So I'm finally done with school.
I'd have preferred staying on until the end of next term, but I ran out of money. Alas, the next JLPT exam is in June/July (somewhere around there) so I've got a while until I can try again.
In the meantime, I'm continuing to study and look for work. Considering how expensive everything here in Japan is, the money problem comes first. As such, I've been taking on jobs wherever I can find them. The only bummer is that I can't find anything permanent.
Of the three jobs I've done this month, only one lasted for more than one day. It was also the worst paying of the three.
Sigh
I've been applying for more permanent jobs, and I've been trying to keep busy in other ways. We'll see how long it takes me to get cabin fever.
Considering where I am, I shouldn't be getting my hopes up, but I can't help but think of the stuff I'd like to buy and do if I got a job. I'd go to a sushi place. I'd buy a new PC. I'd go somewhere other than this house or my old school for the first time in a year. I'd take some photographs again.
Oh well. I'll start thinking about doing something interesting if I find a job that pays well enough.
In the meantime, I'll keep studying.
Showing posts with label studying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label studying. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Friday, 8 December 2017
Good God, Is This What Being an Adult Feels Like?
For the past month and a half I've been back in school, formally learning the language I've muddled with for the past few years. I've never really sat down to learn Japanese properly, which is a sign of my laziness, but also a sign of my financial situation.
Learning is not cheap.
Learning should be cheap, but it is not.
As a result, I've penny pinched my way to Shinjuku Nihongo Gakko. This is not an advertisment for them, but I thought you might be interested in where I've ended up.
I chose them for two reasons. Firstly, they're on my line which means a forty minute ride with no changes, giving me ample opportunity to do some work to and from school. This is great, because a lot of the busy work when learning language is memorisation. There really isn't a lot of logic, problem solving or argument construction when trying to learn a language. This is obvious if you think about it, but you can't argue your way out of a grammatical error until you get into exceptionally high level arguments over the correct usage of obscure particles or whatever the case may be.
Unfortunately, the stuff I loved about studying in university is the construction, deliberation and execution of a well (sometimes not so well) thought out argument that oftentimes ended in me looking like a pillock. For the sake of coming to understand the impetus behind a particular literary trend, I will suffer that indignity.
The astute among you may have come to realise that I am (in a long winded way) saying that language learning is boring.
There is literally no challenge in it. I have to memorise verbs, nouns, adjectives (of two varieties) and a smattering of other stuff, then learn how to put them together. Learning a language is more like learning a bizarre alternative maths, where all the rules are already known and you are told to plug in components to get an already known outcome. The most rewarding part comes when poking at the boundaries and seeing what sticks and what doesn't, which is absolutely infuriating as a teacher, particularly when you're teaching a low level class like mine.
Coming from the other end of the profession, I know how tempting it is for a simple 'BECAUSE IT JUST IS,' to slip out of the mouth without really thinking about it, but to their credit, the teachers do their best to explain their way around the problem.
Being one of the oldest, if not the oldest student, and coming from the workforce, has also had a profound effect on my understanding of the learning experience.
I haven't stopped working. I am working so much. This past month my schedule has been as follows: Wake up. Study. Get on train. Study on train. Study at school. Get on train. Study on train. Get home. Study at home. Make dinner. Study. Clean clothes, then study until bed. Sometimes there's a shower in there.
One of the facets of learning Japanese is learning Chinese too. Their writing system is based on 2 alphabets of their own, and Chinese. It's difficult to explain without spending hours on the who's where's and why's for's, because I'm not sure of the rules myself, but the upshot is that there are literally thousands of characters to learn.
Each one of those characters will have up to four different sounds attached to them. If we're counting, we are already up to very many thousands of sounds and meanings and whatnot. Combining this smorgasbord of characters gets you the words that are used every day.
The Japanese and Chinese will tell you there is logic behind the way the kanji are constructed and subsequently combined, but that's utter bollocks. It's all a hodgepodge of lines and squiggles.
Anyway, I have to learn about 2,000 I think? I'm going for a specific test, and while I have done the research, I can't remember off the top of my head what the requirement is. Those 2,000 will then combine among themselves to give words and meanings and make an entire language. So I'm told.
