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+--- Thread: The Discouragement Thread (/thread-1762.html)
The Discouragement Thread - samesong - 2008-09-17
I get quite a bit of indirect discouragement from Japanese people themselves; most of them are some of the nicest people I've ever met, but I can't count how many times I've gotten '知らなくていいよ！' when I ask somebody a moderately difficult/abstract question.
To me, it's their assumption that foreigners don't/shouldn't have such a high proficiency in their own native tongue, and that bothers me.
The Discouragement Thread - mentat_kgs - 2008-09-17
Dislexic people, unite!
The Discouragement Thread - alyks - 2008-09-17
I saw this after coming home from Japanese class (for credits, yo), and now I have something to say.
My teacher is an old hag. H-A-G. Her idea of practicing the language is exclusively output. That's all we do in class. Output, output, and more output. When I mention I prefer input, I get scolded.
After two weeks with UBJG, I've learned more than the entire class worth. AJATT really is the only way to go.
The Discouragement Thread - mystes - 2008-09-17
alyks Wrote:My teacher is an old hag. H-A-G. Her idea of practicing the language is exclusively output. That's all we do in class. Output, output, and more output. When I mention I prefer input, I get scolded.Unfortunately, as a result of the backlash against the Grammar Translation method of language learning, input seems to have been mostly thrown out the window. My advice is not to get suckered into wasting your learning time by the promise of useless credits.
The Discouragement Thread - Ryuujin27 - 2008-09-17
Japanese classes used to be such B.S. for me. They were all about output and the using stuff only to be corrected. No one seems to understand that doing that will instill bad habits when speaking/writing. Thankfully, there is very little output being done this semester, and all we are doing is reading a book and getting input. Luckily, since I've been self studying all this time, this is a breeze for me.
Yet another easy Japanese A here I come...
The Discouragement Thread - phauna - 2008-09-18
Everyone who is down on classes doesn't understand them at all. Language teachers are meant to force you to output, because they expect you are going to be doing input on your own time. How will you do input in a class setting? Just reading? You don't need to come to a room with others and a teacher to do that. Class time is for output and questions, not for reading a book on your own. Do you want listening practice, then go watch a movie, series, listen to music etc. Again, why would you do a lot of that in the classroom?
Are you really saying output of any kind is bad? Quite frankly it's not an either/ or question. You must have both. If you do anki and watch dorama all day, then for that one or two hours of class time you have a chance to use what you've absorbed. You will not be able to magically produce if you exclusively do input, just look at all the terrible English speakers who have only studied grammar and vocab and reading and writing their entire studying lives. They were never asked to speak, so they can't speak.
Dyslexic people, untie!
The Discouragement Thread - alyks - 2008-09-18
Actually, Phauna is right. But in all honesty when you're limited to practicing 'watashi wa..." crap, it really gets to you. The only reason I'm in the stupid class is to satisfy this cultural awareness thing for my degree.
In response to what Phauna said about output, my thinking is that speaking practice is a good thing if you're not forcing it. You just can't be trying to construct sentences which you don't know how to say. This whole backlash against output practice is really a natural response to how much it's abused.
The Discouragement Thread - mystes - 2008-09-18
phauna Wrote:Everyone who is down on classes doesn't understand them at all. Language teachers are meant to force you to output, because they expect you are going to be doing input on your own time.If this were the case, classes would actually be useful. If your class involved you speaking to a teacher who would answer your questions and correct everything you said, it would be great. However, this was not at all my experience. Instead, classes did a poor job of simulating an SRS and involved lots of speaking to other students. Moreover, they assumed that nobody was doing any learning on their own other than the homework and studying for quizzes. Apparently, my teachers didn't understand what classes were for either.
phauna Wrote:just look at all the terrible English speakers who have only studied grammar and vocab and reading and writing their entire studying lives. They were never asked to speak, so they can't speak.They were also taught by teachers who don't actually understand English among other problems. If their teachers suddenly went and said, "produce output" they probably wouldn't have been able to magically speak English either.
Edit: Also, I think studying production with anki really shouldn't be underestimated. IMHO, as long as you can use the vocabulary and grammar freely, the more stylistic aspects that remain are things that native speakers need to think about consciously as well, and they can be learned by studying works in Japanese. On the other hand, having been forced to produce so much output in my classes, it's not as if I've followed the pure AJATT method anyway, and perhaps I am being overly dismissive of the benefits the classes had.
