Taking a Break from Language Learning - Here's what I learned..
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Hi guys, I'm finally back making videos. I took a long break due to various personal reasons but that itch to make content never left me and I kept getting all these ideas to make videos. I'll be making more time to make content so be sure to let me know any questions you guys want answering!
In today's video, I discuss the idea of stepping back and taking a break from learning a language. While I didn't go and completely eliminate Japanese entirely from my daily life, I was by no means in contact with it enough to stimulate language acquisition. I personally found that over the course of the last year that my ability dropped somewhat slightly, but this was mainly in the areas of speaking and reading. My speaking ability dropped because I had less exposure to natural Japanese speech on a daily basis, which worsened my grammar and caused me to make more mistakes. My reading decreased only really due to kanji as I would sometimes forget certain harder kanji that I may not have been in contact with as much, however, this was only a small percentage of them. My listening ability, for the most part, stayed the same and I haven't noticed much of a difference.
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Hey guys I'm back! I'm also currently live on www.twitch.tv/britvsjapan if you want to come say hi!
Great to have you back!
Thanks Matt! Glad to see you've grown and are having a massive impact on the language community! :D
Thanks for the update, man. Its the type of video that not a lot of people have made.
Its you! You got me into AJATT thank you so much i wish you the best in life!
Omg you're BACK!! I learnt so much from ur videos glad to see you again Matt!
great to see you back matt, hope you're doing well and i wanna tell you that your videos and blog have helped me so much in my AJATT journey of about 1 year so far. Been going through a rough patch language learning wise recently and this video really helps me get back into it. Hope you stay safe and keep going on your journey!
Thanks! I'm glad it's been helpful for you! :) You'll get there, stay safe too!
Man it's been such a long time since I've watched your videos... great to have you back though!!!
Glad you’re feeling better.
Welcome back
Thank you :)
He's alive!!
Good to see you back! The OG is back.
I've been going through something very similar over the last few months and really not doing much in my TL. Initially feeling bad for slacking off but then also feeling guilty WHEN immersing for other reasons, very confused time. I've learned that I've to be ok with putting my language learning to the side in order to focus on getting myself better, whatever that means doing. Glad to hear you're doing better now and wish you best of luck!
Welcome back, thanks for sharing your difficulties and I'm glad that things got better!
I actually also took a break from Japanese (little to no immersion) from mid November 2019 to mid December 2020 and I also found that my abilities hadn't dropped much. Only reviewing my over 5000 Anki cards really sucked but I caught up and relearned some of the old cards without any issues.
Yeah it wasn't as bad as I was expecting which was a huge relief. I guess it only makes sense that the brain isn't going to forget something you've spent so much time on so quickly.
I took a break to write my thesis. Language learning was a constant excuse for me to not do what is important for me right now.... the break was totally worth it.
Glad you are back!
thank you for your come back
welcome back hope you are well
Thanks for sharing.
Keep perserving mate. These uploads keep me motivated with language learning as well.
Glad you are feeling better man. You're a big Inspiration to me
Glad to hear you're feeling better!
Nice to have you back mate! looking strong. Sure your words we'll keep others motivated in these hard times.
Welcome 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 back to UA-cam. You have been completely absent for the year 2020. I started learning Japanese 🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵 in 2020 March and I see plenty of improvements.
Nice good stuff man! Keep it up!
Well said. All the best, friend.
Welcome back mate!
Thank you! :)
Wow, your back. Can’t wait for your new videos.
Great to see you back. All of your language learning videos have been very helpful. 🙏🏽
I'm glad they've been helpful! :D
Very glad to see your videos again!
Hey welcome back dude! It’s been a while, and I’m glad your doing well. Can’t wait for the next video!
I’m so glad you’re back!
Took a month break because I had to move. Felt exhausted for a few days after the move and trying to get settled in, so I just stopped doing Anki and immersion for a month after. Lost my 399 days streak, which really killed my motivation too, but now a month later I'm trying to get back into Japanese again.
Glad to see you again!
