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Why isn't there a thread dedicated to people uploading (vocaroo, soundcloud, youtube, etc.) audio/video of them practicing/showing off their Japanese? Those more experienced learners, bringing at least their speaking ability to the fore in some respect would serve as a nice motivation, with maybe a short back-story of the individual's study, as a little of what to expect to be able to speak after practicing for X amount of time. Recording and uploading audio is probably more of a convenience for most (especially those little too shy for the whole youtube thing).

I understand that the Japanese writing thread died off (a shame, really- I'd love to be able to waste time on here at least in Japanese, if I were capable) but maybe if you haven't got anything to write, you might have something to say? A poet? Prose? Reading the paper, even, lol.
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Arupan Wrote:[more derail]
@uisukii: I decided to record a reply just for you (lol).

https://soundcloud.com/arupan/blabla
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I'm impressed. Your pronunciation is really good too I feel.

I wonder how Benny (remember him?) is getting along. Its been a week since he did his Hiragana reading, I wonder how he has progressed since then.

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@arupan: Hi~ I thought I'd reply to you. I hate my own voice in English let alone Japanese but enjoy lol. Watch out - volume might be a bit loud!
https://soundcloud.com/koohii_ash/blahbl...hdajsdhasj
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p.s. jealous of your accent/pronunciation x)

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I've thrown together this for now. I should have asked, so if you want I can remove any of the quoted material from the opening post.

His next video is up:

t3amkill3r Wrote:His next video is up:

I've been reading this thread since it started, but I'm a tad scared to share my opinion. I couldn't get past 7 minutes. His pronunciation and the constant use of 'um' bothered me. I don't have anything to really comment on other than that I'm amazed people find him in that video 'motivating' or that he's made 'excellent progress'. I'm not one to judge, but there's noting really inspirational in that video to me. As a beginner, who has a lot to learn, I find it kind of urking. If he wants to be conversation/listening/whatever fluent (is that correct?; this thread is just a ball of confusion to me with there being constant debates about fluency) then why did he not even know what どうして was? How exactly is he approaching this? I don't feel like going through this whole thread again. Shouldn't he atleast learn basic words / sayings that every beginners text book teaches?

Although, should I even be mentioning that? He says his skills are very basic and he's not trying to really demonstrate anything. He just wants to motivate people about how language barriers won't get in the way of 'conversations'. But, haha, I personally think language barriers are huge. You will never be able to fully talk to someone unless you know their language. No amount of little gestures will get certain points through.

Bleh; I can't convey my thoughts into words. His strategy is something I personally wouldn't do, but I'll be very curious about his end result.

I sort of skipped around the video a little bit since I don't have time to watch it all, but I am mesmerized. This method is full of so much struggling. Wow, I had no idea. It's kind of really painful to watch. It looks like he had a great Skype partner, though. Kudos to him.

I'm still rooting for Benny, though. I haven't followed any of his previous language projects, so I'm really curious to see how drastically different the end results/videos will be.

MelonBerry Wrote:Shouldn't he atleast learn basic words / sayings that every beginners text book teaches?

This is what I'm thinking. I was pretty amazed he kept saying スペインにです when 1) the other person was clearly using います, so I don't know if he "should" have picked up on the fact that 「にです」 just isn't a thing? and 2) I'm pretty sure within the first (few) week(s) of beginner's classes you learn how to say にいます. And he's been studying for a week, so I wonder what exactly he's been doing.

Also, what really frustrates me is that he considers this "learning" the language. He literally admits this is cheating ("you can "cheat" and use a dictionary for both words that you don't understand"). And in his first video he basically read off a pre-translated speech. But how does this show that he has "learned" Japanese? In that first video, did he know what any of those words meant? Did he understand the grammatical patterns? Could he produce novel sentences that are at least accurate to some extent? My guess is no.

I am not knocking the use of dictionaries; I still use them on a daily basis. But spending an entire conversation looking up every other word and then reciting it, without actually committing it to memory, is in my opinion not "learning." You still don't "know" anything.

So yes, from what I've seen, Benny can "speak" Japanese. Hopefully by the end of his three months he'll actually be able to Speak Japanese.

t3amkill3r Wrote:His next video is up:

For roughly just a week of learning, his Japanese seems damn good. Or at least, his ability to make the conversation go forward.
Even after a good year or more of classes, I wasn't able to make a conversation flow like that.

Interesting video. On the one hand, he does use a pretty large vocab for someone who has only studied for 10 days, and spent some of that time just learning kana. I also heard some forms, such as て-form and たい that I don't think a beginner following a more structured grammar based study would know yet. On the other hand, there seems to be some unevenness, as there are some glaring mistakes, such as the にです part. It'll be interesting to see how his knowledge grows and evens out over three months of intensive practice.

I am interested to see how things go for him in the next couple of weeks. He definitely has courage to converse in japanese with only a week of studying and I give him props for that. I've been studying for about 9 months now and haven't conversed once with anybody.

Zarxrax Wrote:

t3amkill3r Wrote:His next video is up:

For roughly just a week of learning, his Japanese seems damn good. Or at least, his ability to make the conversation go forward.
Even after a good year or more of classes, I wasn't able to make a conversation flow like that.

Hmm I'm not so sure. That's probably the least "flowing" conversation I've ever seen in my life. I don't think any part flowed and almost every single question required some dictionary lookups, or a massive amount of thinking. I think anyone who has studied any Japanese whatsoever would be able to have a similar conversation, he did very little to help it go forward.

Not that you could expect much more after only 10 days though, in fairness.

