Rewarding yourself for studying may be one of the best ways to train yourself to study more. I've been studying Japanese on and off for years. I know that knocking myself out with hours of study often just sours the whole process. Then when I see a textbook, I'll start to feel nauseous and avoid opening it altogether.


But I like studying kanji. So I've decided, rather than studying hardcore for a few months, then taking a few months off of studying, I should regulate my study time a little more closely. For me, maybe ninety minutes is good. The problem is setting aside the time to study.


This is where my conception of rewards comes in. I like cycling. I like watching DVDs. I like drinking single malt scotch. If I tell myself 'No scotch until I've studied Japanese,' I will sit down and study. And ninety minutes of kanji study really flies by. I can set a timer so I don't go too far. Then it's time to reward myself, yay!


I often do this with cleaning. But cleaning's not so bad. I don't have much stuff, and cleaning is very physical. It's exercise, so it feels good. It's like a meditation. Studying could possibly be like this, but it's not going to get your body in shape. It's well-documented in studies that your brain works better, not only if you're in good physical condition, but especially right after exercise. If you go for a jog, or go cycling, you'll get more out of your study time if you do it immediately afterwards.


You don't have to make a set schedule, but it means that there should be some order to your activities. If you set your study time before you eat, you may be too hungry to concentrate (and not enough glucose for your brain.) Immediately after you eat, you may feel drowsy. I do. So I recommend really thinking about how you order your activities in the day. Simply changing the order of a couple things can help you maximize your productivity. Finally, don't forget to reward yourself after studying. This will positively reinforce your study habits, and you won't cringe every time you see the cover of your textbook.

▼▽▼▼【講師】Sandy先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Just Relax】2009.09.02 (Wed)

On those rare occasions that free time appears in my schedule, I like to read novels. I've never been much of a sci-fi fan, but recently I've been reading a series of "alternate history" novels. In this one, Nantucket Island is suddenly transported 3,000 years into the past. How would a small group of people, with modern values and dependent on technology, survive in the primitive past? How would the people of that time deal with them? The author must have had a good time writing these books, thinking about our relationship with the past.


Another thing I like to do is go to a blog called "Shorpy", featuring lots of interesting photos, mostly from 70 to 150 years ago. It's hard to believe that my great-grandparents, whom my own mother knew well, had already reached middle age before airplanes and cars were invented. Looking at the now-lost scenes of everyday life they experienced is really fascinating, especially when you realize that so many of these things that seem so alien to us really happened, and not so long ago!

▼▽▼▼【講師】Kurt先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Cool Weather, Here We Come!】2009.09.23 (Wed)

I want to describe reading fast, or speed reading, or skimming. I guess all of those actually have a different meaning. In my mind, reading fast means reading every word really fast. I do this when I'm at an exciting scene in a book. Speed reading I may not have the best definition of, because I've basically defined it for myself. I'll talk more about that later. And skimming I would say is what most of you are interested in and can use on tests. But I still want to talk about all of them. I guess reading fast came last for me, so I'll talk about that one last. Speed reading, or my version of it, is what I started with, so I'll start with that, and skimming is basically an adaptation on speed reading for non-native speakers, I'll talk about it second.



So speed reading.



First, let me explain how horribly slow of a reader I used to be. I used to hate reading. I hated it hated it hated it. I think I probably hated it so much actually because I was so slow at it. Imagine listening to someone t a l k .. . .... ..... ... . r e a l l y.. ... . . ... ... .. ... s l o w . That's what my reading was like. Pretty boring, right? But as reading became more and more important in school, I thought that I just had to find a way to like it. So I had heard about this "speed reading" and tried it out for myself. I just tried reading really really fast, and not stopping for any word I didn't understand or complicated grammar or strange spelling. I just kept a really fast pace even if I didn't understand what I was reading. And it kind of worked. After finishing a page, in like 5 seconds, I didn't understand everything, but I understood enough to pass a test on the dumb book. Let me demonstrate.



While reading that previous paragraph you might have thought that I was having spasms while typing and blurting out random words "louder." To read that paragraph out loud certainly would be humorous as we do speak bolded words louder. But those bolded words are what I would read if I was speed reading. Only those. It would sound like this in my head:



First explain horribly slow reader hate reading probably hated actually because imagine listening talk really slow reading pretty boring reading became important school just had heard "speed reading" myself reading stopping understand complicated grammar fast pace understand reading worked finishing 5 understand everything understood enough demonstrate.



And then I would just fill in the grammar and get an idea that is similar to but not exactly the same as the original paragraph. Actually, in speed reading I might read even less words, I'm not sure. You see speed reading has to be done fast, your eyes just have to naturally graze over the words. If you stop to bold the words it kind of interrupts the process.



You can also notice some patterns in the words I choose to read. First, they're all about evenly spaced. I never read more than about 2 words together at one time. I never read small words like: and, I, but, the, to, a, on, it, just. Words like articles, or prepositions or small ones. The number "5" is small, but numbers catch my eye and so I'd always read them.



So that's how I speed read. Not really very useful for non-native speakers as you have to have a pretty native understanding of grammar.



Actually, at this point, my blog is getting pretty long. So I'm going to hold off on skimming and reading fast till later blogs. So you can go ahead and look forward to that.



Before I end though, let me just explain that most of my motivation in explaining speed reading is to let you know what native English speakers are talking about when they talk about speed reading. It might not be a technique that'll be really useful for you, but I still think it's valuable to understand how some of us read.



Ok, so in my next blog I'll move on to skimming. Until then.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【The best advice I have.】2009.09.09 (Wed)

This summer has been a relatively cool one, and despite high prices for fruit and vegetables here in Tokyo, I'm thankful. Until I came to Japan, most of my life was spent in dry places like the Great Plains of the US and the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. Even though I've lived a long time in Tokyo, I'm still not used to the humidity!

Winter, on the other hand, is great. It gets a little cold, but nothing like Colorado or Kansas. I remember shoveling the snow off driveways for cash when I was a kid, with snow drifts up to the roofs of the houses. That was a hard day's work! Every time I complain of the heat, I try to remember that winter's just around the corner. Tokyo weather's not so bad!

Cool Weather, Here We Come!


▼▽▼▼【講師】Kurt先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Brave New World】2009.08.26 (Wed)

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