaking: lexis, is relatively easy to learn. You get a list, you memorize it, and you feel like you’re good to go.

But after a while, you realize that you can’t communicate. You blame your poor vocabulary for it, so you study more, and then again, you can’t communicate… and that’s how you start vicious circles. How come tho? You memorized so many words, so many swipes on Memirse, Quizlet, and Anki and you still can’t handle a conversation.

Let me show you where the problem is.

What does it mean to be conversational?

Well, it’s easy; you want to be able to strike up a conversation with a native or a non-native speaker and carry it for a longer period, utter meaningful sentences, and survive, right?

The first thing that comes to your mind is “To do that, I need to know more words” (that’s where our vicious circle starts). You go to Memirse, Quizlet, or Anki and you start memorizing your super long word lists.

Tip#1 To be conversational, decide what topic you want to talk about in the first place. About games? Fashion? Daily activities? Search useful language related to the topics you want to learn to talk about.

Tip#2 Set mini goals, for example, “By the end of this week I want to be able to talk about my favorite game!” and focus solely on that.

Pockets of fluency

Have you heard of that? An extremely useful term. When you study a language, at some point you’re becoming well-versed in certain topics. You know lots of words related to those topics, and they create your pockets of fluency. I’m well-versed in teaching methodologies and anime because I studied the first one (I’m a language learner myself too) and I’m obsessed with the other one (my master’s thesis is on anime). In this case, my pockets of fluency are extremely full.

Pockets of fluency = topics you want to be able to talk about → becoming conversational.

English for work or other professional purposes

Sit down, then, and think about your duties at work. What phrases, words, and sentences do you use daily? Make a list of them and start searching for translations. Don’t limit yourself to words only; look for whole sentences too. Are you a sewer? Then look for articles related to sewing, extract useful language, and adapt it to your needs.

Tip #3 Useful language in teaching means words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Not just words! To become conversational, you need to learn as much useful language as possible.

Tip #4 Don’t look for lists of words only. They are a good jumping-off point, but you need more. Articles, people’s comments, videos will help you sound more natural.

Avoid these!

Learning words that you don’t really need. Let me tell you, during my college years, I learned a shit ton of words that I haven’t even used since then (not even once). I’ve seen, maybe, 10 in novels and NY Times articles. But hey, that’s what you get when you major in languages.

Off-topic!

Whenever your brain sees new words, it immediately starts making connections with the words it already knows. That’s why you remember some words faster and some not. When you learn a completely new word, your brain is kind of lost, it sort of asks:

What am I supposed to do with that word?

So, your brain puts it in a random place and just waits… for you to use it again in a context. When you use words in context, your brain easily associates the new words with the old words, it says:

Hey! I remember that! We spoke about it last time, and we used these words… ok I’m going to put it here, in this pocket of fluency, seems useful!

Conclusion? If you don’t use words, your brain forgets them.

Passive learning is another thing to avoid

Study actively. Anki, Memrise, and Quizlet are good for revisions, but real learning starts when you use the words you’ve learned in real-life situations. If you can’t put yourself in such situations then create them yourself, in your head, on paper, with other language learners.

An example from my classroom

The instruction says: What words do you already know? Check your knowledge first. Don't look for words without verifying what you already know. The blue box is for words you know. The pink one is for words you don't know. To expand your vocabulary, you can create a mind map, like the one below the boxes. You can start with vague words, for example: activities you associate with housework, and then look for more detailed vocabulary related to each specific word.

#teaching #rants about language #asks #vocabulary

2 notes · View notes

minimalist-language-learning · 2 years

Text

youtube

This video is not about language learning but about learning in general and using SRS (spaced repetition systems) like Anki, which is used by some people in the language learning community to learn vocabulary, for example. Especially among Japanese learners Anki is often recommended.

Among other interesting things, he explains why popular methods do not necessarily work well for everyone. What made me think was when he talked about the success bias:

(Summary) "... you don't hear about the failure stories - This then combines with availability bias where we define legitimacy by how common we are exposed to it - This creates a spiral of unknowledgeable people creating videos about common techniques that are not as effective as they claim, making it more available, increasing its perceived legitmacy"

I use Anki myself, but only for reviewing kanji. I tried often recommended methods like sentence mining several times in the past, but no matter how hard I tried it never worked for me. It's not that I didn't learned something but after a few weeks reviewing these sentences felt meaningless. I wondered why this method didn't work for me while other people seemed to have great success.

Whenever I review sentences in Anki, it’s lacking a lot of valuable context. Even if this sentence is from a book I enjoyed, reviewing this single sentence in Anki has not the same effect as reading it in the full context of a story. I realized that I learn words much better when I encounter them in their "natural environment“. Of course, I do not claim this is "proof" for anything, it's just what I experienced.

Success Bias

Since I fell into this "trap“ myself, I think that we should be careful when we come across "popular“ methods. Maybe they work for some people but just because a method seems to be popular doesn’t necessarily mean that it is so much better than other (less known) methods.

As explained in the video above, people tend to talk more about their successes than about what didn’t work (success bias). That’s why some success stories are probably overestimated. We see a handful of popular YouTubers, for example, who seemingly had great success with this method, but we don’t see all these other people who also tried it but realized that it doesn’t work as well as these YouTubers claimed.

It’s hard to estimate, if a certain method worked well for a great amount of people or only for a lucky minority (who then are making videos where they give the impression that this method works great for everyone, while in reality this is not always the case). I think this is something people should be more aware of.

Don’t get me wrong! If a method really works well for someone and he or she recommends it, that’s fine. It’s always interesting to see how other people learn and what experiences they made! Success stories can be motivating and inspiring.

It’s just that I think that we should be a bit careful, because stories of people who had no success with a method are usually not as visible as success stories. I think these "failures“ should not be ignored, because they are part of the whole story. Only if you know the whole story, you’ll get a realistic picture. And more often than not, you can learn more from "failures" than from success stories.

So, I think both stories have their value and should be told, so that people get a more realistic picture of a method.

PS: This is also true for my own posts, of course. I describe what works for me, but it is not my intention to claim that this is the best method and that it works great for everyone. If it works for you, great! If not, it's also fine. Try something else until you find something that works for you. I only share my experiences and thoughts in case that it is helpful to some people.

#langblr #self study #languagelearning #languageblr #language learning #Youtube

15 notes · View notes

seherstudies · 2 years

Note

Hi Seher-senpai,

I take it you study Japanese at university?

Feel like sharing what it's like?

I only took a course back when I was a uni student at a uni of applied science. Since then, I've been dabbling in self-studying but that is kind of hard to keep up at times... I'd like to get back into "proper" studying, so I would like to ask whether you have some tips?

Anyways, thanks for your blog, I just found it and scrolled a little through it. Always cool to meet other JP learners 😊

Sending some good vibes from Bavaria

-Bee

Sorry that it took me some time to get back to you. Life is busy at the moment, oh and servus aus Österreich! :)

I take it you study Japanese at university?

I do! I am a Japanese studies major, so they come in the bundle haha

Feel like sharing what it's like?

Sure thing! Beforehand, I have two types (?) of Japanese classes, Japanische Theorie (Theoretical Japanese), which is held in German, and Japanische Praxis (Practical Japanese), which is entirely in Japanese

The pace can sometimes be a bit too fast for me, sometimes we would do an entire chapter in one lesson.... But overall, I enjoy most parts of my classes!

In Theory, we learn about grammar passively and you could also say about how to translate Japanese into German and it's also profs way to check if we understood the grammar. The exams of the class kill me though. In a semester we have two kanji and two translation exams and I don't know which one is worse lmao The first two few years we only worked with textbooks (we used Bunka Shokyu Nihongo 1+2 and now we use the Advanced Tobira) but now, I am in my last year, we moved on to different types of texts like song lyrics, essays and learn more about slang, spoken Japanese and that sort. I am grateful for that because Tobira can be quite dry at times. It’s definitely my favourite out of the two simply because the prof makes it a heap of fun with his random, while educational, rambles or anecdotes.

Praxis we should learn how to apply the grammar studied in Theory, so we do a lot of grammar exercises (complete the sentences mostly). It certainly helped with building a strong foundation, but I do wish we would… actually use the language in class more ya know. The only “speaking” we do is by reading sentences out loud and I am not sure about my peers, but it certainly doesn’t help me learn how to speak Japanese. We are not learning Japanese to be able to communicate but simply for class where we cover topics you will most likely never have a conversation about. At least I know I will never talk about robots. But I have the feeling that is an issue with most language classes...

I'd like to get back into "proper" studying, so I would like to ask whether you have some tips?

Good question. I had to think about it a bit ngl and I hope some things will be useful to you in a way.

Build discipline while you still have a lot of motivation. The first one or two weeks use apps like Duolingo or Lingodeer simply to build the habit of daily learning. Even better if you can set a specific time every day. For example, every day after dinner it is Anki/Memrise/Lingodeer/etc. o’clock. You HAVE to do a bit every day - even if it's just for 3 minutes. If you teach your brain that sometimes you can skip, then it will try to find excuses to skip another day and soon you will slip.

