The AJATT is considered by many, so to speak the Bible of language learning (or language living, if you will). I too believe it so. However, as I was going to this method, I found on occasions, a few things that didn't fit me or were not that good. I know many of you will not agree on me with these. This is not a negative criticism on AJATT or a hate post. In fact, the method works very well. I just wanted to point out what I felt needs to be pointed out.

Here is reference to the AJATT method: http://plus.ajatt.com/nutshell/

Here are the things (in my opinion) the AJATT lacked and how I improved on it (to fit my needs).

1. Passive Audio Immersion
The AJATT states that you must, as much as possible, listen to audio that is completely in your L2. He states that even hearing it is just fine. So, having it played in the background through your speakers or earphones while you do something productive, even if it be in English, is counted as immersion. And I quote from his site, "Most of your time will be passive". Where the problem lies is not the "immersion" or the "audio immersion". The part where the problem lies is in the word "passive". Passive Immersion just doesn't work, and I'll tell you why. I have been watching anime (in its original language of course) ever since as child. Even up to know I am still watching anime. But all those time I haven't been able to understand a single word. Not even a simple おはよう or すみません（すまない）. Why? Because I'm reading the subtitles, that's why. Our brain has that capacity to blur what's not important and concentrate on what is.

That's why if you try and solve a math problem while your friends talk in the background, you won't be able to understand what they're saying completely. Sure, you'll catch a few word from time to time, but 90% of the context is lost.

Now imagine, while you do your audio immersion, you do it actively. And how do you do that? You concentrate. You concentrate on what they are saying. Even if you don't understand. You try to make do with the words that you hear. And, you don't do anything at all while listening. If you must do something, you do something that's not mind challenging. You do something that doesn't require much thinking (doing laundry, doing the dishes, cooking, eating, exercising, etc.). The time it takes for you to improve is quicker. Thus I created a formula for effectiveness of immersion:

E=T*C

Where E is effectiveness of immersion, T is time, and C is concentration.

Sure, with AJATT your T (time) is bigger, but when it comes to C (concentration), not so. But if you do it so your concentration is bigger, even a little bit of time will equal when doing it for a long period of time, but not having a big concentration.

2. Visual Immersion (those you read: books, journals, sites)
AJATT does not put much emphasis with reading. I am not saying that it was not mentioned nor was it forgotten, but the emphasis isn't enough. I'd say this visual immersion is just as equally as important as audio immersion.

3. Output
I cannot emphasis enough on how important it is to speak. Speaking makes you more comfortable with a language, it makes you live the language. Since your goal is to become fluent, you need not hinder yourself by not speaking or by giving way too little attention to speaking. Speaking makes you closer to fluency, because you get to have fun with the language, you enjoy it, you use it. You don't speak because you understand, you understand because you speak.

4. AJATT - not for everyone
This is the part where AJATT doesn't talk about at all (please correct me if I'm wrong). AJATT does not mention that it is not simply for everyone (but as for me, it works well). The AJATT method may work for many or even most, but not all. The best way for one to learn a language, is rather hard. The way that one could learn is through using a method suitable for him. And there is only one person who could get that method from. And that person is him. He must device his own method by getting (or stealing) from other methods. Like me, and I'm sure several of you here, most of the method you use is not a 100% of a certain method you may have read or discovered online. Like mine, mine isn't 100%

AJATT, but I'd say around 80%. The core of this method, nevertheless, still relies on the two factors that makes AJATT: Immersion and SRS.

So there it is. I hope that, and I encourage that people discover their own techniques. I hope they do not make the mistake of missing the opportunity to self study. Even if these people believe that classes do work and it does work for them, I hope they do try to self study, and experiment with techniques. I believe that AJATT gives a good core, a good beginning, a good rule, in beginning or continuing on with a language.

Good Luck.

My problem, as with any language I've studied, is simply remembering all the words.

E.g., gikai = Parliament
gen-in = cause
genzai = present time
hen = vicinity

I studied these recently. Hopefully I'll be able to hold them in memory.

The more of these words you know, the better you can read/speak the language.

AJATT is a bit of a can of worm. On one hand the basics of the "method" make sense ; exposure is always gonna be good for you. On the other hand you have the Snake-oil-salesman sales tactics of Khatzumoto.

