Second Week
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| Extensive vs Intensive Listening ... somewhat ironic that the first line of Star Wars is "Did you hear that?" |
Progress has been steady this week, although the forces of living everyday life are always threatening to kick you to the floor.
Firstly, the listening to Olly Richard's "Conversations" have been something that I have been able to maintain consistently. One of my friends raised a valid point regarding the goal to transition to authentic material once I've completed all twenty conversations.
Essentially, I had previously stated that I believe at the end of the twenty conversations, I will transition to authentic materials. But of course, that begs the question, "will I really be in a position to comprehend authentic materials?" Judging by past experiences in listening to podcasts; probably not ... although, I'm currently feeling that I was able to comprehend enough of the movie, "Heavenly Forest" to feel confident that I can sentence mine that movie and transition to that as my primary source of input. So with that in mind, I started creating a course on Memrise.
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Start of the first five minutes of "Heavenly Forest" |
That's all "Intensive Listening" where I want to fully understand every single word. I think it's a reasonable goal to finish this year by being able to fully comprehend all of Olly's conversations and this two hour movie.
But then, for "Extensive Listening", I'll be watching Star Wars movies, anime and listening to podcasts with varying degrees of comprehension. Star Wars is perhaps a big jump from "Heavenly Forest" in regards comprehension. The language is currently pretty incomprehensible even with subtitles. The subtitles don't match the spoken Japanese most of the time. However, Star Wars does give me a schema; since I've watched each movie over a hundred times and in English would be able to repeat each line of dialogue. So of course, that gives me some hooks to hang the Japanese.
Kanji
So one goal I set myself last week was to bring my apprentice stack of reviews on Wanikani down below 200. Mission accomplished!
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| Getting the 'Apprentice' stack down to 188 makes a big difference. |
Originally, I had hoped to get my apprentice stack down to 100 by the beginning of the month. I estimate it will be another two weeks before I'm there. I'm also doing kanji writing practice regularly every morning, so that's half an hour before I go to work.
I went on a road trip to Suzumejima (Sparrow Island) a couple of days ago. I had a language learning "fail" and "triumph" on the way there. The fail was when I wanted to ask a restaurant owner if it was okay to leave the car in the car park while we went to take photographs on the beach. The guy didn't comprehend what I was trying to say and I froze up. My friend then swiftly asked in a very short burst of Japanese and the restaurant owner instantly understood what was being said. Perhaps I was trying to hard to be articulate ... my friend simply asked if it was okay to park the car, whereas I was trying to explain that we wanted to go down to the beach, take some photos and would be back in around ten minutes.
Later that day though, I had a triumph. I was in a shop and when I got to the check out, I didn't want to split a 1,000 yen note, so explained to the lady that I had more money in my pockets ... so as I was searching for the correct amount, gave her a running commentary on what I'd found ... that perhaps if I jumped up and down I'd find another one yen coin ... and then when I thought I'd found the exact figure, on realizing that I'd put an extra five yen coin in the pile ... said mathematics wasn't my greatest skill. All this amused the check out lady and I walked away feeling very good about the fact that I'd been able to have a laugh with her.
Why the difference ... well, in reflection, that triumphant conversation is one I've had a lot ... it's a conversation I'll have quite often ... so I'm very familiar with it. The "language fail" conversation was trying to articulate a more complex story and use vocabulary I don't use so often.
A few weeks ago, I guess that language fail would have been just as painful as it was when it happened ... however, it seemed that simply by acknowledging there's a difference between uttering stuff that I'm familiar with vs. stuff that I've never uttered before is hugely different ... I'm not beating myself up about it the way I probably would have before. So there's progress.
Ultimately, if I wasn't entirely convinced that massive exposure to authentic input was the key to going from suck to splendor, this experience really bolstered my feeling that both exposure to the natural rhythm of the language, attaching particles instinctively and a healthy dose of repetition is going to get me there.
My friend has escaped the psychiatric hospital.
Another rather amusing gain this week. In Olly's Conversations; they were speaking about a penguin that has escaped from the zoo. I comprehended the sentence without any problem at all, but only because I knew 動物園から逃げて来た (doubutsuen kara nigetekita) ... ran away / escaped from the zoo. Incidentally, I wouldn't have compounded the verb to escape 逃げて with 来た (to come). So I learned that when you're talking about something that has escaped from somewhere else, you use 逃げて来た
So I thought OK, where else can something escape from ... police custody (警察の監禁) ... prison (刑務所) and how about psychiatric hospital (精神科病院). I quickly wrote out some sentences:
Now you might not think knowing these words is that useful; but literally the same day, I was able to help someone with their 自己紹介 (self-introduction). Not the usual ... "My name is .... I'm from .... etc etc". Lets just say the self introduction included the line: 精神科病院から逃げて来た (I escaped from a psychiatric hospital).
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