Have different activities for different levels of energy/attention. This kind of latches on to the previous point. Have core activities you do every day for the sake of progress and on days where you are more motivated and alert, do something that requires more effort and have a set of relaxing activities for your low days to keep your TL floating around in your head.

consistency > efficiency. The best method is not the most optimized one or what someone says is more efficient but the one you actually enjoy and stick to. This also goes when you choose media to consume, read/watch what you enjoy. Keep a healthy mix though: Each medium has it's own speaking style. You won't learn everyday Japanese if you only watch dramas or anime, so include a variety like drama, anime, podcasts, Youtube videos, news etc.

Choose a resource for grammar, vocab etc. and stick with it until the end unless you really don't like it. This video (~12min) by Robin McPherson goes more into depth of the 'Paradox of Choice' and what it means for language learners in this day and age and how you can counter choice paralysis. Japanese is a popular language. Therefore there are many resources out there and it’s easy to start doubting our decision. You see the next shiny thing and want to try that out and often we don’t even think twice about purchasing another textbook because you have heard something good about it. I highly recommend the video!

I can also recommend you this video by Livakivi on how to learn Japanese but it's a general guide. His videos are great! The most important part though is having fun with the language though. Best of luck!

#answered #study advice #language learning #honestly I don't feel qualified to give any advice #i am just a mess most of the time

3 notes · View notes

kyoshalearns · 9 months

Text

Remixing My Language Learning Journey: Crafting a Unique Path Through Japanese Rap

Turning Language Learning into a Personalized Musical Experience

I have so much to write about and I'm really behind but I'm getting back on track. I want to write about my first trip to Japan, some new studying techniques, learning breakthroughs, linguistics research, tasty new Japanese food including more RAMEN…all in due time. First though I want to talk about music.

Music is an excellent tool for language learners to take advantage of because it can provide you with entertaining and compelling input at a high volume. You may have a tv show or movie you like, or even a book or comic, but chances are you won't read that over and over to the same degree that you would listen to one of your favorite songs. So it may be the case that finding music you like in your target language is a big breakthrough, unfortunately however I personally couldn't find anything I liked for a while .

I'm a long time hip-hop fan that was born and raised in the tri-state area on the east coast, near NY. Late 90s and early 00s hip-hop forms the foundation of my music taste, so automatically, even in America I have to do a lot of digging to find the things that I like a lot. I just wasn't very successful in finding Japanese rap that really resonated with my taste. Now obviously there is the vocabulary issue so lyrics mostly won't be able to resonate with me yet, which puts a greater emphasis on beat, melody, and lyrical structuring (vocab will come later with study).

I found some OK songs here and there but for the purpose of language learning you need to like the song a lot, maybe love the song, which will motivate you to listen over and over. A regular level of "just ok" is not enough.

Then one day I got a crazy idea and I started googling. I thought "what if I could just make my own remixes?", what if I could take Japanese vocals and mix them with the kind of production that I prefer? If I could do this I would be able to make all kinds of music custom tailored to my taste that would make me want to listen over and over. Personally I have a mildly musical background and have produced music before but there were some technical hurdles I needed to cross. Thanks to recent advances in audio production tech I was able to find practical methods that allowed even an amateur like myself to operate at SOME level of functional problem solving. I'm not saying I'm churning out the most professionally scrutinized hit records, but I have some, if not rudimentary, ability to realize my ideas.

Since I had that idea, at the time of writing this, I have made close to 50 remixes and am slowly building my catalog. This has been an exciting experience for a few reasons. First I'm getting a chance to engage and learn more about music production (I can speak a lot on this, maybe another post). To add to that, I have learned a lot more about the Japanese rap scene and a lot of the rappers that populate different areas of the country. I started to develop a taste for certain styles and find myself building a much stronger relationship with the artist and music, where before there was nothing. Lastly, and most importantly, the catalog that I am building is highly entertaining to me, I want to listen to it all the time and I am able to get the kind of reps on these songs that are necessary for a language learning scenario. I use YouTube music for music streaming and have a special playlist now just for Japanese rap.

youtube

I started putting some of my remixes on YouTube. The song included in this post is featuring a rapper that I really like named Jumadiba, who has a very interesting style that I like to work with.

I think I will do some lyric breakdowns in the future because it is a process to convert these songs into comprehensive input. I basically look up the lyrics and break apart the lines into vocab, that I add to anki and review while listening and practicing. It takes time but so far its the most fun I've had learning new words and I am excited to see where this rabbit hole takes me.

#LanguageLearning #JapaneseRap #MusicRemixes #HipHopFan #CulturalExploration #PersonalizedLearning #LanguageJourney #RapRemixes #AmateurProducer #LinguisticsResearch #StudyTechniques #TumblrBlog #Youtube #learning japanese #languagelearning #learning theory #JUMADIBA

0 notes

russenoire · 3 years

Text

a masterpost: this is how i study japanese・これが私の日本語の勉強法です。

as part of a dialogue with @chokopan, this is how i study japanese.

…i don’t know that anyone else would find my current process helpful or even realistic, though i will detail it in another post.

@russenoire

…Yes please, do share! I think all of us in the langblr community could find something useful to learn from you. The more we all talk about how we learn, the more ideas we’re exposed to - which can help us come up with new study methods we wouldn’t have thought of trying before. Like I said before, everyone learns differently; but sometimes, mixing it up with a new technique or note-taking method, for example, could help push us out of studying ruts or times of low motivation. To that end, I’d like to know what resources you use when you’re breaking down kanji and etymology. It seems like you’re learning kanji in a sort of… non-traditional way.

this is my response. it is a Very Long Post, but i hope others find it helpful. for the method i use to learn kanji specifically, go here.

table of contents under the cut.

table of contents

tools / apps.

online resources.

dictionaries.

grammar / cultural context / word nuance & usage notes.

japan-based japanese language schools.

youtube channels.

sundry goodness.

textbooks.

immersion content.

actual study.

daily.

weekly.

helpful tips.

for the morbidly curious only: what got me to start in the first place?

tools

a word processing program, for taking notes.

takoboto.jp (online and on android) - it’s a dictionary of words and kanji, with stroke order diagrams, kanji meanings, some notes on word usage, and a slew of additional info (like JLPT levels and school grades for individual characters). includes grammar search with renshuu.org.

anki (on mac/linux/windows) - the mack daddy of SRS apps. massive learning curve, but have you the time to surmount it, the serious flexibility it offers is yours; you can even add javascript to anki cards. i’ve used it for years for learning programming languages – it’s indispensable to me.

hinative (an app) - ask native speakers to correct your writing, pronunciation and word usage. do the same for other learners too. pretty eye-opening, especially for my native language.

a 原稿用紙 (genkouyoushi), for writing practice.

cool pens.

online resources

dictionaries

jisho - a dictionary with a search function that lets you input passages of text and look up each word separately. amazing for the vast majority of words, not always great at catching grammar patterns.

takoboto - much like jisho.org, with grammar patterns. the mobile app or a full subscription to the website unlocks easy grammar search through renshuu.org.

japanese language @ en.wiktionary.org - an embarrassment of riches. hella useful for etymology, verb conjugations from a japanese standpoint, historical word use and translingual information on individual kanji.

goo - a monolingual japanese dictionary. i’ve slowly started using its definitions for some of my cards — they’re also an additional vocabulary source.

grammar / cultural context / word nuance & usage notes

japanese with anime - another person learning japanese with manga and anime, but who has spent far more time poring over linguistics articles in peer-reviewed academic journals than i have. excellent for making sense of manga/anime visual storytelling conventions, tropes, slang!!! and grammar.

renshuu - kanji/word dictionary and grammar resource, with quizzes and games. lots of natural language sentence examples as well.

takoboto - like renshuu, but not gamified. i use this site more often, as it’s a little more user-friendly and i already use the mobile app.

japanese @ stackexchange - this is one of many offshoots of the venerable programming advice forum stack overflow. full of questions and answers from native speakers, academics and learners about japanese use in the wild. highly recommended.

self-taught japanese - a blog by a professional translator and long-time student of japanese culture.

imabi.net - an exhaustive grammar resource from an academic perspective. i like to point people here instead of tae kim, as imabi is less reductive, but people who need to ramp up complexity in their learning materials may find it overwhelming.

maggie sensei - i wish this site were easier to read and navigate, but the content is amazing. plenty of natural japanese examples for grammar points, some coverage of colloquial japanese and helpful explanations from a native speaker.

sci.lang.japan FAQ - Q&A from the usenet newsgroup. useful for cultural questions, some grammar.

japanese language @ en.wiktionary.org - see above.

the tv tropes wiki - given japan’s immense worldwide cultural influence relative to its population, this site has tons of useful info on japanese culture, from honorifics to the actual language.

japan-based japanese language schools

wasabi - indispensable. concise, exhaustive breakdown of grammar and an entire self-learners’ course for free. they also offer the instantaneous composition method, a technique for training up speech in japanese using common sentence patterns. i intend to try it this month.

genki academy - where i found validation for using literal translation to study. lots of articles on grammar and strategies for effective study.

youtube channels

onomappu - an adorable medical student explains his native language in very simple japanese. includes dual eng-jp subtitles.

cure dolly - the creator died last year, sadly, but she left behind some of the most illuminating explanations i’ve ever seen of japanese structure and grammar. polarizing presentation, but highly recommended.

cyberbunny (if only for the 30 min katakana song!)

sundry goodness

kanjialive - stroke order diagrams using real japanese handwriting, not typefaces.

youglish for japanese - just started using this and it’s fantastic. it crawls through youtube subtitles to help you find native pronunciations of japanese words in context.

massif - natural japanese sentence aggregator, meant to solve the problem of outdated and often inaccurate sentences in projects like the tanaka corpus and tatoeba.

dōgen on patreon and youtube - a linguist who pretty much made japanese phonetics his life’s work. his course is great if you are serious about near-native pronunciation. (i paid for it, but am not making it a focus until i have acquired more japanese myself. i also don’t feel this is strictly necessary for proficient command of the language – the author agrees.)