Self study works, it's a fact, but I'm always a bit worried by AJATT followers and their adoration of the man...

john555 Wrote:genin = cause

No, it's "a person of low birth; a servant" (下人). ん followed by a vowel is properly romanized as n'.

Yeah I'm completely disillusioned with Khatz as a person/salesman....
The method, however, worked for me with a couple of twists and definitely helped me get where I am now. Hmm.. I don't strongly feel either way about any of your points in the OP lol. Rather than any concrete method, I think the mindset behind AJATT is the most important thing which people can then use as they want. It's a real eye-opener for some people (me!) who had only experienced being taught languages in the classroom.

Vempele Wrote:

john555 Wrote:genin = cause

No, it's "a person of low birth; a servant" (下人). ん followed by a vowel is properly romanized as n'.

The trouble with romanisation:

Genin = げにん　＝　下人

Genin =　げんいん　＝　原因

Genin = げにん　＝　下人
Gen'in = げんいん　＝　原因

げにん　＝　下忍
げんいん　＝　減員!!　　...笑

Also, no method is "for everyone."
The thing that makes AJATT good is the thought process behind it.
"I can do this. This language belongs to me. There's no reason I can't speak this language as well as people who grew up speaking this language. There's no reason to think through my L1 to understand my L2. Time and effort = results. Stop analyzing and start experiencing." etc etc etc. There's a lot of ground work going on behind AJATT and the AJATT of four or five years ago was basically all about simply changing the way we think. Yeah, there was a "method" at the time but even the "method" was all about changing the method. I got on board that train and now I'm bilingual.

The method itself can be subject to as much tweaking as you like. I think the reason he's gotten so ridiculous in recent years is because there are people willing to buy into that ridiculousness. Diving into the deep end alone is scary. Or something. I dunno. I grew up by the ocean.

Splatted Wrote:The trouble with romanisation:

Genin = げにん　＝　下人

Genin =　げんいん　＝　原因

Holy shit, you mean that writing systems have advantages and disadvantages? Like, if I wrote 'koukou' you wouldn't know if I meant 航行, 高校, 孝行, etc.? How would you ever know? Wait, how was that problem solved by using こうこう instead of 'koukou' again?

I guess we're just gonna have to stick with kanji all the time, so we know exactly which word we're talking about. Wouldn't want to confuse anyone. But then we should probably come up with more kanji, because I don't know how we'll tell whether 寝る means to sleep, or to lie down, or to go to bed.

But maybe we need to make a new way to show the pronunciation, because if romaji doesn't cut it, kana clearly doesn't either.

He actually does mention every now and then that not everyone might be able to do his methods (or something like that). Followed by something along the lines of "if you don't put in the time now, it will probably take you longer to get to the level you want" and "just make sure that, if you can't get X done, do at least something every day (1 word/kanji/etc.)"

I agree that the stuff he sells might be a bit of a rip-off, but I know that I don't have to buy it; it's just one of many resources I can utilize (and fortunately my wallet has the last say in this one). But, as mentioned above, AJATT was really good for changing my philosophy of how to learn Japanese, making more of "that thing I can do without too much trouble every day" instead of "this huge effort that is the hardest thing i've ever done (or something like that)" which some people seem to think it is. A lot of the stuff that his articles talk about I've seen similar types of posts about here. And I never really felt like he pressured the readers into buying his stuff as much, but maybe it's just because I don't like spending much money and so never wanted to do it.

A lot of his more "pep-talk" articles actually do try and get you to output if i remember right, but only when you are ready. Most of the articles I read these days seem like it's trying to encourage you to keep going, and seem a bit like newer versions of older stuff. But the core philosophy itself is a generally a good one, in writing style that I found humorous, so it did the job I wanted of changing my learning philosophy at the time

Not having read them, I can't comment on his earlier works. But parts of his content in recent articles struck me as pretty stupid. There was one about making your space Japanese or something (to presumably create your own "immersion" environment) but he suggested using chopsticks and buying Japanese furniture. While that would help with the immersion feeling, I fail to see how it has any effect on learning. I seriously doubt sleeping on a futon vs a bed, or using a piece of wood vs a spoon for eating, gives you any benefit in terms of acquiring language skills.
There was also another one where he was advocating some guy's idea which said to use two different devices, playing two different audio streams, and listen to them simultaneously. You put one headphone from each in each ear. Some of the reasons were:
"If you get tired of listening to one, you can switch attention to the other"
"Mechanical failure is really common, so this way you have a backup"
and some other stuff. He might be a good motivational writer, but I don't know what you can write after several years on same subject.

