How to Keep Our Motivation

How to Keep Our Motivation

Hi there! How are you doing? I am glad that I can update my blog again!!

Today I want to write about how to keep our motivation. I think everybody has experienced to set up some goals. When you do this, I am sure you have lots of motivation. However, after a while, you figure out that the goal is more difficult than your imaginaion and start losing motivation. It happens to everyone.

To avoid losing motivation, I like setting up small goals. Every time I achieve the small goals, I can feel accomplished and fulfilled. The feelings are good for me to keep motivation.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I finshed reading a book which has around 1000 pages in English. When I started reading books in English, I had set up the book called ” The Pillars of the Earth ” as one of my small goals. I started reading some kid’s books like “Magic Tree House series” for the first time in English. Since I am a grown up, I couldn’t enjoy reading such books at all. Every time, when I almost gave up to improve my reading skills in English, I imagined the 1000 page book in my mind. It took eight years to achive the small goal, but I finaly did it!

After finishing to read the 1000 page book, I could feel more confidence to read something in English. I think I have improved my reading speed as well. I think before the 1000 page book, I had set up much smaller goals to read as well. When you conquer something, you can gain more confidence and this brings you more motivation. When you achive more difficult goals, your motivation increases.

I want to set up “Gone With The Wind” as my next small goal. The book has over 1000 pages and is a classic. I am weak at reading classics in English. So, it will bring big confidence when I finish reading this! I hope this blog post sounds useful to you to improve yourself.

Thank you for reading my blog post. See you around in two weeks!

-Yumi

Keep Going Is Very Important!

Hello there! How have you been so far?

It’s been a while since I posted my latest blog entry. I am sorry for the delay again. I had been in Italy to make my dreams come true! I will write about my studying abroad in Italy on my other blog later. Please check it out if you are interested in what I did.

Today I should say I want to show off what I did a bit because I have been writing journal entries in English almost every day for ten years! I started writing something in English on the 15th of November in 2008 on Lang-8 (It is a langauge site, mainly to improve our writing skills.). Since I was in Italy this month, I couldn’t check out the date.  Today I posted my 3138th journal entry!!! Woo Hoo!

Of course, it was not easy at all. First, I started learning conversational English to study abroad in the States to take many porcelain painting classes. I don’t count how many classes I had taken, but I had kept going back to the States every year for eight years. I sometimes stayed there for six months! ( I can’t stay there straightly for 6 months, so, I stayed there for two months, went back to Japan and stayed there for two months again, went back and stayed there for another two months.) I really do appraciate my husband and daughter who have supported me a lot to make my dreams come true! I also do appreciate my American friends who have supported me to let me stay at their houses or teach me English!! Thanks to them I have learned American culture which relates to their language a lot.

I think writing in another langauge helps our reading skills a lot. In ten years, I can come to read more advance books in English. I have read 310 books in English and am still reading 8 books now. I also think writing skills helps our thinking skills. While keeping to write something in English, I think I have improved to think something what I want to say in English. It really helped my conversational skills. I can respond English immediatly, write something in English immediatly and I don’t translate what I want to say or write in English from Japanses at all. I read books in English without translating Japanese as well. You know, conveasations are going through so fast and if you can’t catch up with them, you don’t understand what people are talking about. You have to understand the conversations right now in their langauge without translation. I think writing journal entries helped to improve my such skills a lot.

I know my written English is not perfect enough. So, I would love to keep writing something to improve them more in English! Even so, I am happy that I could achieve one of my goals that I have set up when I started learning conversational English.

Via learning conversational English, I feel like I have learned life lessons. We can’t build something one day. If we want to complete something, it will take a long time. So, every time I feel like I almost give something up that I really want to complete, I try to say this to myself. I could achieve some goals in English, so I can do anything I want to do!! I think English gave me lots of self-confidence.

Compared to ten years ago, my goals have changed. I need to learn Italian more than English. I want to make my body better ( I am involved in bulding muscle things. Well, don’t misunderstand me. I am not interested in being a bodybuilder at all, lol. ) . Learning Italian and training muscles are not easy for me at all, but I would love to try them out because I know my life is only once! I hope I will be able to keep writing something in English for another ten years and will post another journal entry about this ten years later!!