OJAD - university of tokyo’s online japanese accent dictionary. pitch accent contours for thousands of words and conjugations, with audio.

字幕プレーヤー (jimaku player) - a user script that allows you to add your own subtitles to crunchyroll or VNV videos. each line is sent to jisho.org as a text search. free / donation-ware.

kitsunekko - japanese subtitle files for hundreds of J-doramas, anime series, and movies.

awesomeTTS and japanese support, for anki users. fairly natural-sounding text-to-speech audio for flashcards.

textbooks

a dictionary of basic/intermediate/advanced japanese grammar, seiichi makino & michio tsutsui. possibly the beilstein of japanese grammar. exhaustive, organized in roumaji alphabetic order.

japanese: a comprehensive grammar, 2ed., by stefan kaiser, yasuko ichikawa, noriko kobayashi and hilofumi yamamoto. another excellent resource, focusing on modern and most frequent patterns.

essential japanese vocabulary, by akira miura. helpful for notes on nuance and words that learners confuse easily. it also helped me clarify the meanings of a number of words like 相手 (あいて, aìte == ‘someone one performs an activity with or against’).

the kodansha kanji learner’s course, by andrew conning and jack halpern. the ‘all japanese all the time’ and ‘matt vs japan’ learning communities – my introduction to study methods for japanese – love love LOVE heisig’s remembering the kanji 1.

i wasn’t sold:

it focuses on recognition and writing jouyou kanji as pictures only. readings and actual meanings are meant to be learned once part 1 is complete.

conning’s method was much more intuitive for me: it teaches you kanji with their original meanings and the most common readings, in increasing stroke complexity and by similar components. he provides some historical context as well. highly underrated. i use this as a reference and a backup, not a primary kanji learning strategy; i’m not in any hurry.

making sense of japanese, by acclaimed haruki murakami translator and yale professor jay rubin. if you can overlook his borderline racist dismissal of kanji (i couldn’t); the rest of the book wittily illuminates grammar points that trip up learners – like how the ‘passive’ actually works in japanese – in a cultural context.

immersion content

mob psycho 100, manga / anime.

MP100 is a character-driven, supernatural realist slice-of-life coming-of-age story, larded with hardcore action and darkly funny satire. it’s great. i love a well-executed slice-of-life story and they’re often perfect for language learning, but they’re typically not that popular among anime fans because ‘nothing happens’ in them. á chacun son gout.

it seems i got lucky when i chose this particular series for reading immersion:

the replay value is quite high. i notice something new almost each time i revisit.

it’s almost entirely free of weirdly specialized vocabulary that would be useless in the real world (though i did learn two entirely separate words for ‘exorcism’. LOL).

it contains a healthy mix of different registers of speech.

i got to tangle with slang (which is really only painful to work with because of the lack of resources for english speakers) and fairly polite japanese right away. the protagonist speaks very politely with most people he encounters in the anime, with some exceptions, and he code-switches as appropriate to the situation. he’s…less polite in the manga, but his character is otherwise unchanged.

the lack of furigana made me work a little harder for understanding. this and the mangaka’s not infrequent use of kanji for words typically written in kana are almost certainly meant as a satirical comment on 中二病 (chuunibyou), or 'second-year middle schooler syndrome’.

chuunibyou can include pretending to have magical abilities, behaving in real life as if you’re a character from a superhero manga, or wearing eyepatches for no good reason. apparently kanji overuse is one of its least embarrassing symptoms. self-satisfied teenagers often have a pathological need to show off the mess of kanji they’ve just learned in junior high…

a number of adult characters in MP100 clearly suffer from it.

a few other carefully curated anime series.

mostly watched without subtitles. this changes on a whim, and it can be difficult to find a story with a good mix of spoken japanese registers that is also watchable without subs. making a story so compelling that it can be understood and enjoyed purely on a visual level is a unique skill, it seems.

the ones listed below are ones i keep returning to:

uchuu kyoudai a story about two brothers who make a promise to each other to become astronauts as kids. it meets this and then some; i was pleasantly surprised. the animation is not great, but the realistic character designs, the story’s emotional depth and the careful details in the setting more than compensates for it.

shouwa genroku rakugo shinjuu a real slow burner in the best of all possible ways. different characters’ personal attachments to rakugo – a form of traditional storytelling best described as ‘a one-man sitcom performed for a live audience’ – and to each other across different time periods make for some affecting viewing. mixed speech registers, but leans more towards the colloquial side.

other listening content

interviews with voice actors i like, with JP subs if they are available.

songs in japanese. self-appointed reddit gatekeepers look down heavily on using songs as immersion, but like, fuck those people. i’ve already written about how lovely they are. they can be a great source of vocabulary too, particularly if you love literary or poetic language and don’t care whether every word you learn shows up in a frequency list.

actual study

i do not have kids. i have never needed much sleep. i work from home, and i actually asked my friends last year for space in order for me to 日本語を身を委ねる (nihóngo o mi o yudanèru, abandon myself to the japanese language)…they were all understanding. i’m grateful for this.

i’m also very aware that my circumstances won’t resemble anyone else’s, because my brain is…odd.

like, when i began, my kana and kanji knowledge was minimal at best. i could identify maybe a handful of kanji on sight, like the one gaara scarred his forehead with as a child in naruto (愛), or the one for wind (風). i dove head-first into immersion anyway with a manga series written for teenagers and adults precisely because i know myself and knew i hadn’t the patience to sit with literal children’s books.

the line by line, particle-by-particle, pattern-by-pattern interpretation i do is indeed slow, but there wouldn’t be enough stimulation to keep me engaged otherwise. the friend who introduced me to MP100 asked me for advice on learning strategies, as we’re both acquiring this language. he recoiled in horror when i showed him what i was doing.

i’ve always been like this. physics made no sense to me in high school until i studied single-variable calculus; musical acoustics in university might as well have been greek until i learned the underlying math. i taught myself to sew by making a sofa.

if this comes across as humble-bragging, i apologize; it’s a liability for me almost as often as it is an asset, and it really doesn’t make my life easier.

daily studies

1h, minimum, of anki flashcard study.

i set my timer for a block of 30 minutes and answer as quickly as i can, twice a day. if i’m not pressed for time, that’s maximum 90m in 30m blocks. in practice, this is the only thing i do daily at this point: everything else is as i have time.

anki power-users generally recommend making your own decks, and i second, third and fourth this. rolling your own does take far longer, however. i spent a fair amount of time bending anki to my will to design beautiful, useful cards, but the effort i invested in tailoring them to my way of thinking and learning made their content easier to retain. YMMV.

a little while ago i downloaded a deck made up of lines of audio dialogue timed to subtitles, ripped directly from MP100’s first season, for listening practice. it’s also been great for vocabulary acquisition.

a typical anki session presents me with a mix of everything: listening exercises, word recall, translation. many of my cards are audio cards i made where i listen to a line and type in what i heard, or work backwards from a translation to typing in a japanese equivalent.

i do this for the sake of exposure as well, as i don’t read quickly enough yet to regularly encounter most of the words i have learned.

1-3h translation.

from a random tankōbon of MP100, i pick 1-4 pages and translate however much i can make time for.

i keep a word document and record each line, my translation, words to look up, and any questions (why this word? why say this like that? etc.) as i comb through the text. jisho.org and takoboto both have a search-by-radical function for identifying unfamiliar kanji.

original word order is preserved unless it’s confusing, in order to get me accustomed to typical japanese sentence layout, particle function and phrasing. it helps some, but i’m starting to need this less as i progress. i have encountered quite a few lines that i can understand without the need for this sort of parsing, which feels good.

when a line of text has got me stumped, i translate what i can around it and move on. i then return, consulting the grammar resources listed above to clear things up.

words to look up go straight into anki. anki management itself can be time-greedy, depending on how many words or sentences i need to enter or how many cards need retooling.

weekly studies

once a week, untimed, learning the lyrics to a song or mining a song i can already sing for vocabulary, using lyric sheets. i would like to be more systematic and consistent about everything this year.

1-5h of non-anki-related listening.

keeping track of words i can pick out and don’t know for entering into anki on the spot.

anime with and without japanese subtitles.

simple japanese listening.

japanese rock songs.

1-3h of focused grammar study.

cure dolly’s grammar videos can be really good at clearing up grammar misunderstandings. though i don’t love her pronunciation, her explanations are usually solid.

the aforementioned resources for grammar that i consult in translating.

helpful tips

a note on transliteration.

