Share Your Goals!

[Jacob]

I FEEL GUILTY... I keep promising to come on here and study. But being human I forget and get side-tracked. I want this thread to be like the thread that has what I need to review briefly as I forget... Basically just broad topics that I can recall to refresh my Japanese. In the summer (another promise) I will come on here  3days a week! Im trying my best but I am so busy it will be difficult

[Jembru]

It's good to see you Jacob! We miss you when you're away, but we understand how demanding your studies are. It's not unusual to find it difficult to fit Japanese around a busy life. I'm always tweeking my routine to make it as time and effort efficient as possible.

Loads of us have experienced drifting in and out of study in the early days. I studied for 3 months, then quit for 3 years, then studied for 6 months, and quit for 4 years before finally giving Japanese the attention it deserves! Others have definitely mentioned similar exeriences. When the time is right, you'll slip into a routine that suits your lifestyle!

Anyway, I like the idea of having somewhere to set goals. At the end of each week, I usually write a summary in my dairy of how the week went and then set a goal for the following week. Maybe. Could write that here too? It might be quite motivating to share my goals openly!

This weeks goal was... 'Experiment with alternative lesson plans'

I usually set my new goal on a Sunday evening though, so I'm almost done with that one.

[Jacob]

I've also found one other way.. to have a dry-erase board in your room and to keep vocab on it so when you leave you can see it.

[Jembru]

Mar 16, 2014 17:20:40 GMT Jacob said:

I've also found one other way.. to have a dry-erase board in your room and to keep vocab on it so when you leave you can see it.

Aaaauuughhhhh... we had so much stress over our memo board!! JP recently helped me to create a cosy little study in the spare bedrood and we thought a memo board would be a good idea. The PC in that room used to be used only for minecraft, and I had been using sheets of wall paper pinned to the wall so I could scribble down vocab while I played.  So JP decided to get a memo board that's half cork and half dry erase. He said I can scribble notes on it, but then I have to transfer them to paper and pin them if I want them there for another time. It seemed like a good idea at first but it was hung with 'no nails' pads and fell down about a week ago. We've been trying to get hooks into it ever since but it's just such a headache. I think I'll just get more no nails and cover it next time.

Anyway, assuming you can convince one to stay on your wall, I agree.. that's a very good idea Jacob. I hope you come back and tell us how well it works for you!

Well, I said I'd join in by sharing me weekly goals. So here's my report on how last week's goal went;

Last week, I wrote in my week to view planner that I felt I wanted to experiment with different study methods with a view to tighten up the various methods I use so that they all follow a similar theme, but at the same time, vary the way I conduct my Jpod sessions, because it was getting a bit boring and also, the upper intermediate dialogues don't lend themselves so well to my original method.

As a result, I now have a basic outline for study sessions that works regardless of what material I'm using, or what I'm practicing (reading, writing, conversation, grammar... anything). It's basically 'warm up', 'study and controlled practice', 'free practice'. 

I've also created a special study plan to follow during my free time at work (that follows the same outline as everything else). I've only had 2 shifts during which I could test it, but it seems to be working well for me. Of course, this also gave me an excuse to start yet another new notebook!! ^^

Oh and I use a timer now. I study in 40 minute bursts because when I was a student, I attended a seminar on revision methods and they said you retain the most information in the first 15 minutes of study, and if you push your self past 45 minutes without a break, you start forgetting things and pretty much waste your time. I decided to be overcautious and make it 40 minute bursts. The timer helps me to keep on task and not wonder off and start doing something else. I usually aim for 2 per session, with a 10 minute break between.

So this week's goal is... 'Identify and remove mental blocks'.

More accurately, I've decided to go into self-help mode and try to stop that voice in my head that keeps telling me I can't do this, I'm not smart enough and so on.  No matter how good my study methods are (and I personally think they're pretty darned cool), I just sabbatage myself by being so critical. I don't practice as much as I should, because I get so overcome with fear that I can't speak and avoid the stress and trauma by making excuses to myself not to seek out opportunities to practice. If I never practice, I can't get better and that just perpetuates the vicious cycle! So.. this week I'm going all pro-active!!

No promises this will work, but knowing I've shared this here already makes me feel motivated to succeed!!

(btw if you'd rather this thread was just for your goals Jacob, let me know and I can move this to a seperate 'Share your goals' thread).

