How I learned my second language by accident

Currently, I want to learn more about the history of Japan — in Japanese. I've found some interesting looking e-books about japanese history and started to read them. For example, I learned something about historical figures like 卑弥呼 or 聖徳太子. I also started to read Wikipedia articles about this topic. 

Lately, I felt that I need to change my mindset. I noticed, that I read books and articles in Japanese not for information, but for learning Japanese. My focus lied more on unknown words and phrases than on the content itself. All the hard work like learning words / sentences and all the listening and reading don’t seem to pay off. Seemingly, my Japanese is not improving. 

How I started to learn Japanese — and improved my English instead

When I think about it, improving my second language worked pretty well. As you may have noticed, English is not my native language (I'm sure, I make a lot of mistakes XD). I learned the basics at school. You know what that means: vocab lists, grammar rules and exercises, listen to English spoken by non-native speakers (teacher and classmates) and only sometimes by native speakers (CD). My grades were quite good, but my English was very limited at that time.

I had no access to novels, websites or other interesting things in English. And I was fine with that. At that time, English was only a subject in school. I don’t really wanted to learn it, but I had no choice. XD

After graduating, I became interested in Japanese. I found some online forums in my native language where other learners of Japanese shared their experiences. 

I also bought my first edition of RTK (Remembering the Kanji). I was amazed how well the Heisig method worked in contrast to my first attempts to learn kanji. But in the forum, most of the users were very narrow-minded. There were a few other users who thought that RTK is useful (including me), but the majority of users persisted, that their way of learning kanji (writing them a zillion times and such) is the only "right" way to learn them... They only made fun of RTK users and that’s why I left this forum.

I found a more open-minded forum: Kanji Koohii. It was in English, but I was amazed by the fact, that they shared many different ideas and methods. So I started reading even though I never read "real" English before. I was spending a lot of time with reading the threads of this forum.

Many users mentioned AJATT and so I became curious and started reading the posts on AJATT as well. Khatzumoto’s slangy writing style was hard to get used to in the beginning, but I concentrated so much on the content, that everything else became secondary. 

Then, something else happened: The first season of my favourite TV show ended and I found out, that they would not air the other seasons. But I found the other seasons on YouTube — in English. I wanted to watch them so badly that I started watching them in English even though I had nearly no experience with listening to native speakers. 

I already knew what the show was about so I was able to understand what was going on. I didn't understand every word, of course, but after watching 5 + episodes, I became quite familiar with the words and expressions that were typical for this show. There were still things I couldn't understand, but I didn't care. I was able to watch new episodes of my favourite show quite comfortably which was all I wanted — learning English was not the goal, after all.

English became a part of my life — unintentionally

Without realizing it, English became part of my life. Remember: In school, I didn't choose to learn English. I only learned as much as was expected of me. After graduating, I wanted to learn Japanese, not English. But in order to learn about other people's experiences with learning Japanese, I needed to read forums and websites in English, because the forums in my native language were so damn narrow-minded. I only watched my favourite TV series in English because the other seasons were not available in my native language. 

I used English not because I wanted to learn it but because the content I was interested in wasn't available in my native language.

Today, reading and listening in English feels natural to me. There are words I don’t know and I make mistakes, of course, but I'm fine with that. There is a lot I can do in English. In contrast to Japanese, I never used Anki to learn words, (after graduating) I didn't actively learned vocab or grammar and I never really immersed myself in English. I just occasionally watched or read something in English in order to gain information.

Methods like AJATT recommend to use as much time as possible to immerse yourself into your target language. Like, listening to audio while walking to work, watching TV for hours or reading lots of books. This may be effective, but in case of English, I never did that to that extend. Far from it. After reading some interesting posts on AJATT or watching two new episodes of my favourite show, for example, I did things in my native language for the rest of the day. And then there were days or even weeks with no activities in English at all.

But somehow I was able to improve my English despite of that. 