This is a topic that has been discussed ad nausea in several threads going back eight years or so. Not sure there is anything left to be said that wouldn't just be a repetition of what has been said before. I get the impression it was really done and over with by at least around 2010.

Regarding #2 though I can't resist...

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...cy-problem

"The problem of adult illiteracy, in cause, symptom and solution, is exactly the same as that of illiteracy for learners of a foreign language. If you look at the statistics ABC News brought up, kids who grow into adults are illiterate not because they’re stupid, but merely because they have not logged the hours with text.

...

Want to get good at reading and writing in any language? Then read more. A lot more. A lot. You need to become baptized in the Church of Text. No, screw that, baptism is only once — you need to drink the Holy Text Water for breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, midnight snack and everything in between. There’s you, there’s text."

I'd say the emphasis is just fine. The important of reading in volume was one of the most important things I took away from AJATT back when it was relevant.

markcat Wrote:The AJATT is considered by many, so to speak the Bible of language learning (or language living, if you will). I too believe it so. However, as I was going to this method, I found on occasions, a few things that didn't fit me or were not that good. I know many of you will not agree on me with these. This is not a negative criticism on AJATT or a hate post. In fact, the method works very well. I just wanted to point out what I felt needs to be pointed out.

Well written and helpful post, but some of your points about AJATT are a bit off.

1. The reason you didn't get any benefit from listening to Japanese audio by watching anime, etc, for all those years is probably twofold:

A. as you said, you read the subtitles (I'm assuming in English). That won't work as you've found out. You pretty much need to listen to the audio raw.

And B. I'm assuming that your intake of Japanese audio was sporadic throughout those years. AJATT recommends 18 to 24 hours a day of passive/active listening of raw audio for nearly 2 solid years. Which, after a time would likely prove beneficial alongside other studying methods.

Another reason why listening to raw audio can be beneficial is when you hit the vocab stage and become accustomed to words. Where your listening comprehension developed to become somehwat familiar to the syllables in a stream of audio that you don't understand, learning vocab can help you isolate individual words in that stream and be able to better recognize them through a different amount of media types.

Personally, what I do is I watch anime, the news, dramas, variety shows, talk shows, manzai comedy, etc, and I listen to them at various volume levels. The louder the volume, the easier it is the make out what someone is saying. So the lower volume makes it a lot more challenging.

I've also found that the news is the easiest to follow as the speakers speak so clearly, where as manzai comedy and variety shows seem to be the most difficult to follow because of the different dialects, speech patterns, and amount of people speaking/laughing, etc while talking. Anime can be pretty difficult, too.

2. AJATT actually recommends strong visual immersion. Khatz even recommends getting a poster of the most common kanji and staring at it wherever you are. The entire method of sentence mining, at the time he encouraged it, was to mine sentences and words from books, subtitles, manga, etc, and to review them consistently until you understand them. Which would include looking things up in dictionaries, both english to japanese and japanese to japanese.

He also recommends that you read 200 books or 1 million words, lol. Even MCD's is about finding reading material that you enjoy and reviewing them.

3. I tend to agree. If you aren't comfortable with the language, then even if you have solid input, your output would probably be hindered by nervousness and lack of experience speaking.

4. Not entirely true. In various areas of his articles he will detail who AJATT is for and who it is not for.

1. Passive Audio Immersion
I'm not responding to your entire bit there, but watching all that anime with English subs before making any effort to get a grip on the language meant that the Japanese wasn't comprehensible. A staple of what AJATT has been standing for is the comprehensible input method. Being exposed to completely incomprehensible material won't have you acquire anything. As you make progress though, material isn't going to be completely incomprehensible, and there will be more and more "i+1" bits. A flooding of as much exposure to the language as possible is undoubtedly going to contain comprehensible input, sort of like how a generally healthy diet provides you with vitamins you may not have to keep track of.