The Discouragement Thread - alyks - 2008-09-18
phauna Wrote:Are you really saying output of any kind is bad? Quite frankly it's not an either/ or question. You must have both. If you do anki and watch dorama all day, then for that one or two hours of class time you have a chance to use what you've absorbed. You will not be able to magically produce if you exclusively do input, just look at all the terrible English speakers who have only studied grammar and vocab and reading and writing their entire studying lives. They were never asked to speak, so they can't speak.Also, reading up on the subject a bit, I found this:
http://www.antimoon.com/how/input-boydell.htm
The Discouragement Thread - mystes - 2008-09-18
alyks Wrote:Also, reading up on the subject a bit, I found this:I really think that site explains things much better than AJATT does. In particular, the section on how to read in a foreign language was very interesting. I think it is really necessary to notice grammatical details as they describe and this is impossible without learning (memorizing) the fundamentals first.
http://www.antimoon.com/how/input-boydell.htm
Edit: The section on classes is pertinent, too.
The Discouragement Thread - phauna - 2008-09-18
Yeah, again antimoon goes really far in what they say with little proof. I mean, I'm on the SRS bandwagon, but I don't think a total absence of production is necessary and definitely not desirable.
That Richard Boydell is a really poor example. I mean he had 30 years of input, including his childhood when his brain is wired to learn quickly, and then he wrote something. I mean when you're writing you can take your time, pronunciation is not important, and who knows how long it took him to write that. Anyway, I call shenanigans if that is their only example. Do you have thirty years to get input before you speak? And I dare say he wouldn't be able to speak well at all, if he got the chance, not ever having used his voice before.
As for other bad English speakers, that's my point exactly, they only learned through input, they never spoke to a native, or even to each other. And they suck at speaking. So all that input, maybe ten or more years only input, and they can't speak.
Of course speaking to your teacher is the best, but you are in a class. If you have money to pay a tutor one on one, of course that's the best. But why would you expect a class to be the same as a tutor? And here is the problem with a class. Say your class is an hour long and there are ten students. You can talk to the teacher for six minutes each, OR you can talk to the teacher for six minutes, and for the other 54 minutes you can talk to your peers. You are practising production still, and ten times as much. This is why you speak to your peers.
Not all your output has to be corrected every time, anyone who thinks so will never speak a word. Do you think you could remember all the mistakes you make if you talked to your teacher for an hour anyway? Of course not. The 'never make a mistake' theory is bollocks. I mean is it even possible? Even things I know I can write often have small problems of register, intonation, pronunciation, spelling, usage, etc. I've made a million mistakes already, maybe I should just give up?
The last thing to mention about Antimoon, is that they spoke Polish, not Mandarin, or Korean, Japanese, Hindi, or other greatly different languages. Polish is a European language, and it has similarities to English. They use a similar alphabet for one, that is a huge difference. Now think about our situation, are we Koreans or Chinese trying to learn Japanese, a related language? No we (mostly) speak English, and Japanese is really, really different. We don't share an alphabet, or even a close culture, the thinking of each language is really different.
Take Antimoon, and Khatzu saying all classes suck, with a grain of salt. Actually the Antimoon guys even state that they had many many hours of classroom instruction on top of SRS and input method. This can't be discounted.
The Discouragement Thread - mystes - 2008-09-18
phauna Wrote:Of course speaking to your teacher is the best, but you are in a class. If you have money to pay a tutor one on one, of course that's the best. But why would you expect a class to be the same as a tutor? And here is the problem with a class. Say your class is an hour long and there are ten students. You can talk to the teacher for six minutes each, OR you can talk to the teacher for six minutes, and for the other 54 minutes you can talk to your peers. You are practising production still, and ten times as much. This is why you speak to your peers.In this case, you're forking out money to have someone sit there while you talk at them. In classes, if you actually study the other students won't be able to understand you anyway. You might as well just practice talking by yourself.
The Discouragement Thread - kazelee - 2008-09-18
LULZ
@_@
I've been here I while and I just noticed this thread. It seems nukemarine is the anti-me.
The Discouragement Thread - Tobberoth - 2008-09-18
I'd watch out for what Alyks is saying. While I agree that forcing only output is a horrible way to learn a language, saying forced output is bad is almost as horrible. Reason being that if you don't force output, you'll never output. You can practice passive skill for years and you'll still not be able to speak, at all. You have to force your mind to use grammar instead of understanding it, if you don't, you'll always use the most simple structures since the hard ones won't come to mind.
