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+--- Thread: Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) (/thread-8174.html)
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - JimmySeal - 2011-08-03
zachandhobbes Wrote:How could spending 1000 dollars on "Snake oil Khatz" possibly be detrimental to your progress?Has anyone said it would be? Throwing away 1000 dollars on something that's worth about 50 can be detrimental to your life.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nadiatims - 2011-08-03
zachandhobbes Wrote:How could spending 1000 dollars on "Snake oil Khatz" possibly be detrimental to your progress?It's detrimental if you waste time following his prescribed methods (presuming silverspoon just rehashes what's provided on his blog) when you could be spending more time on the things that actually matter by cutting out all the extraneous bs thats serves little purpse except to distract you and complicate your life. And that's what 90% (thora's favorite number) of his blog is.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - gdaxeman - 2011-08-03
nohika Wrote:As for the "it's just $1000"? Please, please lend me the money so I can spend it like that - for nothing, really. I'm a student and I don't know very many of us with that kind of money.That's the problem: students don't make money. If you want $1000 to be pocket change for you, you need to do things differently.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - gdaxeman - 2011-08-03
tokyostyle Wrote:Sorry for the non-sequiter double-post but I think parts of this thread have made it into the SilverSpoon banner rotation. Congratulations to all of the winners!Funny thing it says "Everybody loves..", but at least for now there seems to be only negative things appearing in there!
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - tokyostyle - 2011-08-03
Surreal Wrote:Khatz just uses a lot of cheap tricks in his marketing.Just saw this one!
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - thecite - 2011-08-03
Well, I'm another person that would probably still be memorising grammar rules and staying away from native media if it wasn't for AJATT. The site gave me exactly the type of advice I needed when I needed it. I wasn't a beginner when I started using it though.
That being said, there's an awful lot of crap on the site as well, and I wouldn't personally pay for 'silverspoon'.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Surreal - 2011-08-03
I said I wouldn't participate in anything AJATT anymore, but seeing as he decided to rip parts of my post and use them for marketing I'll make an exception.
I've already asked him to remove all quotes that are parts of my post. I'd suggest everyone who doesn't want their words to be used for something that has financial gain as the ultimate goal (or one of the goals, however you want to see it) do the same. If you don't mind it so much, I think you should at least ask Khatz to include a link to what you originally wrote with the quotes as to not be misrepresented.
That's it, see you in other parts of the forums.
(and just in case it isn't entirely obvious, this post is also not OK to copy-pasta with, Khatz)
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - bodhisamaya - 2011-08-03
Haha. Go to his site and keep hitting refresh to see your quotes
Every Japanese learning forum on the internet must be ripping him, unless half of them are made up.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Jarvik7 - 2011-08-03
He is making many of them up or at least massaging them.
I saw something I said mixed up with something I didn't.
..unless someone else noticed that at least one of his youtube videos seems rehearsed but said he can't speak Japanese at all (which I never said).
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Offshore - 2011-08-03
How many threads have there been trashing Khatz over the years & especially when it comes to his paid products? Jeez, I don't particularly like the guy & I don't care what he does with his "business" but man. Okay, people don't like Khatz. Great, move on. Seems like a waste of energy to me to even worry about what Khatz is doing. Is he personally effecting your life, JP studies, or money at all? No, then why the heck do people care so much about it? Chances are the people who bought or are thinking about buying Silverspoon, aren't going to change their mind because the majority of people here seem to think it's some scam or something (which it probably is in all honesty, I don't buy the 18 month fluency). Anyway, It's all subjective what someone thinks is worth their time and/or money. You hate it, that's cool. I honestly don't think Silverspoon is worth it either, but who am I to go tell other people it's not right for them? One man's trash is another man's treasure.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Thora - 2011-08-03
It has nothing to do with whether we like him. It has nothing to do with hating it. It should be possible to discuss Silverspoon without it being just "another anti-AJATT thread".
