magamo wrote:
Another thing you can do is only use Japanese material that draws you in. You use something that gets you, something you're really into, well, anything that keeps your attention longer. I'm sure you already heard this, and you may be thinking it's painfully obvious. I know it's not always easy to find such ideal material too. But it doesn't bode well if you can't pay any attention to the stuff you're using to the extent that you feel like it's teaching you to tune Japanese out. I mean, it sounds like you're literally torturing yourself...
I can't give concrete advice about how to find more interesting material, and no one knows what you might like because everyone is different. You yourself may not know what you might like either. So why don't you just throw lots of random stuff and see what sticks? If nothing sticks, you still payed attention to the material when searching for good stuff. You can't fail to achieve your goal with this strategy.
Haha, yeah, it probably would feel like torture to have to listen to it, or any language, including English, constantly, I can't handle continual noise. So, I stopped attempting that pretty early on in my studying, yet it seems some proponents of immersion suggest it should be continuous. So, that also made me curious what people's experiences were (it's interesting to hear about, thanks all! : )) and if they think it's useful.
The material I engage more actively with is different, I think it's quite separate in a way from the more passive type of immersion.
Found something I like now, anyway - audio dramas. : ) I like listening to plays on the radio in English so it has a similar feel to those, except the VAs and characters are familiar so I don't mind so much listening even when I don't understand. Listened to one for Tales of Graces today, first without subtitles then with, and followed it a lot better than I would've expected considering how little Japanese I know.
(As far as more active interaction goes, well, I at least do that to a minor degree by talking back to and commenting on my anime/dramas etc. Probably look weird chattering away to myself, but still. XD)
Stansfield123 wrote:
This type of immersion helped me immensely (including the subtitled stuff, but of course not as much as re-listening without subtitles, or watching things I can follow live without subs, like sports and variety shows).
Yep, that's something I also do, good to hear you feel it helped. : ) Though at the moment, I'm still finding that if I was going to learn anything from it, I'd have picked it up the first time, think improvement there will only occur with active studying at this stage. The subtitles thing, yeah, I wondered about that, so often I hear 'don't watch it with subtitles', yet for me they've been very helpful and it's far more fun than just watching something incomprehensible. As a beginner, how am I supposed to magically pick up the words by watching with no subtitles? There's a chance one will stand out through repetition, but if that's the case and I'm watching with subtitles, I can see the translation right away in the subs, I've actually learned most of my vocab that way. Usually without subtitles it all just blurs together a bit as a stream of words I don't understand and I don't pick up anything new at all. Though I find going no subtitles, then subtitles, to be better than vice versa for listening practice.
It sounds as though the comprehensibility factor is important, that it does need to be comprehensible to some degree. For beginners, perhaps it's best to focus on making it so even if it does mean using native language subtitles, as long as they can also concentrate on the spoken Japanese. That, and it may just be best not to worry too much about it.
Last edited by Ampharos64 (2013 March 16, 7:25 pm)
