Massive Immersion Approach and other methods
I will write this post throughout the month of April.
I’ve always been pretty terrible at listening comprehension, at least when the audio is in Japanese. So I remembered when I read about the AJATT and MIAprroach. I began those methods on the 1st of April.
Watching some of Matt’s videos, I think my previous problem with listening was not understanding the Japanese phonemes. I believe I’m slightly better at that. But now it seems that I have another problem: I can’t assimilate the grammar fast enough. So, regardless of understanding or not the words, I can’t understand the sentence’s meaning because, without grammar, it seems just a bunch of random words.
Well, this is what I’ve been doing:
Youtube - I created a different channel within my main account (so I don’t have to be always logging off and on and to keep the same email). On this channel, I selected Japan as my region and only watch Japanese videos, so the suggestions are always more Japanese videos and I don’t get distracted by things I actually understand. This is what I’ve been watching:
--Anime (Doraemon, Shin chan, ...)
--Vegan themed videos (Veganelly)
--Gaming related content, for example people showing their collections
JapanesePod101 - They read a dialogue, read it again but slower, and then translate it sentence by sentence. Useful.
News Web Easy - A year ago, it was difficult for me to read their news, but now... not that much. I always add the useful words to an Anki deck.
Matcha - You can read the easy version (https://matcha-jp.com/easy) or the normal one (https://matcha-jp.com/jp)
Remember the Kanji (aka RTK) - I know a lot of people do +20 kanji per day, but I usually do less than that (13-20). I supplement the RTK with the Koohii website (https://kanji.koohii.com/) instead of Anki
Bilingual Manga (https://bilingualmanga.com/) - It’s easy to get the meaning of the individual words through an addon like Rikaichamp (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/rikaichamp/) and, if you still don’t understand the meaning of the sentence, just click “language switcher“ and it will give you the translation. I don’t recommend it though. As Matt from MIApproach says, «Growing your capacity to tolerate ambiguity is essential to making rapid progress. Unfortunately, tolerating ambiguity often doesn’t come naturally. Most of us have grown up in a culture that places a lot of value on “understanding things.” Because of this, for most people, being able to tolerate ambiguity is a skill that must be actively cultivated over time.»
Video games - I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Switch in Japanese. If you think it may be too difficult for you, play it in a language you’re comfortable with first, and then, when you get used to how the game works, switch the language to Japanese. You only have to change the language of your console to Japanese.
Podcasts - Mainly ゲームなんとか. I always listen to it while I’m taking breakfast and while on my bed trying to sleep. If I can keep immersing myself while doing other tasks, I’ll do it.
I’m not studying Japanese as much as when the quarantine started, I have to admit. Still, I’ve been studying every single day, which by itself is already an accomplishment.
Recently, I tried again to read Doraemon in Japanese. It’s a lot easier now than it was 6 months ago. I’m so happy with that! It’s undoubtedly one of my favourite manga/anime.
I’m neglecting grammar, unfortunately. I know MIApproach doesn’t focus much on grammar but I believe it still has some importance in understanding any content. But as I am trying to focus on input rather than output, I think that just reading about some grammar patterns should be enough, because then I will notice them during the input and get used to them. It’s simpler because I don’t have to create my own sentences with those grammar patterns, I just have to recognise them.
I had a Japanese lesson today, and I noticed that I was able to understand more than I usually do. It may have been just a coincidence, though.
Things I think I should change:
I should be using more of my time to listen to podcasts and radio.
I need to keep learning grammar in small amounts.
I have to watch more anime.
I need to write on Lang-8 (https://lang-8.com/) every week. I should probably decide on a day of the week and write the text exactly on that day.
It could be useful and fun to think in Japanese and talk in Japanese with my family (although I will have to translate what I’ve said afterwards...)
