s?

How have your experiences in learning Japanese effected the way you learn things in general?

I have been studying games for gambling and learning more about computers and I have learnt not to assume I know everything and to take advice from people who are in the know as well as reinforcing the basics before I move onto the next level.

I have also learnt not to purchase books unless I will read them.

What has everyone else learnt?

Not to SRS every damn thing I tried it with programming with disastrous results. You can only SRS certain things, and even then you gotta spend too much time setting it up. I would definitely purchase a professional commercial deck on non-Japanese subjects though (if there are any).

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:How have your experiences in learning Japanese effected the way you learn things in general?

No change.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:What has everyone else learnt?

I'm not sure I've learnt anything new in general, but I was surprised a few times.
1. That they have so many good movies, and I don't mean anime or doramas.
2. That learning Japanese is just like learning any other language, not more difficult than French or German, and much easier in many respects.
3. That there are hardly any audiobooks.
4. That learning materials usually ignore pitch accent.
5. That they committed many atrocities in Korea and China during the war and refuse to acknowlege it.
6. That there is an 'impure' caste there - burakumin.
7. That they managed to adapt Chinese characters to write Japanese.
8. That Hirohito escaped punishment.
9. That yaoi and roricon are popular there.
10. That yakuza help people after earthquakes, and that they are much better organised than public services.

Like most humans, I was already capable of learning non-Japanese things, so Japanese certainly wasn't the catalyst my ability to study things.

I learned that I don't need supervision when learning a language. I understand languages much more in general, and no language seems difficult anymore. Now I'm learning Italian on the side, and it's quite smooth sailing.

KanjiMood Wrote:Not to SRS every damn thing I tried it with programming with disastrous results. You can only SRS certain things, and even then you gotta spend too much time setting it up. I would definitely purchase a professional commercial deck on non-Japanese subjects though (if there are any).

Oh God this... Though it kinda worked for set in stone stuff like the derivative of cos(x) or stuff like that, but SRSing is probably something for more memorising heavy stuff like medicine or biology...

I wouldn't even download a deck either, because it is important to know the stuff your SRSing before setting it up, so that SRSing is only used for retention of what you've learned.

That I can't make much use of SRS outside the language learning area.

Why memorize what you can find in a book or encyclopedia? If you need to memorize something to use it, then reviewing it would be passive by using it every now and then! And you can't SRS understanding and skills.

Our educational systems that require forcing loads of info into our heads is way too imperfect.