I’m not entirely sure if this will be acceptable as a post, but I thought I would mention it anyways because it has really really helped me in my Japanese self-studying. I found a book specifically on how we learn and what are good strategies for doing things like note-taking, planning, etc when it comes to learning. I realized that I was flailing and without focus in my Japanese studies. It wasn’t that I wasn’t putting in effort in my Japanese studies, it was that I was dumb about where I was putting in my efforts and that sort of thing as a result of some really bad schooling and upbringing I had growing up. Simply put, I was trying to teach myself Japanese when I didn’t have any good study skills and teaching skills. I think in hindsight this is something that should be obvious to everyone trying to teach themselves, but it actually does take some skills most of us take for granted. Skills like note-taking, planning, goal setting and adjustment, learning from lectures and videos, and the like. If you don’t have these skills for whatever reason or if it’s just been a long time since you’ve been in school, then I can’t recommend enough just stepping back and learning how to learn again. (Regardless of the book or resources you use to achieve this.)
As such, I would just like to recommend the book “Outsmart your Brain”. It’s geared towards students in high school and college, but I honestly feel like I would have achieved way more in my life if I had this book earlier on. Specifically, I feel like I’ve been really dumb about how I approached my study sessions and the like and like I’m now supercharged in each of my study sessions. So yes, it’s not specifically about learning Japanese, but I found it to be an incredible resource as I’ve learned Japanese in the last couple of weeks. I hope this helps someone else out.
PS: the title of the book sounds a little hokie to me to be honest, but the actual writing in it is incredibly straightforward and not at all some sort of “pseudoscience self-help” book. You will not be told that you can learn crap in your sleep, or that everyone in the world is wrong about learning, or that this is going to make all of your learning easy, or anything like that. Lol
5 comments
It’s a good thing to learn how to learn effectively, especially when on your own.
However, there’s a big caveat in that language acquisition is *nothing* like studying a topic. We acquire language through input and very likely input only. And it takes a lot of time spent with input (and, I think, also the intent or necessity to understand it).
You are better adviced to simply listen, watch, read to level-appropriate / comprehensible input for lots and lots of hours, than to do traditional studying. (That’s not to say that the book advocates for that, because I haven’t read it and don’t know.)
Here’s Bill VanPatten on [What Everyone Should Know about Second Language Acquisition](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1LRoKQzb9U). This is probably more useful knowledge in this regard.
I can not thank you enough for this post. I’m not even trying to learn Japanese, I just…joined the subreddit on a lark because “maybe, someday” — but! I AM trying to learn a million other things aaaaaand – you just hit the nail on the head with a problem I could never articulate or even considered addressing until I knew it existed.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a single healthy studying skill, and I can develop those!
Thank you thank you! 😀
Who authored this book?
Was going to add this to my wish list and then I saw this review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2DJNYBCMEZKS/
What do you think of the criticism made there?
Thanks for sharing! This will probably benefit me, as someone who loves to self-educate but has never been taught how to study. Excited to see what I can learn from this book.