While I was looking through Audible for a new audiobook, I somehow found this book – “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” by Haruki Murakami.
Oh, an audiobook in Japanese. Tempting.
By listening to the preview, I could only catch about 30% of it. It feels so good to recognize words or phrases I know, but it is still too high a level for my (amazingly terrible) Japanese.
After all those years of trial and error in learning English, one of my language learning principles has become “not to learn materials that are much higher than my level”.
Everything remains somewhere in the brain, yet I found that level-appropriate materials were much more effective in terms of understanding as well as speaking.
I have no doubt that watching Japanese TV shows with subtitles is better suited to my level.
Until the day I can understand most of that audiobook, I have decided to keep that Haruki essay in my (already overflowing) wishlist.
That took self-discipline.
It really did.