[Jacob]

Jembru Im sorry about your troubles with the board! I just went to Target and got a like... 12 in. by 12 in. Dry-erase board... my Dad put a nail in the wall and hung it up (*somehow...*). Im afraid I forget to change the words weekly though... And the stuff you are posting on this thread is Perfect! In fact can I rename the Title of this thread to that: 'Share your Goals'

[LittleGaijin]

Yeah, we really missed seeing you around, Jacob! You're one of the few members who came here from the old site, so we were really sad when you disappeared! I'm just glad that you're back!!

I put "Japanese Literature" on the poll, because I have so many Japanese books that I wish I could read without seeing words here and there that I can't understand... (especially since I have a copy of Game of Thrones in Japanese on my desk right now), but I think the thing that actually motivates me the most is talking with friends in Japanese; studying hard so that I don't have to look anything up when having a conversation!

[Jacob]

LittleGaijin these are all wonderful reasons to come back to the site and have discussions with people that are motivated...

[Jembru]

Yeah, I picked 'other', because my motivation has always been my friends. Like Anna, I just want to be able to use Japanese to communicate freely with people who mean so much to me. If I can even pick up some new friends along the way, even better! In particular, there is a 1 year old girl (she'll be 2 this august), who is very special, and who's mum hopes to raise bilngually. She can only do this if enough people in this girls life speak Japanese to her. On my darkest days, I try to remember I'm doing this for her too!

Other than that, my motivation is being able to have one thing I can be proud of myself for. It's a double edged sword though, because I then use not being there yet as an excuse to beat myself up, so that it ends up demotivating me more than anything!

Maybe we could also use a thread for sharing our motivation?

[Jacob]

Jembru This thread is for anything you all need to be for!

[Jembru]

Sorry I'm a bit late updating. So I think the confidence boosting week went well, but I've decided to continue the techniques I started, so that at least for now, they're part of my everyday study routine.

Last week, my focus was on increasing spoken fluency. I'd chosen shadowing as my technique for this, but then just after that, Chocopie told me about a cool book that I hastily bought myself. I've therefore decided to make shadowing my goal for this week too. I've already chosen next weeks goal too. I@m going to spend the week working on drilling recently learnt grammar. I usually include at least one grammar drill session per week anyway, but I think I'll try to do one per day next week, because I've found I'm still just sticking to safer structures when I speak.

Hope your studies are going well too Jacob, or rather, what you can make time for!

[Jembru]

Have you managed to squeeze a little Japanese into your busy life Jacob? It's so tough. So much to do, so little time to study. >.<

I mentioned my notice board but forgot to update...

So JP had made me a little study corner by clearing out much of the clutter in the spare bedroom. It was really sweet of him, but not a very comfortable area to study in. I decided to spend a little money on furniture to make my study space more comfortable.

This is how it looked before (sorry it's so blurry, I think my phone can do better, but all technology turns to poop in my hands)... basically just for playing minecraft.



My Japanese textbooks were kept in an entirely different room, and they didn't really fit on the desk, so it was a bit of a pain to use such a small space.

Once my furniture came, and after a bit of effort, I finally have this...




I just feel better studying in there. In that photo, I've been using my laptop, but I also use my PC now (I just carry my laptop through if I was already using it and decide I want to study more seriously). I feel much more focused in my little room now. Unfortunately, JP also feels the vibe, so I get kicked out when he needs the room for his more creative pursuits ^^

When it comes to my Japanese studies, I'm always up and down. I experience dips where I feel really depressed, and even consider quitting because I feel that no matter how hard I try, I get nowhere. Then there are times, admittedly short-lived, when in spite of myself, I actually think, 'yeah, I'm actually making progress here'. I think I'm experiencing one of these periods.

My current 'course', dare I say it, seems to be working! At one point tonight, I went to the toilet and Miyo followed. We talked a little about how nice the toilets were in that place, then returned together to our friends, remarking on what a strange but nice venue it was. As I descended the stairs, I suddenly became a little emotional as I realised that while I'd definitely contributed much less to the conversations than my native and fluent friends, I actually HAD followed pretty much everything and I don't remember even once asking for the meaning, even when asked direct questions (I'd missed details of course, but caught enough of the gist to join in without any confusion). I'm a bit shy to say too much, as I know my friends sometimes sneakily read my gaiwa posts, but yeah.. tonight felt was like a turning point somehow.

