All !English All The Time
(For the non-programmers !English means Not English)
Today I finally took the plunge and removed all English-language feeds from my Google Reader account. I read about All Japanese All The Time a while back and the idea kept coming back to me — removing English as my main source of information. Or more precisely, changing it to Japanese, Korean or French.
I have enough news and design blogs in Japanese to learn new vocabulary, but I still haven’t found enough on linguistics or NLP yet.
I read half the time via Reeder on iPad and half the time through the Pure Reader-themed/plugin for Firefox
With news and reading material covered, my next objective is finding news and TV I want to watch. I just finished watching the phenomenal Deadwood and there’s nothing I’ve seen on Japanese TV that even comes close to it. Cultural differences are part of it, but the acting in Japanese dramas is horrific.
TOEFL
On the topic of English, I booked myself in for a TOEFL test today. Despite English being my native tongue, Kyoto University require that I submit a TOEFL or TOEIC score to apply to their doctorate program. So TOEFL get $200 for me to go and have a chat with them. I’m actually a little worried I’ll use too much informal English in the speaking sections, and be marked down for “insufficient vocabulary usage”.
