Last term's class

A few people are missing, but this is most of us. I'm almost never in my pictures since I'm holding the camera, but here's a rare shot taken by someone else (after being frightened by holding an SLR and dropping the lens cover).

Model koi pond

My dad's always talking about making a koi pond in our backyard, and I finally found an ideal model! The picture is a little over-exposed, but I like the way it turned out. It's the pond in the Imperial Palace East Gardens in Tokyo.

When one thinks of building vocabulary in a second language, word lists often come to mind because of their widespread use in courses, textbooks, and bookstores, that is to say in general in current second language acquisition practices. Unfortunately for the many people who use them, word lists are nearly the worst possible way to learn new vocabulary. I only say "nearly" because in theory there could be some even more counterproductive method; however, I have yet to encounter it.

But they're easy to use

Most people, myself included, are impatient and look for the easiest way to do something. Word lists seem simple enough: someone else tells you what words to learn, someone else compiles them for you, other people write quizes for them, they're easy to test so educators love them. This would be wonderful if languages were simply collections of words; unfortunately, for people who use word lists, they aren't.

Um, that sounds strage for some reason

When you learn words from a list, you don't learn how to use them. The classic example of this failing is "construction place". The definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English says, "1 a particular position, point, or area in space; a location (a building or area used for a specific purpose or activity)", among other senses and variations. From this correct definition, a person learning the language doesn't understand that we simple don't say "construction place" in English. It's odd; it's weird; saying it basically marks you as a person who can't speak English. We say "construction site".

And another reason . . .

Most word lists contain a so called translation in the learner's native language. This just makes matters worse. If there was a one-to-one correspondence between words in different languages, this wouldn't be an issue. Once again, however, this isn't the case. (Disclaimer: word lists are less inappropriate for use between languages that are very closely related such as Portueges and Spanish, but still have the occasional problem. However, at present, I'm a native English speaker learning Japanese, but even when I was studying German which much more closely related to English this was a problem.)

Ah! if lists are bad, what should I do?

Learn the way your learnt vocabulary in your native language. How many words did you learn from a list in your native language? Two hundred, maybe five hundred if you really enjoyed amazingly boring study? This is somewhere between 2% of your vocabulary if you really liked lists and have a small vocabulary and 0.4% if you didn't like lists and have a large vocabulary. Gasp! How did could you possibly learn all those other words without lists? Context.

Because you learnt almost all of your vocabulary in context you don't have to think about using it naturally. Except when compositing a particularly obtuse sentence, you don't have to actively consider grammar or word choice. You say "construction site" not "construction place". You don't have to think about when to say, "On the way home, I stopped by the bank", or when to say, "On the way home, I stopped by a bank."

"But I spent 18 years learning words slowly in context and I don't want it to take that long in my second (or other) language." I agree completely; I'm impatient just list you. So we distill the process. Most words you learn aren't learned instantaneously: you saw it once, you forgot it, you saw it again a month later, you forgot it, you saw it again a week later and realized that you've seen it before, buy you still forgot it, you saw it again the following week and poof! it stuck.

We can condense the process by reducing the time between encounters with the word. In the past that would mean using index cards and writing down sentences and phrases that you think are interesting. Fortunately, in this age we have the computer; of course if you don't have convenient access to one, you can always fall back on cards. A computer can store all the sentences and phrases you've found interesting and show them to you when you want to review them. (This is just a system to make the process convenient and is a separate topic. I may write more on using such systems later or point you to others' explanations.)

Context

What does context mean? A word in a word list has no context; this is the least amount possible. You'll simply try to apply the context of the given so-called translation in your language, which is incorrect more othen than not. If we add a little context, we can look at some textbooks or phrasebooks that give you one sentence as the context for a word: 例文 (example sentences). Now you'll have an idea of how to use the word. Add some more context and we have a basic conversation, also found in a number of text books.

At this point, you may be tempted to use textbooks as a source. However, there are two rather glaring deficiencies. Even though the sentences are written by a native speaker, the content of a textbook is specifically toned down under the guise of helping the learning and making it easier to understand. While this is much better than a word list, it's still a far cry from the amount of contextual information you have when learning a word or phrase in your native langauge. Unfortunately, this often ends up producing sentences that sound very artifical and occassionally even unnatural. Sentence patterns (文型) have their place, but they're often used to the point of overkill.

