Learning Japanese... the right way
Since I have a lot of free time, I really want to attempt to learn Japanese.
My Japanese final is today, which should be ridiculously easy. With my grade in class, I can not show up and still pass. When I do show up it's a guaranteed A. But the class had problems that I think really impeded my learning. But there were also some good points, and the teacher was very good... when I could hear her.
1: 高校生はうるさい!
There were a lot of students in there who would just talk all throughout class. It was annoying and I couldn't hear the teacher. And by the way 90% of the class that was like that.
2: 英語をつかわないで下さい。
Seriously, no one really tried. Everyone reverted to English when talking, before switching back to Japanese. It was kind of jarring.
One thing I noticed while learning is that you can't think in English and then translate it back to Japanese. It's slow and inaccurate and causes you to fumble around trying to make sense in your brain.
For example:
私は魚を食べました。
"I ate fish."
In Japanese, it says (I) (Fish) (ate) with whatever grammar needed to tie it in. You have to train your mind to think in that order, by thinking of the ideas first and then in Japanese.
If you start from English then you think, "Okay. "I", that's watashi. "ate" is tabemashita, and "fish" is sakana. But I gotta flip sakana and tabemashita in the sentence order, then I'll have a working sentence."
I've noticed that bilinguals who aren't trained translators, they struggle to translate on the fly. Why? Because they don't constantly think in both languages, they think in one. And that's what it takes to learn grammar and how to really speak: Separate English as much as possible from Japanese. Define Japanese words with more Japanese words. Allow yourself to make mistakes when talking in Japanese, it's the only way to learn, just make sure you're being corrected by an actual native speaker and not your friend who watches anime all day. I feel like I definitely learned a lot more when I would stay after class for half an hour and just talk to the teacher in Japanese which leads to...
3: Interaction levels were low
During class there wasn't much actual conversation, and the ones with our classmates were often unsupervised. For one exercise we had to ask people if they did things like drink coffee at Starbucks, and apparently I was the only who asked in Japanese while the other slackers did everything in English.
It sucks because... the class is very influential and if not enough people speak Japanese, then no one will, and I took the class because I thought group learning would be beneficial, not detrimental.
---
On the plus side:
1: It was a good refresher. I learned sentence structure again, which is important. Language is just picking away at sentence patterns, so it was nice to learn some again. Learned some vocab and overall just regained my interest and motivation in actually learning the language.
2: Talking with the teacher in Japanese, even at my low level, was both interesting and helpful. Last night I was talking cooking food and unagi, I asked about unagi season, and all that. And then as I learn more words and more about sentences, I can put it in practice.
---
In the meantime, I'm starting to see that the majority of learning needs to come outside of class. I found this site which outlines a good program to learn, as well as using SRS (NOT Super Rotation System, but Spaced Repetition System) to learn Kanji and sentence patterns.
Also, gotta learn all the Joyou Kanji to really start putting vocabulary at the forefront. And I need to start listening to random Japanese things (like the news, music, books-on-tape) and watching Dramas without subtitles. Even if I don't understand it, it's helpful because it breaks the ties from English.
Yep.
Goal: Fluency in 2.5 years!
My Japanese final is today, which should be ridiculously easy. With my grade in class, I can not show up and still pass. When I do show up it's a guaranteed A. But the class had problems that I think really impeded my learning. But there were also some good points, and the teacher was very good... when I could hear her.
1: 高校生はうるさい!
There were a lot of students in there who would just talk all throughout class. It was annoying and I couldn't hear the teacher. And by the way 90% of the class that was like that.
2: 英語をつかわないで下さい。
Seriously, no one really tried. Everyone reverted to English when talking, before switching back to Japanese. It was kind of jarring.
One thing I noticed while learning is that you can't think in English and then translate it back to Japanese. It's slow and inaccurate and causes you to fumble around trying to make sense in your brain.
For example:
私は魚を食べました。
"I ate fish."
In Japanese, it says (I) (Fish) (ate) with whatever grammar needed to tie it in. You have to train your mind to think in that order, by thinking of the ideas first and then in Japanese.
If you start from English then you think, "Okay. "I", that's watashi. "ate" is tabemashita, and "fish" is sakana. But I gotta flip sakana and tabemashita in the sentence order, then I'll have a working sentence."
I've noticed that bilinguals who aren't trained translators, they struggle to translate on the fly. Why? Because they don't constantly think in both languages, they think in one. And that's what it takes to learn grammar and how to really speak: Separate English as much as possible from Japanese. Define Japanese words with more Japanese words. Allow yourself to make mistakes when talking in Japanese, it's the only way to learn, just make sure you're being corrected by an actual native speaker and not your friend who watches anime all day. I feel like I definitely learned a lot more when I would stay after class for half an hour and just talk to the teacher in Japanese which leads to...
3: Interaction levels were low
During class there wasn't much actual conversation, and the ones with our classmates were often unsupervised. For one exercise we had to ask people if they did things like drink coffee at Starbucks, and apparently I was the only who asked in Japanese while the other slackers did everything in English.
It sucks because... the class is very influential and if not enough people speak Japanese, then no one will, and I took the class because I thought group learning would be beneficial, not detrimental.
---
On the plus side:
1: It was a good refresher. I learned sentence structure again, which is important. Language is just picking away at sentence patterns, so it was nice to learn some again. Learned some vocab and overall just regained my interest and motivation in actually learning the language.
2: Talking with the teacher in Japanese, even at my low level, was both interesting and helpful. Last night I was talking cooking food and unagi, I asked about unagi season, and all that. And then as I learn more words and more about sentences, I can put it in practice.
---
In the meantime, I'm starting to see that the majority of learning needs to come outside of class. I found this site which outlines a good program to learn, as well as using SRS (NOT Super Rotation System, but Spaced Repetition System) to learn Kanji and sentence patterns.
Also, gotta learn all the Joyou Kanji to really start putting vocabulary at the forefront. And I need to start listening to random Japanese things (like the news, music, books-on-tape) and watching Dramas without subtitles. Even if I don't understand it, it's helpful because it breaks the ties from English.
Yep.
Goal: Fluency in 2.5 years!