30dbc

There are 29 posts tagged 30dbc (this is page 2 of 5).

How I learnt English (Day 22)

This post might be useful if you’re learning a foreign language. I’ll write about how I learnt English.

The way I learnt English is simple. After I decided to go to university in Australia, I started studying English with enthusiasm. To be able to study philosophy in English, one must get really good at English. That was the case for me and served as a big motivator. It helps to be clear about how much (at least for now) you want to master the language you’re studying. You may not want to read philosophy books in Japanese and just want to be able to have a decent conversation without the help of a dictionary; that’s totally fine as long as you’re aware of that. Also, it helps if you have a meaningful motivation for learning that language. What makes it ‘meaningful’ is totally up to you, but if you feel you’re obliged to study the language because you need it to pass a school exam and you don’t like it at all, you’ll probably have a hard time in learning it.

There are two things that built the foundation for me in learning English.

Here’s the first one. I focused on getting my English pronunciations right as much as possible. I didn’t aim for 100%, because you don’t need to get everything right from the beginning. If you can pronounce the vowels and consonants in English, then you’re more likely to understand what’s being said, at least to understand the phonetics of what’s being said if not the meaning. It helps to know what’s phonetically important in the language you want to learn as well. Tone, pitch, intonation, stress. I think it’s fairly safe to imitate what you hear, though.

The second one is this. I read aloud English texts. Since almost every English learning book comes with a CD or two these days, I could read the texts aloud to the recording of those texts. That was pretty neat. In addition to reading aloud, I did this exercise recommended by a prominent Japanese interpreter—reading aloud and writing down texts at the same time. Choose a page long text and do it for 3 pages per day. And do it for 3 months every day. Once you’ve done that, your linguistic intuition for that language will be sharper.

You’ll probably have to study more if you want to master the language you’re studying, but these approaches will get you a good foundation in going further.

Now it's the 21st post (Day 21)

This post is almost being a post for the sake of posting, but it still reminds me of blogging everyday. For the last 9 days, I want to write more substantial posts rather than this kind of posts!

Year of creativity (Day 20)

This year has been a year of creativity for me. It’s mostly due to Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist Way”. It’s not an easy task to define what creativity is, but I’m happy to say it’s really common and we’re all creative. It comes down to choosing to be creative as well. I’m just going to put this here as my quick thought, but just like confidence, it’s something you get after doing something anyway rather than being able to do something because you’re creative. And you can choose to do things. It doesn’t have to be big. It just needs to be something. If you can choose to do it and you actually do it, you’re already walking the path of creativity.
That’s how I feel about creativity now.

Another experiment (Day 19)

I’m writing this post on my iPhone. The internet connection is somehow not working for my laptop. I thought I wouldn’t be able to update this blog today for that reason, but it seems I can, using my iPhone. Great.

It will be a year soon since I came back from Australia. Two more months. I think I’m still in the process of letting go of my feeling that I’m an outsider from the inside, but things have become softer, I suppose. I don’t care too much that I don’t belong–well, I do belong to the Japanese society, but what I really feel is perhaps that I don’t really want to belong to anywhere. I’ve always felt like this. The sense of belonging to nowhere, and I want it. I’m not sure if I’m a committment phobia or a lover of freedom.

But then, I can sense that things have changed within me as well. It’s something about laughing at myself. It’s about being light and delighted. Ease and delight help me have abundance and give me the sense of possibility.

If it’s fun to think about something in a certain way, why don’t we think that way?

Perhaps the internet connection not working is a conspiracy to block my challenge of blogging for 30 days. A conspiracy planned by… I don’t know. People from the future. Ha.

When was the last time you laughed at yourself with ease and delight? (i.e. In a positive manner rather than a negative, self-depriciating way) Can you laugh at yourself?

SMENA 8M + iPhone experiment (Day 18)

I have a SMENA 8M, a toy camera. This photo was taken with it – and I “scanned” it with my iPhone.  I’m not sure what you photography enthusiasts think, but I like it a lot. A retro taste of SMENA 8M cheapened further by iPhone. If I’m correct, this photo was taken somewhere near Bateman’s Bay in Australia. One of those deserted beaches… That’s exactly the place I want to be right now!

Slowing down a running frog and how to be absurd (Day 17)

When you slow down and stop for a moment, you might see something interesting. Or you might choose to make something interesting for you to look at.

I’m surprised that this is already the 17th day of the 30 day blogging challenge. 13 more days to go!