Apparently adding PE Goals to a daily to-do does not make them more likely to be accomplished! Actually, my to-do lists are seeming to mean less and less in terms of my productivity but that is another matter! I wish I could report better news in terms of what strategies I actually fulfilled. I did attempt to speak with my father in Japanese more frequently but our conversations do normally end up being in English simply because I don’t get to talk to him that frequently and I want to actually be able to catch up! Still, I want to continue trying to speak with him in Japanese past the end of this class (that was the point of the whole course, after all!). No extra shadowings, unfortunately. I did listen to a number of NHK podcasts, though. They remind me of home! I also think they helped me just pick up on rhythm, pitch, and sounding natural. I think this new level of comfort with pitch and rhythm (and using them both to connote meaning) showed in my pritele performance today (I hope)! I think overall my ability to understand faster-paced Japanese and improve my own speed and ease with speaking has improved substantially, perhaps because of the NHK podcasts, and the Japanese music (probably less so) but also I think this new facility has simply come about as my ability to express myself has improved. Since I have been listening to native-spoken Japanese all of my life, I think that the tool that was actually missing to me before was ability to speak the language myself (vocab, grammar, etc.) now that I have these tools, I have been pleased to find that the pronunciation stuff seems to have fallen into place nicely (at least for my level now!), with or without my ability to follow through with all of my PE strategies! Here’s to improving my ability to follow through with to-do list tasks but also to learning, making progress, and growing even when I’m not living off of a list!
またね！
みゆき
