Complete immersion week⁸

I did 1 week of complete immersion and these are my findings.

I really enjoy immersion learning and have been doing it for about 4 months now. I always take breaks to read the news or scour the forums for interesting bits and pieces. Since I am able to, I wanted to completely eliminate those breaks and do 1 week of complete Japanese immersion.
I want to share my observations with you all.

Difficulties:
I found ignoring English youtube content particularly difficult. I still struggle to find Japanese substitutes for my precious youtube channels.

The News!!!
I read the news everyday so it was difficult to not have immediate access to understanding it. I’d have to translate stories word by word if I want to read a story which is annoying.

Discoveries:

New media
I really like Baby Metal and Slam Dunk.

Summary:
Immersion is fun and awesome. Don’t expect instant results. Enjoying content without translation is relaxing. You don’t need to do complete immersion and probably shouldn’t. But if you want to, go for it!!!

I suck at Japanese

I find myself often disappointed with my progress in Japanese. While doing immersion, I find myself a bit down that I can’t understand 99% of what I’m consuming.
“You’ve been studying for X amount of years and can’t speak Japanese”.
I don’t know if you have ever found yourself in a similar thought process.
The thought that really keeps me going is the hope that I will be able to understand one day. I have plans to go back and rewatch all the interesting shows that I don’t understand now. I’m excited really.

My way of immersion

I really like the All Japanese All the Time (AJATT) theory. So I based my immersion lightly on this with a few differences.
I like speaking and don’t really care about
Pronunciation.

Does immersion work?
I think so!! Don’t listen to me though because I’m not a Japanese master. It is fun though.

Listening:
Passive listening

  • TV or anime is on the whole day.
    I usually put on something a little boring so it doesn’t distract me from studying.
  • Music while working out or cleaning

Active listening

  • Watching movies, shows, anime without subtitles.
    I want to put on Japanese subtitles but Amazon Prime doesn’t have that option. Boooo
    -Teppei’s Beginner Podcast.
    Soooo relaxing. It may not be Japanese for Japanese people but it is nice to listen to something I can understand.

Reading
Native content
-Marimba
I click around this app and just try to read or discover. It is really tiring to do because I have to translate everything. My husband uses this as his main method of getting news.

The rest is just studying like mad
-wanikani
-sentence mining for +1 sentences and using anki (finding new words in reading and using the dictionary example sentences)
-N3 grammar reading comprehension
-Classes
-Reading an elementary school novel everyday

Anyways
I signed up for a caligraphy class so I’m excited to start that tomorrow.

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I’m all for immersion learning. After all, that’s all I’ve been doing these past years. And, likely, all I’ll be doing moving forward as well. (well, I do wanna try to increase my formal understanding of grammar a notch, so there’s that).

I find listening to Japanese especially valuable as it comes closest to the AJATT theory (first time I hear that term though), in that you’re forced to comprehend things purely from what you hear and it’s all Japanese so either you make it or you don’t. There is no place to hide. Either you understand what’s being said, or you don’t.

Reading frustrates me more, but is also a great way to just train your brain into thinking in Japanese. Games also.

And just listening to Japanese music puts a smile on my face! ^>^ :notes:

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