ボキャブラリー

look for ways to generalize whenever possible.

i stole my approach to learning words with multiple meanings directly from cure dolly. words with multiple meanings usually have a single core meaning that applies to most of the different senses in which you’ll find them.

here’s an example, using 適う (かなう):

the core meaning here is ‘fit’; it neatly encompasses most of the definitions on this card. i have also included the kanji meanings applicable to this particular word.

relate new words to existing knowledge; use the kanji’s meaning/shape for further support.

here’s an example with 籠る (こもる).

the main kanji making up this word, 籠, can mean ‘basket’ or ‘cage’. it resembles one too.

what can you do with a basket or cage? how are its contents affected? the answers to both questions encapsulate 籠る’s meanings.

it’s also related to 引き篭もる (ひきこもる, h’k’komòru), the root behind the word for the unfortunate japanese cultural phenomenon where kids give up on entering society and seclude themselves in their rooms for years…

keeping things like this in mind helps meanings stick for me.

with that in mind:

i don’t learn vocabulary out of context.

there are so many pre-made anki decks just for vocabulary: Core6000, Core10000, and so on. people seem to find them helpful, and i’m glad. i don’t, at least not for their intended purpose (i have a 6K deck with a ton of professionally recorded sentences spoken by voice actors! i use it for listening practice). i have no scaffolding to hang these words on.

i pick words up directly from immersion: from anime, from the manga i’m using, from songs, from podcasts i’m listening to. anything in japanese that i’m interested in understanding further can serve as a source for vocabulary, including recipes. the more existing information – emotional, visual, auditory – you feed your brain along with a single bit of new knowledge, the better for overall retention.

there’s a scene in MP100 where the protagonist’s mother is yelling at him to wake up so he can walk to school on time; i find it notable mostly for the overly-concerned soccer-mom sound of her voice. whenever i hear the word 遅刻・する (ちこく, ch'koku == lateness) now, it echoes in my head:

｢ (しげ)！　起きなさい！　遅刻するわよ〜！｣ shige! okinasai! ch'kok’ surú wa yo~! shige! wake up, please! you’re gonna be LAAATE!

even 'i heard that word in a scene where two characters were arguing about cheese’ is context.

i learn verbs in ergative pairs when i can.

not because knowing what ergativity is is particularly important, but because it’s a great chunking strategy: i can learn to associate multiple related words with a single kanji.

each kanji representing an action is often associated with at least two separate single-kanji verbs representing opposing aspects thereof:

自動詞 (じどうし, jidoushi == self-move-word). this concept roughly corresponds to intransitive verbs in english, which don’t take direct objects.

他動詞 (たどうし, tadoushi == other-move-word). transitive verbs, which need to act on something (a direct object) to make sense.

例えば (たとえば, tatoeba == for example):

落とす (おとす, otòsu): to allow to fall, to drop (something). other-move.

落ちる (おちる, ochìru): to fall or drop (on its own). self-move.

sometimes there are more. if introducing the additional verbs associated with a single kanji doesn’t sow confusion, i learn them all at the same time:

見る (みる) mìru to see, look, view… (みる has more definitions, but different kanji are used to indicate them. a kind native speaker on hinative pointed this out to me.)

見える mièru to seem, be visible

見せる misèru to show, display

two birds, one stone. 一石二鳥。いっせきにちょう。 isseki nìchou.

漢字

my approach to kanji, however, is entirely my own.

i was exposed to ateji early with the word 真面目・な (まじめ・な, majíme na == grave, earnest, serious, not fucking around). the characters in this word were chosen entirely for sound and not meaning, which probably explains why it gets abbreviated to マジ so often. that i couldn’t trust kanji in nouns to consistently convey meaning was a harsh lesson to learn. :D

when i turned my eyes to verbs and adjectives instead, i found this:

the pronunciation of every verb or adjective comprised of a single kanji with an okurigana trail represents a single 訓読み (くんよみ, kun’yomi) or native japanese reading. that leaves me with just word, meaning and pronunciation to remember.

relating directly to ergative pairs, in each half of a pair the kanji occasionally has a different 訓読み.

例えば:

教わる (おそわる, osówaru): to receive teaching, to take lessons in, to learn.

教える (おしえる, oshíeru): to teach, preach or inform.

using 教 as an example again, i learned 教育 (きょういく, kyóuiku == education, training, schooling) a little later. きょう is the 音読み (おんよみ, on’yomi) or chinese reading for 教。

that gave me all possible readings for this kanji and a good sense of its meaning in other words — like 宗教 (しゅうきょう, shùukyou == religion, faith, creed) — without needing to drill the kanji independently. readings for other kanji can be acquired in similar fashion.

a rule of thumb: you can usually expect kanji in verbs and 形容詞 (けいようし, keiyoushi == so-called i-adjectives) to be read with 訓読み.

when i notice that i keep confusing one particular kanji for another, or i can’t get a reading to stick in my mind because i have nothing to anchor the character to…i add the troublesome character alone to my anki deck. it gets a list of compounds of itself with other kanji i already know, to help me better associate ideograph with meaning. i trust that in time it will stick too, with enough accumulated context.

so why this manga?

short answer: this story means a lot to me.

here’s a longer answer.

that was in april last year.

this same friend first recommended this series to me back in september 2020. i slept on it until the following may… then promptly asked him for forgiveness. i’d mainlined both seasons in japanese and english over a single weekend.

i had to have more.

the last time something like this happened…

i was a student at university, in my last year. my then-boyfriend — who’d escaped from chernobyl as a child on his father’s back with his mother’s grip tight on his arm, fallout flakes still clinging to his jacket — handed me a fanlation of the viktor pelevin short story ‘hermit and sixfingers’.

this one, actually. i’d recommend it heartily, especially if you’re into dystopias and bleak, absurd humor – i was at the time. though once i slowly awakened to life in the genuine article, fictional dystopias and their attendant laugh-to-keep-from-weeping ethos…lost their appeal some. (i still have a soft spot for nikolai gogol, though)

some time later, i read a professionally-translated version and compared them: what the rougher of the two lacked in polish, it made up for in quite a bit of culturally-specific nuance and awkward charm. i felt cheated enough to want to learn russian. like, this blog is called what it is for a reason. i’m still a fan of russian literature. my given name, анастасия, is russian.

sadly, it didn’t stick, probably for a number of (mental health-related) reasons outside the scope of this post.

a scarred veteran of the sub versus dub wars, old enough to remember a sailor moon scrubbed clean of lesbian 'subtext’, i’ve loved anime for a long time. i’ve been touched by so many sweet and deeply affecting stories over the years, but all the hard work put in by amateur translators to give every joke and obscure cultural reference its due…never motivated me to learn the language. not even as i became increasingly fascinated by japan’s culture and history.

what did it, finally? mob psycho 100. (a global pandemic and a sense of time evaporating didn’t hurt.)

MP100’s realistic depictions of reactions to trauma and the slow healing process…

skillfully-drawn main characters…

wry commentary on storytelling tropes and clichés shounen battle anime fans take for granted…

everything it has to say about the complexity of relationships that shape us as people, forgiveness, kindness, gratitude…

and the protagonist, a neurodivergent person finding self-acceptance as well as a place in the world…

settled into my bones and wouldn’t leave.

i won’t gush overmuch about it here; my deep adoration for ONE’s stupidly-overpowered, almost-certainly-autistic love child probably seeps out of this blog enough and i’ve already uncapped that geyser elsewhere.

after i’d inhaled all 16 volumes of the attendant scanlated manga, i tracked down the first two volumes of its official english translation to read. the translator made some puzzling changes.

one of the main characters, a phony psychic and habitual liar with a kind heart that he won’t even admit he possesses, honestly didn’t need extra help to come across as slimy. what the anime (and the slightly awkward scanlation i read) handled with some subtlety hit like a tornado of anvils in his work: the translator just dunked him in nickelodeon slime. this wasn’t the only character whose personality he changed.

he also pointedly avoided using the word psychic in his own take on the story (i think it appears once in the first volume). i was at a loss as to why:

the original text is full of two words (霊能力者 and 超能力者) that both refer to people with psychic powers.

霊能力者 (reinouryok'sha, 'person with spiritual powers’) is rendered as 'spirit medium’, which at least isn’t terribly far off. but 超能力者 (chounouryok'sha, 'person with supernatural powers/ESP’) becomes 'person with superpowers’.

superpowers don’t usually have paranormal connotations in the US.

every 超能力者 in mob psycho 100 has one or more abilities associated with ESP: astral projection; being able to see, commune with and exorcise the dead; laying curses on objects; or telekinesis.

superpowers would be a fairly literal translation of 超能力 (超 == super, 能力 == abilities, faculties), but it misses the spirit of the original word: 超能力 refers directly to ESP.

the protagonist is a psychic.

the story itself, as you can guess from above, trucks heavily in the supernatural.

i… wasn’t okay with that.

my frustration was just the impetus i needed to find this story in the original japanese – and use it to finally start learning this language. if the gap between an official translation and an amateur one was this wide, i had to know what was actually being said on the page.

these arrived from japan in august last year, well in advance of my birthday – a gift to myself. i started this adventure in late august and this gift is still giving…

195 notes · View notes

mirai227 · 3 years

Text

How to go from beginner to intermediate in a language!

