I just started to learn Japanese (around three months ago thus, I already have a good comprehension for very basic Japanese). Two weeks before I started, I did an intensive research on how to study Japanese, and generally how to study languages, and I stumbled upon several methods such as the L-R method, "Speak from Day One" method, etc. However, what struck me the most was Khatzumoto's AJATT where he talks about how he became fluent in 1.5 years using complete immersion and SRS. What's striking there is the "immersion part" or at least the "passive listening immersion" where you immerse for 18-24 hours a day. I wanted to try the method, but after doing more research, I found out that several people claim that they have been immersing for a 1000 hours and they're still in a low level. They say that it's not worth spending hundreds to thousands of hours in listening and only learning a "few words". Then, there are those people who do claim that immersing does work and has helped them and has made their comprehension skyrocket.

Now, I'm at a loss here. Should I begin doing immersion or should I just do SRS? Is it worth it? Will it teach me the language or at least make my comprehension better? I can always try immersing and stop if it doesn't work for me, but when should I stop? A week? A month? How can we say that immersion does really work for me? Maybe if I stop after a week, we could say that I should have immersed for month, because maybe by then, immersion would have worked for me.

Also, for those who are doing immersion, does it really work? What's your schedule? How often do you do it and when? Do you follow the "i+1 rule"? And if you do, where do you get audio that fits the i+1 rule?

Unless you have something against it, you should use SRS anyway (for stuff like the Core decks, RTK, etc.). It's excellent for flashcards as long as you arent too lazy to put the words in (and even then there are decks you can download if you are lazy like me).

Khatz does recommend doing audio all the time, and on one level I agree, even if you only glean 1 new word an hour and are conscious for 15 hours, that's 15 words per day if you are diligent with putting it all into Anki (105 new words per week, 420ish per month 5k per year, etc.) I'm exaggerating somewhat, but you get the idea (and if you listen to a variety of music that uses a fair amount of vocabulary it isnt so hard to pick out a word here or there, even more when you consider tv as well). One of the big philosophies of the blog is to just do a little at a time consistently

However, and many people here have said similarly, input isnt necessarily so useful if you can't clearly distinguish the individual sounds (much less the words themselves) and all you hear is slightly emotional mumbling. I know that was a problem for a lot of my music when I first started really paying attention to it. Sure, I loved the melody and rhythm of the words, but I couldnt distinguish a line like "Atashi wa mizu ga suki desu yo" from "tashiwami zugasu kide suyo" <-(completely made up on the spot); but you get my point. The value of that input is drastically reduced in my opinion until your ear is actually trained to understand the individual sounds. Songs that were pretty mumblings a year ago I can now separate out most all the words (even if I don't know them all or understand the grammar structures). As a beginner, you almost certainly won't have an ear that is as used to picking out the individual words as you will in a month, year, etc. time period.
Also, not everyone has access to enough material that they would actually want to loop 24 hours a day, and, more importantly, unless you want an eternal earphone trailing from your ear not everyone wants to hear your music 24 hours a day (depending on your living situation/what technology you own).

Basically what I'm saying is, there definitely is little harm in playing Japanese all day, but if it's not comprehensible input it's not going to be nearly as valuable as a few hours of relatively comprehensible input. I started off with subs on my anime and not worrying if I understand the strange grammar of songs, and it helped me a lot to get to the point where I can understand what I'm hearing. And listening to stuff will definitely get you into the mindset of Japanese, I've noticed that by basic japanese "instincts" are a bit sharper during periods where I am watching a lot of Japanese vs. when I have not been. But comprehensible is more valuable to me than just running a continuous mumble all day and if it's not comprehensible I can use subs. Definitely try and work SRS into your studies as well, it helps a lot.
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But most importantly of all, stop worrying, and pondering or you will turn into the rest of us who use this forum too much instead of doing stuff in Japanese. Go searching for some anime or drama, and just watch it, then watch another one, then another. Pay attention to interesting words, write them down if you need to. Do a little every day (an hour or two is surprisingly useful over time), and do it NOW.

markcat Wrote:[...]
Now, I'm at a loss here. Should I begin doing immersion or should I just do SRS? Is it worth it? Will it teach me the language or at least make my comprehension better?[...]

Just as one would lay back and watch an episode of Walking Dead (or Pretty Little Liars, whatever tickles your pickle), the idea of immersion (as purported by Ajatt's approach) is to relax and lay back and enjoy -- whatever happens to be the preferred media of your persuasion. This "method" or "technique" is a way to convince oneself that the viewer is performing a normal, almost mundane act, not a fancy fluency hat trick. I'm almost certain this mindset is like a tenet of khatz's approach, i.e. laziness is not a flaw or whatever. Which is cool, I like the way he thinks.

TLDR; To apply immersion from an Ajatt perspective, listen to Japanese language enough to imitate a seemingly natural Japanese lifestyle. His approach may seem a bit extreme, but he's transparent about what his method entails; there's no self-deception about his approach.

Heh, I wish.

Having lived in Japan for years, in an entirely Japanese environment, you'd think I'd have picked up a few words by now. I've watched many thousands of hours of TV, work in Japanese offices, and all of my friends speak Japanese. If immersion works, it doesn't work for me.

I can't speak for everyone who lives here, but judging from the "foreigners" I've met, one thing seems clear: those who can speak decent Japanese have studied their asses off. And that includes Khatz.

Apparently watching basketball games won't enable you to actually play the sport. Who knew?

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Apparently watching basketball games won't enable you to actually play the sport. Who knew?

But listening/reading/watching the language -is- the sport. If anything, it is traditional textbook focused study which is like "watching basketball".