So far I have about 300 under my belt, from a month or so of trying to memorise them. If you say the meaning, or show me how they are spelled, I will be able to write those 300 kanji, with about a 5% error rate. Reading those kanji is harder, but is what I am focussing on at the moment. Next week, I start on the next 300 and then so on and so forth until I die, or learn the 2,000. There are way more than 2,000, but that's what they decided is the level for competency.
All in all there's a long, long way to go. I've not even mentioned the grammar which is bonkers. How many ways can you conjugate a verb? You would be surprised.
I'll leave that for another post though.
Learning is not cheap.
Learning should be cheap, but it is not.
As a result, I've penny pinched my way to Shinjuku Nihongo Gakko. This is not an advertisment for them, but I thought you might be interested in where I've ended up.
I chose them for two reasons. Firstly, they're on my line which means a forty minute ride with no changes, giving me ample opportunity to do some work to and from school. This is great, because a lot of the busy work when learning language is memorisation. There really isn't a lot of logic, problem solving or argument construction when trying to learn a language. This is obvious if you think about it, but you can't argue your way out of a grammatical error until you get into exceptionally high level arguments over the correct usage of obscure particles or whatever the case may be.
Unfortunately, the stuff I loved about studying in university is the construction, deliberation and execution of a well (sometimes not so well) thought out argument that oftentimes ended in me looking like a pillock. For the sake of coming to understand the impetus behind a particular literary trend, I will suffer that indignity.
The astute among you may have come to realise that I am (in a long winded way) saying that language learning is boring.
There is literally no challenge in it. I have to memorise verbs, nouns, adjectives (of two varieties) and a smattering of other stuff, then learn how to put them together. Learning a language is more like learning a bizarre alternative maths, where all the rules are already known and you are told to plug in components to get an already known outcome. The most rewarding part comes when poking at the boundaries and seeing what sticks and what doesn't, which is absolutely infuriating as a teacher, particularly when you're teaching a low level class like mine.
Coming from the other end of the profession, I know how tempting it is for a simple 'BECAUSE IT JUST IS,' to slip out of the mouth without really thinking about it, but to their credit, the teachers do their best to explain their way around the problem.
Being one of the oldest, if not the oldest student, and coming from the workforce, has also had a profound effect on my understanding of the learning experience.
I haven't stopped working. I am working so much. This past month my schedule has been as follows: Wake up. Study. Get on train. Study on train. Study at school. Get on train. Study on train. Get home. Study at home. Make dinner. Study. Clean clothes, then study until bed. Sometimes there's a shower in there.
One of the facets of learning Japanese is learning Chinese too. Their writing system is based on 2 alphabets of their own, and Chinese. It's difficult to explain without spending hours on the who's where's and why's for's, because I'm not sure of the rules myself, but the upshot is that there are literally thousands of characters to learn.
Each one of those characters will have up to four different sounds attached to them. If we're counting, we are already up to very many thousands of sounds and meanings and whatnot. Combining this smorgasbord of characters gets you the words that are used every day.
The Japanese and Chinese will tell you there is logic behind the way the kanji are constructed and subsequently combined, but that's utter bollocks. It's all a hodgepodge of lines and squiggles.
Anyway, I have to learn about 2,000 I think? I'm going for a specific test, and while I have done the research, I can't remember off the top of my head what the requirement is. Those 2,000 will then combine among themselves to give words and meanings and make an entire language. So I'm told.
So far I have about 300 under my belt, from a month or so of trying to memorise them. If you say the meaning, or show me how they are spelled, I will be able to write those 300 kanji, with about a 5% error rate. Reading those kanji is harder, but is what I am focussing on at the moment. Next week, I start on the next 300 and then so on and so forth until I die, or learn the 2,000. There are way more than 2,000, but that's what they decided is the level for competency.
All in all there's a long, long way to go. I've not even mentioned the grammar which is bonkers. How many ways can you conjugate a verb? You would be surprised.
I'll leave that for another post though.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Of English Ability
So the Japanese view English in the same way the English view R.E. It`s a governmental requirement that will never be useful in everyday life. A learn and forget subject, if you will.
In most countries it would be difficult to escape English. France had to legislate against the steady encroachment of the English language - Korea actively embraces the alphabet and words while reviling anyone non-Korea. There is tons of English in Japan, just none that`s intelligible. They`ve appropriated English and created the infamous Japlish, a kind of strange dialect that`s mostly Japanese with an English twang.