So.. this week's 'goal' was 'stick to daily study tasks', which I seem to be managing, and next week.. I think I'm going to try to capitalise on my recent glimmer of progress and aim for a bold 5 conversations in one week. I don't know though, because I only have one night free and have no means of conversing besides text messages when I'm at work (and no one is awake to text me at 3am^^). If I decide I can't manage that, I'll probably make next week a 'flood with input' week and go for listening practice.

Have I ever told you I hate Japanese....?

[Jembru]

Well, the time has finally come where I stop focusing so much on speaking and listening and start to brush up my reading and writing skills. I think my conversation skills have improved as much as they're going to with the amount of vocabulary and grammar I currently recognise.

So while I'll of course still be exposing myself to spoken Japanese as much as I can, I won't be studying from it as such. Instead, I'll be working on my reading and writing, learning the 1,000+ jouyou kanji I still can't read and picking up grammar as I go. My hope is that from January of next year I'll be able to study from Japanese novels and monolingual textbooks, keeping all my own study notes in Japanese too (although I'll probably write all but the most common words in kana.. lets not aim too high ^^). I've heard Japanese people say that reading novels in English really helped them to improve. I've bought myself some manga aimed at young readers that use furigana throughout. I'm hoping to read those for now and then from next year when my reading is better, I can start reading all these novels that are sitting on my shelf collecting dust.

For the last 3 months I've been ignoring reading and writing.. not posting on lang-8, staying out of the reading threads or Japanese threads here at Gaiwa.. staying clear of anything that would distract from my primary objective basically. I guess I'll be joining in with all that again now. In fact, I already posted to lang-8 a day early, to explain my new plan.

I've already divided the next 5 months into 4 courses. A 2 week course starting tomorrow, followed by a 4 week course and then 2 8 week courses after that. If I remember, I'll post here at the end/start of each course. Kinda like what Alan is doing in his beginner's story thread. I should be able to reach this goal. It's not too ambitious. Even if I only increase my kanji knowledge by a couple of hundred (easy to do over 5 months), I should still be able to read well enough to continue monolingually. I'll just have to use my dictionary a bit more.

Oh and I use mascots when I study. My last one was a kokeshi doll with roses on her kimono that was given to me because her name was Jemma like me! ^^ This time, I've decided to go for Kuromi because she's badass and I want to be badass too! That's why I've changed my profile picture to Kuromi! My new stationary has her on too and I'm even wearing my Kuromi underwear (you really needed to know that didn't you? ^^)  

So my first 2 week course is: Handwriting Basics. I'll be practicing writing kana and grade 1+2 kanji. I've studied the writing of these already, but am just a bit rusty. It shouldn't really take more than a few days to remember all the stroke orders and so on, but I'll be reading manga, posting on lang-8 and still continuing with my video journal during this time, so 2 weeks is more realistic.  

I wish you all the greatest of success in your studies! Lets all do our best!  

[Jembru]

Well, I finished my 2 week writing course yesterday. It went pretty well I think. Before I started I could only write a small handful of kanji from memory and often got kana mixed up. I was going to focus mainly on kana and 1st grade kanji, but refreshing these took less time than I expected. So I started learning 2nd grade kanji and kanji from words I frequently need to write in my study planner (where I write what I do each day, so I needed to be able to write things like 練習、投稿). So I'm now at least keeping my day planner entirely in Japanese and can write approximately 120 kanji from memory.

I use a handwritten flashcard that has kana on one side and the kanji on the other. I write 12 kanji at a time and I'm going in grade order using this as a guide -> Jouyou kanji by grade I skip kanji I already know how to write and I sometimes add kanji from other grades if I frequently need to write them. 

I added a deck to anki for writing practice. As I add a character to my hand-written flashcard, I add compounds of that character to the writing deck. If it's a word I know I prompt in kana, if it's a brand new word, I use English and include the kana on the reverse with the kanji. I've learnt some new words this way already... 直角right angle, 四つ角crossroads, 中年middle-aged, 草分け pioneer all words I'd never come across but that use simple kanji! 

Posting to lang-8 is working out pretty well. The feedback is so useful and I've ironed out a few verbal slurs I make as a result. I was a bit upset with my last post though because only one person replied and other than rewording the title, they marked every line as perfect. I knew they weren't perfect so waited for a normal person to read, but no one did. I ended up re-posting yesterday, explaining what had happened and that even if what I write is technically okay, I would rather they correct it so that it's more natural. That time, I got some great feedback!! I don't want to have the same post 3 times, so I didn't re-post a corrected version this time.  I'll probably still edit it with the corrections though, for the sake of copying my post by hand. 

