Learning two languages at once (Effortless way to improve English vocabulary)

11/23/2015 chardonnaygal 0 Comments

  Learning two languages at once is a challenging thing to do. There was a time I had to take basic French and Chinese courses at once. I mean, that sounds impossible!

Basic French is a compulsory course for every one studying food/service/hospitality management.(Mainly because many French words are used in the hospitality industry starting from "A la carte")

About Chinese course, I just wanted to give it a shot when I had the chance considering there are some resemblances to Japanese. I can't say I can communicate in both languages, but in the future, who knows. And don't even remind me of that compulsory Russian course in high school. I learnt literally nothing for a year, maybe that's why I admire people who speak fluent Russian.



   After a while I started working with Japanese, my Japanese speaking got much better than it was in my college years and my English got unbelievably worse. (Some part time jobs I had in college didn't require much of a communication. Because the words and greetings I had to say was usually the same.) Words did not come out easily, so I continued the conversation in Japanese. I felt discouraged because I was actually preparing for the speaking section of TOEFL IBT at that time. What was wrong with that moment?

It's just maybe when you spend too much time in a Japanese speaking environment and don't have the opportunity to practice English, your speaking gets worse. By "worse", I mean words do not come out of your mouth like they have been never used before. Have this ever happened to you?



   Speaking of learning English, I still do struggle with my Japanese sometimes, considering that I spent 6 years here. Especially when I have to speak in public in front of Japanese audience. I think I speak fine - but you could still see that I'm a foreigner and has a lot to learn. I think the problem with my Japanese is not with the grammar or vocabulary, it's mainly with my accent and intonation.

So back to the topic, since I don't have enough time to improve my English when my Japanese still sucks, I'm trying this effortless thing to improve my vocabulary. Whenever I watch movies or read a paper/novel in English there are always so many words that I don't know. But there are usually few words that catches my ears/eyes, and I try to write them down somewhere. (Usually I use old calendars) I don't usually write the meaning together because when I do, I just don't look at that paper again. When I see those words later, I kind of remember what movies and books they were used in. Then I would remember the meaning of the word by how they were used in the scenes.

For example, in September I was watching "Desperate housewives"(such a late watcher huh) and Carlos(Eva Longoria's husband in the show) loses his sight and then luckily he regains his sight. So I wrote down "regain your sight". And Iggy, one of the most interesting roles of the show, is a realtor of that neighborhood. So I also wrote down "realtor" which means real state broker. Sometimes there are words that I seem to already know but do not use in conversations. I think it is because I do not have the opportunity to practice them. So watching TV shows is not always a bad idea for me. No matter how busy I am or I should be, I always manage to watch my favorite TV shows and vlogs.

I think pretty much every word from this September paper came from "Desperate housewives", because I was watching that show every night before going to bed.

September new words

   
   A year ago, I took my first law class in Japanese. It was challenging because I had to learn many new words I never heard before. But after a while, I realized those too many new words were actually not that many. From the first page, I didn't know about 20 words, second page maybe around 15, and on the last page of the textbook there were maybe no words to look up. I felt like most foreign students avoided law class because they were overwhelmed by the amount of new words they thought they had to learn. In few weeks, I was the only foreign student in that class and our professor was so worried that I can't pass my exam especially when he knew that I spend 2 hours coming to school for his class. I eventually passed my exam by 76. It was one of the lowest scores that I ever got in my life but sure it was the most valuable C of my life. So the excitement from that C set the mood to learn more about law.


I wanted to learn more about law watching "Suits" and "The Good Wife". Most words I learned was from The Good Wife because the show is really about a court life. That happened until one of the main characters decided to die in the courtroom. I did not watch that show again but I think I learned few useful words.

New words from "The Good Wife"

Lately, I realized I somehow wrote down so many disease names and I don't know why. Well, I know why. I was watching "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" and the main character was a girl suffering from leukemia. By the way, that movie was a good one.
About "appendicitis", one of my close friends had an appendicitis surgery recently. I didn't not want to write the meaning of every single words here. Because when you look up a word from dictionary you somehow memorize the word at that moment. You can forget once but when you have to search for that word for the second time you will never forget. I do not guarantee though :P

October and November

   I think it's better going slow than doing nothing. So basically, I learned only 19 words in the last 3 months, but girl!! I could have learned nothing. I'm just trying to be optimistic here. So good luck everyone who is going to give it a try. But if you are a hard working person, you really don't need any of my suggestions.