Of the approximately 17 people here who have wanted to practice some variety of English with me once they find out I'm from Canada, there has been one person who managed a natural greeting. The other 16 were robotic: "How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" It's not a coincidence that they all used exactly the same wording. That's the example sentence found in virtually every English textbook around here. It's not that there's anything grammatically wrong with what they said. It's just that there is a very limited set of circumstances when a native English speaker will actually say that. And this introduces the second and far more serious problem with accepting the context that textbooks and other material for foreign learners.

The words, phrases, and tone that we choose are based on much more than a series of preceding words. What sort of personality do we have? What do we perceive the other person's personality to be? What's she wearing? What am I feeling? What sort of expression does she have on her face? What sort of place are we in? What happened last time we met? What's our present mode of speech and style? This sort of context is generally, and to the detriment of learners, ignored when learning a foreign language.

Context is everywhere

Anything that a native speaker is exposed to is suitable for context. Movies, television show, hanging out, warning labels, instruction books, novels, essays, novels,

[writing in progress]

If I own a plot of land and sell it for $300,000 then invest that money in bonds at 4% interest, after three years, I will have gained $37,459.20 according to accounting costs; however, if I consider that a train station will be built five minutes from the plot in two years, significantly increasing the property value and assume that I will be able to sell it for $375,000 in three years to a condominium developer, the first option is actually a $37,540.80 loss according to opportunity cost. Or course, the $375,000 is a speculation and likewise opportunity cost is rarely certain.

For better or worse, I apply this principle to any major and many minor decisions that I make, often to the chagrin of others. In general, time is a much more valuable and scarce resource than money, and thus becomes the measure for many decisions. If I am presently learning 10 abstract learning units (ALUs) in 10 days, after a year, I will have learnt 365 ALUs; however, if instead I use a different method where by I can learn 10 ALUs in 8 days, after a year, I will have learnt 456 ALUs, a significant improvement over the first option.

As a more practical example, consider the acquisition of vocabulary, a major hurdle for most language learners who are serious about learning the language, id est, who are aiming for ability beyond that of the advanced tourist. I have an hour every day to study vocabulary. If I aim for 98% retention after a week, I can learn 15 words in that hour, 0.3 of which will be forgotten after a week on average; however, if I only aim for 80% retention, I can learn 25 words in that hour, since I don't have to spend time on the words that don't stick quickly. Of course, 5 of these will be forgotten after a week, but if you consider the long term, after a year of studying for 98% retention, I will have remembered 5365 words, but by only studying for 80% retention, I will have remembered 7300 words. Again, this is a significant difference. And I don't have to worry about the hard to remember words because I'll see them one week, forget them, see them another week, forget them, see the another week, and finally remember them.

This of course has even broader and more vague applications and that's where occasional problems arise. If I study at this school for a year, my Japanese will improve significantly. "But what if there were a better use of this year of my time?" What is that cliché yet ever so correct and incorrect expression? Ah yes! ignorance is bliss. It is the difference between hearing a sound and enjoying it and hearing a sound and trying to understand why it is enjoyable. People who are given to this sort of thought are well advised to, as Nike says, "Just do it!"

Please apply opportunity cost responsibly.

A new class

Or rather, half of a new class has been formed this term, with eight students from my class in the previous term, four students from another programme at the school, one from another class in the same programme, and one brand new student. The intake of new students may seem low, but because student visas are only issued by the government for entry in October and April, the intake is naturally lower in January and July.

The assortment of nationalities is even more varied than last term with fifteen students representing twelve countries: Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Brasil, the United States, New Caledonia, Taiwan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Korea, England, and the Netherlands.

Although perhaps it is to be expected to some degree, the six students who are new to the class seem particularly quiet. Maybe the rest of us are intimidating with Americans and Canadians who have little reservation when voicing their opinions. (You know who you are, or is that we know who we are . . . ?) Regardless, I'm sure people will warm up to each other and relax in the coming weeks.

While I occasionally, and by occasionally I mean every day or nine out of every ten days, complain about the slow progress as far as grammar is concerned, and outdated, poor teaching methodologies, since languages are so expansive there is enough wiggle room to allow for an interesting term. More accurately it's not a matter of the term being interesting; rather, the term can be made to be interesting. The preceding is doubtless an obvious statement to most of you, but some people are like me, somewhat retarded, and need to hear it explicitly.

This was originally going to appear as a section in one of the earlier entries, but I never got around to writing it, so it it being promoted to its own entry.

As far as modern education systems are concerned, I have a penchant for cynicism. This of course is not entirely unfounded, but I shall attempt to refrain from overindulging in it. Naturally, this also implies that my actual opinions may be more severe than those that I am presenting.

My aim

First the objectives of this endeavour must be taken into consideration. While I may have varied reasons for learning Japanese, the immediate goal is quite simply to be perfectly indistinguishable from an above average, educated native speaker in all matters relating the language.

