How to make your learning efficient

   Hello everyone ! It’s been a while since I didn't write, doesn’t it ? I am really sorry for that will try to apologize the best way ! It comes to my mind that it would be a good idea to publish once a week, on Sunday for instance, but, as I am working until holiday ends, I am not sure to respect that… *she said while drinking her tea lazily on the middle of the afternoon after watching several episodes of Spice and Wolf II*

   Anyways, I am back ! And I have some tips to give you about the different ways to make your learning efficient. Studying a language is not something easy, we all know that. Apart if one of your parents speaks an other language, or that you were born with two mother tongues, you will have to spend hours and hours to remember vocabulary, grammar, and conjugation. And moreover, as I already told you previously, this is a never ended process.

   But let’s make these hours shorter and funnier with some tips !

1) Do you love it ?

      If you do love a language and that this is your reason for studying it, believe me, you have already done a large part of the work ! People, when they learn that I am studying Japanese, always tell me that it has to be hard, really tough, almost impossible to understand. Do you know what is my answer ? I am passionate, that erases all the difficulties. When you want to learn and that you are enthusiastic at it, that is like a good book : you want to know every thing about it, its conception, …

   There is a problem when you don’t like it, or even if you hate it, but that you HAVE to study it, for school, for instance. That is what happened to me for Latin, and the reason is simple : no one ever taught me to do the contrary ! Latin is considered as a dead language and professors teach it as well. Did they ever taught me how to say “hello”, “yes” or “no” ? Never. So that, when we have to translate texts, that is clear to me that I do not have any knowledge, … and she calls herself polyglot ? It was obvious that I couldn’t stay being that hopeless at a language ! I began to find an interest in Latin culture. I have a deep preference for the Greek one, but, I had to remember that France and its language owe a lot to Latin.

   Well, when I was motivated, I bought 40 leçons pour découvrir le Latin. I already knew this kind of books because I own the Japanese version. I found that pretty good as well for Japanese than Latin. I discovered a lot of things, and over all : what was interesting in knowing word etymology. Did you know that the word “Charlemagne” comes from the Latin Carlus Magnus, which means Charles the Great ?

   Anyways, I’m not here to write an article about Latin, so let’s move to next point !

2) The 4 pillars

   I suppose that, if you are interested in languages, you already know these 4 pillars : listening, speaking, reading, writing. They are essential to learn ANY language.

No color yet but, don't worry, it's for soon

   Listen to radio, to music, watch TV shows, movies, news, YouTube videos (50% of my English comes from there).

   Speak with your teacher, classmates, penpals, even alone, take every chance to practice.

   Read books, novels, mangas, blogs, anything you want. You learn a lot of words by reading. It’s possible you don’t realize it right now but they are just hidden in a side of your head, ready to show up.

   But, don’t forget writing too ! With friends, for instance. Create a game ! I already done that with some friends of mine : we tried to speak just in English. That’s a good way to progress ! Furthermore, if you have a competitive spirit, this game is for you ! You don’t want people think they can speak any language better than you , right ?

3) Make it cuter !

   Who like working on a sad little copybook ? You have to customize it ! 

Take your pen and let's do it !

  If you are at junior high school, I know that will be complicated : in France, you can’t do what you want to do with your copybook but, in high school, or college, you can. You have the possibility to glue things, use, reuse and over use of masking and washi tape, take notes everywhere, and that is working for a copybook as well than a ring binder.

That's not perfect, but I like it this way

   If you have to keep your school copybook “clean”, let’s take an other one where you will write your own things ! But, that’s the subject of number 4…

4) Who said boring ?

   No, studying is not boring. Well, ok, it can be but, now that you love the language you learn and have a pretty copybook, let’s care about study stuffs.

   Opening a textbook, working on it for hours and not remembering any thing you should is pretty normal, don’t worry. As I am a kind of self-taught Japanese learner, I recently bought a big copybook (24x32cm) and write down everything which is related to Japan and on which I am interested. I have some piece of newspaper about Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki catastrophes, about Shintoism. I glued Hiragana and Katakana tables, pictures of Japan, sakura. I also copy grammar points I learnt by myself (and not by the CNED) or found on the Internet, … I also even wrote a story in my English copybook (you can read it here)

   But, recently, I took an interest in translation. I copy out the first Hikoichi story (from the book that you can see just below) and, with the help of this book, I looked for vocabulary. Copy kanji allowed me to remember how to write them, as well as for new words.

   Honestly, I never remembered vocab or grammar things so quickly. I mainly recommend that kind of practice if you are learning a language really different from your mother tongue and that it is too tough to read anything without feeling lost at each sentence.

   I also copy some songs (Tabi no Tochuu by Natsumi Kiyoura, for instance… yes, I’m really, really loving Spice and Wolf recently…) and I am going to try to translate it but I’m waiting to “have a contact with Japan” because dictionaries I found are not excellent…

   Anyways, you can do that with anything you want, from songs to a book’s passage, …

   Obviously, an other funny activity is to watch YouTube. There are thousands of small videos, easy to understand and probably about subjects you like. Watching again and again movies… wait, you are not forced to do so, don’t take me as a model… So, I was saying : Watching movies you already watched in your mother tongue with or without subtitles (depends on your level) is beneficial.

   I think I said all I wanted to say. I hope this will help you. Don’t forget to enjoy what you do and to be creative !

   Tell me if you liked this article and what are your own tips !

A~