Thank you for reading! See you around again in two weeks!

-Yumix

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Is The Reason Why I Have Been Learning Conversational English Part 2

Hello there! How have you been so far? Since here is still really muggy, I am super lazy to do something. I do apologize for the delay.

Today I want to write about something English. A couple of days ago, I finished the Trevor Noah’s book in English. He is a comedian from South Africa and now lives in the States. He is very popular in the States. Since my American friend likes him, while staying at her house, I had seen him a lot on his TV show. Most of the time, understanding jokes in English is tough for me because jokes always relate to their culture references. If you don’t understand the culture, even though you understand what people are talking about, you never ever get why it’s funny.

If you are interested in different culture, I high recommend reading his book. You can figure out there are so many different worlds, society or culture in this world.

Anyway, I bought the e- book for one dollar at Amazon Japan. I figured out it was a bargain. I love reading any kinds of books in English to improve my reading skills. For some reason, Amazon sometimes makes products’ prices down. I was lucky to find the deal  then. Now, it costs around 7 dollars at Amazon Japan. We have the Japanese translation version of his book as well. It costs around 20 dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just don’t understand why it’s so expensive. The book was really good indeed. I enjoyed reading it and it has become one of my favorites. However, Trevor Noah is not popular in Japan AT ALL. How many people know who he is in Japan? Probably the majority of us don’t know him. I am sure nether my husband nor my daughter know of him. If my American friend didn’t introduce him to me, I also wouldn’t know of him at all. I understand it costs to translate into Japanese, but it’s too expensive! E ridicolo!

Now, I am reading Kain and Abel by Jeffery Archer from England in English, and I really really love his books as well. He has become one of my favorite authors to read something in English. I can say the same thing in his book. I bought the Kain and Abel e-book for one dollar at Amazon Japan. Then, I found out it normally costs for 10 dollars. Then, Japanese translation version costs 20 dollars because Japanese version has two separate books for one book. Each book costs 10 dollars.

If you love 20’s culture, I recommend his book as well. Somehow, this book reminds me of Frank Sinatra and his songs. I love people who have strong wills or ambitions and make their dreams come true! This is a someone’s success story that you really can enjoy reading.

If I didn’t handle English. I would have to spent more money to read their books of the Japanese versions. My other favorite British author Ken Follet’s books are the same. I didn’t notice the fact until now. I guess I can say the same thing to buy DVDs at Japanese Amazon. It’s always more expensive to buy DVDs with Japanese subtitles or dubs. So, I always buy import versions that don’t have Japanese subs or dubs at all. They are really cheap.

I can say that when we read original books in English, it’s fun and when we see original movies in English, It’s much fun because we can hear original actors voices! It’s much better than hearing Japanese dubs.

I do want to keep learning conversational English because I can take advantages from these facts!

Thanks for reading my blog post and I will post in two weeks again!

-Yumix

 

 

I Achieved My Goal!

Hello there! How have you been so far? It’s getting extremely muggy here. I hope you all are doing good.

Today I want to be proud of myself! I started writing journal entries every single day in English in November, 2008. I just started learning conversational English then. I simply wanted to improve my writing skills in English.

Today, I wrote my 3000th journal entry in English! It took almost ten years to achieve it, but I did it!!!!!

To think back in ten years, I sometimes couldn’t write journal entries, but I always tried to keep writing. I think writing journal entries in English really helped to improve my reading skills. Now, I can enjoy much more advanced books in English.  This gave me lots of confident that I can do anything I want to do. This definitely motivated me up, and I want to keep doing to achieve my goals. I can feel that I can reach lots of goals if I just keep going. So, I definitely do! You will see what I will achieve even though it will take a long time.

Life is short, everyone! Stop wasting time to spend time for stupid things!! I hope everybody is having a fruitful day!

See you here soon again!!

-Yumi

See you soon here again!!

