Recently I’ve been having increasingly anxious that I feel I have been at a bottleneck in my language capabilities for quite a long time. Reflecting over my past 3 years of attempt, I feel like it would be good to put a plan into words to tell myself that it’s normal to have doubts on whether I am improving. I hope it would also serve as a reference for my readers who are considering/already learning a new language.

English Learning

Reflecting on my experiences in learning English, it really wasn’t very comparable to Japanese because my English learning was much less intensive but took place over 5+ years. Also, ultimately I began living in a place full of native speakers which simply is not true in my Japanese learning.

With that being said, I do feel like I’m not the kind of person who could put in the effort I “should” in studying grammar.

I could still vividly recall, around 3-4 years into learning English, I became quite depressed about unable to remember most grammar points I learned. As a result I was pretty much criticized daily by my teacher about being “lazy”, which I, in some ways have to agree with.

Despite me simply unable to put in effort in studying grammar, I feel like my outcome is outimately a success: I don’t feel in any way restricted by my language abilities for in past two years of life in the states.

I used to be pretty worried about my expressions when meeting with my social worker but it turned out just fine.

Same Difficulties

I feel like I am hitting the same issues with Japanese learning recently. I found myself devoting most of my time craving for vocabulary and reading material but can’t really put any energy into reviewing grammar and writing.

I even wrote myself a browser addon (with my limited JS capabilities) so I can quickly look up and save any new word I met on the Internet, proved to be very helpful! Meanwhile I feel like the last time I seriously read a language textbook was before summer break.

At least I haven’t been critized that harshly by any instructor as of now…

Resolution (?)

If it was not because of the deadnaming problem, I feel like scheduling a test would help cheer me up, but that’s probably not happening for another year.

As an alternative that does not involve testing … I feel like maybe importing local K-12 language textbooks would help me further get my grammar (and language usage smell) correct.

Turned out it was not as easy as I thought and I spend significantly more than my expected budget for this… Had to pay about the same price as the textbook it self for shipping charges, and it ended up costing around ¥3,000 per (text)book… The self-study guides were cheaper simply because there are more options.

I feel like maybe getting a textbook for native speakers could help me interpret the grammar points in another way. I am also hoping these would help me killing (pre/post)-operative time meaningfully.

I would write updates to how these turned out! (ﾟｍﾟ*)ﾌﾟｯ