Hello everyone (especially Henry and Angeline)! My first post to the Dojo has actually not come from any Japanese study, though today’s session was wonderful.
I was watching Dave Eggers talk over at ted.com where he describes a volunteer after school English enrichment program that he started. I found his talk particularly interesting because I started a Spanish enrichment program in university and am currently teaching my daughter and other children to read. I have been looking for the source, but one of the statistics he threw out was that a kid needed about 40 hours of one on one reading practice to go up about one grade level. If this is true and applies to people such as myself who would like to raise our reading skills in Japanese or any other language, then cramming is impossible. If I were to have a reading coach and devote one focused hour a week to studying Japanese, then it would take at least 10 months to raise our level. This is assuming live in a Japanese environment where I do EVERYTHING in Japanese, which I obviously don’t. Look at this blog!
The good news is that since I’m already literate and have the tools to teach myself, I don’t need all of that one on one time that a kid needs; however, I still have to not only study test questions, but read in Japanese for fun and do a wide variety of things in Japanese. Having a Japanese OS and spouse go a long way in helping me accomplish that.
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