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+--- Thread: The AJATT Method (/thread-682.html)
The AJATT Method - Dies_Irie - 2008-11-08
Err... how is that a danger?
The AJATT Method - Tobberoth - 2008-11-08
Dies_Irie Wrote:Err... how is that a danger?When you learn a word, you do so to use it, at least if you study Japanese to have practical use of it. If you learn a word from a context you don't understand, you will use it wrong. That is the danger and it's a pretty major one for those of us who actually talk Japanese on a regular basis.
The AJATT Method - alyks - 2008-11-08
timcampbell Wrote:Way to go. That's definitely awesome and you should keep it up. That's the way you do it, read a lot. Eventually the situation will reverse to where you'll understand more than you don't. As you run into more contexts for words, you'll build up a real understanding of how the word is used and have a true understanding of the word. Awesome dude.Codexus Wrote:I don't understand more than 20% of a typical shonen manga but it's really beneficial to read them even if I don't understand. Some words just get stuck in my head and then later I recognize them and they are instantly learned. That happened to me no later than today. Yesterday I noticed the word 一体 in One Piece, today I was listening to japanesepod101 in the bus and they explained that word. When such connections are made, it really reinforces what is learned.I agree with this approach. I don't understand everything in every manga I read either, but I enjoy the stories. There are basically three kinds of sentences: Sentences I completely understand. Hurrah! Sentences I can't understand at all: Skip them. Then the best: Those I ALMOST understand. If I look up the one word I don't know - bingo!, I've learned new vocab and I'm on my way again. Or maybe I know all the words in a sentence and still don't understand it. Fine, there's probably a piece of slang or grammatical structure I don't know. I look it up or ask someone. Bang, another one down. Each time I'm finding sentences that teach me bit by bit, one word at a time. Then when I move onto the next manga, I'm starting from a bigger and stronger base.
The AJATT Method - timcampbell - 2008-11-08
Tobberoth Wrote:Actually, there are quite a few of us on this site who speak Japanese on a daily basis, myself included. Hopefully you don't mean to imply you're more qualified to speak on the subject - my bad if I interpreted you wrong.Dies_Irie Wrote:Err... how is that a danger?When you learn a word, you do so to use it, at least if you study Japanese to have practical use of it. If you learn a word from a context you don't understand, you will use it wrong. That is the danger and it's a pretty major one for those of us who actually talk Japanese on a regular basis.
Regarding your previous comment, I do consider a sentence where I understand everything but one word to be an i+1 sentence. Those are the low-hanging apples that are easy to grab. And it's best to read it in the context of a story, rather than a list of vocabulary, since you can see how the word is used naturally. Of course, the first time you encounter a word, you get only a brief, cursory understanding. But your understanding of a word grows with time as you see it more frequently in more situations. There's no way you can memorize every possible use of a word before moving onto the next. Get out an unabridged Oxford dictionary and look up the basic English word "set." A student doesn't need to understand ALL of those uses before he/she can start to use and comprehend SOME of them.
The AJATT Method - Tobberoth - 2008-11-08
I didn't say I'm more qualified, I just said that if you don't use Japanese regularly, you're not going to understand the dangers of learning words incorrectly since you never output them.
Your post doesn't disagree with any of my points so far, at least not from what I can see. I'm saying it's dangerous to learn a word from a context you do not understand, not that it's dangerous to learn words from a context you DO understand. If you understand 20% of a sentence, you shouldn't use that sentence as a basis to learn new words since you do not understand the context and will not understand the words properly unless you're lucky. You can still read a sentence where you understand 20% and enjoy it.
The AJATT Method - Dies_Irie - 2008-11-08
Tobberoth Wrote:If you use Japanese on a regular basis than you are learning new words from the context of actual Japanese speakers' sentences. Are you saying it's "dangerous" to imply the meaning and then use it? Or, if you're using Japanese on a regular basis I'm sure you have some Japanese friends that can tell you the nuances better than a dictionary could...Dies_Irie Wrote:Err... how is that a danger?When you learn a word, you do so to use it, at least if you study Japanese to have practical use of it. If you learn a word from a context you don't understand, you will use it wrong. That is the danger and it's a pretty major one for those of us who actually talk Japanese on a regular basis.
