Today's post is about speaking, which is rare on my blog! What triggered it is this video I found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zgqcQ6Z9Mtw It was a commercial, and for once, I didn't skip it after 5 seconds. This Korean guy learns English by doing impersonations of Sherlock Holmes from the series by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. I always..
My new study method: the One-week challenge/immersion!
I think I got it at last! The method that suits me best to learn a language. Learning Japanese on my own has been a mess of trials and errors, of abandoned study plans and seemingly revolutionary but unrealistic study methods. But somehow, it has been fun trying different things, and designing study plans is..
Read the news in Japanese: one-week reading challenge!
I have decided to try something new this week and start a "reading the news in Japanese" challenge. I will read and translate one news article per day this week, starting today and ending on Sunday. I think that the more often you read the news, the easier it gets. Not only because you improve..
September, at last!
September is here at last! (I don't like Summer in Korea because it is too hot and the air conditioner everywhere makes me sick.) Only four months to go before the end of the year...! It's time to look at the goals we set for ourselves in January and make some last adjustments to be..
Monthly Review: August 2018
August, or summer in general, is not a good time to study... at least to me. I have struggled with books and haven't read as much as I should have. I blame my lack of productivity on Korean summer heat and hope that writing this monthly review will put an end to this Summer curse,..
Back to study mode!
I am back, after a two-week break from writing my blog. Even though I promised myself that I would continue learning Japanese, I almost did nothing to learn or be immersed in Japanese during these two weeks... Some say that taking a break from time to time is not a bad thing and some say..
Monthly review: July 2018
I haven't been productive this month, I was mainly fighting the heat, sleeping badly because the temperature would hardly go down during the night. That's okay, because I know I will be filled with new energy in September! Japanese I haven't done much apart from reading, studying Anki and making one type of exercise per..
Organising my studies
For some time now, I come up with things that I want to do every day. I want to write in Japanese every day, I want to do listening exercise every day, write lines of kanji, read the news and take notes, read my book on Japanese history, revise N3 grammar, study Anki, and so..
New Anki deck, old goals
I have started a new Anki deck... and I am not using anymore the one I started on the very first day of my learning Japanese. I have realised that my Anki deck was not fitting my goals anymore. When I created my deck, I had in mind a strategy to learn vocabulary as thoroughly..
My listening exercise for the second half of 2018
In my checkpoint about how good I was doing in 2018, I had to admit that I hadn't work much on listening. I regularly come up with a renewed motivation to listen to more Japanese, but as long as it does not find a concrete plan and schedule, it often remains at the stage of..
Half-way through 2018! Time to check our yearly challenges.
We are halfway through 2018, it is time to check our New Year's resolutions! How are your challenges doing? It is now the perfect time to adjust them if it didn't work or even drop it all and make a new start with mid-year goals. As for me, I had a lot of ideas and..
Monthly Review: June
We are entering the last week of June and almost reached the half of the year! 😮 If I had to sum up the month of June, I would call it: "going back into my comfort zone." Though I am still drawing and journaling with as much enthusiasm as last month, the focus of this..