My English ability is declining - This is the feeling I have often these days. Although I've been accepting the fact that my English fluency is not getting better, having decline is different. I have struggled to articulate my engineering points to my teammates, which feels like a real threat.

More practice is needed, probably speaking, but writing is easier. So I decided to start some writing practice: I'll write some random trivial stuff once a day for ten days. I expect it to be plain diary and do not expect it to be worth a read. That aims to be pure practice.

What should I write about today, then? Here you go...

Why is my English fluency declining? There are several contributing factors.

First of all, I have spent no time on explicit English practice. I simply cannot afford it. This isn't great, but it's just a plain fact.

Secondly, I've largely withdrawn from podcast listening for a month. I still listen time to time, but my phone no longer has any podcast app installed. The intention was to spend more time on long-form audio books and my own thinking, and it paid off. However, thinking more to me means thinking in Japanese, and also listening to written English like Audiobooks isn't like listening to people speaking and somehow doesn't have the language gravity podcasts had. It might be matter of taking back podcasts again to my life, but somehow doesn't feel like that today.

Relatedly, I feel myself in a kind of introspective mode these days. I like to be introspective, but it's not a great way to be aware of languages. What's worse, my introspection is solely done in Japanese.

Probably I should spend more time on consuming spoken media, talking to people and thinking in English. I don't feel like that, but there needs to be some balance to hit. This writing project is a not-so-promising attempt to hit the balance.

By the way, have you tried Google Docs' spell checker recently? It's amazing. I wrote the text above in a single path, and pasted it to a gdoc, and edited based on the suggestion. I underscored such edits. I guess I could've spotted some of them if I re-read, but all of t hem. It's worth highlighting - It tells me my misspelling patterns.

Anyway, spell checker. It's worth a shot. (I guess GMail is now using the same checker, but I'm not sure.)

Edit: I've made several edits after the spell checker applied. There are endless mistakes and rough edges.