 

This Is One of The Reasons That I Want To Learn Another Language

Hello there! Really long time no see! I am very sorry for the delay. I had been very busy with painting, traveling around the States and so on. Now, I finally have settled my life normal and started blogging again. I will update my other art blog soon as well.

Today I want to write about my thing a bit.

A couple of days ago, I finished reading a book which was originally written in Spanish. I read the English version of the book. Since my first language is Japanese, of course, I don’t think I could understand the book perfectly. However, I felt the book was one of the bests which I have ever read in my entire life. It was my first time to feel the way when I read English books.  You might be curious which book I read. You can see the book title and read some reviews here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1232.The_Shadow_of_the_Wind, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2051256._?ac=1&from_search=true, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15827788?ac=1&from_search=true

 

After reading it, I bought the Japanese translation version. Right now I am reading the same book in Japanese. While reading, I can’t stop thinking that I wish I could read Spanish! If I could handle it, I did enjoyed reading the original one. I am very curious which translation version is better than the other one between English and Japanese.  I can compare between the English translation version vs the Japanese one. I will write the review after I finish reading the Japanese one on Goodsread. You will be able to read my review there then. I think it’s an interesting way to learn another languages. I want to read two versions of the same books from now on when I find interests in the book.

I am learning both conversational English and Italian, and I am thinking that I want to start learning Spanish after I improve my Italian. One of the goals for my Spanish will be to read my favorite Spanish authors books in Spanish.

I think it’s endless to learn another languages. When I started learning conversational English, I never ever thought I would study Italian. Now, I started thinking studying Spanish. Life never makes me feel bored. I am feeling like I am rowing a small boat to find a land named a goal in the ocean called adventures. I still don’t find any goals yet, but I am enjoying rowing my boat.  I can say that another languages definitely have open my horizons.

Thank you for reading my blog post.  I will update my blog constantly again. Stay tuned!

A Strong Will

Recently I’ve been keeping on reading books in English every single day, and it makes me very happy 🙂 It took more than five years for me to put it in my routine work. I tried to do a lot of things to make it routine, but I always gave it up. To keep my goal (I’ve set a goal to read 48 books in English every year), I always had to push myself at the end of year. It was very hard, and I regretted why I didn’t keep reading constantly. Even though I learned from my mistakes, I couldn’t keep on reading ever day.

However, this year is different from usual! Somehow, I can keep on reading every day. I want to think what changed me.

Firstly, I think I’ve improved my reading skills, and it has become easier for me to find certain books for me.
Secondly, I’ve been showing my reading progress in public to use Facebook and Twitter, and it has become my motivation to keep reading.
Thirdly, I think I finally joy to read in my second language.

I have several high goals for books. Someday I want to read more advance books that I’m used to reading in Japanese.
Through this thing, I learned keep going is the most important thing for me to improve my skills. I’ve known it, but it’s easy to say and hard to do.

I really want to use this method to improve my painting skills. I’m a moody painter, and I sometimes can’t paint. I’ve still been struggling with putting it in my routine work. I want to have a STRONG will to keep on painting every single day from now on to improve my painting skills!

My Phobia

Hi there! Long time no see!!! How have you been? I’ve been doing well, and I returned to Japan from Canada a couple of weeks ago.

Do you have phobias? Today I want to share my phobia with you. Before studying conversational English and studying abroad in the States, I hadn’t realized that I’m scared of some small talk. Seriously, I’m scared of small talk.

When I go to the States, people love speaking to STRANGERS. You receive a lot of small talk everywhere. Since we Japanese people are not good at small talk like American people do, I have no idea how I response it. It always makes me very nervous. You might not understand what I’m talking about. All right. I’m picking up some examples for you.

You are in a Wal-Mart and waiting for your turn in a line. When you get your turn, a casher speaks to you, “Hello? What’s up? Today is really pretty, isn’t it?”. I have no clue how I should response because in Japan we don’t receive such small talk at cashers. When we go to a restaurant, a waitress/waiter are more pushy. They love talking to us. Even though we order our meals, they sometimes come to our table and ask “Everything is OK? Don’t you want anything else? Did you watch a game last night? Bula bula bula………”. I know they show kindness and niceness to us customers to get more tips, but we don’t have tips in Japan. We don’t need such the service at the restaurants.