Hi! I recently reached an intermediate level in French, and I am on my way to reaching an intermediate level in Spanish too, so I thought I would try to offer some tips and ideas about how you could reach an intermediate level in your target language as well.

What does an intermediate level feel like?

So from what I can gather, the beginner level (about A1/A2 on the CEFR scale for languages) is where you can communicate on a very basic level, and can only really understand beginner learners' content. Native material is kind of a no go (except maybe for children’s content). You can understand about 30% of what natives say at natural speed, and can struggle through some basic articles with key vocabulary, as long as you are already familiar with the subject and the key vocabulary. You can express yourself in quite a limited way, and can speak about familiar subjects, while being able to provide some simple explanations why. This self-assessment grid can tell you more about what you can and can’t do at these levels.

At the intermediate level (about B1/B2), native material is slowly but surely becoming more easy for you to understand. For me, it usually means that I can understand enough words and phrases when native speakers speak to piece together what they are discussing, though I can’t really provide specifics. You can understand about 50/60% of what natives are saying about a relatively wide range of everyday subjects (though specialised language for complex adult discussions on things like science and philosophy is usually too difficult at this stage). You can express yourself quite well on a wide range of subjects, though in an often clumsy and simplistic manner. At this level, you should be able to survive in a country where the language is spoken, and operate fairly well in a professional setting (if the language required is not too complex). You will definitely make a lot of mistakes, but not too many, so you should be understood by natives. This self-assessment grid can tell you more about what you can and can’t do at these levels.

What should your goals generally be here?

Greatly expand your vocabulary.

Improve your grammar to a passable conversational level (watch this video clip to understand what I mean).

Get comfortable speaking with native speakers.

Make sure that most of your study time is spent consuming or using your target language. Minimise contact with the languages you already know, except maybe for grammar.

Spend a minimum of around 1-2 hours a day on your target language.

How should you reach intermediate level?

Use a textbook for around that level. For me, I used the higher tier textbooks for GCSEs, which is about the level that I wanted to reach. I went through the whole textbook, learnt all the vocabulary that I came across, and did all the practice questions that I could find. This helped me immensely. Textbooks are usually organised to provide the base of what you need to reach an intermediate level. However, they should not be used alone.

Find a native speaker to talk to! Seriously, this helped me so so much. Before, I was not comfortable speaking to natives in French at all, but I started to speak with a friend of mine twice a week, and I was absolutely stunned by how much more smooth and confident my speaking became. I looked up words that I needed to know while I was speaking with her, and this really helped me fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I also learnt a lot of the nuances in French and and discovered some really cool and useful phrases. Try making a habit of speaking either with someone, or by yourself every day. If you don’t know something, then google translate is your friend! That way you can learn really cool set phrases. You can usually find someone to talk to on discord servers if you join some language learning ones, though be very careful about revealing any personal details or your face. Arrange a fixed time a few times a week and stick to it!

Study every day. Seriously, I really dropped the ball with my Spanish and because of this, my progress has been really slow. I could be at the intermediate level in Spanish already, but because I’ve been so slow, I’m not. Figure out what time of day you are most productive at (for me this is the early morning) and set a fixed time for studying your target language. It’s okay to experiment a little, and for it to take some time to figure out your schedule. With languages, at this stage, it is very easy to forget things, so going a long time without studying (longer than a month) is really going to hinder your progress. Still, you should always be your first priority, so if things are too busy for your studies at the moment, then it is fine to put your studies on hold for a while, or even stop them altogether. Just make peace with the fact that your progress will be a little slower than you might like.

Do lots of practice questions for grammar. It is all well and good to hear about the rules and write notes down, but if you cannot use it in practice, then frankly, you do not know the rule. Find a grammar workbook, like this one, or this one, and work through it. You can use HiNative to find corrections if you do not know the answer. Then, try making sure that you actually use it in your writing or speaking. Experiment, and learn from the corrections that people make.

Keep a journal in the language, and post it on websites like Journaly. Write about subjects that you already know about, and make sure that you use as many grammar rules that you know as you can. Try to elaborate on your reasons and opinions on things. It will be difficult at first, and you will make absolutely loads of mistakes, but as time goes on, you will gradually start to improve. Look up words that you don’t know, and write them down so that you can learn them later.

Try listening to intermediate content. Yes, it will be difficult, and you won’t be able to understand much, but as time goes on, you will slowly become more accustomed to the vocabulary you need to reach that level. Make sure whatever podcast you are listening to has a transcript, and highlight and learn the new vocabulary that you have discovered using Anki, or any flashcard app. Listen whenever you have time to kill, like on the train or when you are doing the dishwasher - it’ll really help!

Text natives on apps like Tandem or HelloTalk. It’ll get you used to forming the written language more quickly, and will let you practice more conversational phrases.

Make sure that you have the basics of grammar down, like all the essential tenses and basic particles, before moving onto harder things. Find a list of grammar, or a textbook that specifically covers intermediate level, and do lots of practice questions on each one.

Watch some native content on YouTube on subjects that you are familiar with and really like. Again, this will be difficult, but helpful! Make sure the videos have subtitles in the target language so that you can follow what it is about. Do NOT use english subtitles. It is vital that you get used to understanding the language without the crutch of the languages you already know. Look up the words that you do not know, and learn them using whatever vocabulary learning method that you like.

Read children’s (like, young children) stories and books to practice reading. It will be surprisingly difficult, because the grammar used in children’s books is usually for around a certain degree of fluency. Learn the vocabulary you don’t know, and try to practice when you can.

Learner’s material and articles are usually quite good for reading as well, as they are frequently quite challenging. You can find some in your textbook, or online if you google “[language] intermediate reading exercises”. You can probably also find reading comprehension books online if you try hard enough.

Learn vocabulary in context instead of memorising lists of vocabulary. Find the vocabulary you don’t know in all the content you are consuming, or look up words that you want to use yourself, and write them down with example sentences. Then, learn them using flashcard apps or websites like memrise, quizlet and anki.

For your pronunciation, shadow native speakers. Listen to how they say words, and imitate them. Personally, I use Easy Languages videos for this, along with random YouTube videos with subtitles in the target language. If a certain sound is difficult for you, then be proactive! Look up YouTube videos and articles on how to pronounce the word, and keep on practicing until you eventually get it.

Engaging with people on social media can be a fun easy way of practicing your TL. You can read or listen to posts and leave comments.

That’s it! That’s all the advice I can possibly think of. I hope you found this post helpful!

Here are some articles that I have found useful in the past:

How You Can Become Fluent in a Language - In Just One Year By Ramsay Lewis

9 points about language learning and how I’m learning 20+ of them By @ravenclawhard

Language learning tips for beginner & intermediate learners 🌍 By Lindie Botes/ @rinkodesu

45 notes · View notes

failedthetopikexam · 4 years

Text

My Top Korean Resources [2020 edition]

I have been discussing resources with a few people on private message and have been thinking a bit about what resources were the best on my journey.... so here’s my final (maybe) compilation of resources for the year that will hopefully be helpful for anyone who is looking at resources between the beginners and upper intermediate levels.

NB. This list is based off materials I have used in the past and is not an exhaustive list of ALL the resources I have used - it is just a selection of some of my favourite. There are so many Korean resources out there so there might be some that work more for you that I haven’t even looked at.

Course Texts

In my opinion, the perfect course text isn’t going to teach you everything you need to know, but a good course text will at least give you a clear framework to chunk up and guide your studies. I have used a few but the most user friendly one is definitely:

Talk To Me In Korean - they set things out clearly so nothing feels overwhelming and provide a sensible framework to follow for self-study. Other course books tend to be better suited for in-class settings and not great for self-study.

Grammar

The course texts will teach you about grammar but I think they don’t teach you how the grammar structures are related to each other. So I think it is key to look at one or more of these books:

Korean Grammar In Use: Beginners

Korean Grammar In Use: Intermediate

The above series is incredible and a serious MUST for all Korean learners. They clearly and concisely set out the grammar points and show how they are all related to each other. There is an Advanced book as well which I have yet to use and will teach quite complex structures.

Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook (I have linked the forthcoming version being released in Dec 2020!)

Intermediate Korean: A Grammar and Workbook

The above Routledge series is great for its workbook feature. The layout is a little academic so it’s not super appealing but the way they explain grammar is clear and relatively detailed. The number of examples included in the workbook is fantastic, providing a lot of opportunity to practice. I haven’t used the Basic book but if it is anything like the Intermediate, it will be a winner.

Vocabulary

The part that people often miss out when learning Korean is vocabulary, because it can be so easy to just follow course texts and grammar books, but those will never teach enough words. To learn more vocab, it is really important to read around. There are so many Korean language books that you can pick up, but here are some books and resources that are catered specifically for language learners that I have loved:

Korean Culture in 100 Keywords - they give a paragraph on different cultural aspects of Korea in both Korean and English and highlight all the new vocabulary for you. The texts are graded from easy to more difficult.

