How to Learn Easier | Original
When I wrote this essay in April 2023, Why and How I Learn Japanese, I realized that I hadn’t made much progress. Two years have passed. I have listened for more than 300 hours, averaging half an hour a day. The rhythm may have become more familiar to me, but I still can’t recognize many words.
I shouldn’t have much trouble learning basic phrases, even lyrics or articles. There are AI tools available. I know of a great Japanese dictionary, Jisho. The pattern I have observed is that I keep making the same mistakes again and again. The mistake is that when I listen, my mouth may follow the sound, but I don’t understand.
It is like learning English without speaking or writing. It is like learning to swim without jumping into the pool. This makes learning slower because you never gain insight or learn the essence until you make mistakes or get your hands dirty.
Why does Yin Wang learn so easily? Because he is dedicated to figuring out the meaning of every word, like さよなら (Sayonara).
My progress with my associate degree is slow. I wrote an essay about it, Associate Degree: Progress and Reflection.
Why do I keep failing the exams? Because I often don’t grasp what the exams are challenging me with. I read materials or watch videos without solving many actual exam questions.
I like to take a hands-on approach in my work because I have to finish tasks. Without a hands-on approach, it is often not possible to figure out the root cause of bugs.
Why do I still like a hands-on approach in my leisure time? Because AI helps me a lot. I can fix many problems with the assistance of AI.
How to Learn Easier? One has to be slow at the start to figure out the basics. After having a car accident in my first months of driving, my skills have improved, though there have still been car accidents in recent years.
Every time I make mistakes or don’t understand something, it is because I don’t try to figure out the reason and learn from it. So I keep making mistakes or remain clueless about something.
This is probably one of the big lessons of my life. Nowadays, learning is so important. The world is becoming more complicated. This is about how to learn easier, and this is probably equivalent to how to live better.