I think hes doing pretty well.

Yes its not fluent and for sure he'll get nowhere near 2kyuu level which I think was his original target, but hes clearly putting the effort in and hes definitely doing better than most people would after 2 months of study.

[RawToast]

He's definitely improved since his last video which makes me optimistic. I struggled to understand his last video through a combination of my poor listening and his poor production; but I can follow this one

For some reason I can't get to his website at the moment... I wondered when he was going to Japan. I think if he goes in January he might be able to converse to a 'fluent' (flowing, without many pauses) level towards the end of his trip. His listening might end up at N2/N3 level and it would be interesting to see him try just the listening section of the online sample test.

Oh, his site works now xD He is going in early January.

RawToast Wrote:His listening might end up at N2/N3 level and it would be interesting to see him try just the listening section of the online sample test.

Sorry, but No Way. Not even close.

Speaking is a piece of cake compared to listening---you're in complete control. That's just watching someone do a pattern they've practiced, like me playing "The Entertainer" on piano. Just because I can do one song half ass doesn't mean I can "play the piano."

The real test of fluency is listening. Being able to answer questions and have a two-way discussion is the skill that's needed in real life.

He'd be lucky to be N4 by early January. But okay, prove me wrong. Let's see Mr. Benny Lewis take just the JLPT listening tests at the end of 3 months. He won't do it, but somehow he'll find a way to claim he's "between B1 and B2" or "fluent."

The JLPT listening tests are short enough to do N4, N3, and N2 in a morning. So prove me wrong.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to playing "Blackbird" on guitar.

23 pages of this.

Edit: page number correction.

Not bad for two months, but still false advertising.

Not too bad for two months, he still needs to work on his accent though. Watching it made me remember how hard it was to be a beginner, and be grateful that I'm passed that stage.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to playing "Blackbird" on guitar.

There's this guy here who plays that song, with speakers, outside my apartment several times a day every weekend. Thankfully, the rain and cold have been settling in, so he hasn't been showing up lately. Unfortunately, this weekend was on the warm side, and so he returned. Fortunately, I have great full-ear headphones.

I used to truly love that song, but that guy and all the other ones posing as sensitive and profound while playing it on the beach and college campuses have more or less ruined it for me. Now I instinctively go for Pantera or Slayer when I hear the first few notes coming through my windows.

I think his vocab has improved a lot, but he has to practice using あの or えっと instead of umm and his うん sounded really off to me

vileru Wrote:

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to playing "Blackbird" on guitar.

There's this guy here who plays that song, with speakers, outside my apartment several times a day every weekend. Thankfully, the rain and cold have been settling in, so he hasn't been showing up lately. Unfortunately, this weekend was on the warm side, and so he returned. Fortunately, I have great full-ear headphones.

I used to truly love that song, but that guy and all the other ones posing as sensitive and profound while playing it on the beach and college campuses have more or less ruined it for me. Now I instinctively go for Pantera or Slayer when I hear the first few notes coming through my windows.

You really should tell him to go bugger off... I can't imagine how annoying that would be T_T

vileru Wrote:There's this guy here who plays that song, with speakers, outside my apartment several times a day every weekend. Thankfully, the rain and cold have been settling in, so he hasn't been showing up lately. Unfortunately, this weekend was on the warm side, and so he returned. Fortunately, I have great full-ear headphones.

I used to truly love that song, but that guy and all the other ones posing as sensitive and profound while playing it on the beach and college campuses have more or less ruined it for me. Now I instinctively go for Pantera or Slayer when I hear the first few notes coming through my windows.

Haha. I've probably ruined a lot of songs for the people around me, unfortunately. But in my defense I'm a guitarist, so it's just because you have to practice things so much to really get them down. Recently I learned the Johnny B Goode intro solo and all the little licks, and I can't imagine that the people who live near me ever want to hear any of them again (although, luckily, the verses are just a blues chop so I didn't need to play them very much to get them down).

And yes, screw anyone playing Blackbird on a beach.

As for Benny, I think he's doing quite well for two months. I know a guy who's lived in Japan for seven years that would do a bit worse, haha.

He is doing quite well!

I'm impressed that he was able to pull off that thing:

僕は外国人のための電車の別料金を見つけたので二十一日間乗り放題のパスを買います。

[RawToast]

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

RawToast Wrote:His listening might end up at N2/N3 level and it would be interesting to see him try just the listening section of the online sample test.

Sorry, but No Way. Not even close.

He'd be lucky to be N4 by early January. But okay, prove me wrong. Let's see Mr. Benny Lewis take just the JLPT listening tests at the end of 3 months. He won't do it, but somehow he'll find a way to claim he's "between B1 and B2" or "fluent."

The JLPT listening tests are short enough to do N4, N3, and N2 in a morning. So prove me wrong.

I did say I was optimistic and that listening would be after his time in Japan, which I assume will be the end of January. So he may go at N4 and come back at N3 -- listening only. Still that's more like 4 months.

I also want to see him do that, even if it is just the online example tests.

Yeah, I'm not in any way criticizing what you wrote. Like you (and I think, many people) I'd just like to see some measure of this "fluency," because it's not difficult for people to BS about the things they want to BS about. But that doesn't make you fluent.

Benny promotes his "language hacking" methods, which somehow differ from "studying my ass off," and since he's doing it with Japanese, okay, after 3 months, how many things can you talk about, and to what depth? Will that be for here or to go? Do you want cream and sugar? One way or round-trip? These are everyday questions.

The JLPT is a standardized measure of Japanese ability used world-wide. Half a million people take the test every year. And here's one guy who's devised a shortcut method. Great. So back it up. Take the test.