News in Korean - lots of short news stories with translations in English and comprehension questions. Might be targeted more at intermediate learners

Mind Map TOPIK VOCA 2300 - this book sorts vocabulary into categories and shows them as mindmaps. It also gives readers sentences in context and has mini quizzes, HOWEVER it is written in 98% Korean so this is a book that is definitely more pitched at upper intermediate levels and above and teaches vocabulary that is a little less common

Anki - my most used resource. Everyone has their own favourite for flashcards and this is mine. Anki do spaced repetition meaning that it will constantly test your knowledge on vocabulary, spacing the quizzes/tests depending on how difficult you find the word. It is more efficient than other flashcard platforms, but it is a little tricky to get started and create your own cards. If you want to download pre-made decks, you can, but this works best when you add the words you have learned yourself so that you get decks that are full of vocab that is relevant for you

Beelinguapp - This is an app that has some story books written in both Korean and English. It also has an audio function so you can listen to someone reading the stories in Korean. This is neat for pronunciation and listening, and also identifying new words, however the range of stories are limited.

Gloss - Gloss have a set of online lessons pitched at different levels which takes you through articles or texts (or audio and video), then asks a lot of comprehension questions. It follows a lesson format so it is far more engaging than your regular book, however it is a little on the difficult side.

[EXTRA] Your First Hanja Guide - you might not want to learn vocabulary this way and it is absolutely NOT an essential, but for me it is helpful to visualise the Hanja character when seeing the relationship between words, so if you like learning words like that, then this is the book for you

Listening / Watching

Like with reading, there are multiple resources that you can use to listen to native Korean, but here are some that are specifically targeted at learners

여보세요 - this app/website has a few short video clips and goes through slowly to examine the meaning and new words, then has a number of test quizzes through multiple choice or through speaking (via microphone). There are different clips graded by levels and the app tracks your progress and gives progress reports.

Real Life Korean Conversations: Beginners / Intermediate - this IS a book, but it is best used in conjunction with the audio files. The book gives the script, as well as the vocabulary, and also looks at key grammar points and structures used in the conversations

Speaking

There aren’t many resources that I find great for self-studying speaking - generally you need someone else to do that with you, but here is one that I thought was quite neat:

Teuida - I just did a very quick run through this app as it is definitely pitched at beginners, but I thought that it was a smart way of learning some basic conversational Korean. It teaches you phrases and you have to repeat them back through the microphone feedback function. Then to test your retention, they take you through a mock situation and you have to speak your answers - there is quite a strong focus on getting pronunciation correct. My biggest downsides of this app are that the free sections are really limited, AND they seem to have geared the lessons towards the idea of dating, which I just find so awkward and embarrassing hahaha!

Writing

I’m in the market to buy some writing books and have my eye on some but am waiting until I have the time to work on them, but this book is quite neat for learning different sentence structures and how to construct meaningful answers:

Korean Q&A Sentence Patterns - this book poses a question and looks at different ways of answering it. It also shows variations of the question, then examines form. It gives an example long answer and prompts you to think about how to construct your own response using the grammar and vocabulary given

233 notes · View notes

luckydoeslanguage · 6 months

Text

"After dusting off the fountain pen you found within the tin, you refill the barrel with ink. Surprisingly, the pen still works."

started using my binder journal again to talk about the things I'm immersing in right now. i bought the thing during covid, used it once to bullet journal, and promptly abandoned it lmao. kind of rewriting my entry here, since i made this blog for the same purpose. As for my thoughts on CCS for immersion:

Its a great show to start with! after a lot of humming and hawing when it came to finding a show to watch, i ended up settling on this because id never seen it before, and since its aimed at a younger audience the word usage is very simple and easy to follow.

I'm about 16 episodes in and while I don't understand everything, I'm able to get the gist of whats happening without too much trouble.

its also engaging enough that I don't start zoning out in the middle of the episode. I have that problem with Youtube videos. (mostly because i get quite lost while immersing there)

I'm always surprised how many words i kind of just, understand without having to look them up. every time I return to learning JP, I feel bad for not studying for a long time. but when I immerse, the act kind of re-builds the connections my brain has made and I don't have to review that much to pick up where i left off. its kind of like riding a bike.

sometimes immersion learning doesn't really feel like it works. but its moments like this that i think keep me more motivated that I'm doing the right thing with learning.

Overall, i think CCS is pretty good! its very approachable from a language learners perspective. I'm only at about 400 anki cards but i felt pretty comfortable watching the show. there's a lot of look-ups you could do while watching, but i try to not obsess over not knowing a word unless i feel like i need more information on whats going on.

#lukrio chats #japanese langblr #langblr #studyblr #learning japanese #language learning #immersion #lukrios immersion #card captor sakura #CCS #japanese language

1 note · View note

alwaysabeautifullife · 4 years

Note

How did you learn so many languages. Do you have any tips?

Yes!!!! Yes I do!!!

Everything I wish I could tell myself before starting my language “journey” lol:

🦩Dont be intimidated

Don’t be intimidated, specifically by doing listening or speaking practice. I know in the US (or for most English speakers), when we hear someone that speaks perfect English but merely has an accent we think “they don’t speak English”, but from experience this mentality is not shared with other languages. When you know even a little bit of a language or can’t speak it very well, natives speakers are really really encouraging. I think since we view not being 100% fluent without so much as an accent, as “not knowing any of a language” we are hard on ourselves and give up pretty easily.

🦩Listening practice is as important as studying vocabulary and grammar

When you listen to native speakers talk, you are training your ear even though you don’t understand it. Listen and listen, eventually your brain stops picking out English words that aren’t even there, but rather, starts to catch patterns in the language (for example, the same words sticks out to you over and over).

🦩Set realistic and doable goals or you’ll get discouraged and quit

If you are a busy person, make small goals to fit language study in. Don’t tell yourself that you need to master _____ within a week. Instead give yourself 15 mins of reading in the evening, and 25 mins of language listening in the morning. It’s also easier to add the language into stuff you do on a daily basis anyway. For example if you are religious, find your prayers you pray daily in the language you are learning.

🦩learn to read the language first (obviously this tip might not be applicable for character based languages like Chinese)

I know everyone says “immersion is the best and most important part of language” but honestly, a lot of our native speaking knowledge comes from our literacy education. When we are taught how to read, it’s through reading we can discover new words through context. It’s also easy to pick up new language reading since it’s available anywhere, where immersion is only available when you are surrounded by native speakers. The first thing I do is learn how to read and write the language, then the entire language becomes accessible to me.

🦩Spend time perfecting the sounds of the language that are most difficult for you

The vocal sounds of a language is the foundation of a language. I know we are all impatient and want to simply learn as many phrases as possible as fast as possible, but if you get down the unfamiliar sounds of a language that don’t exist in English, you’ll have a better foundation of the language and your speaking and listening will be better from the very beginning. So take the time to practice those weird sounds by looking into the position of the tongue and where the sound comes from, from the chest to the lips. Look into how tense the mouth is, how much air comes from the lips, what the sound is like next to other sounds. When you master this speaking becomes more instinctual and it’s easier to pick up the language.

🦩Search YouTube, google, Instagram IN THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE STUDYING.

Don’t search “korean music” or “korean kids tv” or even “korean vegetables” in google. Just translate how to say them in a translator app, then copy and paste them into the search bar. This way native korean information, videos, posts will come up. For example, if you’re in the mood for some horror comics, and want to read/watch them in the language you are learning, go to the translator app, and figure out how to say them, then search it. It works way better, even if the translation isn’t correct or more natural, you’ll still get the information, posts, and videos you want to see.

🦩Find ways to practice speaking the language (I use HiNative) and don’t be discouraged by corrections.

Getting corrected does not mean you’re wrong, corrections are the most useful part of learning a language. If you are the type of person who is sensitive to criticism, you need to remind yourself corrections are NOT criticism. They are NOT a reflection of your progress, they are NOT you failing! You will always be corrected as a language learner and the sooner you are gentle with yourself in learning the sooner you will learn more. Get those first corrections out of the way, allow yourself to butcher pronunciation, get corrected for the first 10 times, let it sting a little and move on. Eventually you will be begging native speakers to tell you every little detail in where you went wrong!

🦩Tv and Books seems to be more useful for immersion and listening practice then music does

So far in my experience music is its very weird and abstract, and the things said in music aren’t really useful in speaking? It’s good for gathering vocab, but if you want music listening practice that’s music based try searching for rap in that language, although obviously you’ll be picking up a lot of informal language in music/rap. Tv shows however are typically how people really do talk, so turn off English subs and just listen! Books are really useful for learning new vocabulary, but sometimes written language is different than spoken (often), although when you speak it the way you’ve learned from a book the worst you’ll sound is “formal and poetic”.

🦩Look up “insert language you are learning phrases and words that aren’t useful or correct”

There so many programs and books that teach you phrases you’ll never use or that are only appropriate in very specific situations. I don’t know why language programs do this, but learning which ones are weird or only in specific settings before you start learning really helps. Chinese Especially does this...like I learned so many phrases and words that natives will never use and have no purpose???

