Language Learning - Chinese 中文and Japanese 日本語

Just a little update about my language learning.

For the past 2 years I've been getting my Masters in English teaching. During that time I didn't have much time for language learning. When I did have time I was doing Japanese Memrise vocab learning and then Audible and Kindle book listening and simultaneous reading (which I covered in another blog post).

The Kindle and Audible reading has been by far the most effective language learning method I've found so far. From my English teaching studies I learnt about Krashen's theory of language acquisition where he talks about comprehensible input. In that theory Krashen talks about acquiring language through being exposed to lots of language that you already understand. The part that you do not understand you can learn through context.

For me a first step in this method was to learn a lot of vocabulary. I did this through drilling myself on thousands of words through using Memrise. Memrise was effective as I got into a routine of at least reviewing at least 50 words a day and learning a new set of 30 words a day. I guess my vocabulary now after 3 years of sporadically doing Memrise is around 10-15 thousand words in Japanese.

With that amount of words I've quickly found I can a read decent level of book in Japanese. While this is lower than my English level it still means I can read adult fiction and generally understand what is going on.

One of my aims in reading and listening is to see vocabulary used in many different sentences so that I can understand how the word is used better. One difficulty with Japanese is the onyomi and kunyomi readings of words. These are tricky as it is hard to know which reading to use. Which is why using Audible is good - the Audible narrator is obviously a native of the language and when listening you can hear the native and correct pronunciation whether it is onyomi or kunyomi. 

Another thing from my language studies that is worth mentioning is that some language in your brain is active and some is passive. When doing simultaneous reading and listening you are building both but the passive knowledge of language is being reinforced quicker - I believe. So while there are improvements in language usage (active language) the passive knowledge of language is also being extended massively.   

To show one aspect of this - when I've gone back to grammar study, I've found that grammar that I previously did not know well I had a feel for even though I wasn't sure why I felt that grammar should be used or not. To illustrate this I've been reviewing Japanese grammar with my italki teacher and while I had studied some of the grammar in the past I didn't know how to use it. However when we go through the grammar exercises I seem to know/feel which grammar construction should be used. I put this down to having been exposed to the grammar through massive exposure - through reading and daily life (I live in Japan). Basically, I've acquired a feel for Japanese grammar. 

This had been a massive breakthrough as I've tried before many times to memorise a formula for grammar use and while I can understand it at the time and apply it, I subsequently forget it and have trouble knowing how to use it later. 

Anyway back to the original aim of this post what I've been doing lately. Now I've finished my Masters I've had time to increase my simultaneous reading and listening now 30 minutes a day of Japanese 5 days a week and I've started to do Chinese vocabulary (again) through Memrise.    

So I'm using the same playbook for Chinese as for Japanese. I'm going to learn a truck load of vocabulary on Memrise then dive into simultaneous reading and listening. When I have time I'll probably find a teacher on italki to practice speaking as using the language is really important for language development. I'll keep you updated on how this goes.

TLDR - simultaneous reading and listening is great for grammar and vocabulary acquisition. It can help you get a feel for grammar even though you are not studying it directly. In the case of Japanese it can also help you learn correct pronunciation of kanji. However, before you do reading you need a good vocabulary base - using Memrise can help you get this quickly and efficiently.