The AJATT Method - Tobberoth - 2008-11-08
Dies_Irie Wrote:If you use Japanese on a regular basis than you are learning new words from the context of actual Japanese speakers' sentences. Are you saying it's "dangerous" to imply the meaning and then use it? Or, if you're using Japanese on a regular basis I'm sure you have some Japanese friends that can tell you the nuances better than a dictionary could...Of course. It isn't dangerous in that it will ruin your Japanese, your brain and your life. It's dangerous in that it's not a valid source of understanding. Sure, you can have a sentence where you understand 20%, look up all the words in a J-E dictionary and start using them in conversation, odds are you will get some of them right. The ones you get wrong, someone will HOPEFULLY correct. That doesn't make it a less dangerous practice.
Summary: If you don't understand the context well enough, there's a high risk of not understanding the word properly. If you don't understand the word properly, there's a high risk of using it incorrectly when outputting Japanese. If your goal is to speak correct Japanese, it becomes a dangerous way of study to learn words from contexts you do not understand. Thus, if you want safe and effective studying, study from texts where you have a good grasp of what's going on, use complex texts for entertainment. Eventually the words you heard during the entertainment phase will show up in texts you grasp, and you will learn them from a context you understand.
The AJATT Method - Dies_Irie - 2008-11-08
Tobberoth Wrote:Isn't the AJATT method of input first that you don't even try output until you are really, really confident in what you are going to say?Dies_Irie Wrote:If you use Japanese on a regular basis than you are learning new words from the context of actual Japanese speakers' sentences. Are you saying it's "dangerous" to imply the meaning and then use it? Or, if you're using Japanese on a regular basis I'm sure you have some Japanese friends that can tell you the nuances better than a dictionary could...Of course. It isn't dangerous in that it will ruin your Japanese, your brain and your life. It's dangerous in that it's not a valid source of understanding. Sure, you can have a sentence where you understand 20%, look up all the words in a J-E dictionary and start using them in conversation, odds are you will get some of them right. The ones you get wrong, someone will HOPEFULLY correct. That doesn't make it a less dangerous practice.
Summary: If you don't understand the context well enough, there's a high risk of not understanding the word properly. If you don't understand the word properly, there's a high risk of using it incorrectly when outputting Japanese. If your goal is to speak correct Japanese, it becomes a dangerous way of study to learn words from contexts you do not understand. Thus, if you want safe and effective studying, study from texts where you have a good grasp of what's going on, use complex texts for entertainment. Eventually the words you heard during the entertainment phase will show up in texts you grasp, and you will learn them from a context you understand.
Anyway, here's what I'm doing now for my studying...
1. RTK while listening to Japanese music or watching Major
2. Trying to transcribe Japanese music (pick out individual syllables, etc) and then check them with my gf to see how close I am.
I'll pick up Japanese classes again winter quarter and try to learn the kanji for EVERY vocabulary word (since I will already know them from RTK) and practice speaking and listening with my gf as well as use her as a resource for those 10,000 sentences thing. I'll also watch dramas, animes, etc...
I know not everyone has a Japanese person to check their understanding against to make sure everything is going well, but I do, so I will use that resource.
The AJATT Method - QuackingShoe - 2008-11-09
Learning words isn't an all or nothing ordeal. You can understand it 'a little,' which is synonymous with 'incorrectly,' at first. If you try to use it, of course you'll get it wrong. That's why you keep seeing it in different contexts until you understand it fully. That's the whole idea.
Also.. if it's not dangerous for your Japanese, your brain, or your life.. what was it dangerous for again?
The AJATT Method - kazelee - 2008-11-09
CaLeDee Wrote:うそ just means lie as in うそをつく. It's mostly used when something unbelievable happens, it's hard to translate because just saying "lie!" or "that's a lie!" usually doesn't fit well.LOL. I just used Rikaichan. うそ means "really" or "lie." WTF. Oh I get it now.
All this talk of dangerous makes learning Japanese seem like walking through a minefield.
--If you only understand 20% of the map :o ! --
Quote:Isn't the AJATT method of input first that you don't even try output until you are really, really confident in what you are going to say?Heheh. That's what I've been waiting for someone to say -though I dabble at output from time to time.
The only time I can imagine premature output being "dangerous" is if you do it uncorrected for years. At some point it is no longer premature. You end up creating your own dialect of a language. It doesn't help if you are the only one who know what you're saying.
The AJATT Method - Dies_Irie - 2008-11-14
Sooo... I started watching Major completely without subtitles and I'm starting to understand the sentences, even though sometimes I'm focusing on kanji learning instead of Major...
This anime is amazing though. I'll be sad when it's over.
