Flashcards And A Book Review

It's the last weekend before lectures start. As always, I've been ready for them to start for weeks. Summer always feels too long. I took time this week to do all the shopping I've been meaning to: I bought new pens, a stiff folder to keep papers from crumpling in my bag, and a brand new shiny phone-- the Samsung Galaxy S2. It's the most beautiful phone I've ever seen. I'm not exaggerating. I then got out a blank notebook I've been saving for note-taking. Now, I'm just finding things to do with my time.

One thing I started yesterday, which I will do my best to continue with for a while, is use a program called Anki to brush up on my Japanese vocabulary. I was inspired by a friend who wants to learn German on his own, and a reminder from my boyfriend that this program exists. It's also an Android app, so I'm using that version of it on my new phone. It's a program in which you can create or download pre-created decks of flashcards about anything, be it chemical names, language vocabularies, anything you want to memorize. It's based on an algorithm proven to be the best way to remember things: to be reminded of the word just when you are about to forget it. After looking at the "back" of the flashcard, you rate how easy it was for you to get the answer, and the program then decides how far in the future you will see the flashcard again.

I've only done it for two days, and since I'm doing 10 words a day, it only takes a few minutes to go over the new cards plus the old ones I didn't know very well. If it gets to be too much eventually, I'll make it 5 words a day. There are pre-made decks that people have made for the Genki textbook that is so standard for Japanese these days, and so I'm working through the Genki I vocabulary deck and kanji deck. I went through all of Genki I when I was in class learning Japanese, so I should know all of these words, but I know I've forgotten quite a few of them after a year of not practicing. This also means that Anki won't really help me practice grammar, but perhaps I'll speak a bit with a relative or friend who knows Japanese for that.

The difficult thing is, I know that with Japanese it's best to learn writing at the same time as reading, so the kanji one may not go so well. The program is made so that you can't look at that day's words again easily, since you're supposed to follow the algorithm of only looking at them when you're doing that day's reviewing. So I can't go back and see what I learned, look up stroke-order, and practice writing. But if the algorithm is known to work so well, perhaps all I'll focus on for now is reading. I'll let you know how it goes, particularly mixed with the extremely busy school term that's starting soon.

I've realized it's been a full month since I finished reading the following book, the second of the two I promised to review, and figured it's about time to write my review before I forget what I was going to say.

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Book 11: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon

I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, since my main draw to it was the interesting cover and apparent popularity. Once I started reading, though, I couldn't put it down.

It is about a boy with autism, or an autism-related illness (it's never explicitly stated), written from his perspective. His perspective on things is intriguing to me, as I've never met anyone like him and am curious how a conversation might go. The story starts with the boy finding a dog lying dead on a neighbor's yard, and he becomes adamant about finding the killer. The book touches on the hardship of parenting such a child, the amazing learning capabilities he has, and his inner thoughts. I don't know much about autism and related illnesses myself, so I can't say how accurate I think it is, but it can't be far off. It certainly opened my eyes to the way some people live and think differently, and I was interested to find some of his quirks in myself.