The AJATT

No, I'm not the first person to talk about this, but I got a question from a friend and the answer became so long I thought I'd just post it here. If I could find the AJATT post that explains it exactly as I need, I'd have just linked to it, but well, this happened.

Q: I would imagine that most of what you are learning there can only be obtained through actual experience there?

A: Well, that's arguable. Language is not a mass of knowledge, it is a skill. Skills need to be practiced to be learned. But you don't necessarily need to travel to practice a language.

Somewhat random related article by a wise and funny man on the subject: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/critical-frequency-a-brand-new-way-of-looking-at-language-exposure Eh, it's kind of a side point but it gets at the point of how you just need to get the practice in.

Most of my exposure is to teachers and class materials, which are basically dumbed down for us. I got to the point I could understand class, but I still couldn't understand my conversation partners without constantly digging through my dictionary. I only see them for 1-1.5 hours a week, and I don't know anyone else, but an American, a Lithuanian, an Australian, and some Koreans. And I don't even see them that much. So I marathoned Azumanga Daioh (no subs) for at least a solid week. Every moment I was in my room it was playing, even when I slept (just in case). The next week, I understood more of what the *real* people were saying. I understood more of everything. So I kept doing this. I'm noticing it's my vocabulary that's lacking, not my listening. So I'm working on that. I'm reading the translation of Eragon. Slowly, and without understanding everything, much like a child who just sounds out all the words in a book without really knowing what they mean. But you figure it out from context and from what you know, and you put it together. And I'm studying flashcards. I made too many at first, and I still haven't gotten throught them all. I wasn't doing them for a while because there were a lot I just hated, so I started deleting, and now I can do my daily repititions of my main deck in around half an hour to 45 minutes. And it doesn't feel like a chore.

So, yeah, the main reason I've been getting better has been constantly watching/listening to anime and flashcarding interesting sentences and reading (despite lack of actual, competent literacy).

And it's definitely working. Sometimes it does help to slow down and use google and a dictionary to translate stuff, because you do learn from that, but it's slow and bothersome and boring as all hell. By just reading I learn the meanings and real usage of a word intuitively. My conversation partner always says, "sorosoro I have to go." I've never looked it up, but I can tell you it means something like "before long".

Actually, here's the guy who inspired this, talkng about it himself, and DOING it during the interview and just refusing to stop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J34i9lr94pI It's noisy and split into a few parts, but it can save you some reading, because he tries to explain it all in this interview. Just do what he says and know that Michael Jordan failed more than anyone else in the NBA.