“Thus, we will seek out opportunities to think, but we are selective in doing so; we choose problems that pose some challenge but that seem likely to be solvable, because these are the problems that lead to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.” (p. 18)
Introduction
You will avoid studying, Josh, unless you give yourself the right conditions. Learning Japanese feels like a chore and Youtube is my vacation. The videos make me feel smart.
I can sit back and listen to braver souls articulate opinions I feel but cannot express. I consume, digest, and parrot their words, assuming that I am asserting my individuality, when in reality, I am only enslaving my potential.
Youtube, Japanese, and Thinking
I get caught up in people’s opinions on social issues. I watch videos, listen to arguments, take sides, and, in the end, feel like I know something about the topic, let’s say the liberal agenda for a fun example. After my fill of Youtube ideology from American political pundits, I open up my Japanese book and try to learn a new word: irasshaimase
I have to learn how to write irasshaimase in Japanese (いらしゃいませ). Next comes the part of speech. This is the imperative form of the verb irassharu (いらっしゃる), which means “to be/come/go.” My brain already hurts. Irasshaimase is often used when entering stores or restaurants and means “welcome,” so the everyday usage is quite different then the dictionary entry of the base form of the verb. I ask my friend about it and he tells me that my pronunciation is wrong. Japanese words have something called pitch accent, and this particular word has the 4th nakadaka (中高) pattern, so the pitch should be low, high, high, high, low (LHHHL), but I’m not going low at the end. We practice together. I feel confident. Later that day, I hear the door rattle shut. Naomi’s back. I shuttle downstairs, my lips tense, ready to try out the phrase I’ve been rehearsing all day. “いらしゃいませ.” A puzzled look turns to gut laughter and my own insides twist. “This isn’t a convenient store, it’s our house. When you greet someone at home you say “okaeri” (おかえり). It means ‘welcome home.’ Let me hear you say it.”
I try.
“No, your pitch accent is wrong. Go low, high, high, high.” I’ve had enough. I go back and listen to out-of-touch caucasians telling me how to feel about the radical left. That is much easier to understand than a single word in a foreign tongue.
| Things that make me want to quit Japanese |
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1. Strict teachers - I hate being wrong and strict teachers remind me how wrong I am, constantly. |
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2. Vocabulary lists - Isolated words without context is like someone asking you to appreciate a painting by looking at the frame. |
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3. Other Youtubers - There are a lot of intelligent and gifted people who make you feel small. Keep your head down and focus on the work. |
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4. Information overload - Understand 95% of what you study (n + 1). Thinking about grammar, accent, and meaning at the same time is a recipe for disaster. |
The Four Factors of Successful Thinking
Thinking is tough. As Willingham stresses in his book Why Don’t Students Like School?, people are curious and like to solve puzzles, but we are not equipped to be good thinkers. You are not a good thinker, Josh. You do, however, like to think about problems if they feel easy to solve. At times, Japanese feels like an endless battle that I can not win. I feel a greater sense of accomplishment summing up the problem with millions of complicated individual Americans who happen to share a vague political ideology. In other words, seeing the fault in the political stance of another feels easy, Japanese feels hard.
Willingham sums up the conundrum and outlines the conditions for successful thinking, “Thus, we will seek out opportunities to think, but we are selective in doing so; we choose problems that pose some challenge but that seem likely to be solvable, because these are the problems that lead to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction” (page 19). There are four factors that contribute to making a topic feel solvable, outlined in the table below. The Japanese language and American social issues are vast, so to make life easier Josh, I gave a specific example of each: writing my name in Japanese and identifying the problem with snowflakes policing speech.
| The Four Factors of Successful Thinking: The Japanese Language v. Snowflakes | ||
|---|---|---|
Factors |
Writing Your Name in Japanese |
Summing Up Millions of Snowflakes |
Information from the environment |
Trying to write my name in Japanese while living in Kansas with no Internet. FAIL. |
Parroting the chorus of introspective middle-aged white dudes online. SUCCEED. |
Facts in long-term memory |
Trying to write my name in Japanese without any knowledge of the language. FAIL. |
Parroting the ideological factions imposed on me by my American upbringing. SUCCEED. |
Procedures in long-term memory |
Trying to write my name in Japanese without ever writing in Japanese. FAIL. |
Parroting the argument of free speech and individual freedom. SUCCEED. |
Working memory space |
Trying to write my name in Japanese while putting together an Ikea bookshelf. FAIL. |
Parroting the political stance of others while ignoring my responsibility to my family and fellow man. SUCCEED. |
"Work to make your Japanese studies so engaging and rewarding that you resist the urge to find bullshit American ideology to parrot."
The point? Don’t confuse information with knowledge, Josh. You are after knowledge and that takes more than listening to words on a screen and reducing complex individuals into simple herds of black sheep. Consider Willingham’s four factors of successful thinking when creating your study schedule. Work to make your Japanese studies so engaging and rewarding that you resist the urge to parrot bullshit American ideology.