I still remember that when I was a kid, we had a first MacDonald in our small town. I was scared of ordering there because we had received small talk from an employee like that “Anything else? ” with a big smile. It was so weired for me. Since I was not used to it, I couldn’t refuse to order something else. I tended to spend more money.

As thinking about my experience at the MacDonald, I think American fast restaurants brought small talk to Japan with their fast foods. Now, I can handle it in Japanese, but I’m not good at it in my second language. I sometimes can’t response well when I soddenly receive unexpected questions from strangers at shops, restaurants, airplanes or wherever.

I hope after improving my speaking skills, I can response without feeling any stress.

Why Do You Learn English?

I read one of my Lang-8 friends’ journal entry today. It was very interesting. In the journal entry he asked why we learned English, and some of Japanese learners left their comments on it.
I think it’s sometimes good for us to make sure and clear our purpose why we learn another language. While learning it, we sometimes forget and loose the purpose. We sometimes loose our motivations of our another language.

In my case, I have some dreams and to make them come true, I’ve been learning English. My dreams are to become an international china artist, teacher and introduce one of our dying art, kutani painting to the world in English. To make my dreams come true, I’ve been learning English for 4 years.

I read some comments on his journal entry. I know many Japanese English learners think English is important in the future to our global society. I’ve heard a lot of commercials and see advertisements that English is important in the future, and we have to prepare the global society. However, when does it become important? Since I was a kid, I’ve been heard the phrases over and over again. I still don’t think everybody needs English in our lives. I think our English relates English business tightly. From younger to elderly many Japanese people are manipulated by mass media and think in a vague way that English is important to our lives.

I think that’s why we can’t improve our English comprehension skills. I also want to ask you why you study English. Can you answer to my question?

What Do You Think That Your Another Langauge Changes Your Character?

Do you think that another language for a person changes the person’s character?

I’ve been learning American English and compared to speaking in my first language, I think I can become more honest and can say more personal issues and topics in public. Basically, I don’t like telling and asking about my personal issues to my friends and tend to hide them, but it’s much easier for me to threw up my feelings and thoughts in English.

I think English is more direct language than Japanese, and I’ve been developing in the language. I mean my vocabulary of the languages is smaller than Japanese one’s and that’s why it’s much easier for me to express my feelings in a straight way. I also think I’m very curious about the languages and I can enjoy my feelings in English.

The feeling is a little bit strange, but I think it’s fun for me that I can tell anything what I can’t tell in my mother tongue! That’s because my second language sometimes can heal my feelings and become a therapy.

In other word, when I speak in English, I can become more assertive than when I speak in Japanese. I can straightly say “Yes” or ” No”. I also can be a little bit more opinionated person and can say my thoughts clearer.

What do you think that your another language changes your character?

My Way to Study My Second Langauge

Today I’d like to try to write about my experiences how I’ve been studying English.

I’ve been learning conversational English for three years. When I made a decision to study it, I started to speak it for 8 to 10 hours a day. I did it for two years every single day. First, I started to find someone who can speak with me in English on Skype. Thinking back on then, I really think I was lucky because I could find several native English speakers who have been learning Japanese. While talking and teaching Japanese to them, I learned how to communicate with people in English. I slow down now and have been speaking English for two to three hours a day.

I also started to post my journal entries in English every single day when I started to speak it. In my case, it didn’t take so much time to improve both my listening skills and speaking skills. I think I can communicate pretty well, but improving my writing skills is a different story.

Following some my native English speaker friends’ advices, I started to watch American TV shows in English without subtitles. It’s been amazing working out for improving my listening skills. I’ve been watching a drama a hour every day. I also started to read books in English without using a dictionary. To keep my motivation for reading, I tried many things. The best way for me is showing my reading progress to somebody to use some websites for readers.

Now, my English level is almost advance, and I feel comfortable to communicate with people. My next goal is to be able to express what I want to say in a natural way. At the end of this journal entry I’d love to add this: I’ve studied abroad in America to take some painting classes four times in two years. It also very helped my skills to improve.