The learning mindset is actually a learning barrier

Watching my favourite show or reading texts about interesting topics in English were never learning activities to me. The purpose was to learn something other than English or to simply enjoy the content. The language was only a tool, not a study object. While doing this, I never thought "So many unknown words… I should use Anki to learn them". I just started reading and listening and ignored most of the unknown and unimportant parts. Only when I felt that I really need to know a certain word I looked it up. And that’s it. I never used Anki to learn them. These texts or videos weren’t study objects. After reading/watching them I moved on.

I ignored so many unknown parts, that I wonder, how it was even possible that my English improved. XD But somehow it worked. Unconsciously and without even trying to improve. Back then, I concentrated so much on the content, that I didn't even realized, that my English became better and better. It just ... happened.

In Japanese, I always try to understand as much as possible, look up words, put sentences into Anki and things like that, because I think that otherwise my Japanese won't improve. Ironically, even after so much hard work and after trying out so many methods and techniques my Japanese is by no means as good as my English.

I’m stuck in a "learning mindset" which makes it difficult to concentrate only on the content. I tend to see only the unknown words and phrases. But my experience made it clear to me, that it's better to shift the focus on gaining information instead of learning new words and phrases. I should even change my goal from "I want to learn Japanese" to "I want to play this game in Japanese, because it's not available in my native language" or "I want to read this book, which is only available in Japanese, to learn something about X". 

Learning a language has to become unconscious and nearly unintentionally. You can't really control what your brain will absorb anyway. It's helpful to use things like Anki to increase the likelihood that your brain will memorize certain words or phrases. On the other hand, putting all these information into Anki takes time — time you could better use to read or watch something interesting in your target language. This will also increase the likelihood to absorb new words and phrases, but unconsciously. 

Some of my friends made similar experiences. English became a part of their life and because of that their English improved. 

Improving my Japanese as naturally as I improved my English

That’s why I was thinking about to apply this mindset to Japanese. I have found that reading nonfiction works better than fiction, except stories I’m highly interested in (like, when I have read the first book of a series in my native language and then I start reading the following books in Japanese, like I did with my favourite TV series in English).

For example: I played Danganronpa from start to finish and only looked up words, when I got stuck (for those who don't know: In Danganronpa you need to solve a crime, that means, you really need to read a lot in order to finish the game). Somehow, I managed to finish the game. XD I was so curious about the story, that I didn't thought about the language at all. At that time, Danganronpa wasn't available in English or any other language, so if I wanted to play it, I had to play it in Japanese. What I did.

This is the only case so far, where I was so absorbed in the content, that I forgot that it was in Japanese. Another good game would be Gyakuten Kenji / Saiban, because you have to read a lot in order to solve a case.  

I also like to play Pokemon, but this is not as suitable as Danganronpa or Gyakuten Kenji/Saiban. The reason is, that in Pokemon it's quite obvious what you have to do or where you have to go. I could even play it in Korean. XD

Summary

• Learn the basics (it doesn’t matter how, even lessons at school or courses are ok)
• Find something interesting in your target language, take a dictionary (bilingual is perfectly fine, it doesn’t have to be monolingual; I still use only bilingual dictionaries) and start reading / listening
• Try to concentrate on the content as much as possible and blend out thoughts like "There are so many unknown words. I should learn them"; don't pay too much attention to these words  — try to understand as much as you can with what you have
• Trust your instincts and only look up words, when you otherwise wouldn't understand the main points of the text
• Over time you will learn to distinguish which parts are important and which are not — don’t pay too much attention to the unimportant parts; the goal is to gain interesting information
• Don't feel bad if you skip unimportant parts; even in your native language, you don't read everything in detail ;)

Methods like AJATT and others may be effective, but there's no need to think, that you can't learn a language to fluency if you don't use Anki and Co. By reading about all these methods I developed a learning mindset which prevents me from concentrating on the content and from improving my Japanese the way I improved my English.

Something interesting in your target language and a dictionary - that's all you need. 

I wrote these things mainly to remind myself that I already managed to learn a foreign language. I realized, that the learning process for English was totally different as for Japanese. And so are the results.

(I'm sorry for typos or other mistakes I made. As long as you were able to understand what I wanted to express, it's fine, I guess. :D)