grwn's Language Blog

The biggest question related to language learning is most likely about the things you need. In this post I’ll be posting the three things I think everyone needs to learn a language. There are probably a couple of other things you could benefit from, but if you want to keep it as minimalistic as possible, these three things are the most important.

1. Input

In my opinion you can’t get enough input when you’re learning a language. There are even people who learn languages solely through input, or are mostly focused around input. All Japanese All the Time is probably the most well known example of this. Input forms the way you pronounce words, the way you form sentences and you learn more words from input then you’ll ever learn from workbooks, textbooks or specialized vocabulary books, especially in the beginning stages of learning a language.

There are of course downsides when you’re getting too much input. People often talk in accents or dialects that are different from the “standard” language, which could mean you’re trying to learn words you can’t find in dictionaries or words you will rarely use in the “standard” language. This mostly happens with languages that are spread over a multitude of continents. Spanish is a great example of this, as the South American Spanish is, on some aspects, quite different from the European Spanish.

2. Knowing your learning style

It doesn’t matter how many books you have, how many movies you’ve watched, how many native speakers you’ve got in your contact lists, it all comes down to studying. This is all nice and dandy of course, but what you really need is an idea about what learning style you have. Once you find that out, you’ll be able to get to grips with the material much faster and you’ll also be able to retain it much longer.

If you are indeed new to language learning, the first thing I’d do is look up a learning style test. For the sake of completion : this test is a good one for starters.

3. Good course material

This fits in with the previous point on the list, as you’ll have to know your learning style to pick up material that’s best suited for you. For example, if you are an auditary learner you’d be best of picking up a Michel Thomas or Pimsleur type course, while a FSI style drilling course would be ill suited for your needs. A good introduction to this would be Professor Alexander Arguelles’ video on Selecting Self-Study Foreign Language Materials and the one on the four most studied languages : Spanish, French, Italian and German.

I hope this will help you get started learning languages, but if you still have questions or additions to this list, feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail through the contact page.

I’m quite sure everyone’s been wondering what I’ve been up to lately .. not? Oh well, I’ll write it down no matter what! *evil laugh*

The last week or two I’ve been studying for my final high school exams. This was obviously my main distraction, but I’ve also started playing Lord of the Rings Online once again .. not the best thing to do if you really need good examresults. My exams will be over in about a week, with just English being a week later. That’s not going to be much of a problem obviously, so my studying for that will be quite limited.

Once I’ve finished my exams I’ll finally be able to focus on Japanese again and carry on with my plan described in my last post. Right now I’m going back to my Economics text and most likely fall asleep as soon as I see them ..

Gerwin

*dusts off his books, reboots his brain and re-bookmarks his Japanese sites*

Hello again everyone!

I have once again returned to my language studies, hoping for it to last this time. I’ve been going over the languages I want to learn last week, and Japanese kept popping back into the back of my mind. Although I’d have more use for German, French or even Latin, I’ve decided to pick the language I find most fun this time, hoping it will keep me motivated.

I went through all the books I have lying around in one corner or another and put them as close to my desk as possible, so I won’t have to go through any trouble to get them and speeding up my language learning in the process. I’ve also devised a plan to get me through the language as fast as possible, without missing any important stuff.

Goal: I’d like to get my Japanese to a self-sustaining level, meaning that I’ll be able to continue learning without having to open any textbooks/workbooks. With that being my end-goal, I decided I had to have some smaller goals to work toward.

First of all I’ll finish the Guide to Japanese website and included exercises. After that I’m going to work through my Japanese for Everyone textbook to strengthen the foundation and add to it. While working through this I’m also going to work through the Japanese Core 2000 and 6000 series over at iKnow/smart.fm.

Materials:

- Guide to Japanese
- Smart.fm
- Japanese for Everyone
- Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary
- A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters
- Remembering the Kanji

Wish me luck,
Gerwin

Someone over at HTLAL asked for an addition to his Pimsleur learning. I went a bit of-topic and made up a whole plan to start learning Japanese and I thought that some of you might like to know about this as well.

Studying Japanese can be a really complex business and selecting your study methods even more so. Lately, I’ve been going over my method and have revised it a bit.

1. Oral

I’m using Pimsleur and Michel Thomas for my oral studying and maintaining my spoken comprehension, which can be really different from your written comprehension. I’ve chosen to do both programs, mainly because I like variety and because learning from two sources at the same time can dramatically increase your understanding of the subject.

2. Written

As you probably know, Japanese has a very difficult writing system and getting this on par with your English writing/reading will be a very time consuming thing. I recommend you first learn all the kana, both hiragana and katakana, before doing any written work. Though romaji can really help in the beginning of your studies, you will definitely be held back if you don’t learn the kana as soon as possible. Personally, I’m quite fond of grammar (yes, I’m a grammar-o’holic), and use a very comprehensive grammar book called Japanese for Everyone by Susume Nagara. It is basically on par with Genki and Japanese for Busy People, but contained in one volume and at a fraction of the price. It doesn’t come with any audio, but it can be found elsewhere.

To learn the kana I recommend just doing the drills on The Japanese Page or iKnow. I’ve learned the kana by memorization and just writing them over and over. If you really want to spend money on the kana, I’d recommend getting Remembering the Kana by James Heisig.

Once you’ve got the kana down, you can start working through your workbook of choice, but once you start browsing through Japanese website, you will notice that there is far less use of kana, and a multitude of kanji, the borrowed Chinese characters. They will be introduced to you through your workbook, but I’d recommend working your way through Remembering the Kanji also by James Heisig.

3. Combination

To get the best of both worlds, I’d try going through the courses over at iKnow and keeping the settings at full mode. This will show you real Japanese with both kanji and kana and you will also learn one or more readings of the kanji through those courses.

I’m following this plan myself and so far, it has been working out quite nicely, although a bit slow at the moment due to other things I need to take care of, school for example.

Gerwin

After a moderate time of inactivity, both on this blog as well as my language learning, I’m back once again, hopefully for the long run this time. I had some personal problems as well as some time management issues, but the aforementioned have mostly been taken care of through lifehacker and Zen Habits.

I think I am going to drop Ancient Greek for the moment, as exams are coming in in 4 months and I’ve got some major catching up to do for them as well, but I will be studying Japanese and Latin though. My TAC log has been neglected as well, but I’m hoping to use that in the next couple of days again.

I’m also going to change my way of studying Japanese. I was trying the AJATT method, but it didn’t really work for me, as I just didn’t have the time and motivation for it. I might try it again once I’ve progressed a bit in the language. The new program consists of Pimsleur and Michel Thomas for the spoken language and Remembering the Kanji, Japanese for Everyone and iKnow for the written language.

Besides Japanese and Latin I’m going to try to actively improve my English, though I’m not sure how I’m going to do that yet.

Gerwin