What's the JLPT level you're supposed to be at after 3 months of studying your ass off, anyway? N3?

Vempele Wrote:What's the JLPT level you're supposed to be at after 3 months of studying your ass off, anyway? N3?

If we're talking about the whole test, I'd be fairly impressed with anyone who did N5 after three months, and very impressed with N4. I'd be super-duper holy shit impressed with N3 (I think it's borderline impossible).

If you're just doing the listening, though, I'd be fairly impressed with N4 and very impressed with N3.

[RawToast]

Vempele Wrote:What's the JLPT level you're supposed to be at after 3 months of studying your ass off, anyway? N3?

I haven't heard of anyone doing that. If you have plenty of free time N5 is doable and N4 is probably also possible but very impressive.

I think you could get to N4 by studying Genki 1,2 and the workbooks. You'd have to cover 2 (probably 3 early on) chapters of Genki and their workbook sections each week, which is very fast!

If you tried to use Anki for N3 and studying for the test, you'd be studying:

* ~3000-4000 vocabulary items (tanos.co.uk states 3700)
** So in roughly 100 days, that's over 30 new items a day; possible, but very hard. Still that's not giving any time for the later items to reach maturity. I think you'd have to push to 35/40 items.
* 650 Kanji
** You could get these done in time, 10 a day gets them out of the way a month early.
* A lot of grammar, many different ways to do this:
** Tae Kim deck and site: 785 items. Doable at a similar rate to Kanji.
** DobJG and some points from IG. Uisukii's deck is 874 cards for both books. I guess you'll be able to drop 100 or so cards as N2/N1 points.
* Listening
** Hundreds of Subs2SRS cards?
* Reading?
** Read

Probably would benefit from doing Genki workbooks on top...

So I guess it's possible if you spend 4-8 hours on it, I can't imagine anything other than a very tight pass and perhaps a mental breakdown at the end.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:The real test of fluency is listening. Being able to answer questions and have a two-way discussion is the skill that's needed in real life.

Pretty much this. it's actually really difficult to accurately assess his level when he is doing all the talking. My assumption though, judging from his pronunciation, is that he isn't really used to half the words he is saying and I wouldn't count on him to be able to understand them on the fly. That said he has made non negligible progress.

For everyone saying n3 is impossible, I passed the old 3kyuu after about 4-5 months. You don't need to know every single word on the word lists or every grammar point. N4 should definitely be doable.

nadiatims Wrote:For everyone saying n3 is impossible, I passed the old 3kyuu after about 4-5 months.

Uh, what? The old 3kyuu is basically N4, which nobody said was impossible.

(But, I assume you know this, so I'm not really sure what you're saying)

ok then. Its been a long time since i've looked at any of these tests.
so n3 is like 2kyuu then? if so i agree that would be impossible. *maybe* listening would be possible but it's a big maybe.

I guess i was reacting to the word impossible being used in connection with what i perceived as lower grade jlpt tests. The lower levels are much much easier.The difficulty ramps up exponentially. ie. 1kyuu is way harder than 2 is way way harder than 3 or at least this was my experience.

nadiatims Wrote:so n3 is like 2kyuu then?

N3 is in-between old-3 and old-2, to try to soften the jump because the gap between 3 and 2 used to be huge.

Also, the actual -questions- in the listening portion of the JLPT are really easy, I think. They aren't nearly as tough in grammar or vocabulary as the written portions of the test, because they're really just testing your ability to listen to Japanese. I'm not really interested in anybody's ability to pass just the listening portion of the JLPT (which Benny isn't going to take anyway.)
If you could somehow make a spoken version of the whole test, that might be a different story (but, of course, that's also not going to happen).

RawToast Wrote:His listening might end up at N2/N3 level and it would be interesting to see him try just the listening section of the online sample test.

Sorry nowhere close.

He is making good progress and its probably inline with what I'd expect from anyone who studies Japanese full time for a couple of months.

I think the people who think its "amazing" are people who don't speak any Japanese anyway so can't understand anything, and also those who just have never put in the hours that he does so don't realise how much a person can improve in a short time. There is no magic here though and no special trick or method.

Which is okay. If his goal is N2 listening / speaking it would definitely be considered a fail, because I doubt he could reach N3 in his 3 months either. N4 listening level he'll probably achieve though.

[RawToast]

Well I have emailed Benny, so maybe he will rise to our little challenge

Or it will get lost amongst the many emails I am sure he gets

I think a better test would be to have a Japanese person (not one of his choosing) interview him then assess his level, a two-way conversation. That would be a better test of his ability, can he understand what the person is saying and not just talk about himself but elaborate on a variety of subjects?

[RawToast]

JunePin Wrote:I think a better test would be to have a Japanese person (not one of his choosing) interview him then assess his level, a two-way conversation. That would be a better test of his ability, can he understand what the person is saying and not just talk about himself but elaborate on a variety of subjects?

I asked Benny to try talking to Steve Kaufmann and he agreed to talk to him, I think sometime in January. Sure Steve isn't a native, but Japanese is one of his stronger languages and he has been a harsh critic of Benny in the past.

JunePin Wrote:I think a better test would be to have a Japanese person (not one of his choosing) interview him then assess his level, a two-way conversation. That would be a better test of his ability, can he understand what the person is saying and not just talk about himself but elaborate on a variety of subjects?

If you can find one who is willing to do that, and is familiar with those European fluency tests... I would certainly like to see the results... I wish he'd do something about his accent, but maybe he can't really hear how strange he sounds?