2. Visual Immersion (those you read: books, journals, sites)
Well isn't this about interpretation, though? The general advice is a ton of exposure and input, all sorts of it, and a key part that's being "preached" is doing RTK in the beginning to make the reading accessible.

3. Output
AJATT doesn't say not to speak at all, it says not to make it any sort of priority in the beginning, and getting to it more and more as you get more and more comfortable with the language. That's the real question -- to focus on speaking early on or not. Nobody wants to never speak

"Speaking makes you more comfortable with a language, it makes you live the language."
As you do get comfortable speaking then yes, I agree that being able to speak it is the best reward you get (but not the only one) for all the time spent. For a lot of people though, speaking is going to be daunting and blending anxiety into the mix. In my opinion, what AJATT does best is introducing a different and by far more fun approach than the established academic methods. People in general believe that if you want to learn a language, you need to go to school and do the usual repetitive exercises and test prepping and all. This often includes things like forced reading aloud before you're even used to hearing pronunciation, and holding uninteresting presentations that show off your mistakes in front of an audience. I think the more relaxed approach that lacks a requirement to force yourself to speak early on before you're comfortable understanding, does more good than harm.

"You don't speak because you understand, you understand because you speak."
Why? This is just completely how you personally see it. You won't be speaking if you don't understand what your partner is saying, and when you do you still won't be able to say anything you don't already understand. You have to understand something to be able to say it. (Well I guess you can rehearse things to say without understanding them, but that's clearly going to invoke miscommunication.)

So I'm interested in having natural conversations. Talking on a very basic level about the weather and then hitting game over as soon as your partner says something you can't understand isn't fun to me. If I have a good foundation of an understanding though, I'm not going to be as lost when something unexpected comes up, and I'll have a much better chance of being able to say something I might not have said before, but know is succeeding communication.

Well anyway, I'm not sure if I'm making a sensible argument but this has been discussed a lot and you're of course free to think what you like, but I personally oppose to your opinion that something like AJATT should suggest forced speaking for everyone.

4. AJATT - not for everyone
I won't go get links to his articles (it's been kinda like people citing passages out of the bible sometimes), but I am sure he's written ones specifically for this. There should be one called something like "How to take advice, including mine".

markcat Wrote:2. Visual Immersion (those you read: books, journals, sites)
AJATT does not put much emphasis with reading. I am not saying that it was not mentioned nor was it forgotten, but the emphasis isn't enough. I'd say this visual immersion is just as equally as important as audio immersion.

This is inaccurate. There was a very heavy emphasis by Khatz on having your environment designed so that Japanese characters are constantly entering your eyes.

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:Not having read them, I can't comment on his earlier works. But parts of his content in recent articles struck me as pretty stupid. There was one about making your space Japanese or something (to presumably create your own "immersion" environment) but he suggested using chopsticks and buying Japanese furniture. While that would help with the immersion feeling, I fail to see how it has any effect on learning. I seriously doubt sleeping on a futon vs a bed, or using a piece of wood vs a spoon for eating, gives you any benefit in terms of acquiring language skills.

Nothing personal, but that is a rather autistic comment so it's a bit ironic for you to be throwing around "stupid". Nobody ever attempted to claim that using chopsticks gave direct language benefits — rather, the idea is that with a Japanese tailored environment (ie: "you are Japanese and this is your right") you will be more motivated and less likely to quit on a seemingly insurmountable task such as learning Japanese. Empirically we can see that this psychological tactic actually works in that athletes who envision themselves winning tend to perform better.

