How to transcend those deeply dippy moments

When I was at school I attended a talk by a rather eccentric Englishman, the adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. During his talk he spoke about the days when he was walking to the South Pole and felt like giving up … only he kept going because he wasn’t going to let his companion beat him to his goal. Whenever I feel like giving up on something I’ve set out to achieve, I always think back to what he said whenever I feel tired and want to give up.

In 1997, I was in Arizona and I met another eccentric Englishman who needed help pushing his car … he conveniently neglected to inform me that what really meant was that he needed help to push his car out of an aeroplane 13,000ft over the Senoran Desert.  I remember thinking to myself, well that’s funny … I only got my skydiving licence yesterday and the first thing I find myself doing is getting involved in a stunt for making a television commercial. But that’s the thing … you see, whatever it is, simply by doing something, the chances of opportunities presenting themselves to you just increase … remember that … because even when you don’t think anything is happening … stuff is happening … it might be that you are just reconfiguring yourself … well, that has to happen in order for you to engage in an action that you would previously have disregarded.

I meet a lot of people who inspire me in skydiving … one of the earliest inspirations came from a man called Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld (author of “Above All Else”). He was part of a world champion team, Arizona Airspeed, who were training for the national championships whilst I was learning to skydive.  That team were, in terms of language learning, the only people who were completely fluent in the language of flight. But just like native speakers of any language you're trying to learn ... these are the people who don't have anything left to prove ... their smiles are genuine ... that seemed apparent to me when I was learning to fly ... these people really got it ... and that's not to say that other people learning to fly don't get it ... lots of people do ... but occasionally I encounter people in skydiving who don't get it at all ... just like in language learning when I encounter people who seem convinced that because it took them years to learn a language (inefficiently) ... that it's going to really annoy them if anyone else dare to suggest that they might be able to learn a language a lot quicker. You'll hear, "oh, but that's cheating ... as if you can cheat ... it is what it is". I can already speak Japanese ... am I fluent ... sometimes ... I'm fluent at saying introductions ... oh, that's not fluent you fool ... yes it is ... but I aspire to speak beyond basic introductions ... where do I aspire ... well ... that's all part of my plan ... and will I be able to achieve my plan ... well ... back to Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld.

 He gave a TED talk about how to overcome all the odds: 

It boils down to asking yourself two simple questions.

Question 1: “Is it possible that I can succeed?”

Question 2: “Am I prepared to do whatever it takes to make it happen?”

If I can honestly answer yes to both these questions; then I stand a pretty good chance of being successful.  I get dips … sure … I’ve had a couple since the +1 Challenge begun … I had a lesson which made me feel utterly daunted by speaking Japanese … I came away feeling as if I hadn’t got above the tree line and the summit of this language was a long long way up. I had a weekend where I ended up completely exhausted … and thought, “oh dear, what happened to all the fun I was having before … have I killed it?”

I don’t hope that I will be able to speak Japanese one day … hope is simply an optimistic form of doubt. I have no doubt that I will speak Japanese once I’ve put in the necessary work to speak it. Am I prepared to do whatever it takes … yes … that gets me through the minor dips easily … but what about the major ones, the ones where doubt comes knocking at the door … hmmm … that’s when I think about this phantom character named doubt … he’s the guy who tells me learning Japanese will take many years … he’s the guy who tells me that even when I can speak Japanese the Japanese people would prefer me to be speaking English with them … he’s the guy who says, “you don’t deserve to speak another language” … and I shun him … because I’m a human being and I don’t need his permission to earn the right to speak another language, I claim the right to speak another language … in the words of Russell Brand … “I’m taking that right”. Am I prepared to do whatever it takes … yes … is it possible … yes … and to put this character called doubt in his rightful place … I take a step back and see him in his true perspective … I see the fun I have speaking Japanese already … I imagine how much more fun it will be when I’m better acquainted with this language … I imagine the opportunities that can occur once we’ve become better friends (for example, the moment I helped a lost Japanese tourist in London … the look of bewilderment and delightful sound of “eeeeeeeeeh YOU SPEAK JAPANESE!!!!” when I gave this guy directions in Japanese) … and when I watch drama’s and can understand a little more than the previous time … that reminds me that I am making progress when I don’t feel like much progress is being made … and I think about the other +1 Challengers who have given me words of encouragement … and I think about other people who’ve taken an interest in my language learning … people seem to have noticed that I’ve got the bit between my teeth and am striving forward … and I think about my language partner who says I’ve inspired her to learn more English because I’m catching her up in regards it always being her who has had the greater language ability in the past … but yeah … most of all, I look ahead and think, “wow, I’ve already had some amazing experiences on this language learning journey already … but this journey is going to be whatever I make it … let’s not sit around staring at the same scenery … lets go further … lets go off-piste … lets go higher and deeper and wider and take this path and that path and perhaps do a little dance here … I don’t know … this works for me … where’s my map … oh yeah … the plan … it’s good … but let’s not be too ridged … as Lao Tsu said, “a good traveller has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving”. Some people don’t get that message … they instantly see it as being, “let’s not have a plan or a goal” … they’ve misunderstood … it says nothing about not having plan or a goal … it says, “don’t fixate on the route … don’t forget to enjoy the scenery” … for this is what makes one a good traveller … and this is how I get out of the dips … I transcend them … they are merely lower contours that one experiences on route.

