In Dire Need of a Massage

Owing to the stress I’ve been experiencing, I feel tense all over, and I’m in desperate need of a full-body massage to loosen up my muscles. The massage parlor that I typically go to is inside the Chijmes complex, which mainly consists of bars and restaurants, conveniently located in the City Hall area. I don’t go there very often, as I normally don’t get too much tension, but today is one of those rare occasions when I genuinely crave for thorough relaxation. As soon as I’ve finished writing this journal entry, I’ll call the parlor up for a reservation.

Speaking of massages, here in Singapore, getting a massage is not very cheap, although it’s not outrageously expensive, either. For today’s 60-minute full-body massage session, the price is SGD 71, approximately USD 53. In Asia’s cheaper locales like Bangkok and Johor Bahru, you can get it for much less, so many Singaporeans like to go for massages whenever they travel to those destinations. I don’t know when my next trip to Thailand or Malaysia will be, but I’d definitely consider having a massage during my stay there.

By the way, while so-called new age or alternative therapy methods, such as full-body or foot reflexology massage, yoga or aromatherapy, can most likely make you feel more relaxed, I’m not fully convinced that it’s beneficial for your health, especially in terms of healing your chronic ailments. I say this from the perspective of someone who believes in science only: if you have an issue with your kidneys, for example, you should go to your doctor’s rather than your masseur’s.

Having said that, it is not my intention to make light of the usefulness of alternative therapy, much less disrespect the contributions made by those working in the industry, including therapists, instructors and masseurs, to bring joy to people seeking relaxation and a sense of healing. Sometimes, what truly matters to clients is not so much how their physical condition improves in a clinical sense, as whether they can feel good during and after the therapy session.

To sum up, if you have a physical condition that requires medical attention, you should go see the doctor immediately; but if you’re simply seeking a therapeutic experience for relaxation, you shouldn’t hesitate to choose whatever form of therapy that suits you, whether it’s considered “alternative” or not.

AJATT is Not For Me

Yesterday was sort of my “English day,” so I studied quite a bit of English and no French at all. I started my day with writing a journal entry in English, then had it proofread by ChatGPT, and finally transcribed the proofread version into my diary, like I customarily do. The entire process took me around three to four hours, so it was definitely a solid amount of studying.

As per my diary, I began to use ChatGPT for language learning purposes on April 20 of last year, so it’s been exactly nine months that I’ve been studying English through journal writing with the aid of this chatbot. Ever since, my English has undergone a substantial transformation, as manifested by my enhanced fluency in both written and spoken English.

I’m convinced that this is by far the most effective method to improve my command of the language, so I’m determined to keep up the practice, despite the fact I can only write journal entries on weekends due to time constraints.

Other than writing my journal entry, yesterday I watched a bunch of YouTube videos in English, most of which were related to language learning. There is a community of YouTubers who are particularly into learning foreign languages through the immersion method. 

The typical examples are the AJATTers, who aim to teach themselves Japanese to an extremely advanced level within a very short period (two to three years at most) by immersing themselves in an environment known as AJATT, the acronym for All Japanese All The Time.

The so-called founder of this method is a guy named Khatzumoto. He’s sort of a mysterious character and not much is known about him, but apparently he taught himself Japanese to a near-native level by using some insanely intensive methods.

These include making full use of flashcard apps like ANKI to memorize numerous words at frequent intervals, and creating an environment where he can listen to Japanese 24/7 - literally all the time, even during sleep, whether it’s through YouTube, radio, or television.

Although currently I’m learning French, as a working professional I can’t adopt as drastic and extreme a method as AJATT, but I do tend to agree that in order to learn a foreign language to a high degree of proficiency, you need to have a one-track mind and dedicate your free time exclusively to the studies of that language.

With French, I’m willing to do exactly that, by diving into my dictionary whenever I get some free time, like during lunch break and in the evening after work. Until I reach the end of this dictionary, I’ll refrain from studying other subjects, such as Italian and Chinese, although English will remain an exception for now.

Back in Love with French Again!

Last week, I had a very busy and stressful week, so it was a huge relief when I finally finished my work on Friday evening. From the office, I walked over to Raffles City Shopping Centre, where I had my eyebrows trimmed at a beauty salon, before heading home.

Back at my apartment, after dinner, I studied some French words from my dictionary as usual. To assist with my studying of the dictionary, I recently started using ChatGPT to look up the meaning of those words and phrases that aren’t explained clearly enough in my dictionary.

To my pleasant surprise, ChatGPT has greatly enhanced my learning experience, providing me with explanations that are not only detailed but also plain enough to understand. The answers provided by this chatbot are clear to the point that leaves little room for ambiguity for me. I find this truly liberating as any lack of clarity in definition of words leaves me feeling puzzled and frustrated.

By the way, I have been learning French off and on since 2003, which makes it more than 20 years up until now - well, actually, it’s not quite true, as I tried learning French for a few months in 1986 when I was 12.

Back then, my father recommended that I study this language through a radio French-language course, which aired for 20 minutes daily on NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting system. I eagerly complied with his suggestion, since the notion of learning this Romance language sounded kind of cool to me.

The mellifluous sound of spoken French really enchanted me, but unfortunately I had to cut my French studies short after only four months because I had to move from Japan to China to study in a middle school in Shanghai.

As I got busy trying to adapt myself to living in a new country and had to contend with learning Chinese, I completely lost interest in learning French, except when my yearning for the sound of French was briefly rekindled when I heard the French lyrics of the song Michelle by the Beatles.

Fast forward to the year 2000, when I was already back in Japan, a chance opportunity to listen to singer Lisa Ono’s rendition of the famous French tune Un homme et une femme at a Tokyo CD shop revived my longing and admiration for the language of Rousseau.