If there are, as you say, several threads "trashing" AJATT's paid products, perhaps that has something to do with the quality of the products, rather than whether people hate Khatz?
Look outside, there are all kinds of people working to improve the situations of other people. The whole "It doesn't affect you, why do you care?" argument is a waste of breath. It only makes sense if where no one is negatively affected.
People need information to determine worth. There hasn't been adequate information about Silverspoon. At least 3 SS bloggers say they are reviewing it so others will have more info because Khatz's description was too vague and they didn't know what they were buying. Other people exchanging opinions about Silverspoon is also good. Ultimately, customers make up their own minds.
Neither of us know whether or not potential customers or Khatzumoto might be influenced in some way by this thread.
I think each of these points has already been covered.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - aphasiac - 2011-08-03
This thread is boring, and seems to be moving onto the almost fanatical.
I'm going to re-iterate again - if people who actually bought the product (i.e. saw the value in it that others maybe dont see) start complaining that silverspoon was a waste of time, or if Khatz runs off with everyones money, then I will change my opinion of him. He's no guru to me, my opinion can be swayed, whatever.
Now if silverspoon people actually make good progress, and claim fluency at the end of the program, I hope the haters on here are man enough to do the same and give him some credit. Sadly though I'm assuming they won't and they'll still make the claim that better more relevant ways of learning are out there (with no links to them of course..).
oh and as someone said in this or the other silverspoon thread - this set of posts has really put me off coming to this site. I have never seen such negativity on here before, and frankly this is one of the few sites I like to come to with no drama. Really made me change my opinion on a few people, that's for sure..
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nadiatims - 2011-08-03
I don't understand why it annoys you so much that people criticise khatz and his methods. I and I think others have given all sorts of concrete reasons why. Isn't this one of the purposes of the forum? To discuss the relative merits of different methods and products. That will involve hearing some opinions you don't agree with. This is a good thing. If you want to here unanimous praise go hang out in Khatz's comment section or something.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nohika - 2011-08-03
aphasiac Wrote:if people who actually bought the product (i.e. saw the value in it that others maybe dont see) start complaining that silverspoon was a waste of time, or if Khatz runs off with everyones money, then I will change my opinion of him. He's no guru to me, my opinion can be swayed, whatever.A couple comments here...a lot of the people at the beginning who buy into Silverspoon aren't going to comprehend/understand how the things are "bad". They don't have the experience or the knowledge to question Khatz.
Now if silverspoon people actually make good progress, and claim fluency at the end of the program, I hope the haters on here are man enough to do the same and give him some credit.
And the JLPT1-argument, and someone (might've been a different thread) mentioned that'd be too high of a bar...Khatz promises fluency in like 95% of whatever and being able to read newspapers and whatnot. That sounds around JLPT-1 ish to me unless you're talking about like hiragana times or something.
If they actually do make good progress, it's still hard to "stop hatin'" since there's no proof that Silverspoon is what did it, even if they swear up and down the magical flower of whatever. You can't visibly SEE it and for some people that's required for them to "believe". For all we know they've been ignoring Silverspoon for the past 8 months and studying like ta121212 on their own.
I don't hate Khatz.I doubt Silverspoon works as well as he would like it to, especially if he's opening it up to more people. I wonder if he lost his job or something.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Christoph_D - 2011-08-03
aphasiac Wrote:Now if silverspoon people actually make good progress, and claim fluency at the end of the program, I hope the haters on here are man enough to do the same and give him some credit.There may be a difference between claiming to be fluent and being fluent.
I'm quite sure people can convince themselves to be fluent, to understand nearly everything, and all that, and yet still fail to pass higher JLPT levels or other objective measures of reading/listening comprehension.
Maybe Silverspoon will do exactly that: convince people that they are fluent even if they can't put two sentences together without a mistake. Of course, they don't notice their mistakes, and other people are generally too polite to point them out. I've seen that with people who learn English. I'm sure the same thing happens with Japanese.
