So I’ve Been Lazy
August 22nd, 2009 | View Comments
I haven’t cracked open a non-English book in weeks, including Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook. I haven’t done any practice with my Anki decks either. The truth is, I was on the verge of language burnout, and then I had to work a billion hours to finish my dissertation. Brain fried.
And so I’ve been lazy.
Though this doesn’t mean I haven’t been getting worthy language practice, as it turns out.
My husband and I have been watching Code Geass. Japanese audio, English subtitles. Each episode is a little over 20 minutes long and we finished Episode 20 today. I’ve already noticed some improvement in my Japanese comprehension even with this small amount of semi-immersion.
And then I read How to Learn Spanish for Lazy People on Spanish Only:
5 Reasons Lazy People Are Better Language Learners
- They generally don’t worry all too much.
- They don’t use textbooks.
- Instead, they use native materials.
- They have all the time of the world to get massive amounts of input well before ever speaking a word.
- When they eventually speak it’s again stress-free, aiming to get their point across (which, miracally often goes without making loads of mistakes and/or pauses).
It made me feel even better about my laziness.
Because to be honest, I hate doing SRS. I hate being glued to my dictionary. I hate being all systematic and angsty about my language progress. And trying to study three different languages every day is a good way to make your brain all ‘splody.
So I’m going to relax. Grandma’s Crazy Phrasebook is going on hiatus (and frankly, I was starting to run out of the funny phrases anyways).
For Japanese and Spanish, my new goal is to watch 1000 hours of TV in each language before I attempt any more formal study. For the time being, I’ve decided that subtitles in Japanese are ok, as I’m basically starting from nothing here. If I use subtitles on the Spanish TV, they must be in Spanish.
I’ve already gotten my 1000 hours of native-speed Chinese audio, so I will start reading through the massive collection of children’s books I have. Once I get through all of those (without systematically mining them for vocabulary), I’ll re-evaluate where I am.
Here’s where I am so far, going as far back as my Spanish movie-watching week (during which I also snuck in a viewing of Spirited Away):
Japanese: 9.4/1000 hours
Spanish: 7.8/1000 hours
Yvonne posted this on August 22nd, 2009 @ 2:10am in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Study Strategies, TV | Permalink to "So I’ve Been Lazy"
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American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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