The school's claim

We offer classes at all levels from foundation[sic] courses for the absolute beginner through to advanced programs for students requiring high levels of proficiency for professional careers or Japanese universities & graduate schools.

However, as can be seen from the above quote from the school's programme catalogue, our goals don't quite align, but seem to intersect to some degree. This, in and of itself, is expected and quite normal. In all the second language programmes and schools I have seen to date, the highest proficiency is considered to be that by which one is able to conduct himself professionally in the target language or attend graduate school. Unfortunately, while perhaps a lofty goal in some respects, this falls far short. Since I haven't completed this stage of the adventure yet, I can yet tell you how short.

Evaluating the claim

Nonetheless we can make some vague approximations. Consider that a student can generally graduate from the highest level class at the school I attend even if he entered the school with no knowledge of Japanese within two years. At 26 hours of class per week, 11 weeks per term, and 4 terms per year, this is the result of 〜2200 hours of study at this school. Looking at the US Government Foreign Service Institute's data on class time required to achieve certain proficiency levels, this should be equivalent to the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR)'s level 3 proficiency (general professional proficiency) [ speaking | listening | reading | writing ].

For the most part the description that the school advertises and these descriptions align. The primary difference is that the ILR attempts to be much more objective and points out what someone with this proficiency will not be able to do. Thus, I prefer their descriptions. This also explains why it is very unlikely that you will ever find me in marketing: unless I believe I understand your objectives and this the product or service I am selling will meet them precisely, I will start by telling you all the things that the product or service won't do for you.

Upon considering the above, I had no doubts that by entering the school and following their programme and curriculum I would achieve the said proficiency, nor do I have any such doubts after completing the first term of my studies here.

Another potential problem

Another more serious concern arises instead. Most humans seem to enjoy categorising everything into mutually exclusive compartments. "My favourite movie is AB." "The hardest language to learn is Urdu." "American Christians are better than Saudi Muslims." "These are the five level of language proficiency." People also assume that these compartments are linearly connected. "My next favourite movie is CD and my least favourite is YZ." "To get to proficiency level 5, you first go through my road, 1, 2, 3, and then 4." While perhaps some people actually organise their mind in this manner so that they really do have distinct favourites, orders, difficulty levels, such a system fails to represent the world at large. This world at large include language learning.

Thought experiment (flawed as it may be): consider a mountain named the language of your choice; in my case, Japanese. Near the top is a plateau that is well-educated adult native proficiency. The peak is reserved for only the best of the best authors, orators, poets. There are various camps along the way: each is at the end of a path, a course of study, personal, institutional, or otherwise. Some of the paths start from sea level, some from other camps, and yet others branch off from other paths. Altitude may be loosely associated with proficiency. There are multiple camps around the mountain at similar proficiency levels. One of the paths, the one requiring the least discipline to follow and leading to near the highest plateau, is restricted to a single starting point: the baby born into that environment.

The path of the language school is but one, and it ends at a camp around the altitude referred to by the ILR as level 3. The problem that concerns me, for I know not whether it exists, is the nature of the path from that camp to the plateau, should one even exist. Having never met anyone who has made a similar journey, the path ahead is largely unknown. This, however, is part of the fun. The mountain is only a poor representation of the situation, but it serves to illustrate part of my concern. Is there a better path to the top and is following this path impeding my final goal?

Fortunately learning a language is not a mountain, and even if it were, I could walk two paths at once. Regardless, throughout the term, I have run into a number of conflicts between my path and my goal and the school's.

Four nearly independent skills

On the ILR website, the descriptions for their categorisations of speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills are separate, and for a good reason: they are largely independent. Much more than you may expect if you only know your native language or languages. There is still a relationship between them: listening and speaking are like a parent and child, as are reading and writing, but listening and writing are more like third cousins, twice removed. In Japanese in particular this divide seems much greater than in English, but I obviously think more about it than English, so my perspective is somewhat jaded.

Since I studied Japanese on my own prior to coming to study at this school, my reading ability far exceeded my speaking ability. As such I attempted to prepare myself mentally for a remedial term of study. Those of you who know me are well aware that such an experience is rather bitter. I tend to have a fairly reasonable retention rate when the subject matter is of interest, and generally believe review to be a waste of time unless a specific deficiency has been found and is being addressed.

Preface to the term

Two days after arriving in Japan, I wrote the placement exam and had an interview to determine which class I would be placed it. The written exam was relatively simple, but I essentially failed the interview. It didn't help that they were asking questions about things I don't care about or hold shall we say alternate views on.