Is it possible for you to succeed … most definitely yes … are you prepared to do whatever it takes …  you decide … when you think about the glorious possibilities that speaking another language affords … it’s well worth it isn’t it?

+1 Challenge Weekly Update #6

Language Learning through the lens of children.

No video update this week ... I have a video but completely forgot to ask the other person involved for their approval to use it. So with that in mind, I looked at the video in question and thought, "OK, what was the most important lesson learned this week?" I've kept up with my plan to learn 50 new vocabulary words again ... but that's not it ... I've increased the amount of italki.com sessions and they've been awesome ... but, nope, that's not it either ... learning some useful grammar ... nope ... what is it then ... it's simple really ... remembering why I fell head over heals in love with learning Japanese in the first place ... because talking a foreign language is hilarious fun ... especially so in the very early stages.

As I've said before, I began learning Japanese completely by accident ... I learned katakana in order to be able to have fun with vocaloid software, yet the first time I googled images of downtown Tokyo and was able to identify an electronics shop sign saying ソニー (Sony) was an incredible moment for me. It's still a thrill when I watch a J-Doroma and can identify shop signs ... とふ (Tofu ... on Aya's family tofu shop in One Litre of Tears) ... ミツビシ (Mitsubishi - on the back of the mechanic's overalls in Mou Ichido Kimi ni Propose) ... each time I can read something that I wouldn't be able to read if I hadn't learned the kana, I get so much joy from knowing that if I hadn't acquired this skill, I'm getting just a little more insight into things than I would do if I hadn't bothered.

Anyway, I didn't begin learning by speaking from the very beginning. In hindsight, now that I've listened to Benny Lewis and other people with a great deal more experience at learning languages than myself. I really wish I had begun learning a language by speaking the language from the very start. But I didn't ... and I can't roll the clock back either ... but I can at least take what I've learned and apply to the next language I learn (I'm thinking Japanese sign language next time). So why didn't I interact with other people at the very beginning? ... it seems so obvious to me now, that it wasn't the fear of speaking to native speakers which put me off (my travels have at least taught me that the effort to attempt speaking the native language is pretty much always appreciated by the locals ... and often results in getting to experience something you might not have experienced otherwise) ... but I certainly feared being around other people learning language ... why?

Well, I've been thinking about that ... it's really surprised me on the +1 Challenge that everyone else has been so encouraging. That's not what my language learning experience was like at school ... my French teacher was battling with a group of 30 eleven year old boys who were forced to learn French or German against their will ... I think we mostly opted for French because we were interested in buying flick knives and cheap wine on the day trip to Boulogne (pronounced Ba-log-nya by everyone I ever met except the French teacher who spoke all poetically and Frenchylike). There wasn't the option to learn Japanese. I might well have learned Japanese at the age of 11 if it had been an option ... but who knows ... I was really into Star Wars and wasn't interested in much other than Star Wars back then!

Have you ever played an online game? I have ... I played Call of Duty on the PS3 online ... I didn't play for long though because everyone else online was either far more skilled than me or as I like to think, perhaps they just have better internet connections and can react faster than I could ... the point being ... I'd last about ten seconds max before someone would shoot me in the head ... and there's only so many times you can be bothered to play when you keep being shot the whole time. I played against the computer a bit more thinking I would skill up so that I could last longer playing against other people ... but nope, I still got shot in the head just as much as before ... so I didn't bother playing online.

The equivalent in language learning I suppose is when you meet other people learning the same target language and they discourage you about learning the language. It happened to me about six months ago at a Japanese event I attended ... I met a person who told that learning Japanese would take me many years. I thought to myself, "Well, I've been learning for about a year ... this person said they'd been learning for five years" so when a Japanese person came up and said something I couldn't understand. I sensed the joy of the person who had been telling me how learning Japanese takes years and years because, after all those years, he could understand something that I couldn't ... and boy did he seem to enjoy talking away in Japanese for next few minutes whilst I just looked on awkwardly wanting to throw in a 「猫がすきです」 (I like cats) or something to at least feel like I could say something Japanese and therefore have just as much right to be attending this Japanese event as anyone else. Anyway, as this guy carried on talking I started to sense that the Japanese person was feeling just as awkward as myself in a situation where this guy was banging on what I thought might have been Japanese ... but could have been Klingon for all I knew. Anyway, so when he finished, I seized my opportunity to say, 「猫がすきです」and the Japanese person became very interested in speaking to me. I then bought a beer, but instead of pronouncing "Asahi" as it should be pronounced, and how I usually would pronounce it correctly, the word just came out as "Arsey" ... everyone around me laughed and it became the source of much amusement for the rest of the night with people taking the piss out of the fact I couldn't even pronounce Asahi ... only then this Japanese person who'd taken an interest in my sophisticated conversational announcement regarding my liking of cats turned to the barman and asked for a bottle of "Arsey" and when we both had our bottles, we chinked our bottles with a 「乾杯」 (cheers) ... and I felt for just a moment like I really understood what was the most important thing in learning a language ... period ... just have fun ... whatever your level of ability is in a foreign language.

