There are two kinds of materials that you need to have when learning a language.
The first one is an easy one that you can comprehend without having to consult the dictionary too much, that’s interesting enough to keep you engaged, but also one that you’re not *too* invested in, that you can be fine with letting go a few bits of details here and there.
The research says (especially on extensive reading), this is the kind of material that will help you gain fluency, and this is where most of your language gains will come from.
**The second kind is a material that you find so compelling, that you don’t really care if it’s above your level.** This is the one that I want to talk about.
With this kind of material, not only do you not mind doing it intensively, you might in fact *want* to do it, because you don’t want butcher the experience by not looking up words or even skipping them entirely, if it leads to you missing flavored details in the story or certain nuances in how the author phrases a certain sentence.
The research says that you’ll progress much slower with this type of material. *However*, if you’re starting to lose motivation, if you’ve started to question the very reason why you’re learning the language in the first place, then this is the type that will likely rekindle that fire, and keep it burning all the way to fluency.
# Everyone has different goals in a language, and you should focus on the thing that directly serves yours
It’s like telling someone that they won’t be a good gamer if they keep trying to 100% every game that they play. But the thing is, being a “gamer” is such a wide term, and everyone has different enjoyment that they’re seeking from gaming.
Sure, if you want to be a good FPS player then you’re better off grinding in Aim Lab and queuing up on ranked matches rather than playing the story mode. But **if all I want is to enjoy and be immersed in a JRPG, then no one can stop me from talking to every single NPC and finishing all the sidequests before going to the final boss**.
And so if you find yourself struggling to keep going, after burning through all the beginner gains in the start, ask yourself what did you want to do in the language when you first picked it up. If it’s to read all of 東野圭吾’s novels or to appreciate 今敏’s movies in their original language, then by all means, grab a dictionary and jump into the rabbit hole. You’ll come out of it with more enjoyment, and you’d still acquire some Japanese in the process, as well.
3 comments
For sure. I personally prefer podcasts for that first type you’re describing, and novels for the second one.
Podcasts I just find too troublesome to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, and so it’s easier for me to let go when I completely blanked on a sentence or two. The contents being typically life updates or news (so missing a few details doesn’t really hurt) also helps with that fact.
With novels it’s the exact opposite. As you said, I *want* to know why the author uses a certain word or phrasing, and so I tend to look up almost every word that I encounter. I also want to be able to read Japanese texts out loud for personal reasons, so I also look up words that I already know the meaning of, but forgot the reading.
That’s the reason i started reading kagami no koujou (after having read it in italian) even though it was really above my level! It was so difficult it made me drop it after 20 pages or so, but that was what I needed to keep my motivation up!
There’s currently only one untranslated work that fits that description for me, but that’s good enough. Moreover, the *possibility* of finding others is in itself a motivating factor. Hobbies tend to be a good vehicle for developing new interests, after all.
I’d say the title is spot-on. I need easy content to give myself small wins as those are a really good partner for raw discipline if you know how to compose yourself (no different from working out at the gym, for instance), but obviously without at least something more noteworthy to aspire towards all that discipline would go to waste. I won’t lie, I suspect I have far fewer reasons to learn the language than most as I’m not as interested in Japan, its culture, its people or even most of its media works, but something *is* there and it certainly lines up well with what you said.