What I like about the AJATT method is how easy it is to employ and how it focuses on passive ability which is the most important. What I dislike is how it teaches people that output is unnecessary, something which is undoubtedly untrue.
The Discouragement Thread - snispilbor - 2008-09-18
When I first started learning Japanese, I was *hiding* it, because I was so scared people would think of me as a nerd (even though, really, I WAS a nerd). I mean, I'd actually hide my (paper) flashcards so noone would see them!
Then came a long period of big change in my life and I learned to be massively more confident and courageous. After that, I realized people usually wouldn't judge me for the language itself, but rather for the subtle signals I'd give when I talked about it. If I was fidgeting and trying to change the subject, that screamed "LOSER" on their radar. Now, I just talk about it with confidence, and it's great. I'll even be the one to bring it up. I've used it as fluff talk after dancing with girls at the club. By being confident and open about it, I actually turn it into a good thing. Especially when people can see how passionate I am about it.
I still have work to do here though. I still feel very self-conscious about anime, and usually turn it off if anyone's around. I should work on that...
Anyway, to change the subject, what exactly is a weaboo?
The Discouragement Thread - Tobberoth - 2008-09-18
snispilbor Wrote:When I first started learning Japanese, I was *hiding* it, because I was so scared people would think of me as a nerd (even though, really, I WAS a nerd). I mean, I'd actually hide my (paper) flashcards so noone would see them!Weeaboo is nothing. On a decently well known forum called 4chan they changed so everytime someone wrote "japanophile" it was changed to "weeaboo". For some reason, people started to go retarded and use weeaboo is a proper term. Weeaboo in reality is from an awesome strip in Perry Bible Fellowship and has nothing to do with Japan.
Then came a long period of big change in my life and I learned to be massively more confident and courageous. After that, I realized people usually wouldn't judge me for the language itself, but rather for the subtle signals I'd give when I talked about it. If I was fidgeting and trying to change the subject, that screamed "LOSER" on their radar. Now, I just talk about it with confidence, and it's great. I'll even be the one to bring it up. I've used it as fluff talk after dancing with girls at the club. By being confident and open about it, I actually turn it into a good thing. Especially when people can see how passionate I am about it.
I still have work to do here though. I still feel very self-conscious about anime, and usually turn it off if anyone's around. I should work on that...
Anyway, to change the subject, what exactly is a weaboo?
The Discouragement Thread - mentat_kgs - 2008-09-18
I'm not talking about antimoon. I'm talking about krashen, pinker, chomsky, piaget, etc...
One thing I could understand for reading that much:
Input BEFORE output.
I did not understood output is forbidden. I understood that input comes before. There is no harm on doing output of you had already some input. Actually, it apears to be great, as we learn more from our mistakes than from the mistakes of the others.
The thing about focusing on input is that it is effective.
The more input you do, the easier is to get more input. It is a self feeding cicle. It gets stronger and stronger. The more you read japanese, the more you'll be able to read. The more you listen, the more you'll be able to listen.
Time doing input can't do anything wrong, and it wont go to waste.
But output is different. Output is much more complex.
For me, a person that is not in japan, input is enought. When I need to output, I'll work on it. I allready do a little in KGS go server, I even already have a few japanese pals.
Btw, I don't consider to practice reading outloud as high class output. I is just input for the muscles of your mounth.
Real output is answer to questions or discuss over a subject.
The Discouragement Thread - Tobberoth - 2008-09-18
mentat_kgs Wrote:I'm not talking about antimoon. I'm talking about krashen, pinker, chomsky, piaget, etc...I agree completely with this post. Many people on this site seem to think that it's output to read a line, or mimic a voice. It's not, it's still input. Output needs to be creative to actually teach you anything. If you know how to say "The car is green", it won't teach you anything to say "The car is green" over and over, you need to say "The apple is red" or "The mouse is big".
One thing I could understand for reading that much:
Input BEFORE output.
I did not understood output is forbidden. I understood that input comes before. There is no harm on doing output of you had already some input. Actually, it apears to be great, as we learn more from our mistakes than from the mistakes of the others.
The thing about focusing on input is that it is effective.
The more input you do, the easier is to get more input. It is a self feeding cicle. It gets stronger and stronger. The more you read japanese, the more you'll be able to read. The more you listen, the more you'll be able to listen.
Time doing input can't do anything wrong, and it wont go to waste.