The AJATT Method - askayscha - 2008-11-18
yorkii Wrote:I personally cannot commit my full life to learning a language like that. there are limits to how much studying I can do before I lose it. By this I mean that I "burn out" or just need to tear myself from it for a brief period of time. A good example is when I went on holiday to Hokkaido with my girlfriend (japanese btw) and just constantly speaking, listening, and reading Japanese for that 1 week trip totally burnt me out to the point where I started to stop speaking coherently after a while. this made me want to speak less.I felt like that at one point.
It's hard to explain exactly what I mean, but there must be some people that understand.
i think "burnt out" is the best expression i can come up with to describe the feeling of beiong surrounded like that...
I would be listening to japanese music, watch drama's read japanese manga to the point that my english was starting to sound weird to me.
I guess you should just take a break, to help that when you do return to studying you'll be more efficient to learn.
Burning out is not a nice feeling. Sometimes I crave the feeling that listening to MGMT and Tegan & Sara gives me. haha.
The AJATT Method - MeisterLlama - 2008-11-23
So, pardon me if this question was answered somewhere in the thread, but how exactly are you supposed to know the meanings of the sentences you mine? This seems like a circular method to me. You learn Japanese by memorizing meanings of sentences, but you need to know Japanese to know the meanings of those sentences in the first place...
For example, I tried to mine sentences for Doraemon, but by the fourth sentence I'd already hit a road block. 野比のび太は三十分後に首をつる。I have no idea what this means. The WWJDIC definitions for つる. Do not help. Best I can come up with is that Doraemon is saying Nobita is going to be hanged by his neck in 30 minutes...which seems a bit dark for Doraemon. This is just the fourth sentence...I don't see how you're supposed to learn stuff you don't know from looking at things that you don't know the meaning of.
The AJATT Method - Jarvik7 - 2008-11-23
askayscha Wrote:If you push through you eventually get over that feeling. I never heard or spoke any English for about 5 months over the summer. My only "break" was going to Korea for a few days. Every time I leave Japan it takes me awhile to get used to speaking and listening to English again. I've been in Canada about 3 months so far and I'm still not used to speaking English, since almost all of my friends are either Japanese or speak Japanese at a conversational level.yorkii Wrote:I personally cannot commit my full life to learning a language like that. there are limits to how much studying I can do before I lose it. By this I mean that I "burn out" or just need to tear myself from it for a brief period of time. A good example is when I went on holiday to Hokkaido with my girlfriend (japanese btw) and just constantly speaking, listening, and reading Japanese for that 1 week trip totally burnt me out to the point where I started to stop speaking coherently after a while. this made me want to speak less.I felt like that at one point.
It's hard to explain exactly what I mean, but there must be some people that understand.
i think "burnt out" is the best expression i can come up with to describe the feeling of beiong surrounded like that...
I would be listening to japanese music, watch drama's read japanese manga to the point that my english was starting to sound weird to me.
I guess you should just take a break, to help that when you do return to studying you'll be more efficient to learn.
Burning out is not a nice feeling. Sometimes I crave the feeling that listening to MGMT and Tegan & Sara gives me. haha.
The AJATT Method - mentat_kgs - 2008-11-23
MeisterLlama Wrote:So, pardon me if this question was answered somewhere in the thread, but how exactly are you supposed to know the meanings of the sentences you mine? This seems like a circular method to me.Yes it is. And that is the beauty of it.
You are not supposed to know it. If the sentence is too hard, skip it.
The AJATT Method - MeisterLlama - 2008-11-24
mentat_kgs Wrote:But if I skip sentences that are too hard, how will I ever learn the meaning of the stuff I don't know? For example if I keep skipping 首をつる, how will I ever learn it?MeisterLlama Wrote:So, pardon me if this question was answered somewhere in the thread, but how exactly are you supposed to know the meanings of the sentences you mine? This seems like a circular method to me.Yes it is. And that is the beauty of it.
You are not supposed to know it. If the sentence is too hard, skip it.
The AJATT Method - Tobberoth - 2008-11-24
MeisterLlama Wrote:But if I skip sentences that are too hard, how will I ever learn the meaning of the stuff I don't know? For example if I keep skipping 首をつる, how will I ever learn it?Eventually, you will see it used in a context which you fully understand and you'll be able to understand it by context alone. Then, the next time you run into the above sentence, you'll understand it.