Well, I switched my definition of fluency from "reading comprehension" to "writing" in just two paragraphs. This is another point, people's definition of "fluency" is not set in stone. Maybe Silverspoon changes the definition a little bit per day, until after 18 months it matches your progress and you can confidently call yourself fluent.
Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that you will have made significant progress at that point if you stick to the program. It's just the word "fluency" that is too vague to count for anything.
If you are adult-level fluent, you wouldn't have to study to pass JLPT N1, I agree with Jarvik7 here. If someone needs to study for that, I wouldn't call him fluent.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nest0r - 2011-08-03
Oh, I was wondering how Khatzumoto was able to incorporate our ideas on his site so quickly. I thought it was doe-eyed leech volunteers scouring the web for free information to place in the subscription-only area of AJATT, but I see he has a tool that collects and mangles the words here? (I guess that's designed to appeal to the same people who buy products marketed in viral advertising.) That would explain why the ideas seem so diluted. Like a URL shuffler that's anchored to AJATT's site instead of the user tools posted here? http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5267
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nohika - 2011-08-03
nest0r Wrote:Oh, I was wondering how Khatzumoto was able to incorporate our ideas on his site so quickly. I thought it was doe-eyed leech volunteers scouring the web for free information to place in the subscription-only area of AJATT, but I see he has a tool that collects and mangles the words here? (I guess that's designed to appeal to the same people who buy products marketed in viral advertising.) That would explain why the ideas seem so diluted. Like a URL shuffler that's anchored to AJATT's site instead of the user tools posted here? http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5267I have to say, some of the "praise of AJATT Silverspoon" on his site hasn't, er, exactly been so praiseful. It makes me laugh. I was thinking it was something like that...the script looks for sites/forums/threads with certain keywords (AJATT, Silverspoon) and pulls random quotes from them? It's kind of amusing.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nest0r - 2011-08-03
nohika Wrote:Yeah it's so funny and self-deprecating, it makes me like Khatzumoto and want to pay him for stuff. ;p It's catchy too, it's so clever I want to talk about it to other people, and then they'll see it and think it's clever and funny and want to buy his stuff. ^_^nest0r Wrote:Oh, I was wondering how Khatzumoto was able to incorporate our ideas on his site so quickly. I thought it was doe-eyed leech volunteers scouring the web for free information to place in the subscription-only area of AJATT, but I see he has a tool that collects and mangles the words here? (I guess that's designed to appeal to the same people who buy products marketed in viral advertising.) That would explain why the ideas seem so diluted. Like a URL shuffler that's anchored to AJATT's site instead of the user tools posted here? http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5267I have to say, some of the "praise of AJATT Silverspoon" on his site hasn't, er, exactly been so praiseful. It makes me laugh. I was thinking it was something like that...the script looks for sites/forums/threads with certain keywords (AJATT, Silverspoon) and pulls random quotes from them? It's kind of amusing.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Amset - 2011-08-03
nohika Wrote:I have to say, some of the "praise of AJATT Silverspoon" on his site hasn't, er, exactly been so praiseful.He is making a joke, to show that he knows how over-the-top his fluency claims sound and to make critics sound irrational. He puts some in there that sound stupid out of context, and the idea is that it makes all the criticism just sound like "hate". It excuses him from actually having to respond to criticism, because by putting it there he is trying to imply it is so unfounded he doesn't need to respond.
There, you can put that in the banner Khatz. Make sure you use ellipses to make it "a joke...over-the-top fluency claims...unfounded"
.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - nohika - 2011-08-03
It made me kind of sad reading some of the links to the silverspoon blogs because literally some had "countdown to fluency" and about how they were "guaranteed" to be awesomely fluent and be like the Japanese Pokemon Master or something.
And amset, that makes a lot of sense...in a weird twisted way.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - IceCream - 2011-08-03
Thora Wrote:........ and responded to, though those responses have been ignored.
