Frustrated by a long-term plateau

[clay]

My English sucks!

I'm not a native English speaker anyway, for what is worth my opinion, I think your English is pretty good.

"Pretty good" is an understatement. Your English is amazing. For example, I doubt many non-native English speakers can use "Fat chance" as felicitously as you did.

[NileCat]

Thank you guys for your kind comments. I really appreciate it.

I received a very thoughtful mail from spin13 again. He kindly explained about this issue for me.
And again, I apologize about my silly and offensive remark to him.
It was a good lesson for me. I promise it'll never happen again. Well...at least I hope so.

[spin13]

I received a very thoughtful mail from spin13 again. He kindly explained about this issue for me.
And again, I apologize about my silly and offensive remark to him.

Nonsense. The internet is a sandbox and I wouldn't play in it if I was afraid of getting dirty.

[NileCat]

Nonsense. The internet is a sandbox and I wouldn't play in it if I was afraid of getting dirty.

That's your doctrine but mine is different. Thanks!

[furrykef]

That's your doctrine but mine is different.

I'd hope so. I've seen what cats do in sandboxes.

[Fillanzea]

I just want to thank everyone for your thoughtful replies. I have been thinking about what all of you had said, and then today I was watching 救命病棟 today, which is a Japanese medical drama. They had words like 'subarachnoid hemorrhage' and 'cardiopulmonary arrest,' and I thought, of course I have to look those up, because they're specialized words and there's no way I would know them unless I watched medical dramas all the time. But maybe it's always like that once you reach a certain level. If you're still learning common words, they show up everywhere, whether you're reading a current events magazine or a novel or watching a drama on TV. But all of these things have their own specialized vocabularies, so maybe it's unrealistic to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that and expect that it will add up. Maybe I need to really put forth the effort to read a novel all the way through, so that I can get used to the way that particular author uses words, in that particular context.

That's one of the things that draws beginning readers to series books, right? There's so much repetition, and not so much new stuff to absorb.

By the way, I really like 吉本ばなな. NP was kind of weird, but キッチン was lovely, and her essay in "Read Real Japanese" is one of my favorites. But I can see where she wouldn't be everybody's scene.

[NileCat]

Fillanzeaさん

まさしくその通りだと思います！
私が最初のポストで「Dr.House」に言及したのは、おそらくあなたが「救命病棟」を例に挙げたのと全く同じ理由からなんだと思います。
このスレッドの途中で私が無用の混乱を招いてしまったにもかかわらず、Fillanzeaさんがステキな結論を出してくれたことを、とても嬉しく思います。ありがとう。