Self Assessment

Since I had to double check the spelling for that title, I am starting to wonder if.I am losing my English at the same rate that I am acquiring Japanese...

For more information about this post, please visit https://theglobalseal.com/self-assessment - this is a site that as some questions to hel you work out your current proficiency level in several axes of proficiency at a language, which rather reminded me of another Dogen video, where he lists the seven types of Japanese learners.  I forget the full list, but I know one was only learning it to understand anime, another could only read it, but not speak it, and another could only speak it, and not read nor write it. So these categories of self assessment seem like a good way to avoid some of those traps (understanding anime is a bonus, the whole process of learning is exciting and interesting with little nuggets of truth and enlightenment and joy along the way.  And of course, the tearing of the hair and rending of the clothes, but they go together).

Given the definition of Performance in this self-assessment site, I can see why our self introduction phrases that we wrote down for Module 1's video was referred to as a script.

Intro
How long have I been studying Japanese?  

For a little over 135 days.  I know this, because I did not initially start out with Duolingo, having bounced off it hard when I tried to learn Spanish in 2014.  Since starting to use it, I had my 135 days share this morning:

Look at the Novice Column in the performance descriptors. Did anything surprise you? 

Several things surprised me in the performance descriptors - several things seemed easier in that definition set than in the results I got back from the self assessment quiz.  I’m not sure if I graded myself overly harshly, or about right, or if the low score was because the specific problem domain the quiz chose was strongly centered around studying at schools, with a side order of “must know the names of all the planets” (& are they counting poor Pluto or not? ;))

If only Element Girls had arrived a day earlier, I would at least have known Mercury…and it would make a nice change for katakana study from practicing country names in Duolingo! 

 

For language learning, I’ve done assessment tests at my own discretion, such as the one in Duolingo that tests your completeness of understanding versus the material that it tries to convey.  I feel that I may be scoring too high on there, because there are words in there that I do not know, but can interpolate them from context, even though I have never heard nor read them before. But I would not be able to produce that word from my own brain if I needed to use it later that day (or minute).  However, the self assessment questionnaire/quiz is broken into a reading/comprehension and a production side and that acknowledges that dichotomy and represents your skill more accurately - because knowing enough of a language to be able to interpret new words from their context is a considerable skill.

I have also been assessing myself informally - it’s why occasionally I go and google certain grammar points because I know that they were not well explained there, or that I, at least, am not following them, and without those building blocks, later things will not stick well.  

One flaw with the video was an example of how you can do self assessment - it said “compare your work to an excellent example” - if you are truly ignorant in a field, yo may not be able to to tell who a good example is.  We were taught a concept when we learned fencing of 4 learner stages - 1.  Unconsciously bad.  You know so little of the subject/field, that you don’t even know how bad you are.  2.  Consciously bad.  You are picking up skills and know enough now to realise how far you have to go and to plan how to study better. 3. Consciously good - you are gaining a lot of expertise and when you focus on it, you can do really well. 4. Unconsciously good - the skills and knowledge have become so ingrained that you don’t even have to think about them, they just happen.  Ironically, people at this stage,d despite being experts, often make really bad teachers of the field, because they often cannot breakdown how they know, they just know, and so cannot communicate it well. But our stage 1 learner may not be able to tell the difference between  types 2, 3 or 4 as a source to compare against.

We have to do annual self assessments at work, as well as provide feedback on colleagues if asked.  It is the single most hated activity by everyone at every company that I have been at, because no one in power at the companies seem to take it as an opportunity to improve training, if multiple people identify the same weakness, it all seems to be used as an excuse to deny people bonuses/raises.  Whereas true self assessment is for yourself, not someone else.

Part 3: Write your Assessment Review

Describe your overall performance level in Japanese as of today.  Are you better than you expected to be?   Describe skills you feel you are good at in Japanese.   

I think I expected to score higher, but part of that is that I can do some things that do not much affect the assessment outcome, for instance read some kanji - even though we had to identify which language we were assessing our skills for, it did not have any apparent language specific rules.

My scores were: 

Interpretive Listening/Viewing Score: 22
Interpretive Reading Score: 11
Interpersonal Listening/Speaking Score: 29
Interpersonal Reading/Writing Score: 19
Presentational Speaking Score: 19
Presentational Writing Score: 11

The questions were very strongly slanted towards being in school, with some additional odd subject focus, which definitely knocked my score down quite a bit I believe for some items. But I may have graded myself too generously in others - when I reached the point that I could draw all the NLPT5 kanji, I tried a free practice quiz online and I couldn’t even understand the instructions, let alone answer the questions!  I may be stuck at the unconsciously bad stage still.

I feel good about my ability to read hiragana, and to find recourse=ces when I need them.  I feel good about some of the assumptions that I have made about grammar, they were confirmed by the tutor on Friday - objects in Japanese cease to be objects for negative statements, and I also asked why it was sometimes あか ＆ sometimes あかい for example - was aka the noun & akai the adjective?  Lauren confirmed that it was so.  This is from seeing patterns, but also reading around the subject, I had seen i adjectives & na adjectives mentioned and so it wasn’t a huge leap to get there but I had to have enough information on Japanese in my brain and enough examples to see the link.  I think this is why sometimes people can reach a plateau - they need to collect enough information at that level to be able to attach the next set of more advanced information, otherwise it won’t mean anything.

Part 4: Write your Plan for Proficiency
Having seen the questions and read the performance descriptors (Links to an external site.), what are some of your goals for this semester in order to reach Novice High level in the following skills:  interpretive (reading/listening),  presentational (1-way speaking/writing), interpersonal (2+ way speaking/writing).    Highlight some skills you will work on this semester. (look at how the can-do statements are worded in the Novice level)

I intend to practice Japanese in everyday life, and continue to try to research additional items or form sentences.  It was a while ago when I realised that I could form sentences on my own, rather than just parrot phrases from Duolingo.  I believe the first one was ねこわるいです、which is eminently understand able to any cat owner!  I also intend to continue to attend the local chat group on Thursdays after class for practice tuning my ear and cultural information, and to continue to read and watch manga and anime, when I have time, between work & homeworks, as well as news sites for more usual usage than anime provides. 

I also anticipate that I will continue to do extra research into the origins and etymology of kanji, which will help me remember them, but also spend a lot of time chasing down rabbit holes after ghosts. That isn't th emost efficient use of my time, but I do enjoy that research and discovery, and if I stop enjoying studying, I will not be motivated to continue.

Some of the high novice items are things we have already done in class, such as asking and answering questions, and creating new ones.  We just need to build the skeleton from the grammar and patterns and build vocabulary to flesh it out, to be able to ask interesting questions that are worth having a conversation about - and to build the confidence to use that vocabulary. I will continue using Duolingo, because it is a good discipline of regular practice, but I will also continue to find and  use resources like Japanese Pod (which is where I learned the "let us go!" inflection form & also ちょうっと was very useful), and which has a balance of vocabulary and grammar points in their podcasts. It is ludicrous how many times a new word I learn from there seems to come up that weekend in my anime viewing - I swear one episode seemed to be entirely made up of ちょうっと, which should be impossible.

I also intend to keep making notes on things that interest me, such as my great american novel, I mean , my one day forthcoming post(s) about structural sexism in English, French, Thai, and Japanese. Look at the radical for 嫌い（きらい）if you don't believe me.  That's the semantic meaning in the etymology, not a phoneme.  

I hope to one day have enough vocabulary to actually play the Japanese version of wordle too!