.....
.....
I think each of these points has already been covered.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - TheKorv - 2011-08-03
I believe Khatz uses this forum as one of his resources because he has linked this site on his website.
He used all the information on the web and created his own "method" out of it.
He utilizes all information fairly well...
I find about two thirds of his "table of contents" to be incredibly useful.
Also, in the "Table of Contents" the order of articles and the articles themselves are very structured and detailed. IMO.
He's got a lot of other random ideas throughout the site that aren't useful; but that doesn't mean his blog is terrible. Or "mediocre crap"
I'd say his blog is at least above average.
Silverspoon is stupid though.
30/month is fine.
60/month is stupid.
The pricing and refund policy is horrible.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Thora - 2011-08-03
Amset Wrote:He is making a joke, to show that he knows how over-the-top his fluency claims sound and to make critics sound irrational. He puts some in there that sound stupid out of context, and the idea is that it makes all the criticism just sound like "hate". It excuses him from actually having to respond to criticism, because by putting it there he is trying to imply it is so unfounded he doesn't need to respond.Yes!
Much of his content operates the same way, not just this "reclaim the criticism" schtick. So I suppose the touted accountability was just more of his "fun writing style" too. Maybe the refund stuff is just a big joke too? All this ironic, sarcastic, self-referential, humourous stuff is just oh-so-clever - it insulates him from criticism and yet he knows many followers take it literally. Best of both worlds. yech.
Here's a few examples of those other criticisms the legitimate criticisms are buried amongst to give you a quick idea:
Quote:Khatz is ugly and gay and writes like a faggot.Cool. I wonder what his target market is? But he's above it...but of it...but above it...
After what he did to my mother I can never trust him again.
Khatz gets turned on by animal cruel.
And if anyone calls him on his crap? Well...they have no sense of humour of course. Haters don't. So predictable. So lame.
Khatz, perhaps try writing something straight in English and in Japanese. And try saying something straight in Japanese. Someday you'll actually have to take off the mask and be accountable. Just kidding.
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - Tzadeck - 2011-08-03
I don't know why people are treating the criticism of SilverSpoon as if it's over the top.
Here's an example of why I dislike AJATT. Look at his section "Classes suck."
Khatz writes:
"Classes suck. Not only do they cost money, but they’re boring and they don’t work. You only need look as far as the number of people taking Japanese classes, versus the number of people who are actually good at Japanese. The people in charge of the classes will tell you that it’s because “Japanese is hard”; “Japanese is different”; “it’s the kanji”; “those East Asians are so inscrutable; they just don’t think like we do”. Bollocks! Absolute bollocks! There is nothing fundamentally difficult or different about Japanese. Very normal human beings speak, read and write it on a daily basis. The problem might be with the way we are learning it, but it would be unprofessional, dishonest, and an act of the most severe bollocks, to blame the object of our learning."
And, about teachers:
"They know it doesn’t work. They know that success in their classes is only tangentially related to success in actual Japanese. Many of them even admit that “you need to do Japanese outside the classroom”, but too often, that takes the form of goofy busywork assignments. Filling in the blanks. Woo! I’m going to be the best Japanese-blank-filler ever!…Please."
Now, how does Khatz know all this? I'd say it's because of his life experience. He's probably been in language classes before. I'm sure he's met tons and tons of people who are taking Japanese class, etc. And from all this he's determined that classes don't work, that homework is busywork, and so on.
But, my experience with classes are completely different. I took Japanese at college--which, incidentally, wasn't really costing me any extra money because I was just taking it on top of my other classes--for a couple of my years there. We used Japanese: The Spoken Language, which is a great f'in textbook. And I had great teachers.
