Minimalist language learning

  Now that I've read the last chapter of 『ひと』I want to share my thoughts: Story I have mixed feelings. Slice of life stories are nice and relaxing to read from time to time but, unfortunately, I struggled to motivate myself to continue reading. I can see the value of this kind of story, however,  I missed interesting twists, unusual events, challenges that the main character needs to overcome, etc. (=anything that would make me curious) To be fair, it's not that the main character doesn't has any goals nor problems, far from it. But they are so … normal. I usually prefer interesting and exciting stories. Mystery, action, suspense, thriller... you name it. That's why slice of life is a bit boring for my taste. However, this is just my personal taste and has nothing to do with the quality of the book itself! Although it was not a page turner for me, it's not that I dislike the story. I think it's a nice slice of life story.  The first chapter introduces the protag...

  I finished volume 1 of ヒカルの碁！A long time ago, I've read the first 4 or 5 volumes in German. I was fascinated by the story and the board game Go. (I even bought a Go set and played a bit) Somehow I never bought the other volumes … which I later regretted… T^T Now, many years later, reading this manga in Japanese is a very special experience to me. (Very light) spoiler warning: In the following, I want to highlight some aspects of the story and characters. I tried to be as vague as possible to avoid clear spoilers. I didn’t describe specific events but just in case you definitely don’t want to know anything before you read the manga yourself you probably should not read the following text. The manga is quite old, but the drawings are still excellent in my opinion. I like, how the main character Hikaru slowly changes his opinion about the board game Go (it's usually not very popular among young people; or at least not among Hikaru's peers). In the beginning, he is a bit arro...

  I've read the first chapter and would like to share a few thoughts in this post. The first chapter introduces the protagonist, his difficult life situation, his past and several other characters. Apart from that, there are no special or dramatic events in this chapter. At this point, I'm not sure what this story is about or what to expect. I think this will change with the next chapter. I like how the story is told. It starts with the focus on the protagonist and introduces gradually more and more details about the protagonist and other characters in a natural way. It’s quite pleasant to read so far. Although nothing special happened during this chapter, I never felt bored. It's interesting to learn more and more about the protagonist and I'm curious how his life will change in the next chapters.  The level of difficulty is okay. I have to look up a bunch of words and don't understand every detail but most of the time I can follow the story well. Only scenes with ...

What do you think when you hear the word "talent“? Do you think talent in language learning exists and — if yes — that it makes a great difference? While I think that some people are able to learn pronunciation and other things more easily than others, for example, I don’t think that "talent“ is the only explanation to this. There are so many other factors that can influence someone's progress, but these are easily overlooked. That’s why I don’t like it when someone is called "talented“ just because he or she is good at something. That’s not the whole story. Why believing in talent can be problematic Another reason why I’m careful when it comes to "talent“ is that it makes many people think that if they don’t have this talent, they should give up. Believing in talent can destroy your motivation and joy to learn a new skill. When you feel stuck or when you made a mistake it’s easy to think "This is because I have no talent. I will never learn this language“ ...

In nature things are often influenced by more than just one factor. A flower needs more than just water to stay alive. It may grow well in one place but withers when you plant it at another place. There are many factors that determine the development of a living being. Our world is not only black or white. It's full of colors.  Unfortunately, humans tend to think in black or white. "Y is good, Z is bad!" People often discuss which opinion is "right" and which is "wrong". In some cases, friends became enemies because they couldn't accept another opinion.  Many people also confuse opinions with facts. They defend their opinion even if they have no proof. And they refuse to change their opinion even if there is evidence that their claims are not correct. Language learning is colorful I don't like "black-or-white-thinking". And I'm not interested in "language gurus". The language learning community is full of many different...

Please note that I write about what works for me and share advice based on my own experiences. If you have a different opinion or if you use other methods, that's absolutely fine. Do whatever works for you. . . . When I learned my second language (English) at school, we did a lot of grammar exercises. Writing was hard because I focused too much on grammar rules. I wasn’t able to write correct sentences intuitively. After graduation, I started to watch my favorite TV series in English because the new seasons weren't available in my native language. I also began to read blogs and forum posts about language learning in English. Over time, my English improved a lot.  I can use it intuitively now because I unconsciously internalized so many sentence patterns and expressions. At some point I stopped thinking about grammar rules and just trusted my feel for the language. This doesn’t mean that I never make mistakes, of course, but I can express myself quite well and without much diff...

Japanese books read: 56. I finished 『オルタネート』by 加藤シゲアキ . Before I share my impressions please keep in mind that this book was very challenging for me. I was able to follow the story but I missed a lot of details and nuances. This book was difficult at my current level. That's why I intend to read it again in the future. The following is just my current opinion. When I read the book again in a year or so my opinion may be different. Please take it with a grain of salt. Main characteristics First of all, it was very different from the books I've read before. The pace is very slow, in my opinion. There are 3 main characters and the point of view changes in every chapter between these 3. So it took a lot of time until I was familiar with every character. Only the last few chapters break this pattern and have a much faster pace than before.  Another difference is that it seems to be a slice-of-life story. I usually read fast-paced stories where a lot of things are going on. This boo...