Hey all.  It's been a while since I've posted here, but I've been lurking a fair bit even then.  So, for a bit of context, I'm doing a study abroad at Okayama University, and as of tomorrow, I'll only have one quarter left to go... which is, in a way, exactly why I'm writing this.

Anyway, while I'll try to keep this as un-blog-like as possible, I've been thinking a lot about the emotional side of language learning lately, and of course, a good deal of that has to do with my own experiences here in Japan.  

But first, a recap of where I am with the language:
-Passed N2, planning to take N1 in July.
-With a J-J dictionary, I can read just about anything I want.  In terms of daily literacy, I can usually get by without needing to look anything up.
-In most cases, 1-1 or small group conversation is fairly smooth... most of the time.  I might have to ask to have a word/phrase repeated a time or two, but generally, it goes pretty well.
-Dramas and TV shows aren't too much of a problem, but I'm more comfortable using Japanese subtitles along with them.  Working to improve this.

Currently, I'm taking the highest level Japanese courses available at the university, with four core classes for the four main skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), along with several other language-focused courses.  For my core classes, the majority of my classmates are Chinese, practically everyone's passed the N1, and 3-4 of them are nigh-indistinguishable from actual Japanese when it comes to pronunciation, accent, etc.  Naturally, I didn't come into the class expecting to be the best student (far from it), but in my reading and writing classes, I've found I'm not as hopelessly behind everyone else as I thought.  In terms of the speaking class itself, even that's not all that bad.  

But, if there's one thing that's become abundantly clear in the past two months that I've been here, it's that my listening ability just isn't up to snuff.  Like, at all.  I mishear/fail to catch words and phrases far more than I'd care to admit, and while it's generally not enough to seriously hinder a relaxed conversation, it still happens too much for me to write it off as coincidence.  Others in my class seem to have next to no problem with this (casual conversations with Japanese students outside of class), though, and even when there's a sentence that's way too fast for me to catch, they seem to be just fine, responding right back just like that.  Which is perfectly natural.  They've worked hard and it's paid off for them.  

The problem, though, is the fact that, what listening ability I have tends to crumble even further whenever I get nervous and such, and being unable to catch something that my classmates had no problem with is usually a set formula for making me feel on edge.  It's even worse when I'm in a large group setting and feel like my Japanese is constantly being judged, so much so that it affects my speaking ability as well.  Basically, any time I end up feeling like I'm not where I should be in terms of ability, I end up feeling squeamish in the plainest sense of the word, and my linguistic abilities take a huge step back.  Doesn't help that I end up beating myself up over those same sort of mistakes on a nearly-hourly basis.  Cycle of misery, right?  

I realize pretty much all of this stems from nothing more than my own personal neuroses, but since it's my せっかくの留学, I want to at least be able to to see some improvement since the time I arrived.  I've been doing everything I can to improve my listening, from podcasts, to dramas, to hours upon hours of Japanese conversation every day, but every time something slips past me, it feels like I'm still not doing enough.  I'm from a rural part of the US, and when I was still in the States, I only had the chance to talk with a native once a week for a 2-hour lesson, so while I realize that might be part of it, I want to do all I can to noticeably improve my hearing while I'm here in Japan, especially considering I've only got another quarter left here.  

So, if you've held out this long, what I'd like to ask is (1. In a situation like this, what else can I do to push my listening to the next level with only a relatively short amount of time left in Japan?  and 2.) Has anyone else had any similar emotionally-rooted frustrations/worries while studying the language, and if so, how did you overcome them? 

As I mentioned earlier, I really feel like these sort of issues are pushed to the side when it comes to discussing language learning, so if you have any stories/experiences you'd like to share, please feel free.  Perhaps I'm in the minority by thinking/fretting/obsessing about it this deeply, but I think it's vital to at least recognize some of the personal issues that can come up while studying.

/end megapost

What helped me was to stop comparing myself to other people. I know I'm not as good as a lot of people, but I know I'm still doing pretty good on my own. It's *really easy* to fall into the trap of "That guy has got it made! He's got everything I don't have!" but here's a secret: either that other guy is either faking it to some degree (Facebook PR hyping), or maybe he's holding on by his fingernails (that expensive car? can't make the payments?), or maybe he's got a ton of other problems you *don't* see.

Or maybe he's just an outlier. Most of us are scraping by somehow in some areas of our lives, while other areas do okay. That's life. The human condition. It's cool. We're all doing it in some form or another.

So while on the surface, those other guys in your class may look super-awesome and talented to you, I'm sure in some areas, they're quietly saying the same thing. "Damn, that guy has it made..." for whatever reasons they have.

As soon as I stopped trying to compare my life with other peoples' lives, I started to enjoy it a lot more, is what I'm saying, I guess?