🦩Know the different subjects of learning a language and which apps to use for that

Everyone uses Duolingo, but this app alone won’t make you speak a language. Duolingo and Memrise are great for memorizing vocab, but, is it vocab that in the context of your reading and listening practice? Are you learning words you are hearing and reading all the time? Duolingo is a lot of fun but I feel like the vocab is so broad and it doesn’t go deep enough into the language. Feel free to use it at first to get used to the sounds of the language, but try using flash card apps like quizlet or Anki instead where you can write down and study words you are hearing constantly. Memrise does have actually study sets for many language books and lessons! So you can study words you are hearing in specific programs and books which is pretty useful in regards to vocab.

There obviously is more than just learning vocab. What about grammar, listening practice, speaking practice and reading? If you are wanting to use primarily apps find out which apps are available for your language. Here is an example of the apps I use for each subject. Be aware some languages are not available on them.

Vocab: quizlet, anki

Grammar: books (printed or kindle), YouTube grammar lessons, websites

Reading: books (printed or kindle), beelinguapp, instagram (posts that have text), Netflix/YouTube with both subtitles in the language you are learning and spoken in language you are learning, epic app

Writing: just use paper and pencil/pen

Listening: audio books (beelinguapp/epic/kindle/YouTube), tv and movies (Netflix/YouTube etc with no English subs), conversations on YouTube (search in language you are studying, don’t search “Spanish conversations” or “Japanese conversations”)

Speaking: HiNative (pretty much all I use since it’s all languages, quick, and you get immediately answered and corrected by native speakers), get friends in language you are learning through lots of apps

Translator: it’s really hard to find a good one, most of them are really weird so only use them for words and the most basic or simple phrases and sentences, otherwise use HiNative to ask native speakers directly, or ask people on the apps that connect you to native speakers

🌱I should note that for talking to native speakers I only like HiNative, since it’s built to NOT be a form of social networking at all. It’s not personal in anyway, and there’s no way to private message or speak to other users outside a asking questions publicly. The people on there are only about learning or teaching a language, not usually making friends. I’ve found the sites that are built to make native speaking friends aren’t useful to me personally, as most of the native speakers are either dudes looking for a woman to date or people wanting to only practice English with you, so they wasted a lot of my study time. People who are willing to help you learn are there, but it takes time to filter everything else out. If you would find it helpful to make friends by all means use them but I don’t really use it myself.🌱

You don’t want to really study EVERY SUBJECT every single day (unless you have the time). It can get really overwhelming, and you don’t really absorb information that if you are just cramming. While I would say it’s good to read and listen daily, spread subjects out over the week. Grammar on Monday and Friday, vocab on Tuesday and Thursday. Take one day to review all of what you’ve learned all week. Pick a day you have the largest block of free time. Bi-weekly works fine too.

I have an old post on how I organize my study time for multiple languages: https://alwaysabeautifullife.tumblr.com/post/182817883372/what-do-you-use-to-learn-your-languages-im

🦩Write sentences daily of everything you’ve learned (no THIS I RECOMMEND DAILY)

Write as many as you can. Use all the grammar you’ve learned, the words you’ve learned, everything! Write them in your notes and submit them to be corrected in HiNative. The sentences they correct, put them in flash cards!

🦩It’s ok to abandon languages you aren’t passionate in

So you’ve learned to read the language, and you know basic phrases, and now you just don’t want to do it anymore. If you can’t think of any reason to maintain it and don’t know why you are studying it, learning some of the language is good! Fluency does NOT need to be everyone’s goal. You can hold a conversation, and that’s good enough for you. Feel free to try out various languages, there will be one or some that really are your passion, it’s fine to have the goal of fluency in those and conversational in others.

Don’t abandon languages however because you feel discouraged. Discouragement is just a bump to get over, when you train your brain to maintain study habits through the days you feel discouraged, you make it habitual. Habits are harder to break and abandon! Evaluate your reasonings for wanting to speak a language, and your reasons for abandoning them if you want. Don’t let difficulty, disorganized, discouragement, or poor time management get in your way!!

🦩With all that said it’s ok to take breaks

It’s ok to get overwhelmed and take breaks from language learning. If you can still maintain what you’ve learned by listening to music in your language or staying connected in some way that’s good, but the “you’ll loose a language” isn’t entirely true. I’ve taken year long breaks and refreshing what I learned previously is pretty easy! Your brain really does go “oh yeah I do remember this!” when you’re studying information you studied years ago.

🦩Be gentle with yourself

Be gentle with yourself. People that claim to be fluent in 6 months are selling something or want to be an influencer. Don’t compare yourself to them. Language learning even for natives is a lifetime education. It’s not something you do for 6 months then stop. It’s continual and that looks different for everyone (yes native speakers included). Don’t bother watching YouTube videos on how to learn in 10 mins or 3 months, you’ll only get discouraged about your own amazing progress and all the work you’ve done.

🦩Plan your “can you say something in it” phrase now

This one is just for fun but after hearing you are learning a language the first thing you’ll get asked is “oh cool you speak (insert target language here)? Can you say something in (insert target language here)?” It does not matter what level of fluency you are at, you will absolutely forget the entire language and your own native language when you are asked this because it sends your brain to another dimension. So think of some funny phrases to say to people who ask, master them, then when they ask what they mean you can have a laugh. Other wise you will say something stupid of jumbled words (my go to was ‘we women are fruit’ for some reason thanks brain you’re incredible) you’ve learned that don’t belong in a sentence, or even worse you’ll run a blank and you’ll just look at them like:

🍳👄🍳

So think of inside jokes to tell your friends, funny phrases, even goofy insults! Memorize them and tell them at your friends and family to torture them because they can’t escape sound waves! It’s a good way to memorize the language but also to become confortable speaking it!

Please excuse any errors I don’t wanna go over my mistakes so pretend u can’t see them 🙈

#langblr #learning languages #korean #spanish #italian #portuguese #lang resources #lang apps #lang

437 notes · View notes

zakuwatorka · 4 years

Photo

Do you want to learn Chinese but you don’t know how to start? That’s the post for you!

Many times I got messages from people who want to learn Chinese Mandarin, but they do not know how to start, what to buy, which website is good or which APP they should download. So I’ve decided to prepare a post where I try to explain as much as I can! Basics about Chinese language, textbooks, useful APPs and websites.

Pinyin 拼音 (pīn yīn) Chinese romanization system

The most important thing is to get familiar with sounds and romanization system of Chinese characters.

I recommend you to watch these two videos below:

initials

finals.

Get familiar with tones too! In Chinese there are 4 tones:

first tone ( ˉ ) called flat or high-level tone 妈 mā

second tone ( ˊ ) called rising or high-rising tone 麻 má

third tone ( ˇ ) called falling-rising or low tone 马 mǎ

fourth tone ( ˋ ) called falling or high-falling tone 骂 mà

plus neutral tone! 吗 ma

If you want to practice your tones and listen to it, I can recommend you this website: Introduction to Tones. 🗣 say initials and finals at loud, 🗣 say at loud every word you learn - multiple times! 🗣 try to record yourself and listen to your audio, 🗣 if you have Chinese friends - send them your audio or try to speak with them, and ask for corrections! 🗣 if you don’t have Chinese friends - you can always send audio to apps like HiNative, HelloTalk or Tandem and see how natives are reacting on your Chinese! 🗣 if you want - you can get Chinese classes - for beginners, it’s a smart move, in my humble opinion (or get a teacher on iTalki).

Characters 汉字 (Hàn zì)

Chinese is a special language because it has characters - not letters. Each character has its own reading and meaning!

For better understanding them, I would like to recommend you to think about them as small pictures! There are two types of writing Chinese characters:

traditional 媽麻馬罵嗎

simplified 妈麻马骂吗

The traditional one is used in Taiwan and Hongkong and simplified one is used in Mainland China. You can see that the traditional one are more complicated and have more lines! In the beginning, I’d recommend you to learn 100 most common Chinese Characters. Try to write characters as many as you can - at the very beginning, it’s very important to get used to a new way of writing!

When you are already more advanced and you easily remembered 100 characters, you can read about Radicals - they will help you to understand more advanced characters and how they are constructed.

📖 You can definitely check the book by James Heisig “Remembering the Hanzi”. He had a cool idea of how in an easy way people from outside China (or Japan/Korea) can understand and learn characters!

📝 write, write, write hanzi every day! 📝 try to post pictures of your characters on IG/tumblr or send it to someone who knows how to write them, so they can check it for you and tell you how to improve! 📝 at the beginning every character looks crappy - it’s normal!

HSK exam

You are at the beginning of the journey with Chinese, so I will not talk a lot about the Chinese Proficiency Test (汉语水平考试). The basic thing you should know, there are 6 levels (at the moment there are 6, but they are planning to add 3 more levels for more advanced learners). Each level has a list of characters, words and grammar points you have to know. Don’t bother yourself with HSK exams if you don’t need at the very beginning. I haven’t touch HSK 1, 2 and 3 - I was just studying with my textbooks and I ended up at HSK 5 somehow! :D

Textbooks

At the very beginning, I can recommend you to invest in a textbook. I know a lot of people want to learn for “free” and not to spend a single $... You can always check if your local/academical library has any textbooks! I am a textbook-person, I need at the beginning of any language some books to make myself “into” the language, to feel it and understand basics. Two series of textbooks to Chinese I know and tried are:

New Practical Chinese Reader

Boya Chinese.

