I'm currently attending several volunteer (free) based Japanese classrooms in my area and surroundings and I was wondering how would paid classes differ? (I guess that if I look I will find them but I doubt they'll offer a free demo lesson). What do you think about this and what have been your experience?

Growl Wrote:I'm currently attending several volunteer (free) based Japanese classrooms in my area and surroundings and I was wondering how would paid classes differ? (I guess that if I look I will find them but I doubt they'll offer a free demo lesson). What do you think about this and what have been your experience?

Although some crazy ppl try to say classes are bad (lol), they are actually a great way to build a solid foundation in Japanese. Not only do you get a basic understanding of grammar, you also get a basic vocabulary as well as speaking/listening practice. Of course, some teachers are better than others, but if you can find a class at a community college you won't regret it.

Now whether its worth the money is an entirely different argument.

I think it really depends on the teacher / class. There is no real answer to this question. You need to try it.

I tried Chinese at my college for a few classes, but it was really slow, and the language did not grow on me so I quit.

It all depends on how much prior knowledge and experience you have had with the language, or how 'independent' you prefer to be. If you've got zero knowledge about a subject, then classes are probably a good place to start if you can afford them, as you'd assume you'd get a good grounding in the basics from someone who knows their stuff. I, however, took a paid class about a year after I'd been learning by myself and found them very frustrating; half the content we covered I already knew, and I was a long way ahead of my peers which made class-based conversation classes somewhat superfluous. That said, my tutor was very supportive outside of class hours, and gave me 'extra' tuition through essay-based projects, and I made a lot of friends.

It's definately a good idea to talk to tutors and have a look at a course-outline, and course objectives before deciding on taking any class.

Taking regular classes is definitely effective when it comes to speaking ability. In my opinion most of the learning (i.e. srsing vocabulary chunks in Anki, learning grammar etc.) can be done at home with a good book and a computer. What is good to be done in group work or with a tutor is TALKING.

I'm taking Japanese classes on skype now and I regret having neglected this important part for so long. You will soon recognise how few words you actually need to know for daily conversation with friends and the like.

In your case I would just take one class and see how it was.

I've taken quite a number of classes at various places, and the short answer to your question is that Yes, paid classes are more effective.

If you're in Japan and taking free lessons at a community center or similar place, then you're likely to get a volunteer with little training or experience at being a teacher. While some people are naturals, many aren't, and it's the luck of the draw. But what really separates teachers from laypeople is planning.

A good teacher will assess your current levels and goals, and then select materials appropriate for helping you reach those goals. Then they'll work through the materials step by step with you. A layperson won't do that. They'll try to teach you without a plan or a roadmap, so the lessons end up going all over the place, and don't build upon each other in a coherent fashion. You need that roadmap to make sure that Lesson 2 builds upon Lesson 1. In education, planning is like gold.

It's like a haircut. Anyone can do it, but there's a reason you'd want to spend the money for a professional.

I took two semesters of basic japanese back in college because I was interested (though not as serious as I am now) and it was a nice break from all the horrible engineering classes I was taking at the time.

Comparing that experience to self study several years after school, I can say that it was nice having face-to-face interactions and to get feedback on speaking, but the progress we made as a class was sooooooo slow. In reviewing the same material on my own, I have covered it in 3 months as opposed to 10. We also did little to no kanji study during that time.

I haven't attended any free courses, but the upsides of actual classwork are improving speaking/listening skills and getting instant answers to your questions. But I'm finding otherwise better ways to learn/study on my own.

muteki99 Wrote:I took two semesters of basic japanese back in college . . . but the progress we made as a class was sooooooo slow. But I'm finding otherwise better ways to learn/study on my own.

I think it's important to study on your own as well, but since we're on the subject of classes, let's note the difference between education and training, because it's significant.

Geometry is taught in education. But building a house requires training. Same thing with Japanese.

Your college Japanese classes were education. Education provides general knowledge with few, or any, specific goals. All that algebra and history and chemistry you learned in school added to your overall brain mass, but they didn't necessarily prepare you to do anything. Nor were it intended to. Nor was your college Japanese class.

Training is different. It has a specific goal in mind, and it prepares you to accomplish that task. That's what a language school does. It says, "In six months, you'll know these phrases, this kanji, and be able to use this grammar." This is the same thing many people do in self-study, by the way. They plot a course, make a plan, and follow it.

If you're interested in being able to actually use Japanese, it's not college classes you want. It's a language school.

Having started working with a paid tutor five weeks ago, I can say yes, it's been extremely helpful for my speaking ability. My hesistancy in speaking has decreased markedly, and my ability to call up key words on demand is steadily climbing. Like Tori-kun says, you don't need that many words to communicate effectively; you just need to have certain words and patterns down pat.

