Reaching “Conscious Competence”
“I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” - Billy Joel
Assuming you are where I think you are, let’s talk a little bit about the things you can do to reach “Conscious Competence.” Of course, the reason you want to get there is because you’ll feel better about learning Japanese. Feeling competent (not that you aren’t competent now, you definitely are more than competent!) is super helpful, for confidence as well as just for having fun. When you know what you’re doing all on your own, things are a lot more fun, and you start feeling some of the “intrinsic value” that you get when you head towards unconscious competence. It’s a nice feeling.
As for getting out of the dip, here are some specific things you can do to help hurry the process along. I’m sure you know a lot of these, but it’s nice to be reminded, especially when there’s so many things you can do.
- Study your vocab, a lot. The better you know your vocab, the more you can focus on things like grammar, which will give you a better sense of progress (and let you say more things). Vocab is the only thing you have to memorize from scratch on TextFugu (and even the kanji vocab get a little bit of help from the kanji mnemonics), which probably means they’re the most difficult thing to learn. Study every day, making small progress on a regular basis, and suddenly you’ll find yourself “leveling up” quite quickly.
- Study every day. Even if it’s only 15 minutes. Just like with vocab, studying on a regular basis for shorter periods is better than less often for long periods. For example, it’s better to study 30 minutes per day, then 8 hours for one day per week, even though the 8 hour one gives you more overall time. Your brain needs daily practice to learn the most effectively.
- Focus on problem areas. If you know what you’re not as good at (let’s say, kanji) tackle that head on – don’t be afraid of it. Your problem areas are going to be the things that hold you back, and keep you from making progress. It’s best to hit them early before they pile up and get a lot worse. Spend time focusing on those things, and try to get better at them everyday.
- Go for visible progress. One of the things that’s different about “Conscious Competence” is that when you’re improving, you know you’re improving. If you’re having trouble staying motivated, focus on things that you can see (for example, when you learn 5 kanji, and are able to recall all of them from memory, you know that you learned 5 kanji). As you get better, more things will be “visible improvements,” and then soon everything will be. This is how you know you’re getting better.
Basically, if you can make sure you practice every day, you’ll make progress. It may not feel like it for a while (that’s all part of going through the dip, and a part of getting good at something), but if you stick with it, you’ll suddenly “level up” and feel like you made a lot of progress. The farther out of the dip you go, the faster you move up towards glory land!