Personally, I am a fan of New Practical Chinese Reader. I used NPChR tom 1, 2, 3 and now I’m working with 4th tom! If you already know that you want/need to prepare to HSK exam, then I highly recommend series:

HSK Standard Course!

HSK Vocabulary Book (mini-series).

APPs

Below I’ve mentioned few of apps that I recommend and they are perfect for the start!

📱 Memrise - this app was with me at the very beginning and I still use it! The perfect tool to remember new vocabulary/sentences! There are plenty of official courses created by Memrise app, but also courses made by other users. Official courses have short videos with native speakers, which is a really nice bonus because you can hear REAL people :]

📱 SuperChinese - a very solid app which is going to introduce you to the Chinese language world! They have real-life conversations, teach how to write characters, a function of speech recognition (so you can practice your pronunciation and tones) and many many more functions. Download it and you will not regret it! 📱 Pleco - Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary and life-saver. I don’t know any Chinese learner who doesn’t use this dictionary, seriously!

📱 HelloTalk, HiNative, Tandem - all these three apps are good to meet natives! You can find folks from China and talk with them! Personally, I used them a lot at the very beginning. I wanted to see how natives are texting and make some new friends!

📱 APPs (beside Memrise) that help you to learn vocabulary: Anki, Quizlet.

Websites

Excellent websites for beginners are:

Little Fox Chinese

BBC Learn Chinese

Chairman Bao

Yellow Bridge

Chinese Tools

Courses on edX

Courses on Coursera

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ If you find this post useful: like, repost and follow me. And stay tuned for more info! You can also follow my instagram, where I post my everyday struggle with Chinese!

#chinese #mandarin #learn chinese #study chinese #chinese begginer #chinese characters #pinyin #resources #study tips #studyblr #langblr #china #apps to study #hsk #textbooks #chinese textbooks

316 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 3 years

Text

gonna be honest i think a huge weak point of immersion based learning methods (specifically ones like massive immersion approach/Refold and AJATT) is learning good production skills. In general these study approaches say explicit grammar instruction is unneeded (though you might choose to seek it out). So in general, you’re learning grammar through exposure. And word use through exposure. I think these study methods work well for comprehension skills, and that the study methods they use to learn grammar implicitly enough to understand it (srs flashcards, looking things up, etc).

But for a few reasons I think they aren’t super great for learning good production skills (and some of these reasons just apply to general self-studying languages in general):

A lot of people who DO these study approaches, and record their experiences, are beginners/intermediate. And since these approaches say do NOT focus on production until you have a high comprehension level, there’s just not much documentation of what to even DO during the production skills learning process. In general it is doable to find examples of individuals who have successfully done methods like Massive Immersion Approach enough to comprehend X material in a language, and who have explained what they did and their comprehension milestones. So it is feasible to copy their study plan and expect a similar result.

But for production skills, there are less examples of people who’ve successfully learned to produce to the level of fluency they are satisfied with, and to find examples of them explaining specifically HOW they worked on those production skills. I can think of only 2 examples of people I’ve seen who did mia and then ‘somewhat’ worked on production skills - Khalifa who studied Spanish (he did frequent tutoring sessions with lots of speaking practice to improve his production skills - https://youtu.be/lqxWYAGDQy0), Luke Truman (he produced language and did language exchange from the beginning of his learning and throughout - https://youtu.be/dDZgec6uzMs). In both of these examples - the people learned production skills by producing language with a language partner often (sometimes a tutor) to smooth out production skills. This does not particularly tell us if they could pass a language fluency test with their production skills, use their production skills professionally or in classes in that language, or if they’re still working on production skills (if so how much longer did they take tutoring sessions, how did they structure the sessions, and did they do any Other exercises to improve production skills?)

Since its hard to find what people even do during this production phase of learning in such approaches, its hard to see if it’s successful and by how much. Hard to see what pitfalls they have to work on addressing, hard to see what methods people do AT the production stage to improve and solidify their production skills. In general it is just HARD to see what steps people are even meant to take during this production stage if using these language learning approaches. In the examples I mentioned above, I’ve seen people practice production by simply TRYING once they reach a certain level of comprehension skill, and trying often. But that doesn’t address improving mistakes/issues with production.

For accent - Shadowing has been mentioned in mia as an activity to do to improve production accent (which is a practical activity to improve that skill). For grammar mistakes and correction, mia’s Matt has mentioned making srs anki cards for grammar points he notices he can’t produce or think of and then drilling/studying them. This indicates looking up correct grammar points explicitly at some point - or does he just look at example sentences? Also this indicates still using anki cards, so is the solution to just continue drilling sentence examples even for production skills?

From what I can tell, the methods for working on production seem to be:

Get a tutor. Start practicing speaking at least weekly. Also do language exchanges if possible. (only a tutor might explicitly address helping you notice and improve errors)

Start shadowing (improves accent, and I do think this is a free study method that would help)

Make more srs anki cards to drill any sentence patterns you don’t seem to know how to say well/notice you’ve made errors on (so continue the srs anki approach that you used in comprehension learning stage - what I dislike here is this is still potentially implicit study of grammar, so for example if you made the mistake to/too/two in english it would be studying example sentences instead of reading an explanation of when to use which to/two/too which seems more confusing/harder to quickly grasp for the kind of learner I am).

I am guessing here - but if planning to take a language test (like the JLPT, HSK, CEFR) get a test-prep textbook/guide/site/worksheets/practice-tests and work through it. I can’t remember if I’ve seen anyone do AJATT or MIA and then take the JLPT test, but most youtubers I’ve seen who have taken the test in general got a prep-textbook or course ahead of time to study and prepare.

So. If I were going to apply developing production study skills to myself, what might that look like? Since I don’t like using srs flashcards much, and I hate learning from examples when there’s quicker ways to get a correction.

What I might try to do in future for production skills:

*Shadowing - pretty self explanatory. Improve listening skills, improve accent. (And maybe if I’m lucky it will help with active vocab a little? Although I’ve seen no specific studies on that).

*Write more often in language - easy ways to do this include journaling (journaly is a thing?), so I have time to look up words I want to use (might help active vocab expansion) and think about my grammar. Strategies that might help grammar here could include looking at language sentence patterns (grammar/sentence pattern book/website), and practicing substitution (using other words relevant to me, while practicing a sentence pattern as a journal entry). This could help me practice from generally ‘correct’ grammar form, while also helping my active vocab and learning how to say what I generally think of saying.

*Use a test-related textbook/site and work through it doing the exercises. (Like the HSK books I have). While not super fun, I think this is the closest way to get classroom-like benefit of doing correct grammar patterns with aids to refer back to.

Language exchange - aiming to talk/write more. This would be free, and simply production practice (would help with active vocabulary, might only be practice for other skills).

Paid: see a tutor weekly. Would help like language exchange, likely be more targeted since less time spent in english, and more likely to receive feedback on mistakes.

*Paid: test-related courses (like the coursera courses, or Chinese Zero To Hero* courses: https://chinesezerotohero.teachable.com/). Benefit would be more videos, possibly more support, and exercises specifically with direction and aids to refer back to. (I’ve had Chinese Zero to Hero courses recommended to me)

* starred ideas I think would be most likely to help.

---

For me:

For free things, I think journaling based on sentence-pattern sentence examples would work very well. So read a grammar textbook/sentence-pattern guide/site/textbook then do a journal entry emulating that point with words I want to put into active vocab. I think that activity would put my already-owned study books to good use, and allow me to practice production/active vocab/correct grammar.

I also think working through a test-oriented site/book would help - I have pdfs of some so this is something I could do for free, and it would be something I could combine with journaling like the idea above. This would also be more progressive/organized more according to difficulty (which could bore me or alternatively help me build good habits from the bottom up).

Shadowing and language exchanges I already do a little, and plan to do more once I start focusing on production more. I think for paid options - the test-oriented courses may actually help the most with the concern I have for ‘improving overall grammar.’ Tutors can help with production practice, more focused than some language exchanges, so tutors may help eventually too but not in that ‘explicit grammar improvement’ way I want to be able to mostly study and fix myself.

So I think, ultimately, what my study plan is going to look like for production skills:

1. Continue improving comprehension skills. Add shadowing more, over time. (language exchange if desired)

2a. Once comprehension is in a good place, pick a book I have (sentence patterns if I have one, or HSK oriented textbook) and go through it doing practice journal entries for each example. Try to use words in the example book, and words in general I think I’d want to use. (Continue shadowing, and immersion in general for comprehension skills).

2b. If I can stick to doing this, work through a book/site. If I cannot stick to this (boredom, badly organized book, etc?) then look at paid course options at that point (Chinese Zero to Hero?) in case a class-style organization/commitment will push me to complete it better. (Continue shadowing, and immersion in general for comprehension skills).

Then After all that, practice away lol.

#study plan #study method #rant #may #may progress #production #production skills #nts #note to self #yeah this seems obvious #output #but for me it really isn't ;-; i have been contemplating for a few months how to improve production skills if self-studying like i am rn #comprehension skills are really pretty straightforward tbh... learn basics. then TRY. then lookup some reference as needed.#a lot of just 'try and DO' like drawing lol.#but production skills are like... english class in school... its like how do you emulate learning to write essays correctly when you have no #teacher or courses guiding your activities?

12 notes · View notes