I don't know that I would say that paid *education* (e.g., a typical college course) is helpful, but paid *practice* - practicing Japanese-only output with a patient native teacher - is worth its weight in gold.

I went to Yamasa in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, for about 3 months a year and a half ago, and it made a huge difference in my Japanese ability. Going to school 6-7 hours a day, in a full-on Japanese environment, needing it to eat, drink, etc., is a great way to boost language skills in a short period of time.

Also, it's Okazaki, so you're not going to be able to "English" your way out of most situations. (Japanese was the only way I could communicate with some of my classmates, who didn't speak English, and it was the only way to communicate with the teachers.)

I highly recommend that school, but any good language school will do. It's great for concentrated language learning, IMO.

But if you can't afford to go there and live there for some period of time, then there are alternatives.

For the last few weeks, I've been trying this to help with N1 prep and generally keep my Japanese levels in shape, and keep my language knowledge growing: (someone recommended it here, thanks, whoever it was)
http://www.japonin.com/

I like the Flex classes so far, and the price is pretty good (if you pay in Yen, and not in Dollars. Their dollar pricing is way out of date. 円安万歳!)

The way the courses are taught, you can just 'drop in' at any point you want to.

The classes are voice chat + text chat + a powerpoint/whiteboard viewer + video (optional). The teachers even take notes for you in the chat box, so you can just download it all to a text file when the class finishes. So far, my classes have been small. About 3 people per class. The cap is 7 people.

You can check the syllabus for the content any lesson offered ahead of time; the texts for advanced /intermediate are Kanzen Master 1/2級 grammar books, or the N1/N2 versions; and the teachers so far have been very helpful.

I'd say that the general level of teaching is roughly about the same as Yamasa. (I'm taking advanced/N1 classes. No idea how it would be at lower levels.) I did the 3-lesson trial, and went ahead and bought some more lessons. It's easier than driving an hour each way to the nearest place here in NC, it's cheaper than going back to Japan, and I can do lessons whenever they fit into my schedule as long as I have Internet.

I will have to think about how I deal with the material both before and after classes, though. There's some new stuff to consider, like "How do I put this in my Anki deck?" "How do I keep from forgetting this?" etc.

Do the 3-lesson trial first, to see if you like it.

EDIT: Just after I say that, they went and changed their Dollar prices:
http://www.japonin.com/doll_yen.html
Still, I saved some money paying in Yen with Paypal, FWIW. Use XE to figure it out if you're going to buy lessons.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:If you're interested in being able to actually use Japanese, it's not college classes you want. It's a language school.

Oh certainly. My time taking these classes were little more than an interesting diversion from the other work I was doing at the time. I would have to continue studying there for ages if i ever wanted it to be useful in the long run.

It did however provide quite a bit of a jump start on pronunciation and kana that would have taken me much longer to figure out on my own.

At my university the Japanese classes were a joke. The Japanese teachers could barely speak English. They couldn't explain anything because they couldn't speak English.

Also apparently it is not appropriate for a student to question a teacher's response so even though it was clear that the teacher did not understand the question we weren't allowed to ask for clarification. We just got glared at.

This described the 2 Japanese teachers I had. The TAs were just as bad.

--

Not sure if it would be the same where you live, but I think using that time to make some japanese friends (even if just online) would be much more productive.

At my university the problem was that everyone knew too much English. Same with the Japan club... Everyone always reverted to English.

it will depend a lot on the school, teachers and other students etc. You'd want the teachers who understand and have experienced second language acquisition themselves and that have designed a system around letting students get a lot of genuine practice. The key word here being genuine. A lot of language classrooms seem to be based almost exclusively around repetition and rehearsal of scripted dialogues and scenarios that are to be memorized. Whereas genuine practice (that simulates reality) should be encourage on the fly interpretation/generation of easy but ultimately unknown messages that use the vocabulary/patterns that you're learning.

In general I've found language classes less effective than self-study but I do think there are some people who aren't motivated or know how to self study and they probably do better within a class.

I also think classroom learning can tend to be undermined by the group dynamic.

Based on my experience， it was good．． I've learned a lot from my professor， thus giving me　a very good foundation in learning more.. I only paid about $70 for the whole course that last for about 10 weeks... And I can say, it's very much worth it..

Paid classes, and later a paid tutor, were really the two things that gave me the ability to speak in Japanese. Otherwise I feel like I would be much worse at speaking but maybe much the same in terms of reading ability.

