When you make a mistake...

To others who have been studying Japanese as a second/foreign language for a long time:
What do you do when you make a mistake? After studying for as many years as I've been studying, it really drives me nuts whenever I make a big mistake or err in an explanation to somebody else. I usually get pretty hard on myself about it.

What do guys do to chill and forget about the mistake?

It doesn't usually bug me that much unless I've been misunderstood; otherwise I'm a fan of self correction.

Let me tell you a story about mistakes:

A few years ago I was going out with a beautiful girl by the name of Akane who I was really interested in. Things between us were going great but after a while I started thinking that something was up because everytime I asked her to call me, she would say OK, but she never did. I'd wait a week or two and then call her myself, asking for an explanation which she would never give. She'd just say "I thought you would call ME". I guess the penny should have dropped then, but it didn't. Instead I started to think that the girl was playing games, being nasty, or just weird. I should add that at that time I had only been in Japan for less than a year and my Japanese was quite poor, but still I insisted on speaking to her in Japanese exclusively (unless of course I was completely stuck; then we'd switch to English, at which she was actually fairly good). Anyway, this problem continued for a bit longer until we finally parted ways in a haze of confusion, misunderstanding and bad feelings.

A little while later (I can still remember the exact situation and instant that the penny finally did drop) I was speaking on the phone to a Japanese friend of mine in Japanese, and just before I was to jump on the train, I wanted to ask her to give me a call next week so I said 「来週電話する」 and promptly hung up. A few moments later I realized why Akane never called me, as the gravity of my monumental error hit me!

Needless to say I tried to get in touch with Akane after that to explain to her why I never called even though I kept saying I would (adamantly) but alas she never answered her phone when I rang. I felt like such a clutz that I tried to call her once or twice a week for about a year before I finally gave up.

It still pains me to think about it because I really did like her, and she must think that I'm a complete bastard who never kept his word too.

In any case, I'm extra careful these days to make sure that what I want to say is actually what I am saying, just so I don't commit another disastrous error like that again. :banghead:

You learned the hard way what I could never get so many of my English students to understand: VERB TENSES DO MATTER!

Oh yeah!

orochi said:

What do guys do to chill and forget about the mistake?

Click to expand...

Usually research. I'm usually more interested in finding out exactly what I did wrong and doing my best not to do it again.

orochi said:

What do guys do to chill and forget about the mistake?

Click to expand...

I find at this point in my study if I make a mistake its a mistake I have made many times. Often it is to forget a certain vocabulary word, so what usually helps me feel better about it is to go out of my way to use the forgotten word, or use the hard grammar soon and often. My tongue often gets tangled with passives mixed with honorifics or causitives. So I often try to wrap my tongue around them even when a more simple way of sayig the same idea might suffice. If I can get it right it always brings a smile to my face.