The Three Year Struggle Report #11

In a shocking turn of events, I've decided to write my three year update post, even though I wrote my last update only a couple months ago in August. I bet you did not expect me to turn up again this soon. Got ya <3 

First things first, you know the spiel:
- omg I can't believe it's been three years
- time runs, wtf
- etc etc 등등 
- still love it tho 

Now that we've got that out the way, I have actually followed through on some of the "experiments" that I announced last post. As a reminder, I set up to carefully change a little bit about my immersion routines to see if I could shake things up a little. Keep the spark alive, if you will. But always stay within the bounds of my self imposed RULES that dictate low stress and forbid min maxing. 

For Korean I am happy to report that I have finished another two books (당신을 기다리고 있어 and 소리를 삼킨 소년). The latter I mined so much that you could probably follow the plot just by reading my cards. I also increased my daily known words from below 5 to somewhere between 8 and 9 in the last 30 days. If I keep up the pace, I might reach 5k known words within the next two months. Big IF. You can really see the gradual incline in my K-Reader and Anki statistics: 

After having had a long fallout with Anki, deleting my 2k Evita deck that I used as a beginner, Anki and I have been on the path of reconciliation. We've been going to couples therapy and even though I don't see us in a committed long term relationship anymore, I do believe we'll be able to coparent our little flashcards well. Ever since I have introduced K-reader for mining as a third, we've rekindled our connection. (I am Ankis toxic on and off ex. For sure.)

Previously the majority of my word acquisition required me to remember and recognise words in the wild. So sometimes I'd see a word, look it up and then think "I wonder how long it'll be before I see this one again". But with mining, I know that I am making this database where I can always retrieve it from later. So I feel a little less stressed with marking words as known. Because I know the word in question will definitely turn up in my cards again and I don't have to worry about loosing it. No shit, almost like that's the whole point. Before I was always very strict with what words I marked as known. If I had even the littlest inkling of doubt if I could remember it in a different context, I'd leave it as seen. But now I think "well if I forget it, Anki will surely show me again". So that definitely adds to my increased word learning speed. 

The way I am mining has also changed. I used to be more picky about which words to mine, picky in the sense that I would only mine a word if I had seen it a couple times before, felt confident it would turn up again and maybe had a relatively high ranking on word frequency lists. I received the advice to be less choosy and am currently operating on a sole criterium: is it a sentence that helps me remember the word. The long term effects of this are yet to be seen, but in the case that I get a bunch of words that don't stick because they are too rare in my immersion, I can always suspend the cards. For now I think it is a lot better this way. The content that I choose to engage with does the pre-selection of words kind of for you anyways. And in the end I want all the words and am now at a point where my foundation is solid enough that it's kind of impossible to guess what words will or won't be relevant next.

I'm also noticing other effects. With all this mining and reviewing, I am inadvertently changing the ratio between the amounts of words I'm learning and the free flow immersion I'm doing. What I mean by that is, for every new word there is proportionally less allotted immersion time. And I've also got a higher amount of new words cooking at the same time.
Previously I could not relate much when others reported how they can understand each individual word but everything together is just not being mentally parsed quickly enough. Either I knew the words or I didn't, exept for a few that i was learning. But now I definitely know this feeling. I know the words will fix themselves with time, but there will also be more new words coming through. So I'll have to get used to this larger amount of shaky new words in my vocabulary and just accept that I cannot be both firm in my understanding and increase my learning pace at the same time. 

I might also need to increase my listening and output. I just caught myself the other day, glued to the subs of a drama! Me! The listening main. Who couldn't keep up with subs and did not shy away from subless dramas! Clearly I've been reading too much. And output has started to feel nerve wracking too. I don't want a case of output anxiety. Maybe I need to do some daily practice for that. A voice note a day keeps the output anxiety away?

I'd love to have the courage to speak with actual people I am meeting in real life from time to time. But right at the bottom of the worry-cocktail of perfectionism and social rules, there's a cherry of not wanting to inflict my broken attempts at communication onto unsuspecting civilians. So the few korean speaking friends I do have, are being mostly shielded from my nonsense. To the detriment of my abilities. Voice notes to myself it is. 

Since all of these things are issues a lot of the higher lvl learners are reporting, I am not too worried. But it's interesting that I'm experiencing some of them now. Maybe I am becoming one of the cool kids. In the end I just need to be careful not to get too obsessed with checking my stats all the time. At the moment it's nice to see comparatively quick process but if I end up having to slow down again, having it all in black on white numbers might make slowing down more painfully obvious. I might also choose to keep quiet about my word count again? Idk. 

For Japanese I have mostly increased my media consumption. I was watching this show called Cinderella closet that was right at my level and really chill. Each episode is rather short and all conflicts were resolved quickly and with communication. We love to see it. I am also watching other things like the latest season of Alice in Borderland, episodes of 愛の学校 or some Anime, but often with mixed subs. I know. I KNOW. Using English subs is a big nono for a lot of people. However, I've done it with Korean shows too and haven't spontaneously combusted so far. Of course it would be better to drop the subs, but if the show is so hard that I need English subs from time to time, I'm not going to get that much out of it freeflow anyway. At least this way, i can ignore the subs where i can, yet glance at them when im like "oh wait, what was is this word? I've heard it a couple of times now". In my experience, not being too strict about this allows me to stay engaged with the language. It's better than not doing anything, that's for sure! 

My previous post announced that I would try to get better learning routines for Japanese. So i set out to set up Migaku again but I spent a whole episode of a show mining, only to find that the cards were lost in the æther, never reaching Anki, never to be found again. So annoying! I also must say, the new migaku is an all in all much more confusing and annoying experience in comparison to the legacy version. So I also installed a newer version of yomitan and it seems that all the free tools and workflows might work a lot better. But they also require much more setup and, the worst about it, there is barely any mobile support. So I will need to start another attempt but at least I am happy to report that I am getting more immersion time in. 

Now, since its my three year learning anniversary, I feel like I should leave some sappy words about how I feel and how it's been. But given that time is running like crazy, next years opportunity for doing that will be here sooner than I want anyway so I will give the heavily abridged version:
It's great, I'm slow but I knew that, I learned a lot and not all of it is language, the path is the goal and the friends we make along the way are the prize. 

Huzzah. 

Sending my best and let me know how your learning is going <3
Yours truly
Mymfiola, the three year long struggler 

 

P.S.: would anyone be interested in reading a sort of life lessons from language learning post? I started one three years ago but never posted and now have some additional thoughts. Alternatively, let me know your life lessons from learning. For research purposes