Actually, I just came to the realization the other day that my Japanese class in college changed my life more than any other class I ever took. I took Japanese on a whim, only moderately intersted in Japanese culture. I liked learning the language a lot, I liked the method we used, and the teacher was amazing. And then, basically because of that class I majored in Asian Studies and moved to Japan after graduating. Been five years, and I'm still here. I'm right back smack-dab in the middle of a quarter-life crisis, but that's another story.

@Tzadeck
what was the method used in your class? And don't you think 5 years speaking with people might have gotten you where you are today?

I get the feeling the standard pattern for most people I meet who are good is either:
they had the basics down from classes/formal study/homestays and then spent a solid 2-3 years immersed
or
(in my case) gambarued to basic fluency alone and then immersed, achieving pretty decent level (over the hump) in maybe 2 years. (More precisely, I passed the old JLPT 3kyuu after 4 months in Japan and passed 2kyuu 6 months later)

it seems to me, there is this critical mass of basic fluency and once you reach that it's basically smooth sailing and you keep learning more as long as you get exposure to new people, media and situations. Classes can help get people there. But I have met people who studied Japanese at uni and never achieved even basic fluency despite living in Japan a couple of years. The quality of the class matters a lot.

also i'm in much the same boat. Came to Japan on somewhat of a whim. Still here 6 years later...

Maybe I can answer this question in 3 months when I get back from 2 months at a language school in Sapporo.

I have found myself in what I think is a pretty nice situation. I am doing an internship for them where I help out with their website, and help other students if needed, and in return they give me their language lessons for free. While I work I have to only use Japanese, but they know I am not fluent.

Seems like a sweet deal as I also get to put the internship on my CV. How much that is worth I don't know but considering I plan to move to Japan after uni I think having experience of already working in Japan and some Japanese references wont exactly hurt.

nadiatims Wrote:@Tzadeck
And don't you think 5 years speaking with people might have gotten you where you are today?

No, I don't think five years of living in Japan and talking to people had any effect on my Japanese ability </Massive pile of sarcasm>

nadiatims Wrote:what was the method used in your class?

We did Japanese: The Spoken Language. We did about a semester of just speaking (the textbook is written in romaji, but generally you're supposed to memorize the vocab, conversations, etc. by listening to them, not by looking at the romaji). An early emphasis was on correct pronunciation and correct grammar.

Then, after the first semester we started learning kana and eventually kanji in a different book, but didn't devote too much class time to it.

Once we had basic grammar down and correct pronunciation, it became a more open speaking class. Generally we had lab three days a week, usually with about five students. We would start with a free open conversation (talking about whatever topic we or the teacher felt like), then present a memorized dialogue, then do drills to practice a particular grammar point according to a formula (usually with pictures--for example, when practicing ませんか we would be given a picture of a cake or something and we would need to say ケーキを食べませんか), then do some kind of open roll playing (an example for ませんか: Pretend that the professor is a new friend you invited over to your house. She comes over and there are a bunch of things around like things to do, foods, drinks, etc. First welcome her into the house, etc., have a little conversation, then offer to do things together or eat and drink--お水を飲みませんか？テニスをしませんか？) , and then maybe one more activity depending on what we were learning.

The other two days every weak we learned grammar and other language knowledge in English. We had a separate professor for the grammar and the lab. The lab teacher had it in her contract that she could never speak to her students in English even outside of class, except in the event of an emergency--including former students.

It was a ridiculously good course. I think if I spent three more years on the course and just two years in Japan, I would be better at Japanese than I am now (five years in Japan) by a long shot. Some of the things I've learned in Japan are kind of impossible to learn in a course, so I do think some time in Japan was necessary to get to my level.

lardycake Wrote:Maybe I can answer this question in 3 months when I get back from 2 months at a language school in Sapporo.

I'm getting off-topic here, but depending on which school in Sapporo, I may know some people who went there. Several years back, I lived in Chitose, the town with the main airport serving Sapporo (about 35 min away by rapid train).

I begin with a disclaimer: I am no expert, or even an intermediate, at Japanese. I'm just giving an honest reaction to recent experiences. I apologize if any classmate reads this--no offense intended--but I must confess something. If a fellow student is reading this know I'm probably not including you at all (there were plenty of nice and respectful people in these classes, and some nice enough to extend their friendship).

I've completed two university JP classes now, the genki book being our primary text. I will make one bold declaration. When people say self study is good, they mean it. I'm entirely convinced I learned more, better, and faster with a healthy mixture of motivation and resources found in and around this forum community. Ultimately, though, the answer is some paid classes are going to be very good. However, some are not...