T: "What's happened in the news recently in Canada?"
N: "Um, I don't watch the news; the Canadian news has nothing to do with learning Japanese."
T: "What sort of country is Canada?"
N: "From what perspective?"
T: "I want to go to Canada and make friends there, what should I do?"
N: "Huh!? What the fuck sort of question is that? You do the same thing that you do to make friends anywhere else."
(I of course used more polite language, but these were the English replies in my head.^^;)

For better or worse, I didn't know how to say "from what perspective?", "what the fuck?", or form a sentence with two nested subordinate clauses in Japanese, at least not while speaking. As a result I ended up in the fifth class from the bottom. There were seventeen classes in the term. I didn't mind that I was in the fifth from the bottom; what bothered me was the fact that everything was going to be review. I was hoping that I'd end up in a class where the first month-and-a-half would be review and after that we'd start covering new material.

However, since my speaking really was lamentable, I decided I would put up with the review, and thus my first term started.

The term begins

If you've made it this far, you'll probably last until the end of this entry. The substance has finally arrived. I'm sure you'll notice that my prefaces and disclaimers generally outweigh the actual content I deliver.

The initial composition of our class was 4 Americans, 2 Canadians, 2 Brasilians, a Czech, a New Caledonian, a Swede, a Taiwanese, and an Israeli. In the second week the Swede was replaced by another Taiwanese after which the class remained through the end of the term.

There were five teachers assigned to the class, only one of whom was male, and even then he only taught our class for two hours per week due to the rarity of men in Japanese second language education. This particularly unfortunate as the way men and women speak in Japanese differs greatly unlike English.

Disclaimer

If I seem particularly harsh on the teachers, it is probably because I have had the pleasant experience of having two superlative English language teachers in the past, one of whom could read Old English, German, French, and Latin. For those more familiar with Japanese, think of Old English as the equivalent of man'yōgana (万葉仮名). It's essentially a complete different language, not Shakespeare's English!

Initial impressions

The students were reasonably normal, as were the teachers. Maybe even a little too normal. I somewhat miss my eccentric professors and classmates with motivation. It's not that my classmates weren't motivated, just that they weren't to the degree that I've grown accustomed to.

Ineffective assignments

For homework, or any variety of study to be effective, it needs to stretch the limits of the learner. Of course, it also needs to be within his reach. In my math and physics courses, for the most part the homework was very effective. It required effort and a mental stretch, even only a slight one, to complete, and upon completion, the student's understanding had increased. It's one thing to have your professor tell you that the singing in a(n idealised) shower may be modelled with a wave equation, and it's an entirely different matter to construct the model and solve it for standing waves.

Unfortunately, the homework assigned was largely ineffective, being overly simplistic in nature. Of course, learning a language is a far cry from math and physics, so the homework should be different, but it should still stretch the understanding of the student.

The Japanese system of inflection and agglutination (think conjugation) is extremely regular; it's nearly impossible to make an error outside of the typographical. Yet, a large portion of homework assignments included such exercises. This was a waste of both the student's and the teacher's time.

After about six weeks, I stopped doing the assigned homework in favour of my own studying. When questioned why I wasn't handing in the homework, I attempted to explain that it was ineffective. I'm still not sure whether I failed to effectively convey that or whether the teachers are simply rutted in their ways and unable to accept the possibility. (At this point we interrupt our regular programming to bring you this friendly statistic. Of all the OECD countries, Japan ranks 10th from the bottom in terms of productivity. The only countries below it are the likes of the Slovak Republic. If you then take into consideration the obvious fact that they severely under-report their working hours, realistically, they're probably in the bottom 3. It's not that I don't appreciate some of the effects. I mean it's nice that there are three employees to direct and stop traffic for me as I cross the the road to the southwest entrance of the grocery store.)

In the end, after ceasing to do the assigned homework, my test marks went up.

Elective classes

In the programme in which I am enrolled, there are 20 standard classes per week and 4 elective classes. At this level the only electives are kanji 1, 2, and 3, reading, and writing. This makes sense as an elective on Japanese history in the Edo period would exceed the students language skills.

Although I didn't select them, the kanji electives were supremely lame. (Kanji are the Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system.) And well, that's part of the reason I didn't select them. Each of the electives covered about 15 kanji a week. In the three weeks before I left for Japan, I studied at least 25 per day. That's a more than an order of magnitude of difference. There are 1945 kanji classified as everyday use kanji by the government and that all Japanese school children learn by ninth grade. An native adult can probably ready closer to at least 3000. At the rate of 15 per week, it would take two-and-a-half years before you would be able to pronounce the characters that appear in a newspaper, and at least four years before you could comfortable pronounce almost all modern publications. (Newspapers are restricted to only use the everyday-use kanji; most other publications are free to use any of the 45,000 or so characters they feel like. Realistically, they don't go past 6000.)

