I got stuck on the intermediate plateau for years, so I decided to build my own app

Yomu Yomu - Daily News is my solution to the intermediate plateau. I got stuck and couldn't find content I wanted to read so built my own app"

Setting out on a language learning journey

I guess we all remember our early rush of enthusiasm and motivation when we decide to learn our first language and commit to it. We go all-in with some lessons, buy the recommended textbooks, and set up our first vocabulary flashcards and start those reps!

It was the late 2000s when I took the plunge with Japanese. It actually wasn’t my first attempt - school had destroyed any interest in French I had, and some after-work Spanish classes hadn’t led anywhere. However, I had moved to Japan to teach English and also decided that this was my chance to fulfill my ambition to learn a language, immerse myself in the culture, and become bilingual.

This was also an exciting time for language learning. The internet was just coming out of its infancy and the app boom was on the horizon. I got hooked on sites that promised fast tracks to fluency, immersive technology that was going to revolutionise language learning, anki, lingq, italki and others all promised great things!

The intermediate plateau

But, as time went on, the magic didn’t seem to bear fruit. 2 years, then 3, 5… 10 years later! Why am I not fluent in Japanese yet!? What is going on!? My study routine had faded as the motivation ebbed. Now I was still clinging to my daily anki reps - proof to me that progress was being made. But somehow it wasn’t. I had reached the intermediate plateau.

Occassional surges in motivation would take me back to searching for materials. Surely, if there was something that could fire my motivation on a daily basis, then I would immerse myself! However, I consistently ended up finding the same content and become disillusioned again - How do Japanese people celebrate Tanabata? What is Japanese tea ceremony? Momo the peach story - in simplified Japanese. Gah! I hated it. I envied manga or anime lovers. Their internal drive to learn comes from their hobby, but I didn’t have something like that. What would work for me? Well, I am interested in reading the news. I like sports. Learning about science and technology. Surely there must be something for people like me.

My app

The idea is simple - daily news, fresh from the news feed, graded to different levels of Japanese so learners can read the latest news stories at their own level and at their own pace without being overwhelmed or bored. Short news stories are ideal for daily intake of content for people who like learning in bite-sized chunks.

The site is new. I recently got my first sign-upped users. New features including a dictionary gloss and more content is on the way based on user feedback. It is my hope that other people also find this site useful and can help guide my development of the site so it can become what it is meant to be - a true learning bridge from the intermediate plateau that learners can use to escape, and achieve their goals.

Find the link to the site below and in my portfolio site's project page. Use it, tell me what works, tell me what doesn’t, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Try out the app: yomuyomu.io

Old friend Emperor Yang

We watched another episode of the Hexi corridor series. This one had moved on the Sui dynasty, and the development of the Silk Road. I met an old acquaintance, Emperor Yang, who I had made a profile of in my blog here. The tyrant who did a lot of good! This episode talked about how he tried to develop the trade with the western regions through the Hexi corridor, by having events demonstrating the quality and luxuriousness of Chinese culture and goods. Ancient day expos if you like. The programme also suggested he was the first emperor to have a foreign summit on Chinese soil with leaders from the regions to the North and West of the Hexi corridor. With a little googling I couldn't find explicit confirmation of this but found this nice passage in an essay here:

"A similar record also appears in the “Shihuo Zhi 食貨志” of the Suishu: In the fifth year [of the Daye reign period] the Emperor progressed on his western tour of inspection to the Hexi region. Adorned in gold and jade, dressed in colorful woolen cloth, burning incense, and playing music, the various barbarians of the Western Regions formed a welcoming crowd at the roadside. The Emperor ordered the young men and women in Wuwei and Zhangye to wear splendid attire to watch the events. If the clothes, chariots and horses were not bright, then the provinces and counties would supervise and handle them in order to impress the barbarians. In short, Emperor Yang spared no expense in the ostentatious display of the peace he had brought."

Will have to see if there is more info on this when I visit Wuwei and Zhangye in June.

Silk Road Blog: Old Friend Emperor Yang

Kicking off with an episode of the Hexi Corridor

 Our pet goldfish Shaoqi just passed away, sadly. Thank you for the one year you spent with us Shaoqi. Named after the brave leader of the China Liu Shaoqi, he was an active member of our household.
I`m kicking off this blog with a post here on Sunday night. Waiting for the Hexi corridor episode to begin. I find the producton quality questionable, but it illustrates some key parts of Chinese history that took place in this strategic area of the Chinese mainland.

This episode was about Buddhist statues and grottos in the Hexi coridor. The episode began by focusing on a monk named Kumarajiva who travelled from the West and got stuck in the Hexi corridor for about 17 years as he was under suspicion by the government of the time. Eventually he was taken to Changan by a more likeminded emperor and set to work translating all the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. After that, the episode focussed on the development of Buddhist grottoes along the corridor. One interesting piece of information I learnt was that up until the invasion of the East by Alexander the Great, there were no human likeness sculptures of Shakyamuni, the Buddha. It was only the bringing of Greek statues to Gandahar- present day Kashmir - that people began sculpting likenesses of the Buddha because they found the Greek sculptures brought by Alexander and his men so beautiful.

I hope I get the chance to visit some of the grottes when I visit the Hexi corridor this year.

 

p.s. (I've now created my own blog for the upcoming trip this post refers to; I will be cross posting there and here and linking to the home-made blog here: https://easterngrean.github.io/silk_road_blog/posts/130425.html

Yuck.. news... where have my blogs gone?

 Yuck..

 It's so annoying to read the news every day. Tired of seeing the same guy banging on and making the world a worse place.

I realised how much I have missed since stopping reading blogs. It was the end of the RSS feed that started that. Without that organised stream of new content I wasn't able to connect.

So I am revisiting this blog, MY blog!, where my reading lists were collated and shared for others. Interesting to see so many of them still going, after what has been more than 10 years since I was a regular vistitor here.

I am still language learning. I have lost a lot of that early motivation, but I still perservere. My career, and its attendant dissappointments, have also got in the way. I am still involved in language learning in my work, which should keep me motivated. But the politics and BS that needs to be dealt with in a large organisation is something that has taken the fun out of it for me.

I have also taken on something of a tangent in learning how to code. Or at least improving my tech literacy. I have a couple of certificates now and am trying to complete the Harvard CS50 introduction to computer science. My overall goal is still to develop a good language learning tool. To make use of this revolution to help myself and others with language learning.

 I will endevour to post more regularly. Additionally, I have set up my own blog to write about a trip I will take later this year, back to China. My wife is Chinese and we will visit the Hexi corridor, part of the old silk road. I would like to connect that blog and this in order to write and post more. I will link to it here once up and running.