If you're enjoying something, and not worrying about it, your brain is going to work better, and you'll be able to focus on the conversations better, and by focusing on the conversation, that will relax you to some degree, because you're taking your mind off of worrying about other stuff that's really out of your control, anyway. (But I get that hangups are hangups, and don't change overnight.)

If you don't understand what's being said, that's okay. You're allowed to not understand stuff while you're still learning the language. Either tell the other person, "Sorry, I didn't quite get that," or wait a beat and see if you can figure it out from the next sentence or two they utter. If you still don't get it, apologize and then say that you didn't understand. As a fellow language learner, I think it's perfectly fine to expect permission to ask for help.

And also, I've noticed (especially when I'm in Japan) that I have good Japanese days, and bad Japanese days. It's probably because on some level, my brain is trying to digest everything I've learned the previous day, but I have days when I can barely string together words, but that's okay. Bad days are bad days. Tomorrow will be better.

From a more practical point of view, you probably need to listen to harder material, without mojibake helping you, which isn't easy to do. I'm a fan of stuff like 爆笑問題's podcast on TBS, because that's coming at you fast, and it's hard to get at first. (And it's also funny.) And since it's a podcast, you don't get any mojibake help. But honestly, any good podcast will help you. Or you could download audio from YouTube videos, too.

Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your study in Japan! Make good memories! HAVE FUN! LOTS OF FUN! And the language stuff... try not to let your worries about it ruin your fun. Nobody is going to sadly shake their head and say, "Tsk, tsk, tsk! You didn't do as well as we hoped!" Nobody. Really. As long as your grades are good, and you know how to ask where the toilet is, you're doing better than 98% of the rest of the world, who can't even ask the question in Japanese, let alone understand the answer.

Some parts of learning Japanese just take time for your brain to adjust to and listening is definitely one of those things. You can know all of the vocabulary, you can practice listening every waking hour of the day, but your brain still needs time to process and organize all of that into a way that actually improves your abilities. If you have all of your studying and listening practice in order then all that you can do is make sure you are eating well and sleeping well.

(2016-06-02, 8:08 am)Raulsen Wrote: As I mentioned earlier, I really feel like these sort of issues are pushed to the side when it comes to discussing language learning

Not on this forum. If you want more advice than you can handle, check out these threads:

http://forum.koohii.com/thread-12998.html
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=12633
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=12900a

A few Japanese learners I know are happy with their listening skills, but for most learners I know (myself included), it's a sore spot. That's fine. Like rich_f said, just relax, enjoy what you can, ask for clarification when needed, and continue working on listening through massive input and L-R training.

I don't really have any answers about the mental blocks. I mean, I understand them, but I deal with them by only interacting in Japanese through text on the internet, and preferably not at live chat speeds. 
Most of my Japanese use is consuming media (novels, manga, video games, anime, dramas, and the occasional movie).

However, for your listening problems, I recommend using sources that you have text for to confirm your listening. Try listening to a segment, then read and listen along and see if you were right. If you were -not- right, then play the segment over a few times and see if you can catch the words correctly now that you know what to listen for. Sometimes this will help 'tune' your ear, and you'll be better at recognizing that particular sound (usually... for me anyway... that's a mora with an easily mistaken consonant; but sometimes it's a missed glottal stop or misheard long/short vowel difference. I rarely mishear vowel sounds).

If you can't tune your ear within 3-5 repetitions, just move on and maybe come back to it another day - after too many repetitions you're just burning yourself out. Even words in your native language will be hard to latch onto and become meaningless sounds if repeated enough times in succession (there's some latin-derived term for this phenomenon, but I forget what it is.) In short, there's no point in overdoing it on a single phrase.


I spent a lot of time with that kind of practice on Erin's Challenge, https://www.erin.ne.jp/jp/ ; even though the 'lessons' as such were low-level for me (and also would be for you), as a source of listening practice it's pretty good. The dialogue is at quite nearly natural speed even in the skits, and there is actual natural speech in the 見ってみよう videos (the balance of natural speech and narrator dialogue varies from video to video). The only videos I didn't watch were やってみよう because I didn't find value in listening to foreign students of Japanese speaking Japanese, but if you have trouble with other students accents maybe even that could be helpful.
Anyway, each video has independently toggled subtitles so you can have nothing or just Japanese or Japanese and English, and turn them on and off at any point if, say, you want a translation of just one line rather than having to look something up in the dictionary.
The script (or the manga) pages for the skits allow you to listen to the dialogue one line at a time, which is good for forcing yourself to practice intensively and get everything out of each line.

You can do the same kind of thing with dramas that have subtitles, although it's not quite as convenient and you can't easily do the line-by-line thing right away. There is a tool with a big thread on these forums though, that lets you turn a video into a pile of audio anki cards, and that could help. I've forgotten the name of the tool though, and never used it.