The reading elective had good and bad points. On the bad side, except for two of the stories that we read, I've ready all of them before. And even then, they were overly easy, at least for my reading level, but I already knew that's stronger than my other skills. The bright side was this elective was taught by our male teacher and we practised reading the stories aloud after him. It would have been more useful if he would have corrected our pronunciation, but that would require polynomial time.

The writing elective was chosen mainly because the other electives (kanji 1, 2, and 3) were so bleak. I'm not a believer in early output. There's no reason to write a recipe before you read 10 recipes written in Japanese by a native speaker; there's no reason to write a review of a movie until you've read 10 reviews written in Japanese by a native speaker. The actual numbers for initial input should probably be higher. If you don't read a significant bit of native material pertinent to the subject matter about which you're going to write, you end up sounding like a foreigner because you're not familiar with the patterns that occur in that style of writing. Output before input makes no sense aside from perhaps giving students and teachers a false sense of accomplishment. Alas, this tirade will have to be saved for another time.

Testing

Oh, fie, the return of multiple choice tests . . . In my seventeen or so years as a student, I have written one effective multiple choice test: it was on mechanics; right answers minus wrong answers; and, it was a good challenge. Okay, okay, so the tests this term weren't really multiple choice (the bit about the one effective multiple choice test is still true) and were generally effective as tests; however, there is a limit to what tests indicate. They were also too easy for my liking, but perhaps that's the way they should be. I still prefer tests where the average is 45% and the standard deviation is 15%. Tests with an average of 84% aren't any fun. This may also be interpreted as when the average is 84% it makes it bloody impossible to clear the next highest mark by 10%.

End of the term

In the last week, we wrote a test very similar to the placement test at the beginning of the term. Afterward, I had a teacher pull my results for both tests. The result was rather disappointing. My score entering the term was higher than a fair number of students leaving the term, and my score leaving the term only improved marginally. This, of course, is because I didn't really learn anything new, or at least not in class.

Speeches

Students for whom the previous term was their last gave a brief speech before everyone from all seventeen classes on the final day. I was hoping to notice some significant difference between the students in my classes and in the intermediate and advanced classes, but was rather disappointed.

The vast majority of students didn't actually prepare anything, and most of those who did certainly didn't practice delivery. With the exception of two students from the top three classes, everyone else's speeches were a let down. This is the result of having high expectations. Yet, not all is lost; many people are poor at given speeches even in their native language and those two students provided a brief glimmer of hope.

It's taken me three months to realise I have an oven in my apartment, all the while mourning the loss of all the baked goods I enjoy eating. Apparently, my microwave oven also doubles as an oven proper — well, almost.

Upon arriving three months ago, I soon realized that the microwave oven had a function where you could set the temperature, but I assumed that it was tied into the microwave part of the oven, and it only went up to 200° anyway. Of course, in Canada all my recipes have directions with the oven temperature given in Fahrenheit which didn't help since the number 200° and word oven bring to mind phrases like "keep warm".

When a package containing popperdums (Indian food item) arrived from my dad early this month, I decided to microwave some of them (yes, I'm hypocritical). However, the convergence of the microwaves in the oven is much different than what I'm used to, so parts of the popperdums were being cooked and other weren't. For the first time I decided to look at the interior of the microwave oven and discovered a heating element recessed in the top of it. "Ah! So it is a real oven" briefly crossed my mind, but was quickly brushed aside since I still figured an oven that just keeps food warm is somewhat useless.

Last night, as I was half-heartedly trying to fall asleep, I started wondering if the common Japanese person simply doesn't eat baked food as a rule. I had no doubt that they eat much less than your typical North American. But even in the Japanese cooking class I went to in October, we used an oven. Then it struck me! What's 200°C in Fahrenheit!? 200°C ✕ 9°F ∕ 5°C + 32°F ・・・ 392°F!

If I'm awake tonight, guess what I'll be making for dinner. Who knows, maybe I'll even bake some cookies over the holidays.

I finally understand why heated toilet seats are fairly common on newer Japanese toilets! In Canada, I've used heated toilets a few times and was somewhat befuddled by their existence. All the houses and buildings I've been in in Canada aside from barns and such have central heating and even when your monther's trying to save energy, the indoor temperature is rarely less than 18°C or so. Add the heated toilet seat to that, and it just seems like a useless extravagence for those who enjoy a warm buttocks.

