Inhae's blog

I am concerned about how to improve my writing skills and I have tried a method that seems to work well.

The idea is to thoroughly study an article in order to collect collocations and expressions that we can use for writing.

Until now, I have entirely relied on Anki to learn new words. This method works like magic to me, but I realised recently that Anki only helps me recognise the words and mainly allows me to improve my reading skills. Which is fine by the way. But the problem is that I don’t always know how to use the words I learn. I don’t want to enter too much information when I create a new card in Anki. First, it would take a lot of time to do so and second, I don’t want to spend too much time studying Anki and I am sure that I would not even bother reading the complementary information when studying my deck. That is why there are a lot of words that I don’t know how to use but it’s only when I started writing in Japanese that I became aware of this problem.

To remedy this problem, I have started to take vocabulary notes relative to articles I read. This is a little different from the news articles I have been studying on this blog because the goal of this was to be able to read the news more comfortably and I focused on understanding the words, not on how to use them. The difference is that, whenever I come across a word that I think could be useful for my (future) writings in Japanese, I spend some time in the dictionary and I note all kinds of useful information about this word: in which context it can be used, what are its different meaning, how it is used and so on. Of course, I don’t write word for word the dictionary contents, I select only information that I think might be useful to me.

Concretely, this is how it works (in blue, examples from articles I have studied so far)

• First, choose an article not too long and not too difficult. I would say that an article about a social issue is a good choice, but it could be whatever you like. A blog post, an article found on the web about a subject that interests you, etc. I personally print it and stock it in a loose leaf folder.
• On a loose leaf that I will place face to face with the article in my folder, I write down all the unknown words of the article. When I read something, I usually try to reduce the number of words that I am looking up and try to guess the meaning of unknown words. Here, on the contrary, we are studying an article, this implies spending time on it and be thorough. I write down the words with their definition in English, an A4 page is usually enough. I always let a margin on the left side of the leaf so that I can use “signifiers” before the words I am writing down. The concept of signifiers come from the bullet journal method: a mark that can be added to a task to prioritise it for example. I am using them a little differently to hierarchise my words. There are different types of words:
  • Very difficult or specialised words that belong to a certain field and that I will probably not use myself. I just write down the definition because if they are jargon from a field that interests me, I might come across them again later. But that’s all, I don’t try to remember them and I don’t draw any signifiers. In fact, to gain time, you could just skip these words. For example, I came across the word 加工肉・かこうにく which means “cold cooked meat”. I am not trying to learn it, but I still write it down because it helps me remember that I came across such words in this article, in case I happen to read them again or hear them somewhere (who knows). 
  • Words I think that I may have the opportunity to use when writing. In front of these words, I draw a triangle, it’s my signifier to say “this word is important and might be useful someday, don’t skip it when you re-read your notes”. For example, the word 肉眼・にくがん that I found interesting and funny. It means “the naked eye”. I also wrote down the expression 肉眼で見える. 
  • Words that can be used in any situation, that is, words not particularly specific to this article and its contents and that I will certainly want to use one day. They can be adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions or of course, verbs and nouns. For these words, I draw a star, which means “to learn and remember” and I devote a little more time to them. I don’t simply look for their definition and write it down, I also read through all the example sentences given in my dictionary. I write down 2 or 3 sentences that I think might be useful. It can be sentences that show how the word can be used or even expressions that I know I will use later when doing writing exercises. These words are the most interesting words so let me give two examples. The word 割り切る・わりきる appeared in an article I read last week, it means “come to a clear decision”. This is the definition I would write on my Anki card, but to be honest, it does not tell me how this word is used. That’s why I also wrote several example sentences like “仕事は仕事、遊びは遊びと割り切る” or “割り切った考え方” (a practical approach) or “割り切った態度” (a business-like manner). Another typical example is the word 倍・ばい. I have this word in my Anki, with the definition “double”… So this time, I wrote down sentences like “倍にする/なる” and even very useful expressions like 金が倍かかる (cost twice as much) or 時間が倍かかる (take twice as much time).
• If I decide to enter some of these words in my Anki deck, I just underline them.
• From time to time, I re-read this list, but only the words with a signifiers.

The idea is really to create a stock of expressions that are ready to use when I need them. This is the best way that I found so far to start collecting colloquial associations. As I saw them either in the article that I read or in my dictionary (in the example sentences) I am sure that they are correct and I can use them with confidence when writing. I don’t know if it applies to everyone but knowing that one expression, one use of a word is colloquial makes me happy and helps me attach some value to what I wrote.

That’s it, I think it’s time to me to leave the comfort zone of passivity to start using the knowledge I have accumulated so far and become able to produce something in Japanese, not just understand it. (I am only speaking of my personal resolutions here, I do consider that understanding a language without speaking it or being able to write it is a highly praisable goal in itself).

おしらせ: Next week is finally the long-awaited Kyoto trip (my second time in Japan). This blog will also take some holiday. There will be no new post next week and I will be back for the Wednesday post on December 27th.

About

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.

Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.

Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.