I'm just a tiny 2 year old, cut me some slack #9

There is a TL;DR at the bottom!

So just about two years ago, a brand new language immersion learner (me) spawned on our blue earth (actually more like the internet). And has been steadily learning Korean and Japanese since! Genuinely, as an opening statement:

Considering it's only been two years, I couldn't be more happy with my progress.

I'm confident I can crush most two year olds in a spelling bee! Maybe even a little bit more. Of course it's had to describe language proficiency across all the possible ways to measure speaking, listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary size and so on.

It's however safe to say, I am right on the long winding road through the intermediate plateau, proficiency still seems far away and progress seems flat. So I can't really say that my level is that drastically different from what I reported in my last update, a half year or so ago. However, there are a couple things I did notice and I want to document them for my future self.

 

My level

I still don't spend as much time on Japanese as I do on Korean (still Jdramas fault I think, Kdrama just wins that battle) and as such my vocabulary and grammar gains are small. HOWEVER, there is improvement. I notice that words and speech patterns that felt foggy and unclear to me previously, have become quite secure and certain domains feel easy and natural to understand. I love getting this increasingly more sharp feeling of understanding. Even when I might have technically understood a sentence before, I feel like there are levels to it and I can tell that it takes me less mental strain to understand the same stuff as I did before.

Since I do basically zero deliberate study with my Japanese these days, this feeling of words getting crystalline from the general word soup of unknowns is especially noticeable. I adore suddenly recognizing a word I didn't before, maybe even knowing the meaning without having looked it up.

On the output side, I have become a little more experienced too. Pretty soon after my last post I ended up making a really good friend. We met at an exchange meetup, hit it off and have been actual friends ever since. We usually communicate in all three languages that we have in common.

Now, this friend graciously just keeps talking in Japanese to me, even when I respond in English or German, which after a while helps me get into the flow of it and feel a bit more confident in answering in Japanese back. It's all usually quite basic stuff, being in a supermarket and looking for jam. Commenting on the confusing statements by the cashier, asking each other about likes and dislikes. If he was hellbent on monologueing on the current political situation, he'd loose me in a second. But I still don't feel like he dumbs it down much for me. I try to do the same for his German.

My Korean is much easier to describe. I read webtoons for fun and have couple where I understand the plot without looking anything up. That's wild. I can follow Didis Korean podcast with ease, on 태웅쌤's I have to focus a little more but it depends on the topic and conversation partner. I have read three books so far, of varying degrees of difficulty. Since switching my immersion tool from Migaku to Kimchi reader (my recommendation to you, if you happen to still use Migaku), I have even sentence mined these books and might or might not have reviewed the cards from time to time. My comprehension still depends a lot on what exactly I am immersing in, but it feels like I have a nice foundation and am steadily adding on to it.

I wasn't sure If I should disclose this because
a) putting pressure on myself is verboten!
b) I don't think this is a good measurement for proficiency at all
c) I don't want other learners to look at this and draw wrong conclusions

But, I am really only doing this for myself and I want to be transparent and have a correct picture of my level, looking back! That being said, here are my Kimchi word stats as of today (cndog If you are reading this, I am coming for you. Just very very slowly hahaha)

 

I am still just marking things as i go, and I am only really using kimchi to read (I don't tend to study with video or audio material), so my word count is just all the words i knew in the three books that I have read so far. But I also don't think it is tooo far off.

In terms of output, I feel most confident in texting, since that's what I have done the most. One person I met for a language exchange told me my spoken Korean was better than my written one, one person told me I had good natural grammar (we were speaking) another told me my vocabulary was better than my grammar (we were texting). So I don't know how to gauge this but my personal estimate is: I have a relatively natural approach to sentence structure and the vibe I want to portray. I do make mistakes in some areas though and I do have a limited vocabulary.

My strong suits are good intuition, good listening comprehension and, honestly, my ambiguity tolerance and inferring from context skills are top notch! I think I am also not too bad at picking up accents, so I am hoping my German twang is subtle.

Methodology

Right, now that I have the level documentation is out of the way, I want to talk about method because that's much more interesting! This is gonna get long, I want to touch on my experience learning, on my findings and get personal. Be warned.