However, for one reason or another, central heating simply does not exist in Japan outside of larger public buildings. This means that in the winter unless you have the heater in your room cranked up to 25°C or 26°C, it may be 14°C or 10°C in your washroom. (Apparently insulation in walls hasn't caught on either.) Sitting down on a ten degree porcelain chair is, well, rather unpleasant! Alas, all that said, my apartment doesn't have heated toilet seats . . . and hence this realisation.

WinG toWn

A new mall, named WinG toWn, was completed about three minutes or two hundred metres away from where I live, which is three times closer than the previous closest grocery store. Mind you, I didn't actually realize it was this close for the first while as I approached it from the opposite side. And yes, the name does use the above capitalisation; if you find method in the madness, please let me know.

Since my universe revolves plainly around me, the two most important stores in the new mall are the grocery store, Valor, and the bookstore, imagine. Aside from being the closest, the grocery store doesn't have any particular points of note. The prices are standard, the bakery is mediocre, and the hours are fairly short.

The bookstore, however, occupies more floor space than the grocery store; it's wonderful — I'm from Alberta, Canada where our bookstores are lamentable, so if you're from a more civilised country or province, I'm sure the bookstore is nothing to speak of — and what's more, it's open until midnight, so I'm heading there after I save this draft. I get the distinct impression that reading in general is much more popular in Japan than it is in Canada; the various bookstores I've been to here have always been lively and occasionally bustling.

I just arrived back from the bookstore, and I must say that it really is nice having a bookstore open three hundred and sixty-five days a year until midnight (and an extra day on leap-years), three hundred metres away. It was 22:45 and there were about 30 customers browsing. This may lead you to believe that Okazaki is a town with a nightlife, but really the opposite is true, which is probably what makes the popularity of bookstores stand out so much. Hmm, maybe it's the only thing open this late . . . I mean the grocery store closed at 21:00.

Engaging learning material

The header for this section originally read "fun learning material", but engaging just sounds so much more intellectual. Nonetheless, such is the topic at hand. All too often, fun learning material is overlooked when learning a language. "Oh! everyone learning Italian wants to read made-up conversations involving a hairdresser!" "All of my Japanese students what to read about Miller-san and his adventures with his Japanese company!" I'm convinced at times that thoughts like these pass through the heads of those who create most language learning materials and methods.

Of course, you can't find material that will please everyone, but some variety wouldn't kill anyone. All too often, fun material seems to be overlooked because it's not sufficiently intellectual, proper, formal (or some other misguided pedantic refuse of a reason). You'll learn far, far more from something you enjoy than something you don't if only because you'll spend more time with it naturally. When learning a language fun material is engaging.

Ah, yes! enjoyable source material. There's this great series on Japanese history targeted at elementary school kids called, amazingly enough, Japanese History (日本の歴史). There are twenty books that cover history from prehistoric times through the current era (平成, Heisei) and they're all in hardback comic book form. I'm not particularly interested in prehistoric times, so I picked up the second book, which covers the Yayoi (弥生) period and the first half of the Kofun (古墳) period (350 BC – 478 AD). They're fairly easy to understand, are about a topic I'm interested in, have pictures to aid to contextual understanding and learning, and have lots of additional detailed side-notes that are fairly dense, so they should continue to have value as my Japanese improves.

I also picked up a copy of Final Fantasy VII since I never managed to finish it in English as my third-party memory card died right outside the Northern Crater. (Don't worry, even if you didn't, English speaking geeks around the world will understand that last sentence.) It has an engaging story and it's just above my reading level, which makes it nearly perfect. So far in six minutes of play I've picked up at least twenty new words or uses of words that I wasn't familiar with previously and two kanji (the Chinese characters that are used in Japanese), and most importantly I have a context for them. This, of course, isn't without effort; the six minutes of game play has taken me about fifty minutes of actual time, looking up words in the dictionary and transcribing the sentences that contain them, but most importantly it's fun and I'll be playing it again tomorrow.

As an aside, wordlists are despised by me: context is everything. In your native language, how many of the at least 25,000 words you know were learned by looking them up in a list? Maybe 500 if you really liked lists. The rest were learned in context.

Flawed assumptions of second-language educators

• Foreigners are in some way less intelligent than native speakers or
  Foreigners should be taught different terminology than native speakers.