Also of course, there's often a word-for-word or nearly so written article accompanying videos on news sites for more of the same kind of practice.

It's possible that you'll find everything in Erin and maybe in your favorite shows to be perfectly comprehensible to you on the first try, and if that's the case, then I'd suggest that you have perfect listening comprehension for standard Japanese and will need to try the same technique with local voices. How to find local audio with transcripts.... is left as an exercise for the student. :o

SomeCallMeChris, you're thinking of Subs2SRS (video => SRS flashcards app). 

Someone once posted a link to a book that was a series of conversations with Japanese people from various walks of life, with full transcripts and an accompanying CD. I wish I could remember for the life of me what it was, as I'd like to pick it up and start studying it...

(2016-06-02, 7:40 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: SomeCallMeChris, you're thinking of Subs2SRS (video => SRS flashcards app). 

Someone once posted a link to a book that was a series of conversations with Japanese people from various walks of life, with full transcripts and an accompanying CD. I wish I could remember for the life of me what it was, as I'd like to pick it up and start studying it...

Maybe this?

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4874243541/
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4874244955/

(2016-06-02, 7:40 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: SomeCallMeChris, you're thinking of Subs2SRS (video => SRS flashcards app). 

That's the one!

I can't suggest a way to completely stop getting on edge, but I can tell you a couple of things that make me feel a bit better when I have to speak (especially if it's a presentation).

1.) (Primarily for speeches or presentations where there are multiple speakers)
If you have the luck of not being the first speaker, listen to the speakers ahead of you and judge everything they say to yourself: "Would I say it that way?", "Was the meaning clear?", "Did it represent their point well?", that kind of thing. This hasn't stopped me from resurrecting my stutter and getting shivers while speaking in front of people, but it gives me much more confidence in what I'm doing: if I'm judging people just as harshly as I judge myself, then my self-criticism doesn't seem so bad.
(Big criticisms that I use are "How is their posture and body language" and "How are their speaking skills?", because those are the things I hit myself for the most)

This is merely anecdotal, but doing this has helped me enough that I was able to salvage a presentation I had to do for a class, even though our equipment quit working and I had to improvise half of it; I was nervous as hell, and probably stuttering some, but it was well received by the class, and I got a very good grade on it. (As a fun note: it was an event report on an engineering failure (Apollo 1); because the first classes labelled 'engineering' are to scare the shit out of you so that you're extra careful and don't do stupid things later)

2.)
Find something (song, quote, whatever) to repeat to yourself that will remind you that there are things you can't help, times where you'll fail, that you've done your best, or whatever is relevant. It doesn't help prevent feelings of failure or self-disappointment, but it can ease them and prevent them from distracting yourself from improvement.
I personally find myself repeating "Must keep reminding myself of this" (from Tool's "The Patient"), to remind myself of both the thing I've found fault in as well as the fact that I can do better and that these feelings can only drive me forward (nothing to do with the song, but it doesn't matter, since it works).
When you have an ego as large as mine, you need something to keep yourself together when reality smacks you back into place, lol.


As for improving, I can only parrot what everyone else has been saying: listen to things until you can pick out all the words (without going overboard, and using a transcript if available), but overall, it's just takes a lot of listening and time.
(Not from experience, because my listening is at a slightly lower level than yours.)

Improvising is like anything else: if you practice it regularly, you get good at it. Most of my weekly practice with my tutor is practicing talking about a random subject she brings up out of nowhere. We do other stuff, too, but 30-40 minutes of that a week, and I don't get nervous anymore, even on "bad" days.

The main thing I've learned to do from that is learn how to talk around any vocab I don't know using simpler vocab, so even when I'm ambushed, I don't feel pressured.

Also, one day we had a class at Yamasa on "saying nothing," those verbal pauses, the English equivalent of "um... well... you see..." that don't mean anything, but keep things flowing. Holy crap, that's useful. Nothing like a "そうですねー" that kind of trails off a bit while you think for a second, or some other empty phrase to give you a couple of seconds to gather your thoughts. Everyone does it, and in fact, it sounds unnatural if you *don't* do it. (Same with 相槌-- a lack of it creeps out the other side for a reason they can't necessarily put their finger on, until you reintroduce it.)

(2016-06-02, 8:03 pm)uchuu Wrote:

(2016-06-02, 7:40 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: SomeCallMeChris, you're thinking of Subs2SRS (video => SRS flashcards app). 

Someone once posted a link to a book that was a series of conversations with Japanese people from various walks of life, with full transcripts and an accompanying CD. I wish I could remember for the life of me what it was, as I'd like to pick it up and start studying it...

Maybe this?

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4874243541/
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4874244955/

Yes I think that's it!!