Again, most countries speak English with a native accent. The French speak distinctively, as do Italians; even Koreans are discernible among a crowd. The Japanese have learned the other way round. They speak Japanese with a slight English accent. For example; apple becomes a-pu-ru (ru being pronounced loo), baseball becomes bay-su-ba-ru (bay pronounced as in baying), birthday becomes bir-su-da-i (bir pronounced as in bird). I picked words that have Japanese equivalents to show that their pronunciation is about as far from English as you can manage, while still using a base English word. Some words have been integrated into Japanese and, frankly speaking, I often don`t understand what they`re saying.
Unfortunately this passes as acceptable English here, so the English teachers work is difficult.
Another side-effect of this appropriation is class direction. The English class is conducted entirely in Japanese, with the target word, phrase or grammar given in English. Learning single sentences or ideas in isolation creates an environment where learning becomes more difficult, as everyone asks for the direction in Japanese, even when they understand enough to answer the question. You don`t need to understand every word to understand the meaning of a sentence. Maybe you do in Japanese, but this severely hinders progress in English.
This is exemplified when, having a class for a mere five minutes (the teacher was busy administering a health checkup (teeth, if you`re interested) for his homeroom class) I managed to get them to understand, with no prior knowledge, the units of measurement for weight and height. I had them guessing my height and weight, and saying their own. I didn`t ask the weight questions of any of the girls, in case you`re wondering.
The point being that, learned in isolation, this would have taken an entire class, were the lesson conducted in Japanese. Sure, retention might well be lower, as the students were unable to take notes during class, but over a period of time, reinforcing this for a couple of minutes each lesson, the students would naturally remember information in this way.
I presume the school has a set syllabus for learning English, and they will stick to it rigidly; just as our French and German lessons were conducted in England. There are myriad parallels to be drawn between our systems, as the Japanese government styled itself on English and american parliamentary systems, education systems and to a lesser extent health systems after the war. Unfortunately, they inherited all the problems we have with foreign language teaching - a side-effect of not creating their own unique system, tailored to the specific weaknesses of Japanese students.
In most countries it would be difficult to escape English. France had to legislate against the steady encroachment of the English language - Korea actively embraces the alphabet and words while reviling anyone non-Korea. There is tons of English in Japan, just none that`s intelligible. They`ve appropriated English and created the infamous Japlish, a kind of strange dialect that`s mostly Japanese with an English twang.
Again, most countries speak English with a native accent. The French speak distinctively, as do Italians; even Koreans are discernible among a crowd. The Japanese have learned the other way round. They speak Japanese with a slight English accent. For example; apple becomes a-pu-ru (ru being pronounced loo), baseball becomes bay-su-ba-ru (bay pronounced as in baying), birthday becomes bir-su-da-i (bir pronounced as in bird). I picked words that have Japanese equivalents to show that their pronunciation is about as far from English as you can manage, while still using a base English word. Some words have been integrated into Japanese and, frankly speaking, I often don`t understand what they`re saying.
Unfortunately this passes as acceptable English here, so the English teachers work is difficult.
Another side-effect of this appropriation is class direction. The English class is conducted entirely in Japanese, with the target word, phrase or grammar given in English. Learning single sentences or ideas in isolation creates an environment where learning becomes more difficult, as everyone asks for the direction in Japanese, even when they understand enough to answer the question. You don`t need to understand every word to understand the meaning of a sentence. Maybe you do in Japanese, but this severely hinders progress in English.
This is exemplified when, having a class for a mere five minutes (the teacher was busy administering a health checkup (teeth, if you`re interested) for his homeroom class) I managed to get them to understand, with no prior knowledge, the units of measurement for weight and height. I had them guessing my height and weight, and saying their own. I didn`t ask the weight questions of any of the girls, in case you`re wondering.
The point being that, learned in isolation, this would have taken an entire class, were the lesson conducted in Japanese. Sure, retention might well be lower, as the students were unable to take notes during class, but over a period of time, reinforcing this for a couple of minutes each lesson, the students would naturally remember information in this way.
I presume the school has a set syllabus for learning English, and they will stick to it rigidly; just as our French and German lessons were conducted in England. There are myriad parallels to be drawn between our systems, as the Japanese government styled itself on English and american parliamentary systems, education systems and to a lesser extent health systems after the war. Unfortunately, they inherited all the problems we have with foreign language teaching - a side-effect of not creating their own unique system, tailored to the specific weaknesses of Japanese students.
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