  This assumption is never stated outright, but it is fairly evidently an underlying belief of material created for foreign language education. In Japanese, there are Japanese terms for the parts of the Japanese language. In particular there are terms that Japanese children learn to describe their own language. E.g. 1 verb types,

  • 一段動詞：itidan verbs
  • 五段動詞：godan verbs
  • 変格動詞：irregular verbs

  However, as a rule, when taught to foreigners, special terms are used. "Group I, II, and III", "〜う verbs, 〜る verbs", etc. The invention of some of these terms can be credited to a bitchwoman by the name of Eleanor Jorden. Notice how Japanese her name is?

  Last week I spoke with one of our teachers about why these terms are used. Her response was that the Japanese terms may be considered too difficult and confusing. I then asked her when Japanese children learned the Japanese terms for them. She replied that they learned the terms early in elementary school. !!!?? So terms that grade school children learn are supposedly too difficult for a bunch of foreigners, most of whom have university degrees? Even the students in the highest-level class at the language school I attend don't learn the native terms.

  If you go up to an average Japanese person on the street, in the grocery store, or elsewhere and ask a question about "Group I" verbs, the response approximates, "What the fuck is a group I verb?" (And yes, I've tried this with multiple people; albeit, not random people I haven't talked with before, just random Japanese people I happen to be speaking with otherwise.)

  Please note that I in no way blame the teachers for this system. They're simply teaching as they've been taught to teach. It doesn't appear they're given much liberty to question the system either.

  If is was just the three main types of verbs that had odd labels applied for the sake of the foreign language learner, I'd be happy to overlook this small issue; however, this mentality permeates virtually all of the educational material.

  Again, if these terms were just for the sake of learning the language, I might be able to accept the foreign terms. It is reasonable to assume that someone who has learned a language and chooses to live in a place where that language is the primary language, he will soon start using native dictionaries. (In fact, I recommend using native dictionaries as early as possible.) However, without knowledge of the native terms, many of the explanation will not make sense. E.g., partially translated entry of one sense for 付く (tuku) from the 大辞泉 (Daijisen dictionary):

  ［動カ五（四）］
  ９ （when attached to the 連用形 of other verbs) exphasises the strength or ferocity of the condition or action

  The two words I left untranslated are words that someone who has just graduated from an instituition for educating foreigners will not know. On the other hand, a Japanese elementary school student will.

  Is it any wonder that many foreign speakers of Japanese speak a gaijin (foreigner) dialect of sorts?

• We musn't teach the poor foreigners Japanese the way we actually usually speak it.

  This issue may well extend to the education of native speakers as well. It did to a slight degree when I was learning English, but certainly not to this degree. Often textbooks for foreigners are created with an agenda outside of teaching the language. They're usually intended to supposedly prepare the student for tourist or business situations.

  This is insufficient and leads to unnatural use. Language education is a priori a general subject matter. It covers virtually all other subject matters: you talk with children in a langauge, you talk with your business partner in a language, with your friends, you think in a language, . . . When learning English, I didn't learn business English, English for geeks, English for teaching children, or English for tourists to Canada. It was simply general English. Any specific terminology that I needed I acquired in context. Second-language education should be the same way.

  To pick on an example that I've brought up once of twice before, we learned one of the uses of the particle し (si) to indicate similarity, reason, and hint at a conclusion a few weeks ago. Most example sentences from the textbook are in the form 「・・・（し、）・・・し、それに、・・・から。」 or 「・・・し、・・・し、…。それで、・・・」. We were also corrected in class when we didn't use one of the above forms. When I read this textbook for the first time eight months ago or so, this struck me as odd, so I've been listening for し used in conversation and looking for it in text. In the last month, I've seen and heard し being used (with the above meaning) somewhere in the vicinity of 100 times. Two of these times were in the same form as the example sentences. Although perhaps not quite as damning, even the examples in the three native dictionaries I've looked in don't use these forms. I've even gone over past books I've read looking for other places that use this form.

  I don't suspect that the forms indicated in the textbook and classroom are in any way incorrect; but, it's very apparent that these forms are not used very much, especially in comparison to other forms most of which don't appear in the textbook.

  So, . . . why teach foreigner's this form? Mentioning it as a passing note seems far more appropriate. It's like teaching foreigners to make compound predicates with "and", then having the following examples:

  • Dick ran to the store and bought candy and brought them back home.
  • Jane ran up the hill and fetched a pail of water and gave it to Dick.
  • Spot likes Jane and likes Dick and dislikes Suzy.

  All the above examples are grammatically correct, but sound terrible. Yes, I'm exagerating a good bit, but my point is that the textbooks often teach awkward language and, more critically, overlook its actual use.