Now the question is if I can get to a decent bookstore before my plane home tomorrow....

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Japanese-Di...030010958X

Is this it, Gaia?  I think it's more in line with what was mentioned earlier.

Anyway, I seriously appreciate all of the input so far.  You all are the best!  

Just like rich-f mentioned, I feel like a big part of it stems from my own tendency to focus on comparing myself with others, but hey, being conscious of those same tendencies is half the battle, right?  I really like sholum's phrase idea, too.  It helps to have something to ground yourself with, especially when you feel like driving yourself into the ground instead.  

I guess the worst part of it all came from the fact that I'm advanced... -ish in some areas, but feel like I'm lagging behind in others.  Plus, I've been at this for some six years or so now (with only the last three being what I'd consider truly serious, dedicated study), so there's the whole "You've been at this for so long and you STILL can't do X?" thought process that makes things a little bit more rough.  

But, advanced-ish or not, I guess the point is that you have to give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn in the process, no matter how long you've been learning.  Easier said than done, of course, but I'll do my best to remind myself as much as I can.  It might take a little bit of mental bludgeoning before it finally sinks in, though.

I'll definitely check out everything mentioned and try to incorporate it whenever I can!

Oh yes - my apologies, Raulsen's link is what I was thinking of. Though the shadowing books may be of value as well.

As for the "I've been at this so long" mindset...I've been at this for four years as an everyday habit. But I also know Japanese speakers who have been studying English for three times as long, and are amazed I've come so far in so "short" a period of time. It's all relative.

I had an eye opening experience today. I am in Tokyo supporting an event for work, helping Japanese customers out with labs they are taking for training on my company's technology. At one point, a woman in the training room beckons me over and asks, "Do you remember me?" Turns out she was an exchange student at a local university near my house, and we had frequent language exchanges for about a year until the demands of life caused us to drift apart. Yet here we were, a year and a half later, and fate caused our paths to cross again, a quarter of a world away at a technical event in Shinagawa. 偶然ですね。Thanks to this chance encounter, we've rekindled our friendship.

You see, that's what matters. It's not about how brilliant you are at Japanese in any given moment; it's about the connections you make, and the bonds you forge with other human beings - bonds that make you realize that this seemingly vast, sprawling world is more connected and intimate than you presumed.

In the end, what matters is: are you enjoying yourself? Are you digging the hell out of the fact that you have made a ton of friends in a language that used to be completely alien to you? Do you marvel at the fact that, most of the time, you can make yourself understood to others in a second language? Has your perspective on the world grown because you can see things from a point of view that you could barely imagine holding four or six years ago?

If you can say "yes" to the above questions, then keep on truckin'. You're doing just fine.

(2016-06-03, 6:39 am)Raulsen Wrote: I guess the worst part of it all came from the fact that I'm advanced... -ish in some areas, but feel like I'm lagging behind in others.  Plus, I've been at this for some six years or so now (with only the last three being what I'd consider truly serious, dedicated study), so there's the whole "You've been at this for so long and you STILL can't do X?" thought process that makes things a little bit more rough.  

Yep, you need to learn to throw that thought away. It's not a race, it's a journey. Sure, some dudes will hit N1 in a year or two, but they're outliers. So don't sweat what you can't do anything about.

Instead, focus on what you can do right now to get a little bit better, and don't worry so much about when you'll get to where you want go. You'll get better eventually as long as you keep at it. It might take you longer than others, but that's okay, too. 

Some old dude isn't going to come down from a mountain and kick your butt because you can't N1 already. (If he was, he'd be stopping by my house first, anyway.)

Also, if you've only been really studying hard for the last 3 years, then don't focus as much on those first 3, when you obviously weren't being serious about it. :

Finally, it's perfectly normal to develop strong and weak points as you go along. When I passed N2, I was totally unable to hold a conversation in Japanese, and it took some serious work to get good enough to do it. The GOOD thing is that you have enough self-awareness to recognize your own strong/weak points. Work on the weak points, don't neglect to keep working on the strong ones, too.

[Zgarbas]

When I was in the Japanese la guage course I realised that everyone there was a Japanese language major (at the highest level, at least). Most of them had received formal Japanese training for far longer than I had, and were far ahead of me in writing&listening... Writing made sense (and is still true), but with listening I realised that it was thanks to their getting specific training for that kind of listening exercises. In everyday conversation we were back to being on the same level I wasn't that far behind on Japanese, I was far behind on the specific skills that you needed in the classroom, and that's ok (sans writing; that's a really embarassing and real problem).

Basically, keep in mind that you all have different backgrounds and motivations and experience and teachers. There might be some things that your classmates think *you* excel at. This is easier said than done, but try to put less pressure on yourself; so long as you're working hard, then you're doing enough. せっかく留学 can be a very tiring mentality to live with.