Comments

Understand Your Weaknesses And Your Strengths Will Shine — 20 Comments

  1. In the past (*cough* like two or three months ago), one of my weaknesses was being unable to handwrite very many kanji. Most of the time I paid this no mind. I didn’t think that being able to handwrite kanji was very important, and it was okay if I didn’t focus on it at all. As time went on, however, the fact that I coudn’t write simple words like 経験 and 絵を描く from memory when I needed to began to bother me a lot. I’m really glad that the RTK mod deck here goes keyword => kanji because, due to that, my kanji writing and recall abilities have gone up exponentially. (Thanks Adam!)

    Right now, one of my weak areas is definitely speaking, but I don’t have anyone I need to be talking to in Japanese right now, so that’s okay. (Side note: It might be fun to start something like a Japanese-only JALUP LINE group, though! It’s not speaking, but it’s definitely a form of output. For all us poor folks who don’t get to interact with others in Japanese very much. ^_^)

    • Glad the RTK mod deck is still being used after all this time!

      Hmm, let me think about the Line group possibility.

      • Even with the existence of Kanji Kingdom, I think there will still be people who benefit from the RTK mod deck for a variety of reasons (ex: They already started RTK before discovering the site and want to continue it).

        And yeah since the forums didn’t quite work out, some other way for JALUP users to connect and chat (esp in Japanese) would be great =)

  2. Currently, I am weakest in writing. Like with speaking, I can bs my point across, and people will get me, and I can’t do that in writing if you get what I mean.

    • Totally understand it. I think it’s because speaking is meant to be less smooth, and writing is expected to be more refined.

  3. My weakness is output in general (speaking and writing). I have a hard time producing any Japanese at all. For now I’m okay with that. Input before output. The fact is that for the time being I have no need to produce Japanese, I only want to consume it.

    I do want to work some on output in the future though. I want to travel to Japan and be able to get by in Japanese while there. For that I will probably mostly have to work on my speaking abilities. It is not going to be easy since I’m shy and not very confident when facing somebody directly. I feel most comfortable safely behind my screen where I can take my time with what I want to express and fiddle around with each sentence until I’m satisfied. But I will have to work on that and I’m prepared to do so.

    Last night I actually had a dream about talking to a Japanese person in Japanese and I just did it without any trouble. I take that as a sign that I’m really getting this whole Japanese thing internalized and it has become part of my identity.

    • Those Japanese dreams are the best and really are a sign that things are going in the right direction.

  4. My weaknesses are definitely listening and speaking at the moment.

    I am perfectly fine with not being able to speak much beyond the basics. That can come later.

    As far listening that really annoys me, but I already know how to fix it. Immerse more! I am doing lots of immersion currently, but was not doing it as much as I should have in the beginning, so I am still far behind on this. However, everyday I notice new words and expressions when I immerse, so I know that I am making progress.

    • Yup, it’s just little by little. Once you reach a certain in the near future you’ll laugh that you ever had trouble in the first place.

  5. My weakness is in writing. I just don’t write anything and I don’t need to. It’s like, I can achieve a certain effect through speaking by varying my intonation, gestures, using filler words, etc. But I can’t do that in writing. In writing, need to be aware of collocations, idioms, grammar, subtle kanjiisms and all that stuff.

    • I think writing is a major weakness for a lot of people. Most people don’t write nearly as much as all 3 other attributes.

  6. Listening is my strongest, followed by reading. Speaking is my weakest followed by writing. However, I do notice that the more I listen the more I form Japanese sentences in my mind, now I just gotta figure out how to get them out of my mouth <3

  7. It’s interesting when I compare Japanese skill ranking (Reading-Listening-Writing-Speaking) to English skill ranking (Listening-Reading-Writing-Speaking).

    It seems to reflect the main method of acquiring each language…

    I’ve completely abandoned writing in Japanese to work on my conversation skills. But considering that I’m not a fantastic talker in English and far better at expressing myself in writing than in conversation, maybe I’m fighting a losing battle!

    • Or maybe working on your conversation skills in Japanese will actually also increase your conversation skills in English. Since being a good speaker is more than just vocabulary and pronunciation (which you probably have down fine in English if I may guess). So some of the skill points you gain by practicing conversational Japanese will be in general conversation skills applicable to both languages.
      Japanese may be the motivational boost you need to work on becoming a great speaker :)

    • I agree with Silwing, that becoming a good speaker in Japanese may actually help your English as well, since it all relates to how your brain expresses your thoughts.

  8. I was planning on my weakness being writing but I’m realising now that I’ve actually started doing Japanese in school that they really want me to write and its greatly frustrating. I certainly never plan to make big speeches, that’s not something I could do that confidently in English. And I mostly just want to be able to read fiction and History. I guess the thing I would like to be best at is listening.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>