Since college I've done RTK, sentences in Anki, have read through a good amount of resources like the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar, have done JLPT prep, etc. But the things I learned in my Japanese class stuck with me in a way that things I learned outside of Japanese class didn't. Because that textbook is so good, and my teachers were so good at explaining what we were learning, and because we had a lot of time to practice in class (our lab teacher was under contract to never speak English to us, even outside of class, so classes were done entirely in Japanese). And I certainly never filled in any blanks.
(There's one exception--I did learn a lot that really stuck with me in "Making Sense of Japanese", which is another great book. Incidentally, it cites the textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language many times.)
So, you see, my experiences have been completely different. In fact, since I've lived in Japan as an English teacher for three years I've met tons and tons of people who have learned Japanese to varying degrees. I've recommended things like Anki and RTK to some of them who were looking for self-study method. But of the people I've met, ultimately the people who took classes or take a class while in Japan improve at a faster pace than those who don't, even if they do serious self study. (In fact, a lot of people I've met who are really fluent used the textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language)
Now, I'm not saying that I'm right about classes and that Khatz is wrong. I'm saying that Khatz has a lot of anecdotal evidence that says that classes suck. And I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that says that classes work well. But our experiences mean nothing, because neither one of us has enough data to actually prove that we're correct.
What's more, besides us just not having enough data, humans trick themselves. Maybe I decided early on that classes help, so now when I look at people I know who study Japanese, I'm biased in such a way that I attribute Japanese improvement to classes. And Khatz decided early on that classes don't work, so when he sees people who are good and have taken classes, he attributes their ability to something other than classes.
So, this is why anecdotal evidence is useless. The problem is that Khatz talks as if he's very sure of his method and his opinion, because he apparently has no idea of the limitations of anecdotal evidence. In reality, everything he says on his blog is anecdotal evidence, which is never never never worth taking seriously. I dislike AJATT, literally, for epistemological reasons.
So, when he starts charging a lot of money for his services, I have a problem with it.
To me it's like this--someone makes a skin cream that says that it will make your wrinkles go away. Now, the person who makes the cream is commited to the task, and knows a little bit about how other wrinkle creams work. And based on that kind of information he makes the cream. He uses the cream, and it seems to work. And he gives it to other people, and a bunch of people say that it works. He starts selling the cream, without actually doing any real trials to see whether it works--that is, trials that are controlled rather then anecdotal.
The problem is that WE KNOW that humans are really bad at determining whether or not that kind of thing is actually working. Humans trick themselves too easily. So all that anecdotal evidence about skin cream is useless. It could very well not work at all, and yet the people using it would think it was working for various reasons.
Khatz of course, is the skin cream creator. He wants to make a good product, and thinks that he has, but he could be wrong. But, it just so happens, Khatz does not talk about this in a realistic way (i.e., he doesn't realistically consider his chances of being wrong), and that's the problem with it. He's content with reassuring you with how IT REALLY WORKS!!!!
Anyway, I would feel a lot better about AJATT if he had some idea about the limitations of his own experiences (I know he doesn't have the means to determine empirically if his method works, so it would be sufficient if he admitted the extent to which he is unsure). And I would feel a lot better about Silverspoon if the cost was a lot less--there's a difference between a skin cream that might not work that you buy in a drug store for 10 dollars, and a skin cream that might not work that is sold as a luxury product at 80 bucks a pop.
(Note that when I'm talking about a language learning method working, I mean that it works better than other random methods. As I said before, anything will work if you spend enough time doing it)
Send me $1500! (AJATT Silverspoon) - IceCream - 2011-08-03
Tzadeck Wrote:I don't know why people are treating the criticism of SilverSpoon as if it's over the top.because people are blowing both it's importance and pretty much everything he ever says way out of proportion, and going with the most negative readings and motives they can possibly think of for the stuff he says / does.
btw, that's a HORRIBLE analogy
almost every beauty product you'll ever see states some ridiculous claim with a small * that you find on the bottom, at the back, saying "according to our survey" or "according to Cosmo magazine" or some other totally unscientific study lol. And yes, they do it on both £5 and £80 products.