Anyway, why am I regaling this story. Well, as much as I could be using the time to be going hard at the Japanese study etc ... this morning I saw the picture that a friend of mine had posted on Facebook (the picture at the top of this post) and also the words his son spoke whilst talking about flashbangs, " you see us kids are so curious & imaginative I want to try out lots of things with these. You won't understand as an adult because all you adults do is talk nonsense and try to grow up, you miss the fun stuff".

Wise words I think you'll agree ... certainly answers one of the questions I've asked myself recently ... given that everyone on the +1 Challenge has been so encouraging ... why have I always avoided other language learners in the past ... I guess it's because, as my friends son said, "adults talk nonsense and try and grow up, you miss the fun stuff".

I got my TEFL certificate for "Teaching Younger Learners" this morning ... however, I feel more humbled at the fact, that if anything, it is children who teach us the important lessons ... we're just here as evidence that the more sophisticated we become with our methodologies, the less fun we make it for ourselves.

So my lesson this week ... play ... play ... play ... I do have a tendency to analyse everything a lot ... I think having a plan is very important ... certainly, without one, I just potter around learning Japanese and don't make anything like the progress I've made during this challenge. I've drifted into a period where I was exhausted a couple of weeks ago ... put myself back on course with just resting up a little and making sure everything I planned for the week would be fun ... and its been a good week. As I continue with the challenge, I hope my face is more like the one below (taken during a Skype lesson with an italki tutor) ... that's what it's all about.

 "Yes I do believe I might be having fun" - Bic Runga, Get Some Sleep

+1 Challenge Weekly Update #5

Another busy week with lots of Japanese learning happening. As you can see from my video update, I've recovered from a short period of exhaustion. I was doing too many things at the same time and not wanting to give any of them up. This said, it did force to me to evaluate things and further optimize the approach I'm taking on this language learning mission. I haven't changed that much in my approach, but although I'm strictly keeping to my original plan, I've added "shadowing" as an activity which I'd not tried before. I tried it with an italki tutor and although I wasn't very good at it, I noticed how much more focused I became on listening to every sound that was uttered and sat there with a big gloopy grin on my face at the end of the session as I realized, that yes ... its more than just helping me my pronunciation of Japanese, it's re-configuring the way I listen to Japanese. Now, maybe it will take me some time to be speaking Japanese all clickety-clackity (that's the technical term I've invented to describe what I don't have the English vocabulary to actually describe) ... but that's the main difference between what I hear and what comes tumbling out of my mouth. Additionally, doing the "shadowing" has given me a lot of confidence that, yes, with some more practice ... I shall indeed be clickety-clackity-drum-sounding-babbler-awayerer in Japanese ... and that's an important difference ... I suppose it's because I've spent many years speaking only in the violin tones of English ... and I learned Japanese without talking it for quite a long time ... and then when I began talking in Japanese, imperfect pronounciation hardly ever prevented me from being understood. However, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of speaking Japanese really well ... it's such a beautiful language. Yes, I shall continue to speak it with grammatically large boots for a while ... because when I become too conscientious of my pronunciation, fear of making mistakes creeps back into my mind ... and so, I think I decided that, yes, I shall aim to be a elegant verbal ballet dancer ... for that is my ultimate goal.

I also thought I'd get back into learning タイヨウのうた. I really love the song and the J-dorama it came from, but also found that it's been covered really well by natsubayashi on youtube:

 

Additionally, I decided that rather than learn to play the guitar from watching English tutorials, it was much more fun to learn to play the guitar in Japanese. So when I discovered that natsubayashi had created a tutorial teaching beginner's how to play this song, it soon became apparent that I don't actually have to understand that much Japanese to understand what he's communicating in his tutorial ... he's a great teacher in my opinion ... and I love the fact that he's teaching me Japanese without knowing it. I like to think that I'll search him out in Japan and say こんにちは なつばやし。あなたが僕ギタや日本語を教えました。ありがとうございます。

Anyway, I think that's all I'll write about in this blog update. It's been a while since I uploaded any of the materials that I've created over the last couple of weeks. I've made a few, but not shared them. I shall at some point ... but I'm hungry and want to go and make something to eat and then I'll be speaking with Mikie-san ... and then I think I'll have an early night because I've got an early morning italki session.

I'm on track as far as going through Tae Kim's grammar guide goes ... and I've apparently increased my vocabulary by about 350 words since the Challenge began and I've been noticing how much more frequently I'm hearing these words when I'm watching Japanese dorama these days. I'm addicted to a new series called "Miss Pilot" ... in the first episode I was amazed how much of the dialogue I could understand; they speak a lot of formal Japanese in this series because it's following a group of trainee pilots and they're often in formal situations. This said, I still haven't got a clue a lot of the time!