{"id":179,"date":"2009-08-11T23:21:37","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T04:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=179"},"modified":"2013-02-18T00:13:48","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T05:13:48","slug":"a-secret-to-japanese-language-success-post-less-study-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=179","title":{"rendered":"A Secret to Japanese Language Success: Post Less, Study More"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve gotten a lot of great advice and tips from reading all kinds of message boards and blogs, but to be honest, I think the best lesson I’ve learned is that eventually, you just have to stop drinking the bathwater and start getting things done<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When I saw the 999th iteration of the same general argument over whose study method is better on one of the boards I frequent, I realized that both methods are no good if they spend their time arguing about them in English<\/em>, no less. And I was just as bad for wasting<\/strong> valuable time reading them… okay, and now writing about them, but this will be the only time.<\/p>\n

So to anyone who reads this: if you’re trying to learn Japanese, or anything else for that matter, and you’re looking for shortcuts, good idea! Look around, grab a few, try them, and move on<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Most traditional language-learning methods are horribly inefficient. There are a lot of folks trying a lot of neat stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve posted a few methods that have worked for me. They may<\/em> work for you, they may<\/em> not.<\/p>\n

But please <\/em>don’t waste your time getting entangled in message board drama<\/strong>— especially message board drama about study methods. It’s like arguing about the best way to clean your house, while your house remains a pig sty.<\/strong> It accomplishes nothing, except consuming your valuable study time.<\/p>\n

If It Works For You, Rip It Off<\/h3>\n

In my mind, the best theory of language acquisition came from a glass studio tech I interviewed in Seattle way back for a documentary I was working on. He was talking about finding ways to build a better glass studio, but the idea works for pretty much anything.\u00c2\u00a0 “If you find a good idea that works for you, rip it off.”<\/p>\n

To go along with the perfect bottom-line theory is this corollary: use it as long as it works for you. But if it doesn’t work, stop doing it.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you want to tell people about it, great. Good ideas need to spread. But don’t let message boards become a time sink<\/strong>. I look at a high post count as a bad thing in those cases. My thought process goes like this, if this dude is so great at Japanese, why is he posting so much on an English-language forum about it?<\/em> Maybe I’m just a suspicious, cynical and dark-hearted person by nature, but, well, there you go.<\/p>\n

Says a person with a high post count on a Japanese language learning message board.<\/p>\n

One final thing– don’t waste a lot of time worrying about trying to set up the perfect study method<\/strong>. It’s a fool’s errand. Just dive into the language, make a bunch of mistakes, and make adjustments as you go along. The less time you spend worrying and arguing about it, the more time you’ll have for doing<\/em> it.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve gotten a lot of great advice and tips from reading all kinds of message boards and blogs, but to be honest, I think the best lesson I’ve learned is that eventually, you just have to stop drinking the bathwater and start getting things done. When I saw the 999th iteration of the same general […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12,21,116,115],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japanese-language-study","tag-japanese","tag-language","tag-message-boards","tag-study-methods","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}