I. Read. Listen. Speak. Write.

When I started teaching, I thought that it's gonna be easy as long as I know how to speak English. But I was so wrong.

I had difficulty specially on the first week of teaching due to a variety of reasons:

a. As an architecture student, I'm a very visual person. I am trained to explain concepts through graphics and that was one big limitation of teaching online--- I cannot explain using visuals.
b. I know what I know but I cannot tell you or put into words what I know. That's my problem even in school. Being articulate with my thoughts is one thing I need to learn.
c. I am not patient. ^.^

I am currently studying the Japanese language, it's sooooo hard (even harder than learning English) and I don't like my teacher which makes it even harder. But I realized one thing, no matter what the shortcomings of your teacher/tutor are, the greater part of learning still lies in the hands of the students.

So...learn and LEARN...

1. TO READ. Read as much as you can. And I don't mean textbooks. Though you can learn a lot from textbooks, I think language can best be learned in a more natural setting--- magazines, advertisements, novels, comics, anything. Even if you don't understand, read it. Then read it again. And don't forget to read between the lines, meaning--- understand the material based on context. You don't need your dictionary all the time. You can learn the definition of something by analyzing how it was used in the sentence or by observing the situation by which it occurs.

Do you like to eat? I LOVE to eat and I also LOVE to READ. Go on!
FEED YOUR MIND.

2. TO LISTEN. The hardest part, eh? Yes, I would have to agree on that. And because it's the hardest, the more that you need to do it. Watch movies, listen to music, download podcasts, make use of free online materials. It's hard to understand? It's fast? So what? Listen to it. Then listen again and again and again. Although your ultimate goal is to, of course, understand what is being said in the material, there's another important thing that can be learned through listening. That is--- FAMILIARIZATION. You don't understand it not because it's fast but because you're not familiar with the words and how they sound. When you get familiarized with words and expressions, the next time you hear it...even if your ears didn't catch the entire phrase/sentences, your mind can process what you have just heard--- MEMORY.

When you read, you get familiar with the spelling. When you listen, you learn the pronunciation which will make you know how to speak.

xkcd.com

3. TO SPEAK. Be confident. CONVERSE. Even if you read and listen too much, it won't help you unless you put that knowledge into test through speaking. You don't have anyone to talk to? Then talk to your dog, to the guy on TV, to your computer, even to yourself. ^_^

Say it out loud. When you read, read out loud. When you hear something, mimic it out loud. Then say it to yourself and repeat it again and again. If you've read or heard something new and you don't try to say it out loud or repeat it, chances are...you would not remember it.

4. TO WRITE. It's easier to write than to speak using a foreign language. In writing, you have the luxury of time to compose your thoughts. You can also go back and read it again and correct your own mistakes.

Write just about anything. Write about your day, the weather, the insect, the dust on top of your table, Doraemon... blah blah blah...there are endless topics that you can write about. But hey! Are you too lazy to make up something about whatever? You don't have to think of a topic of your own. You can write about what you've read. COPY IT. Write about what you've heard. NOTE IT DOWN. Write about the conversation you just had. MAKE A JOURNAL.

Why? When you saw or heard an unfamiliar word, you look it up in the dictionary, right? Then you read the definition. And the next time you encounter that word again, you remember you've read or heard about it before but can't remember what it means. That happens all the time. So what to do? WRITE IT. I'm sure you're not new to this style of memorization. In architecture school, we are taught that if we're not excellent in drawing, we could copy from drawing books or from our surrounding or from wherever. So the next time we need to draw similar images, we can do it from memory. That is called MUSCLE MEMORY. You, or your muscles, remember that you've already done it before, the strokes become familiar.

This is what I call REINFORCING. You are helping your brain to remember.


Note that in this post, the keywords are MEMORIZATION and FAMILIARIZATION. You memorize the rules but not all aspects of language have rules and that's when being familiar will help you. One tip: IF IT DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT, CHANCES ARE, IT IS NOT RIGHT. That's true most of the time. Haha!

So READ, LISTEN, SPEAK, and WRITE.

I will follow the same for learning Japanese language. ^_^

Ganbattene!