Welcome back mate! So mamy things to say but I will try and keep it nice concise. You mentioned your depression and as someone who has recently (since 2020/9ish) recovered from it I just wanted to say that talking about it is great and you are definately not alone. You have given me some good tips to help me learn Korean and am now able to start a Uni course out there in May ^_^ ! This video resonates with me because I have considered the idea of stopping Korean and purauing japanese perhaps in 2022 so its good to see that I may not loose much. Sorry for the ramble but from one stranger to another I really wish you well !
Was binging your videos yesterday and was wondering what happened haha, great to see you upload bro.
Glad to see you back.
I've waited this for soo much time.
Omfd your back man missed your advice I was legit just walking around in my room thinking what if Brit vs japan came back I look at my phone and there pops up a new video I was so confused 😂😂😂😂
Yoooooo you're back, I missed you man. You were quite an inspiration to me back in the day and was quite worried when you disappeared. Sorry to hear that you had a difficult year, but I wish you the best in the future
The legend returns!!
Welcome back!!! Interesting and great to hear your listening ability hasn’t decreased. Just out of curiousity about how many times do you watch the same movie or show? A lot of shows I can watch with no problems on the first watch through but last night I put on two ghibli movies and had a really hard time understanding them. With the Japanese subtitles on it was a breeze since they are words I know but when the characters spoke them I couldn’t catch a lot of it. Do you ever come across this “problem”?
Nice to see you back :)
Also finally good microphone ;)
Yes someone noticed! xD Yea I figured the blue yeti I've had for 10 years wasn't really up to scratch anymore aha!
He’s back!!! When you were full ajatt, how many hours a day were you doing passive and full focus immersion?
Welcome back
Welcome back.
Thanks :D
Oh man, the legend is back!
I’m curious what changes and differences you’ve noticed in the Japanese learning community?
The Meta is so different from back then
The man is back!
Hey man! How's it going? Hope you're doing alright :)
@@BritVsJapan Yeah been doing great thanks for asking! Cant wait for more videos haha
I'm learning Mandarin using the AJATT method. I think people fail to really think about how much they can realistically maintain over a long period of time.
The legend is back
Welcome back BritvsJapan!
What Japanese music are you listening to? Good to hear from you again!
I've got a playlist here ua-cam.com/play/PLfpcnhyagy3FIJIg_Adv6LDNQXWpRlSup.html but I haven't added to it in a while. It's been mainly rap/trap at the moment. Thanks!
@@BritVsJapan Wow! That's a serious playlist! Thanks for the link.
The man, the myth, the legend.
The boy lives
I noticed that I stopped wanting to listen to non-Japanese music as well. Thought it was only me.
I'm almost remissed to call this "stopped" cause from the sounds of it you're still getting regular contact with the language. Like more than most people's entire day.
It would be nice if you could provide numbers for clarity because the title is pretty incorrect as stopped to the general person would literally mean that you did 0 hours and had no contact with the langauge. So for clarity for viewers I think you should put some numbers to it. From what you say in the video it sounds like you went from 12 hours to 3 hours which is misleading tbqh.
@@bobfranklin2572 well he also said he spoke to his girlfriend daily in Japanese. All im saying is the title is misleading or at least can be misinterpreted and it would be nice to provide information like that.
Yeah that's a good point that I don't think I explained too well. I essentially had around 1-3 hours of contact a week, I'll try and clarify this in the next video! Thanks for pointing it out :)
Should be in Japan. The lock down is easy. Some time's the bar's and restaurants close at 8pm. Why haven't you lived in Japan?
It's so interesting that you opened up and told us your job is driving a van. Your girlfriend is japanese. Hope you have saved enough money to get over here and enjoy Japan. My Japanese is awful. Like between n4 and N5,but I mange to rent a house keep it job have a car. Social life etc.
@@ripwig6682 Yea I had a lot going on but the plan is to get over there asap. I essentially came out of University and then covid hit a few months later but I'm looking into it!
@@BritVsJapan did you finish your degree? If not there are some great courses dirt cheap in Japan.
It hardly is a break if you are still consuming media like you said you were. You could stop worrying about learning Japanese and just keep engaging with the language and in a decade you would be much closer to a native.