Though he didn't understand... well anything really ... but immediately スペインには、どのくらい住んでいますか？, or どのくらいいますか？ stand out as things he didn't understand. And later どうして？ I guess its possible he learned other things and they were somehow gaps (he doesn't like the word います very much anyway it seems!), but its hard for me to see what he *did* learn.

Some things were maybe tricky, like maybe he would know the word 子ども but might not have been able to guess 子ども用. That 用 on the end definitely wouldn't have been something I'd have come across in my first 10 days of studying.

When I started studying Japanese I very quickly completed the Pimsleur course, listening to tons of it and trying to do multiple lessons a day. Its boring as hell of course, but in 10 days he could possibly have finished the first Pimsleur I unit by now. I actually think from doing that its possible he would speak and understand more than he does now, actually.

I'm more than impressed that he has the guts to put up videos of himself speaking, as well as frankly being impressed hes able to put himself through those conversations every day. I wouldn't be able to stand the awkwardness personally and I'd no doubt want to be studying another way as much as possible.

So overall I feel slightly disappointed, I was hoping for a little more I think. But then, well, its 10 days, maybe I'm being harsh.

Not bad for a week. As a learning exercise I think doing occasional skype chats like that using a dictionary is a pretty good way to build up some grammar intuition quickly, but he can't rely on that alone or he'll just end up speaking a different version of the language, a mutilated simplified version that requires natives to step down to his level. There's no getting around that to get fluent you need to be able to understand normal Japanese speech at normal speeds.

[s0apgun]

Yeah, personally I think after 10 days he'd be at a better level. Should have been like 80 hours of studying so far right? The constant umm's really became really frustrating. I think I prefer awkward silence, lol.

Comment from the video:

Quote:Are you short on Japanese people to skype? My girlfriend is native japanese and teaching me the language and I showed her this video and is so impressed she wants to talk to you (in japanese of course!)

cringeee

I expected better I have to say. After a week I could probably have done better than that, and I'm not a polyglot. But then, I'd probably not have the courage to speak after only a week.

If you think you could do better than that after a week, I think that you don't remember what it's like to be a complete beginner.

^Not only that, but a complete beginner having Japanese directed at him. Learning to catch a ball thrown into the air by yourself is a lot different than trying to catch and return a ball thrown at your face.

Then again, there is a Japanese Speaking Thread, for all quick to claim they could do better than Benny...

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I was REALLY impressed with your soundclouds guys, that was awesome! I was going to ask how you refine your skills, but perhaps I will do so on the thread that was made for it.

[railed]
I usually lurk but thought I'd briefly jump in. Benny's video is very uncomfortable for me to watch. I think I would have more respect if he gave more credence to some more tried and true (researched) ideas especially for the beginning stages (i.e. input hypothesis). His whole idea of becoming "fluent" in three months would be more plausible if he at least gave some time in the beginning to a) get some nice input and get used to the sounds/basics before trying to speak and b) learn basic pronunciation.

I think in this way, we can see if it's possible to really nail comfortable, fluid output by an output heavy focus in a short period of time with intensive practice... but doing so without basic understanding or command of the spoken form seems... unlikely to me. I'm not even talking about weeks or months of listening before you speak... just a solid number of hours of repeatedly practicing or mimicking (shadowing, I guess), and perhaps a solid number of hours of (gasp) comprehensible input. Only my thoughts... because I'm not fluent, in the output sense, yet. And so, even though I don't think his method will amount to the most bang for your buck, I applaud his effort and his zeal.

On the topic of fluency, I think we are mostly talking about the flow/control of effortless output anyway, right? At least, that's what I think Benny's seems to be. Yeah, need to put at least a little bit of homework in at the beginning and doing so through Output alone... ugh.

Tzadeck Wrote:If you think you could do better than that after a week, I think that you don't remember what it's like to be a complete beginner.

You're probably right but at the same time it's hard to compare. Most people aren't looking to cram as much initial study in the first week, whereas for this guy it's basically his job to be doing these 3 month language sessions. I still don't understand why anyone would find this guy or his methods interesting, but that's besides the point.

[s0apgun]

Tzadeck Wrote:If you think you could do better than that after a week, I think that you don't remember what it's like to be a complete beginner.

True for an average person but Benny has been doing this language thing for a while. I would have expected after 10 days he could at least express some more basic phrases. It seems right now he understands kana, a handful of vocab, and some simple grammar rules after 80 hours of studying. I think if Benny just put that much time into a shadowing book like 「日本語を話そう！」he could be much further along right now with HIS goal.

NightSky Wrote:When I started studying Japanese I very quickly completed the Pimsleur course, listening to tons of it and trying to do multiple lessons a day. Its boring as hell of course, but in 10 days he could possibly have finished the first Pimsleur I unit by now. I actually think from doing that its possible he would speak and understand more than he does now, actually.

I also started with the Pimsleur course, then Assimil and iknow, and I agree with this. It did a really good job of building my confidence for learning the language and I was very comfortable with all the words and language it covered. The amount of vocabulary was less than the later programs I used but I believe it was still useful as a confidence builder.

Thinking about it now, I believe doing Pimsleur courses combined with skype lessons could accomplish most of what Benny is aiming for.

Here is Benny's review of the Pimsleur method. He thinks it gives irrelevant contexts which is fair enough, but the majority of the language is going to be the same no matter the context ね?
But I suppose for his method which focuses mainly on speaking in everyday contexts it's a valid criticism.
Maybe I spoke too soon when I said I thought I could do better than him. What he has accomplished is impressive enough, even if it was a bit cringe worthy.

Thanks, I read his review. I don't totally disagree with it. I think the confidence it builds could still help somebody looking for similar results without already having the confidence he does.