  This is one of the reasons that I believe strongly that you need to hear a word used many times by a native in a natural, id est, outside of the classroom, context before trying to use it yourself.

Previous methodology

On and off for the last 150 days or so, I've been reading various material and committing the many words yet unknown to memory. While this was having the effect of boosting my vocabularly significantly — I've probably remembered somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 words using this technique since I started — it has left me without the ability to correctly use the words and form correct sentences in general.

Problems with the previous methodology

• Words were being learnt without proper context. Despite being of the opinion that you should have read or heard at least twenty, and preferably more, sentences containing a new word before using it, I was not taking my own advice to heart.
• Words were being learnt. When naturally speaking a language, unless carefully constructing a speech or paper, people speak in phrases and sentences, only substituting the occasional word; they don't assemble sentences from a library of words and grammatical rules. When's the last time you considered diction when speaking with your friends? (I don't count here; my native English can be odd at times.)
• The source of words was excessively literary. While using novels and historical texts will no doubt be useful in the future, learning words like 漆黒 (sikkoku, the black colour of a lacquer tree), 血祭り (timaturi, killing an enemy in order to raise moral), and 慟哭 (doukoku, wailing in overwhelming saddness) wasn't exactly proving particularly useful. It also doesn't help that Japanese written and spoken language differ far, far more than in English.

Switching approaches

Last night, I finally updated my methodology to something much more reasonable. Instead of committing words to memory, I will review sentences and phrases on a regular basis. I intend to maintain a minimum average review rate of 100 per day, with a influx of fifty new phrases per day. At this rate, it will take 200 days to build a collection of 10000 sentences, which I think should create a good basis, assuming I choose my sentences carefully (as if that will happen). Ten thousand is a nice round number, it's one of the base numbers in Japanese, 万 (man).

Considerations

I had a number of reasons in the past that I used as excuses to delay updating my approach.

• Where am I going to find natural sentences? Speech in Japanese television seems to differ from the everyday norm about as much as listning to Ice-T in Canada and the States differs from everyday English. There is of course some more natural speech, but selection is somewhat limited. Being paraniod, I was probably overly cautious about my input sources. In the end, listening to a Japanese Ice-T is probably more natural than foreigner textbook Japanese (see my future rants on teaching Japanese to foreigners).
• Japanese television is queer. Maybe I'll elaborate on this another time. Don't get me wrong; I quite enjoy some of it, but I'm not sure whether I enjoy it because of the content, or simply because it's in Japanese.
• How will I know what they're saying? Of course, just having a constant stream of television programming isn't going to work since I can't distinguish what they're saying have the time. Fortunately, courtesy of Khatzumoto, I was introduced to a wonderful website, どらま・のーと (Drama Note). The creators of this website write partial transcripts of Japanese television shows!
• I didn't want to abandon my previous method. As a human, I naturally oppose change to some degree, especially when it implies that I've been doing something the wrong way.

Conclusion

No, wait, it's too early for a conclusion; I just started yesterday. I'll probably let you all know how it's going later.

明日二つ目の試験がある。あとでナサニエルのことを仕留める？

I'm still alive; I just haven't had a chance to write any updates lately. Of course the preceding sentence may be read, perhaps more accurately, as follows. I'm still alive; I just haven't taken the time to write any updates in the last month.

Here's a list in point form with no particular order. If there's anything you're curious about, let me know and I'll take the time to write about it.

• For some reason, I couldn't sleep this weekend. Usually after not sleeping for a long period, I'll sleep for at least ten hours or so, but when I crashed after classes today, I woke up after three hours. Perhaps jet lag is finally catching up to me.
• I gave in to the pressure and bought a cell phone, or more accurately signed up for a cell phone plan and received the phone as part of the deal: nearly equivalent to buying, yet subtle differences remain. If you don't have my number or cell phone e-mail address yet, but think you should, let me know. (If I don't already know you, don't bother.)
• My listening and speaking are still trailing by reading and writing by leagues and neither seems to have improved.
• On one hand, I quite dislike having a goal and not knowing how to get there. On the other hand, it makes for a most interesting challenge. Many people say something along the lines of, "so long as every step you take takes you closer to your destination you're making progress". Others say, "so long as you're moving, whether it's toward or away from your destination, it's better than standing still". While I agree with both of the above statements to some degree, I say, "if there's a route, which you're not taking, that achieves the same result in less time, then you're wasting time." It is thus necessary to find a balance between taking the route you're on and looking for a better one; between doing calculations and performing optimisations.
• It appears I'm no longer Canadian. I just turned on the heater since the temperature in my apartment dropped below 19℃ and it's bloody cold.