I didn’t know it back then, but it was evidently my destiny to get reconnected to this foreign tongue. In 2003, one year after my migration to Singapore, I picked up a French textbook at a local bookstore to revisit this language at long last.

Since then, I’ve been learning French, albeit sporadically, for more than two decades. Inevitably, my drive for learning French wanes whenever I get busy with my other pursuits, like learning English, Italian or world history. Despite my inconsistency in dedication to studying, French continues to hold a special place in my heart, so it’s unlikely that I will ever give up learning it completely.

This time, I find myself learning French with enough passion and dedication to challenge studying a whole dictionary. As of today, I am about eight percent through it. It remains to be seen whether I can persist until I reach the end of this dictionary, but no matter what the end result may be, I won’t have any regrets for having tried at least.

Lessons Learned From "I Learned Italian in 7 Days"

A few years ago, a young famous YouTuber named Nathaniel Drew posted a video series titled “I Learned Italian in 7 Days,” composed of two episodes.

Being a language learning aficionado, and having already subscribed to his channel by then, that sensational title really piqued my interest. So, I pressed Play to see how fluent Nathaniel got in the language of Dante within a space of just one week.

Spoiler alert: in the second and final episode of this series, Nathaniel holds a conversation in Italian with his native-speaker friend Giuseppe for a few minutes to demonstrate how much he was able to learn within that short timeframe.

Check this out:

Naturally, Nathaniel stumbles along here and there, but he can already engage Giuseppe in a conversation in a way that’s meaningful enough for them to keep talking. That truly showcases his remarkable talent in learning a new subject.

Having said that, I have to respectfully disagree with Nathaniel’s characterization of the language learning curriculums of public schools as “a joke,” in the sense that it’s not effective enough to enable students to talk in foreign tongues. That sounds a bit arrogant and presumptuous to me.

Nathaniel seems oblivious of the fact that a second language is not the only subject that a typical high school student needs to contend with in preparation for their college education, so it’s only natural that they achieve a very limited degree of fluency in their target language.

If they had whole days to spare to fully dive into their studies of a foreign tongue, I’m sure they would achieve much better results, even if they used the same traditional learning methods as their existing curriculums.

Coming back to the content of Nathaniel’s video, one thing that truly stood out to me is the importance of being very selective in learning vocabulary, by focusing exclusively on the top 1,000 Italian words. Based on my own experience of learning multiple languages, I fully agree with his approach to acquiring vocabulary in an effective way.

Given the limited time that we can spare for language learning each day, it’s vital that we focus on the most commonly used words first, before learning more specific or advanced vocabulary. If you’re learning words from a vocabulary list or dictionary for the first time, make sure you begin with the most basic ones, preferably those written for elementary learners or even young children.

Studying a whole dictionary with a limited vocabulary content is much better than studying a tiny segment of a voluminous and comprehensive dictionary, even if the numbers of words you learn are exactly the same between the former and the latter. The former enables you to see the forest without having your vision blocked by the individual trees; the latter is the opposite, and you’re bound to get bogged down somewhere among the trees without ever seeing what the entire forest looks like.

In my own case, I’m currently learning words from a French dictionary that’s not too extensive and only contains moderately advanced words. Since I already know around 90 percent of the headwords, I don’t find it too overwhelming, so I’m confident that I can keep learning.

This journey of studying vocabulary is instilling in me the sense of priority and the importance of being highly selective in what I learn. I’m looking forward to witnessing how my learning philosophy will evolve by the time I reach the end of my current dictionary.

First Blog Post of 2024 - Importance of Repetition in Language Learning

Happy New Year!

This afternoon, I watched an interesting video related to language learning posted by a young man called Loïs Talagrand. He is a native speaker of French who grew up on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, currently working as a software developer.

Like most people on the island, Loïs went through the French education system and studied English for several years before graduating high school. However, at that point, he still wasn’t able to express himself in English fluently, and had difficulty understanding spoken English.

In the video I watched today, Loïs speaks English with perfect fluency and almost zero accent. He talks about the two main learning strategies he utilized in his college years that helped him elevate his English to an extremely advanced level.

Check this out:

The first strategy is repetitive listening. To improve his English, Loïs watched and listened to enormous amounts of native content, such as podcasts, television shows, and movies. What’s remarkable about his method is that, if he liked a certain content, instead of listening to it only once, he would repeat it multiple times to deepen his understanding. The same goes for the books he read.

As he stresses in this video, repetition is the name of the game. Consuming the same content several times allowed his brain to naturally absorb the basic rules of grammar and pronunciation, which contributed to building up his own fluency in the language.

Loïs also mentions the importance of comprehensible input, meaning that you should listen to materials that you can understand quite well, instead of something that’s too difficult for you.

The second strategy is to set English as the default language in your life, and maximize your exposure to the language, even if you’re living in a non-English speaking environment. This includes, for example, setting the interface language on your computer and smartphone to English, and trying to do as many things as possible exclusively in this language, like talking to yourself or even thinking in English.

Loïs emphasizes in the second half of the video that, even if you employ the perfect strategies, there is no hack or shortcut in learning to speak a foreign language to near-native fluency - you still have to dedicate thousands of hours to reach that level. I fully agree with what he says, and do not hold any illusions about finding some magic method that can suddenly make me super-fluent in English or French.

As I am learning French right now, I find these tips to be extremely relevant to me. Maybe I can start by increasing the amount of French that I listen to daily, with a focus on repetitive comprehensible input.

I can’t help but feel excited about how my French will evolve in the coming years!