I'm alternating writing and reading courses, so from today I'll focus on reading for 4 weeks. I won't stop practicing kanji altogether, so I'll still use my flashcard and add compounds to anki, but I won't use the anki deck until next writing course. It'll be a great way to revise kanji I practiced during the reading course, and see how much I've retained.

Instead of the kanji deck, I'll use the core decks during reading courses (but won't be writing those words..), and I'll also go back to using memrise for JLPT vocabulary. This way, during writing courses I am studying handwriting in the order Japanese school kids learn, but during reading courses I'll be brushing up on JLPT vocabulary so that I can study from material aimed at JLPT candidates next year. I only need to be able to read those words, so it's pointless learning to write them, unless they come up in the grade I'm currently studying. 

So that's it really.. oh of course, I'll be reading too over the next 4 weeks. I'll stick to manga with furigana for now and I'll move onto parallel texts during the 8 week reading course (last course before New Year). 

[Jembru]

Feeling really down in the dumps today. I don't know why but I've hit another slump in my studies where I just feel that I'm making no progress at all.

Planning my study schedule usually cheers me up though, so I thought I'd share my plan for the next 2 weeks. I was meant to update at the end of every mini course between now and next year but I seemingly forgot to discuss my last reading course altogether. I actually deviated quite a lot from the plan during that course, but I increased my kanji knowledge by about 100 characters so it wasn't a total waste of 4 weeks.

I've just finished week 6 of the 8 week writing course. This will be the last time I deliberately focus my efforts on writing kanji. From next year, I'll be writing kanji every day in my notes, so will just pick up new words as I use them. This means I have to try to ensure I know all 200 or so radicals so that I can look at a new character and quickly recognise how to write it.

From tomorrow I have 2 week's holiday (my first 2 week break since starting this job over 3 years ago). So I'm going to do a mini boot camp. I'm about 10 characters from completing grade 2 kanji, and I've also studied a few characters from other grades, like 最, 丈, 昨 so I can write commonly used words (imagine trying to keep a journal without being able to write 最近, 昨日 or 大丈夫! Or writing study notes without 練習, 言葉 or 文法! Unimaginable ^^). My goal for the next 2 weeks is to complete grade 2 and then start taking a look at some kanji that contain radicals I'm not familiar with. Oh and of course, to practice writing the 400+ compounds in my writing practice deck on anki.

I've also come up with a new study method for combining writing practice and grammar practice, so I'm going to try to make time for that too. I have vocabulary cards I bought last time I was in Japan and on each one, I've written a piece of grammar from my grammar notebook. I number my entries which means I can write the page number on the cards too, in case I need to refer back to the book.

Then I can generate a word with anki and pick a grammar card, then try to write a sentence using both the word and the grammar point. I'll probably bang these onto lang-8 to check if I'm using the structure correctly. I've tried something similar but with speaking practice in the past (in fact I have a variety of 'games' designed to make anki a bit less repetitive), and it worked pretty well.

So that's my plan! Oh and I'm most definitely going to try to get my behind onto skype and maybe even try the drawing game. Hopefully sometime during these 2 weeks my confidence will come back form wherever he has wondered off to..

[Jembru]

I started my new study schedule last week!!! I actually started on Friday 1st because I couldn't wait, although all I did was write my goals for the year in the front of my shiney new kokugo notebook.

I have 3 goals for 2016-2017 so I may as well share them here. Then I can come back a year from now and reflect on how I've done! These goals along with how I intend to achieve them are..

1) Be able to read magazines and novels without having to keep looking words up every few lines.
- Read paperbacks and magazines right away, ignoring unknown words unless they greatly affect my understanding of the story.
- Continue to use memrise
- Reading exercises in kokugo textbook
- JLPT grammar
- Kokugo grammar textbook and accompanying workbook

2) Improve the ease at which I can join in with conversations. I'm including improving my ability to speak with different levels of politeness.
- Continue using lingq.
- Listen to let's plays (audio only) before sleeping.
- shadowing
- audio journal
- keigo handbook
- Resist temptation to revert to English during conversations

3) Improve my Japanese handwriting. In particular I want to learn running script so I can save time when I'm writing my notes.
- Continue with the kanji drill books and then move onto the JHS kanji workbooks
- Do the exercises from my penji manual, applying the rules to kanji I'm practicing in the workbooks too
- Continue to keep all notes in Japanese

Wish me luck!