Studying Yourself Failing
“A man’s life is interesting primarily when he had failed for it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.” – Georges Clemenceau
Failure is inevitable. As soon as you figure this out, you’ll become a much better learner. Fail, fail, and fail again. Every time you fail, you get closer to being an expert. The more terrified you are of failing, the less likely you’ll ever become an expert. That’s definitely one thing I’ve noticed in life. The people who fail (and then learn from failures) are, in the end, the most successful (by a long shot). Don’t fear failing, but make sure you learn from it too.
In the talk on the previous page, Foer talks about how you should study what you fail at. Sometimes this is hard to figure out because you’re bound to get to a point where you are “OK” enough to feel like you aren’t failing. You’re safe… but you aren’t really getting better. His example was typing. If you type 10-20% faster than you normally type you’ll start to notice the things you fail at… the keys you tend to miss, the numbers you don’t quite know the position of automatically… etc. You should give it a try, it’s kind of revealing.
You can do this with Japanese, too. I wouldn’t do all these at once, but try a couple at a time. It’s good to push yourself and figure out what you need to work on.
- Only give yourself 1 second to answer a flashcard. When you don’t know the answer, take a note as to what it is and why it’s giving you trouble (might be a lot, so take it a few at a time).
- Go through all the hiragana kana (and katakana) and try to write them all down as quickly as possible – when you can’t think of one immediately, skip to the next one. The ones you’ve skipped are the ones you don’t know, and the ones you should focus on.
- If you’re feeling more confident, go through a Japanese blog or two, and try to read as much as you can. Figure out the things giving you the most trouble – is it grammar? is it kanji? – and take note of it. You’re probably not at the level yet to do this, but you will be soon in the future.
- Go through your vocab, and see which ones you know the meaning of (start Japanese to English). Then, go English to Japanese, and see what ones you have trouble with. The ones where you don’t know both ways are the ones you know the least. The ones you know one way are ones you kind of know, and the ones you know both ways are the ones you really know.
Either way, as you move forward, think about the failures. Think about ways you can push yourself harder to bring those problems to the surface. Termites are a problem whether you can see them or not, though you don’t notice them until you force them to the surface (it’s pretty ugly making them come out, but better for your house in the long run!). So, figure out ways to fail. Push yourself to fail. Make it game if you have to (how many ways can I fail at Japanese, today?), because once you identify a failure you can fix it, which brings us to the next point.