/jp/ - Otaku Culture

One reason why consuming media is a great way to learn languages is because it's very fun to do. Flashcards are to most people boring, and something they have to force themselves to do, hence this religious culture of "daily reps" people form to motivate themselves. It's unpleasant work, basically. On the other hand, consuming media is fun. It's great. Many people learn the language solely to consume the media - not many do just to read flashcards. The difference this makes is astounding, to say the least.

Whereas one might have to force themselves to do 1 hour of flashcards a day, or some other equivalent manner of academic studying, that same person might find themselves consuming 4+ hours of media a day purely out of enjoyment. Whereas they might skip their daily flashcards reps, loathing the idea of forcing themselves through the work once again, they might rush to consume media at given any opportunity.

Long term, the effects of this should be obvious. The mental state of one focusing on unpleasant flashcards and forcing themselves to talk to people when they barely understand the language will be very negative, one that associates learning with pain. The mental state of one who focuses on consuming media will be very positive, and they will associate learning with having fun.

Basically, regardless of what may be the most mechanically efficient method of learning, it's a fact that consuming media is ultimately what will lead the most people to success with learning through the mathematical properties of time spent doing something, and level of engagement while doing something. A pithy amount of human interaction and flashcard studying each day won't compare to the large quantity media one consumes in their spare time. Clicking through Anki, bored, won't compare to having your eyes glued to the screen during a video game, doing your damnedest to understand the nuance of a key line during an awesome scene. And so on.

The human element is one you must never forget while thinking about language learning. Personally, I've tutored about ten different people in Japanese, not as their sole tutor directing every aspect of their studies but just as a person who's there to give advice and direction at any time. I've mentioned and explained Anki to each of them, knowing how powerful of a tool it is, and over time one of three things happened to each one of them: They dropped Japanese, due to hating Anki and struggling with grammar; they dropped Anki and shifted to focusing on media; or they kept plugging away at textbooks and Anki. The second group has been the most successful, of course. It seems to me that active studying is only something people should worry about in the beginning of their studies, when consuming media is too difficult. Anki, flashcards, textbooks, any form of studying beyond "doing what you want to do" - be it reading, listening, talking, etc - should be abandoned as soon as possible. If a learner isn't engaged in what they're doing, their progress will be slow and meaningless, no matter what the math of spaced repetition says.

I'm not trying to pass of anecdotal evidence here, in fact, I'm not arguing at all. I'm just stating the experience I've had which has guided me to my beliefs. At the end of the day, language learning is simple. Interact with the language a lot. Consume the media you want to consume. And, that's it. You'll know the language.

I focused on the time aspect the most here, but there are other reasons consuming media is so effective at learning. A visual novel might have 2000 unique kanji across 30,000 lines, which means you'll be seeing the same kanji about 5,000 different times reading that VN. Similar idea for unique words. You see the same stuff over and over in language. Meanwhile, think about flashcards. Think about doing a flashcard for a kanji 5,000 times. That sounds like hell. It would be hell. Boring, awful. Nobody would want to do it. They'd quit Japanese on the spot. Yet, reading a VN would be pretty easy. Just one VN, and you've seen a common kanji 5,000 times. And VNs aren't behemoths you spend years reading. You can read a few VNs a month. Then, you've seen the same common kanji 20,000 times. Rarer kanjis less so, but the rarer a kanji is, the more it might stick out in your memory, the more it might stick out in context, the less it might matter, the less likely it is for a native to know it on sight, and so on and so on. (Japanese people are worse at Japanese than you might think. It's kind of funny sometimes. I saw one stumble over how to read 村長, and ultimately they failed to produce the correct reading. This happens all the time. But try not to think about it, unless you want to lower your own standards for comprehension.)

Basically, consuming media is good. I hit the character limit. Yo yo I'm jamal and like rap yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shUbv1Id5DE

>>16717422
That's a fine translation. Fun with Japanese reads well and conveys easily that it's a language learning book. Fun Japanese reads worse. No point trying to stick to the original so much that you make the English worse for the sake of どうでもいい details.