To Ryuudou:
I don't understand why you're labeling my comment as "autistic". Could you elaborate (I'm being serious)?
(I also hope you're not equating autism with stupidity).
Furthermore, I have heard of the study you alluded to. I actually couldn't care less what other people use to get themselves motivated - if they need to stand on their head whilst reading Genji Monogatari aloud, great for them! It's all different for different people, anyway. If people are using his tricks and feel like they're getting results, does it really matter what I (basically some random poster on koohii.com) think?
But in my opinion, using chopsticks and buying cultural furniture seem like such a small deal anyway, it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. Plus, some of the other things he wrote in the same article are just way too extreme for me. Sure, obviously, the more exposure and practice you get, the better. But how far are you willing to go? Here's another excerpt:


Don’t use your significant other as an excuse. “But we have to spend time together”, you say. Bollocks. Take a walk together and hold hands, but make sure to be listening to Japanese music on your portable player; come on, let’s be honest, you don’t really want to hear what they have to say anyhow (joking)! And don’t let your friends or family make fun of you or browbeat you into going along to see the latest mindless flick with them. Don’t let them tell you that you “have to unplug sometimes”; they’re full of crap; they’re only saying that to get you to go along. Don’t let them tell you “you can do it later”. Will they be there for you when your Japanese sucks because you didn’t practice because you were always “going to do it later”? Do your friends know Japanese fluently? Probably not. Because if they did, they would understand why you need to do what you need to do, and they wouldn’t try to dissuade you from it. If they do know Japanese fluently, then they should know better than to attempt to strip you away from the very thing that got them fluent: constant practice.

Be strong. Your friends and family will make fun of you for a while, but just hold on. In the short-term, they may not seem to like you unless you do what they want. But it in the long run, they’ll respect you more than if you’d just given in to their pressure. They may say horrible things to you: “Do you think you’re better than us? Do you value the advice of random people on the Internet more than that of your real world friends and family? Do you think you’re Japanese or something?” to which you may reply under your breath: “actually, I do”.


I'm not against dedication or constant practice. But what, you can't have a social life unless your friends are Japanese? You can't hang out with your SO unless you're speaking Japanese? You can't even watch a movie because it's not in Japanese? (BTW, I know he's not commanding it or whatever, but I can still critique it because he wrote it) Maybe this is in the spirit of "Why would you tell a obese person on a diet that they can still eat at McDonald's?" But I'm more a fan of realism.
It's really up to the individual how much they're willing to sacrifice. But I *personally* don't think it's worth it to replace every last thing in your life with a Japanese substitute. If other people want to, that's totally their prerogative. I'll agree that the more you do something, the better you get...but there's other stuff out there too.

One thing to watch out for is the Projection/Confirmation bias.

e.g.
I'm like this, so you're like this too.
We're like this, so we do it this way.
(Sorry for the weak examples)

They're fine, common in conversation and whatnot, but...
When used frequently, it can lead to a guru-like tone.
/I'm talking about cults and youtube, not ajatt~

Kuzunoha13 Wrote:To Ryuudou:
I don't understand why you're labeling my comment as "autistic". Could you elaborate (I'm being serious)?
(I also hope you're not equating autism with stupidity).

To take something hyper literally, or not be able to understand things beyond the surface meaning, or to be ignorant of obvious nuance, and so on. I'm not calling you autistic, but the comment definitely was. You essentially missed the entire point when you wrote it.

ryuudou Wrote:To take something hyper literally, or not be able to understand things beyond the surface meaning, or to be ignorant of obvious nuance, and so on. I'm not calling you autistic, but the comment definitely was. You essentially missed the entire point when you wrote it.

You could say that, instead of bringing autistic people into this for no reason.

Tzadeck Wrote:

ryuudou Wrote:To take something hyper literally, or not be able to understand things beyond the surface meaning, or to be ignorant of obvious nuance, and so on. I'm not calling you autistic, but the comment definitely was. You essentially missed the entire point when you wrote it.

You could say that, instead of bringing autistic people into this for no reason.

He started it off by calling it "stupid", so I explained on that elevated level that it's ironic to call something stupid when his comment is admittedly autistic-like when it comes to actually understanding the subject material.

ryuudou Wrote:He started it off by calling it "stupid", so I explained on that elevated level that it's ironic to call something stupid when his comment is admittedly autistic-like when it comes to actually understanding the subject material.

Again, no reason to bring people with developmental disorders into this.

It could be said that calling something stupid is also bringing people with development disorders into this. That said I apologize if anyone is offended over the word.

If you read my earlier comment you will see that it was never personal or directed at anyone.

My autism is very sad now.

On a side note, whenever I hear the idiom "the Bible of...", I think it must be dangerous.

Edited, since I think I explained myself badly, haha.