The two Japanese classes I've taken, each including a unique set of students, have had some of the most immature people I have ever seen in a college setting, and this coming from someone who's attended colleges longer than he cares to admit. There was overt cursing, spitting out memes and anime references over the teacher's lectures, laughing and mocking the ridiculous idea of knowing how to recognize/write Kanji correctly and in some an apparent unwillingness to learn. Ultimately I'm going to seem like an elitist prick by going on, but this is the first opportunity I've taken to vent frustration. Anyway... By the end of the second semester there were people who still couldn't read/write カタカナ, and they seemed pretty okay with that. By comparison most people here probably know it within a month of starting. Any attempts to share resources such as RtK got met with complete apathy. Overall I felt embarrassed to write kanji on the board because the class culture was apparently "don't show off or you're a prick," and there was joking going on to this effect. The teacher had to enact a never before used attendance policy due to the insane frequency of people skipping classes. I could go on. In some perverse way it was refreshing to relive the insanity of high school for a semester (笑), cliques included, but it certainly wasn't a good Japanese learning environment.

I'm going back for two more semesters to meet the requirements of a Bachelor's degree. Regardless,　I have a new found respect for self-learners and for people who exert Herculean efforts to lean Japanese, be it from RtK, Core2K6K or whatever else. Thanks for reading. :3

Chigun Wrote:I'm going back for two more semesters to meet the requirements of a Bachelor's degree. Regardless,　I have a new found respect for self-learners and for people who exert Herculean efforts to lean Japanese, be it from RtK, Core2K6K or whatever else. Thanks for reading. :3

To be honest, I find self-study to be incredibly inefficient. Its like studying without the formal education part. And at the end of the day, you can only take yourself but so far. Its an inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless. For most people, self-study will get them as far as they wish to go; however, everyone else will need a formal education.

Honestly, if people put as much effort into classes as they did into self-study, the results would be amazing. The fact of the matter is that people don't like classes, so they naturally put little effort into them. If they did, their Japanese ability would be far and above where it is from self-studying alone. Faaaar and above. It wouldn't even be close. It's the difference between that guy who dropped out of high school and the guy went to graduate school.

Sure, you can get by on self-study. Anyone can learn to be proficient in anything through self-study. But if we take that same effort and put it into formal education, forget about it. Really the only thing that should stop you from getting a formal education is time and money. If neither of those are an issue, I don't see why the heck you wouldn't seek out an awesome language course.

[Zgarbas]

EDIT: Welp. I misread that totally.

Self-study is naturally more efficient than class study. You have one "teacher" for yourself. And that teacher is highly flexible since you can just change websites/textbooks and BAM! new material. Inefficiency is brought on by personal limitations of course, but that would happen regardless of whether you're doing it formally or not.

A teacher has to focus on multiple people, so from the get go it gets less efficient. Run by the fact that teaching requires a curriculum which the teacher has to prepare, so it's not as easy to go from one thing to the next, and teachers are only humans so they might not be as good at answering your question as a dictionary might be, and multiple other factors. Then there's the fact that self-study means virtually no time limit, whereas classes can only last for a limited amount.

However, having a curriculum means extra motivation and guidance, depending on the class you get to practice production (which is not so easy with self-study), and having someone knowledgeable around means extra explanations, anecdotes and details which otherwise you might miss. Not to mention the fact that you're wasting someone else's time with the building of your curriculum and can focus on the study part, whereas with self-study a good amount of time is spent looking for resources, figuring things out, etc. Though, even when taking classes, I doubt any teacher would expect you to learn from the time spent in classes alone...

Of course, how much a class would help depends on the teacher, the environment, the curriculum, the number of hours per week, etc.

amtrack Wrote:To be honest, I find self-study to be incredibly inefficient (and so on)

Hmm, I don't know. I had a Japanese ex-girlfriend who was one of the best Japanese English-speakers I've met. She dropped out of high school, so barely studied English formally at all. She did self study for a long time, and lived in Canada for a year when she was 18, and she was incredibly amazing. Much better than a lot of people who went to college/graduate school for English, or lived in an English-speaking country for much longer than a year. Whatever she did seemed to work great. She's a bright girl, but no genius or anything like that.

Also, there are a lot of little instances I can think of when I or other people did self-study and it turned out better. For example, Richard Feynman talks somewhere about how he learned algebra from a book before he learned it in school. He considered learning it that way an important step in his understanding of math, since he understood the purpose of algebra in solving problems. In school he later learned that algebra was a series of steps in order to find the value of variables (subtract blah-blah-blah from both sides, etc.)--that's what most people learn that algebra is, but he thinks it's a huge mistake to think of it that way (he called what is taught in schools a series of steps you can teach kids to do so they don't actually have to understand algebra). This is a guy who later on, when he was studying for his PhD at Princeton under John Archibald Wheeler, intimidated Wheeler because of how much better at math he was than him.

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