As a disclaimer, as always I am speaking from my own experience, which is affected by my environment, personality, time constraints and general whim. If you're reading this and just starting out, my Nr1 advice is to always take anecdotal advice like this with a grain of salt, trust the science and you do you!

Just as i had decided from the start, I have been learning without much self imposed structure, intentional habits, drills, pressure or even attempting efficiency. My Nr. 1 doctrine is prioritizing enjoyment and going with the flow.

This is the way I learn most things in life. I am a person that is good at autodidactics, and I have always loved learning at my own pace, following just what interested me most at that time. Aside from languages, my hobbies are a many. I taught myself all of my sewing and crafting skills like this, got into various topics of interest and am a proud jack of all trades (omg she mentioned the name of the blog!!).

 I am however also someone who has been studying in academic and traditional school settings, constantly and all my waking life. I am used to exams, homework, having to sit down and follow a curriculum that explains things in an order opposite to my understanding and all of the sort.

At the beginning of my language learning journey, two years ago, I was burnt out and completely devoid of any motivation. It had become almost impossible to continue my university education, studying for exams felt like actual torture, there was 0 fun and only stress.
Starting this learning in exactly the fashion that I did, has been healing and fixing my relationship to acquiring knowledge all across my life. Suddenly I could see that I was much more successful if I trusted my intuition and followed my whim. If I learned things in the order that interested me most, and not in the order that was recommended to me by any curriculum. Maybe my brain is not wired in the way most peoples are because seriously why do people insist on making absolute cabbage without sense out of their teaching material??
Anyway, since I saw no reason to change my method, I continued and I am still happy with it. I think I am much faster this way than any other.

Of course, to a beginner reading this, this is all really vague and non actuable. What do you mean you prioritize fun, how do you ever learn any dull grammar? Rep your vocabulary?

This is where my personality is helpful, I am a nerd and I am into this. I willingly look up the ethymology of chinese characters in my free time, I browse a grammar concept on the train, I listen to things I understand very little of because I am nosy and curious and not ever discouraged by understanding null. I do not need to force myself to read a book because I love reading in any language. I hugely enjoy movies and shows and it has gotten to the point where watching shows in languages I do understand is almost boring. This is my hobby. This is my way to relax. This is all fun to me.

That being said, if I were to even attempt a little bit of structure, like force myself to do Anki even when I am not in the mood for it. Or make me read even though I am more in the mood for listening. Or study at all when I just want a day of break and live life in German for once. Or forcing myself to talk even if I feel insecure, tracking my time to optimize my hours, give myself mandatory drills, comparing my level to others.. If I even attempted a smidgen of any sort of ambition outside of the huge amounts I already naturally have, I would stop.

Full out would not be able to do it anymore.

So I just follow whatever. I watch a show if I want to watch the show, I read If I am hungry for new words, I watch Youtube content if I am interested in the video, be it from the topic or because I just want to know how much I understand. If I feel like opening my Anki for the first time in weeks, I do it. If I am social I output. If I see a grammar concept that I don't understand but want to know more about, I'll read up on it. Hell, If I ever wanted to do a textbook, I'd do it (but I won't. Don't worry, I'd never go that far. ew).

Do you get my gist? Under all of this is of course still Refold and immersion learning principles. Input is key and always outweighs my output. Everything else is supplementary. I wait with outputting things until I am somewhat confident in the matter (low threshhold but still). I trust the process.

The END

And that is where I want to leave you off! I hope you could get something out of my self reflection rambles, I really just do this for myself so I can have a look back at my progress. But I am always really happy to hear feedback and read the experiences of others and I hope someone found this entertaining.

I am also thinking that I should maybe write these posts a little more frequent than bi-annually, because they are getting a little out of hand length wise. Thanks to everyone who got this far, you're a trooper!

Yours truly, the most eloquent two year old you'll ever encounter. <3

TL;DR

Man she's still going. Japanese is mostly marinating already existing knowledge with additions a little sparse. Korean is thriving just not very visibly so. Method is still do whatever and have fun, keep your time tracking away from me please and thank you.