Working Hard or Hardly Working?
Every morning, while doing morning chores and making breakfast, I listen to a Japanese podcast. If I’m in the mood, I keep listening while eating breakfast.
After breakfast, I rewrite the entries in my Japanese diary, and write a new entry if I couldn’t do it the night before.
After that, manga and kanji.
At night after coming home from work, from Mondays to Fridays, I write in my Japanese diary. On the weekends, I read aloud what I’d written during the week.
Inari-san says I’m studying hard, but I don’t think so. 😆 I enjoy the podcast and it seems like I enjoy writing, no matter the language I’m using. I also like the manga I’m reading (I’ve read it many times in English already) and writing kanji is kind of meditative to me. 😆
If I took Japanese lessons (like many foreign residents I’ve met here) and regularly looked at my Japanese vocabulary flash cards, I would think I’m studying hard.
Because I’m enjoy everything I’m doing, it doesn’t feel “hard” at all.
When students ask me what they should listen to at home, I always tell them to listen to whatever they want and enjoy. They can listen to the news or crime podcasts or songs or audio books. They can listen on the train or while cleaning or running or in the bath. It doesn’t matter.
When you reach a certain level of ability in a language, doing as many things as you can with that language is important, and enjoying what you’re doing can help you keep going every day, every week, every month until you get better.
I have zero confidence in my Japanese, and I still don’t like it because it’s a difficult language to learn; but I enjoy studying it so I can keep going and I will keep going. 💪🏼