The AJATT Method - samesong - 2008-11-24
MeisterLlama Wrote:But if I skip sentences that are too hard, how will I ever learn the meaning of the stuff I don't know? For example if I keep skipping 首をつる, how will I ever learn it?I actually asked the same question a while back, and QuackingShoe gave a very lucid explanation on how this approach works:
QuackingShoe Wrote:We (or I) mean that we only put in sentences that we understand, after having figured out what they mean. Not that we dismiss any sentence we don't understand immediately - of course we attempt to understand new information. We wouldn't be able to learn anything new that way.I wouldn't go so far as to not add something simply because you can't understand it purely within context, but if you're spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out something that is far beyond your level, it's probably wise to come back to it when the concept is easier to grasp.
This is merely as opposed to putting in sentences that you don't understand even after actively trying, with what resources you have, to understand them, which many find hazardous (eh) or pointless (yeah). Or spending thirty minutes researching something that's far beyond your knowledge, only to end in a tenuous grasp on the sentence that still isn't really benefiting anything, when you could have simply skipped it and kept reading, moving on to passages that are more appropriate for your level of understanding.
The AJATT Method - playadom - 2008-11-24
Tobberoth Wrote:Weren't you just warning us all of the dangers of understanding by context alone?MeisterLlama Wrote:But if I skip sentences that are too hard, how will I ever learn the meaning of the stuff I don't know? For example if I keep skipping 首をつる, how will I ever learn it?Eventually, you will see it used in a context which you fully understand and you'll be able to understand it by context alone. Then, the next time you run into the above sentence, you'll understand it.
The AJATT Method - shakkun - 2008-11-24
Yeah, the important thing to remember is it's a big language with a lot of levels. Don't stess out on stuff that is opaque to you now. There's always going to be tons of low hanging fruit, things that are easy to learn with a context you understand. You'll then use those words as a base to reach higher levels.
By the way, 首をつる does mean hang by the neck. A google seach gets a bunch of hits about suicide. If it doesn't make sense in the context, you can still add it by itself as an example sentence with that meaning (or a similar dictionary example sentence you do understand). Learn what you can and move on.
Recently I saw this sentence in a manga (Paradise Kiss) and was lost:
もしやあたしボスキャラの仕掛けて来る罠にまんまと嵌まってってるだけなんじゃ?
Even after looking up all the words I didn't know I felt I didn't have a %100 grasp of it. So instead I added example sentences from 大辞林 and 大辞泉 for those words, which I did understand after reading the definitions:
敵の計略にまんまと引っ掛かった
罠を仕掛ける
罠に嵌まる
After that, the original sentence seems a lot more transparent. Actually maybe someone here can help me, what's with the はまってってる? I would have thought it would just be はまってる.
The AJATT Method - MeisterLlama - 2008-11-24
shakkun Wrote:By the way, 首をつる does mean hang by the neck. A google seach gets a bunch of hits about suicide. If it doesn't make sense in the context, you can still add it by itself as an example sentence with that meaning (or a similar dictionary example sentence you do understand). Learn what you can and move on.Haha, yah I should have kept reading. A couple of pages after that line, Nobita actually does end up being hung by the neck (by the collar of his shirt, not a noose >_>) I guess it was supposed to be like an ironic surprise.
So the example sentences you get, are they from http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp or do you actually have hard copies of these dictionaries?
The AJATT Method - shakkun - 2008-11-24
No I have EPWING (digital) copies of them which can be bought or found on less reputable sites and programs... but I don't think you would lose anything by using the dic.yahoo.co.jp ones which are the same.
The AJATT Method - alyks - 2008-11-24
Yahoo has an option for the daijisen and the daijirin. Goo's dictionary is the daijirin. The only worthwhile j-j one you can't get online is probably koujien, but that's kinda crappy for a beginner.
The AJATT Method - timcampbell - 2008-11-24
playadom Wrote:Oh, we're on now!Tobberoth Wrote:Weren't you just warning us all of the dangers of understanding by context alone?MeisterLlama Wrote:But if I skip sentences that are too hard, how will I ever learn the meaning of the stuff I don't know? For example if I keep skipping 首をつる, how will I ever learn it?Eventually, you will see it used in a context which you fully understand and you'll be able to understand it by context alone. Then, the next time you run into the above sentence, you'll understand it.
The AJATT Method - Tobberoth - 2008-11-25
playadom Wrote:Weren't you just warning us all of the dangers of understanding by context alone?When you don't understand the context, yes. That's why the Sentence method is an i + 1 method. In the start, you get extremely easy lines where only one word or grammar point confuses you. You look them up in a dictionary/look for more example sentences and keep going. The problem is when you read a book or something, clearly above your level, and expect to learn from context.