Tim Kung

  • This is 3.5 Years of Learning a Language

    “What’s your level of Japanese?” I get asked this question regularly. It usually comes after somebody has asked me how my weekend/week/day has been and I mention that I studied some Japanese. After the natural next question of “How long have you been studying?” (3.5 years) people now ask, “Are you fluent?” (No) I always…

  • What 500 Japanese Lessons Did to Me

    I noticed today that I passed 500 Japanese lessons on iTalki, the platform I’ve been using to learn Japanese. Combine that with my previous lessons on Verbling, and my total lessons as of today (Jan 2019) comes to exactly 680 lessons over 2.5 years. 500 lessons seems like a lot. It’s been a slow and…

    ,

  • This is What it’s Like After 2 Years of Studying a Language

    As of 2018, it’s been about 2 years since I started learning Japanese. I study for about an hour each day and wrote more about the process of setting goals on autopilot in a prior post. One of the most common questions I get asked is “How is your Japanese going?” How is your Japanese going?…

    ,

  • Reasons I Love Tech: Becoming Conversational in Japanese

    I’ve studied some languages before – French via the Canadian school system, and Mandarin via a mix of self study audio courses and classes. However, in neither case would I claim knowledge of the language. I’ve definitely been scolded more than a few times by French and Mandarin speaking natives for not having better knowledge…

    , ,