Deliberate Practice

Japanese
#1

I just read this article about Deliberate Practice that opens with a sports example, but ends up covering various skills including sushi-making, chess, and writing. I’ll provide the opening blurb to illustrate the main idea of the article:

While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

Throughout the article I saw a lot of parallels to studying Japanese. And when I looked at myself, I realized that I could definitely be more mindful when it comes to my reviews at BunPro, and in my immersion. It was a good wakeup call.

Can anyone share ways that they have been intentional in their Japanese learning journey? Or perhaps any ideas? Would love to see what anyone could add.

6 Likes
#2

Deliberate Practice is such a difficult thing to achieve as it can be quite taxing because it takes so much more focus. So it is recommended to manage your daily workload, so it does not exceed the amount of concentration you can muster up on a daily basis.

One thing that I usually do is go over the mistakes I made during a wanikani session, since those are too long to remember all of them after you are done. That way I get another repition done and can take the time to distinguish similiar looking Kanji.

In terms of Ideas: I think it would be benificial to immediately write down new grammar or vocab you encounter during your immersion, so you can look it up and keep it in memory.

3 Likes
#3

I’ve talked about this in the forums, unfortunately it tends to not get much purchase.

1 Like
#4

I used to read a lot of research about Deliberate Practice, it’s very solid and important, it can teach you a lot about efficient practicing and studying. I’ve basically got it internalized and applied now. If you’re interested, I can recommend the book Peak by Anders Ericsson, the original scientist and mind behind the theory.

Some key things about deliberate practice are being goal-oriented (concrete, not abstract goals), trying to improve specific things, and getting feedback on whether you did something wrong or correctly. SRS/review systems like Bunpro’s (or Anki) are basically pure deliberate practice, at least if you’re concentrating and not doing it mindlessly, if you take the time to try to ingrain something you got wrong.

3 Likes
#5

This is essentially what we try to practice in active vs. passive immersion (watching YouTube full focus vs. playing a podcast while you cook). But it’s not always the case for me. Sometimes it feels like there’s a good few days where I’m not like “deliberately listening” you know? Just be self-conscious of yourself when doing the immersion, have a reminder on the wall or something.

3 Likes