Stop Acting Like an Adult

by Clayton MacKnight

Let your inner child loose.

For those of you who don’t know, my daughter was born last year, and is now more than a year old; old enough to start the process of learning about the world. As good parents (trying to be at least), we’ve been trying to teach her everything we can.

But, I think she has been teaching us a lot more. She is definitely helping us master the skill of working with little sleep. She has helped me with my upper body strength as well. There is nothing like holding 11 kilograms of squirming baby to help you build definition in your biceps.

She has taught me some other valuable skills as well. I think babies are naturally the best learners. Everything in their world is brand new. Going to the zoo is like going to a whole new world. And an empty box is probably one of the best toys ever.

I think the older you get the more important it is to learn from the young. They definitely see the world in a different way. In ways that were sometimes methodically beaten out of us through standard education and rules and all the other junk we go through to become ‘adults’. Let’s take a quick visit to the mind of a one year old, shall we?

Learning How to Use Something

When my little angel finds something new she usually flips it over and over again examining each side. This then generally leads to her hitting the object with her other hand. And if that doesn’t produce any desired result she ends up trying to tear the item into pieces. If she is sleepy, she prefers to throw the object against the closest hard surface for further analysis.

I go about the same process when I’m learning a new grammar point. That is, at first I’ll look at the whole expression or piece of grammar; maybe look at a few example sentences (with English translation if I can find it). Generally speaking I try to get the general idea of how the point is used. This might also involve trying out a few sentences in a conversation or a piece of writing as well.

Then after I have looked it over a few times. I smash it into pieces. See, higher level (N3+) grammar is generally made up of lower level particles and expressions. There are some exceptions to this of course, but in general this theory holds true. That’s one reason why N5 and N4 grammar is so important. It can help you see the building blocks of more complicated phrases and expressions.

Get Excited about the Little Things

You probably don’t remember, but when you are child jumping up and down in your jumpy seat is THE most exciting thing in the world. Better than any movie or video game, better than taking a trip abroad. It was amazing. Nothing could ever beat the feeling you had when you were bouncing up and down.

Now you are surrounded by smartphones, cars, TV, and so many other things that it is hard to get excited. And you were also probably pretty excited when you first started learning a language, but over time as you get more advanced you need bigger and bigger achievements to get excited about.

So make sure you take some time every once in awhile and actually realize what you can do with Japanese. Maybe you can write 100 kanji that you couldn’t last year. Maybe that beginner series of podcasts is a piece of cake now when it wasn’t just 6 months ago.

You are always going to feel like you can or need to improve, even at the highest level. There is no ‘mission accomplished’ when learning a language, even for your native tongue. Much like life in general, language learning is a journey and it’s exciting to take a moment and realize how far you’ve come.

So go be excited about appropriately using that new idiom you learned or celebrate the next time you can get the timing right on a joke in Japanese. Get excited about the small things.