Tzadeck
Member
From: Kinki
Registered: 2009-02-21
Posts: 2484
The two most long-term projects of mine have been learning Japanese and learning the guitar, and the further I get into each the more I realize the similarities between the two.
Justin Sandercoe is a guitar teacher on Youtube who is such a great teacher that I have a semi man-crush on him. He made a video recently on setting long term and short term goals in your guitar playing, and I think it's perfectly analogous to language learning. So even if you don't play guitar you should check it out.
Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDOB40L2 … ture=g-u-u
That was really interesting. Thanks for the link Tzadeck. Before I started studying Nihongo with some direction, these are the sort of videos, speeches, etc. I spent a larger period of a month taking in everything I could for motivation. His mini-goal orientation reminds me a lot of the Kaizen-Toyota method- of which I found out about thanks to AJATT. In fact, most of my initial motivation came from the various insights and references Khaz came across from various professionals and posted on his blog.
Method is great and all but drive and motivation make or break a person. In that clip, where the guitarist was discussing how he felt that he was trying to inspire his students to continue with their practice, more importantly than what he was teaching them, I've come to understand the sentiment inside-out. The autodidactic approach to learning can be incredibly effective with a bit of inspiration, motivation, and mini-goals.