But output is different. Output is much more complex.
For me, a person that is not in japan, input is enought. When I need to output, I'll work on it. I allready do a little in KGS go server, I even already have a few japanese pals.
Btw, I don't consider to practice reading outloud as high class output. I is just input for the muscles of your mounth.
Real output is answer to questions or discuss over a subject.
The Discouragement Thread - Mcjon01 - 2008-09-18
Tobberoth Wrote:Weeaboo is nothing. On a decently well known forum called 4chan they changed so everytime someone wrote "japanophile" it was changed to "weeaboo". For some reason, people started to go retarded and use weeaboo is a proper term. Weeaboo in reality is from an awesome strip in Perry Bible Fellowship and has nothing to do with Japan.And, despite it's initial irrelevance, "weeaboo" is now equivalent to "Japanophile", although it carries a more negative connotation, and tends to imply that the person in question isn't just crazy about Japan, but also thinks that all things Japanese are just better than everything else.
Memetic mutation works in mysterious ways. Usually by changing little bits of verbal nonsense into legitimate, widespread slang.
The Discouragement Thread - mystes - 2008-09-18
Tobberoth Wrote:You have to force your mind to use grammar instead of understanding it, if you don't, you'll always use the most simple structures since the hard ones won't come to mind.In my experience, using sentences with anki has been incredibly effective at getting complicated grammar to come to mind quickly, much more so than output in classes was.
Maybe real output is actually 100% necessary, but there are three options: 1) No output. 2) Production with anki. 3) Lot's of real output. We can all agree that (1) leads to an inability to speak but that in no way implies that (2) leads to an inability to speak. It may, it may not, but please address that specifically rather than conflating the issue by saying things like, "You can practice passive skill for years and you'll still not be able to speak, at all."
snispilbor Wrote:Anyway, to change the subject, what exactly is a weaboo?To put it in Japanese, it means "日本かぶれ"
The Discouragement Thread - askayscha - 2008-11-16
My mom is always like ''AYSCHA what are you doing learning Japanese? And whats up with them dolls on the screen[anime]?!''
My brother: ''You smell of banana's. Is that a japanese scent? You'll never go there anyway, whats the point....japanese sounds retarded''
The Discouragement Thread - liosama - 2008-11-16
Ones that piss me off are
"You are trying too hard" (Because in my Japanese at uni, i'm a first year)
another one that pisses the absolute ***** out of me (yes i swear)
"Learn your own language first" (Which happens to be Arabic here, which i am kinda, learning on my own (again) since i lost it when i was young).
I usually get this one from Chinese friends of mine whose Chinese isn't that great (i usually ask them some kanji related questions when I'm having some trouble)
The way i see it, they are jealous. I cannot find any other logical explanation. They envy will,desire, passion and productivity of ones own time.
edit: lol [\b]
The Discouragement Thread - kazelee - 2008-11-16
Learn your own language first... that's kinda... rude...
You are moving away from what my brother calls the mean, and everything around you is trying to pull you back. That's human nature.
The Discouragement Thread - playadom - 2008-11-16
Tobberoth Wrote:Weeaboo in reality is from an awesome strip in Perry Bible Fellowship and has nothing to do with Japan.Ahh, I love that comic. Such a shame he stopped working on it.
The Discouragement Thread - PrettyKitty - 2008-11-16
"Are you intending to marry a Japanese man? If not then what's the point? The only reason to learn Japanese is to marry a Japanese man. If that's not your goal then you need to think up something else that will get you a man instead of this nonsense!"
"Why are you still learning? You can already read it better than most people. There's no point to learn anymore."
"It's not possible for you to learn Japanese. I don't believe you know any of it. You're just making it up because nobody can dispute what you say something says because nobody else can understand it either. Anyone can point at some gibberish and translate if nobody else knows what it says to argue. How do we even know that's not Chinese?"
"Whites can't learn Japanese because it's a scientifically proven fact that the Japanese are smarter than us and our brains can't function in Japanese."
After asking how many words I know -- "How can you know that many words and not be fluent? I know someone who was fluent at Chinese with only 500 words! You must suck."
I said there's a difference in being able to use 500 words fluently and being fluent. Then I was told I was stupid...
Specifically for RTK:
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! Learning kanji doesn't help you at all. You have to learn words."
"Finishing RTK just means you've learned a bunch of funny stories that won't help you with anything remotely related to real Japanese."