This topic contains 2 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
After about four months of studying Japanese, I found that I was progressing at a reasonable rate with my kanji thanks to WaniKani, but barely making any progress at all with grammar. And I LIKE grammar!
I think the biggest reason is that it’s so easy to chip away at WaniKani throughout the day on my phone, whereas sitting down to study grammar takes more effort. With Genki, I had to pull the textbook up on my iPad, find the right mp3 files on iTunes, track down my notebook, etc. Switching from Cornell notes in a composition book to Evernote helped a little, as did switching to TextFugu. Now I can access my learning materials anywhere with wifi, and even sneak in a bit of study at the office on really slow days. But a month after subscribing to TextFugu, I realized I was still not progressing as quickly as I would like. Mostly I put it down to a motivation thing. I have A TON of hobbies that involve my laptop, so when I sat down with it after work, learning Japanese had to contend with things like writing or chatting with my friends.And most of the time, it lost.
I realized needed an external motivator. So a few days ago, I signed up with Lang-8, even though I’d been hesitating to do so until I had progressed further. It was exactly the kick in the pants I needed!
At first, I was really embarrassed about being such a complete beginner (seriously, I hadn’t even gotten past season 2 of TF!), but everyone I’ve met has been really nice. I also like that I can give back to the community by correcting other people’s English. And I like that I can write about whatever — it makes it easier to pick and choose based on my very limited vocabulary! I started off with a goal to write 2 entries a week, but it’s weirdly addictive, so I have been posting at least one entry every day. I have also been on TextFugu every day since then. Coincidence? I think not. Now I have a place where I can immediately apply my learning.
What do you guys do to keep yourselves motivated?
Well congrats on the motivation! (side note: It bothers me that the spell check in Chrome doesn’t catch “congrats”.)
I’ve never really gotten into Lang-8 myself. I’ve tried a few times, but the fact that you can write about anything, what you count as a positive, was too overwhelming to me. I never felt like I had anything to say. I think it would be easier in a forum type environment, where there are predetermined conversations and shorter entries are more frequent. Whenever I logged in, I spent all my time making corrections. I enjoyed making corrections, but it wasn’t really helping me at all.
That’s really interesting to hear. Your story sounds similar to where I am at. I’m going ok on WankKani, well I’ve learnt more vocab then I ever have before and actually feel that Kanji isnt too scary. But I’m struggling staying active on TextFugu and this place has really been able to explain things in a way that really speaks to me, way more then any text book I’ve attempted to learn from in the past.
I might give Lang-8 a go even though I cant say too much more then ‘I am not an apple’,’ are you an apple?’ OK if i put my mind to it, my sentences may not be that boring.
Thanks for sharing.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.