As Khatz once said (lol at me for starting a sentence like this but forgive me, I think this is one of the best things he ever said):

"That language is also a (the) tool for intellectual discourse blinds us to the fact that its acquisition and use are not fundamentally intellectual exercises."

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...artial-art

That article helped me totally change my approach, and I've never looked back.

I guess we might have some different understanding of what "immersion" means, but I credit bulk listening (and also reading) as one of the most important things I even did to really get good. Of course I "studied". But study alone never got me there. Then in 2010 I found AJATT and listened pretty much 10-14 hours a day, seven days a week (I had a cushy job and strong motivation to get a monbusho scholarship). It paid off. I started out being unable to understand radio or TV. Maybe I could pick up 20-30 percent. Within months I had boosted that up to over eighty percent. By the end of the year I was at a comfortable 95 percent or so depending on the material. But yeah, normal radio? Hasn't been even slightly a problem for over four years now. And there is simply no way I could have got to that point without lots and lots and lots of listening. Listening is also what allowed me to really start speaking. At the beginning of that same intensive immersion period, I couldn't really speak. This was after years of study. By the end of it I could talk all day long. Funny thing is my listening to speaking ratio was something like 50 to 1. Input helped me output.

Some key points.

1. You need to have -some- understanding of what you are listening to. Graded listening is cool. Or listening to things you have already watched before in English like a favorite movie.
2. Of course you also need to be getting your learn on using whatever methods you like (SRS for example).
3. Don't neglect doing lots of reading. Reading is "immersion" too.

So it helps if you think of immersion as something like the bed-rock of a more comprehensive program. Bulk immersion is helpful in that it gets you used to flow, it provides opportunities for you to "notice" things, and helps you from forgetting what it is you are aiming for. If it is always "passive" (because you can't understand it) then of course it won't help you much. You need to focus your efforts more than that. But watching TV if you can understand it a bit? Definitely helpful. And the more you do the funner it gets. So I'm a bit confused by RO7 claiming not to have picked up a few words from thousands of hours of TV. I never would have learned stuff like "ふざけんなよ！" (thanks 女子ダカ) or 教え子 (thanks ごくせん) or countless famous phrases that help make up the shared cultural world of Japanese people without it (僕は死にましぇえん！）. You can't really divorce learning a language from learning the cultural world of that language, not unless you want to end up with something like the equivalent of "business English".

If it helps, think of "contact" with the language over this "study"/"immersion" kind of distinction. Certainly don't think of it as "immersion" = passive, "study" = active. Maximize contact in all its forms. If you can handle more active attentive immersion OR (traditional) "study" that's great. When you are tired, go for less intensive. Whatever it is, just do a lot of it.

You don't need to take Khatz's word on it. Take a look at Steve Kaufmann if you like (http://blog.thelinguist.com/). The guy learned like eight or ten languages fairly well by reading and listening. Here is a guest post he wrote recently about motivation (http://www.lingholic.com/can-english-spe...languages/). A key point is that we need to enjoy interesting content in the language if we are going to stick with it. If it was only study, study, study, why would anybody keep at it for the amount of time necessary to really get anywhere? (oh wait, they typically don't).

shifted to above

As a reply / to build on Danchan's post;

Basketball isn't Japanese !?

For what it's worth, basketball players do watch basketball tapes.
Kobe's favorite tapes were from Jordan. I'm also reminded that James likes to watch film from Iverson and Jordan. And apparently Jordan himself respected David Thompson and Julius Erving, among other great players. A friend of mine likes Dirk Nowitzki, and he tries to imitate his game, kinda annoying actually. The list goes on. I agree that hard work and consistency is important, though.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:Heh, I wish.

Having lived in Japan for years, in an entirely Japanese environment, you'd think I'd have picked up a few words by now. I've watched many thousands of hours of TV, work in Japanese offices, and all of my friends speak Japanese. If immersion works, it doesn't work for me.

I can't speak for everyone who lives here, but judging from the "foreigners" I've met, one thing seems clear: those who can speak decent Japanese have studied their asses off. And that includes Khatz.

Apparently watching basketball games won't enable you to actually play the sport. Who knew?

Immersion worked for me with english. I never "studied" the language, I didn't even use a SRS, I just... "did" things in english until it stuck. And I never even lived in an english speaking country to begin with. Ever. My environment was hardly "english".

Now Japanese is obviously a very different kind of beast, having a very "alien" writing system (alien to occidental languages that is). But immersion works. I mean, how could it not work ? Being constantly exposed to your native language is how you learned it in the first place. You were already fluent in your native tongue by the time you had your first grammar classes.

The trick is, immersion's benefits are hard to quantify, especially as an adult. But the benefits are there, and honestly there isn't much risk in trying anyway.

It's all a matter of mindset. Being cynical isn't helping. And while yes, especially for japanese, you'd still have to do some efforts to learn the language (because the process is anything but effortless, whatever the language), it can be in whatever form you like, from studying, actively reading, playing, writing, ....

But exposure is extremely important. Oral comprehension is a skill you can only acquire through exposure. Same goes for reading and writing. And it helps with talking to a degree too.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:one thing seems clear: those who can speak decent Japanese have studied their asses off. And that includes Khatz.

I agree with this statement. I started off with a lot of listening, I can't say it got me very far by itself. I think you need a suitable balance of actual study and immersion.

I mean, it might not be as enjoyable but it's probably somewhat practical to learn a bunch of vocab in Core2K and listen to the audio of those cards that you are somewhat familiar with already.

To take this further, it's probably practical to take a TV episode with a Japanese script and learn every bit of vocab in that one episode. Then after you do that, listen to it a bunch of times. That way all your input is actually meaningful.

Wait! Hold on a second, going back to that balance thing I mentioned earlier, it's a stupid amount of effort to learn every single word in an episode script. You probably only need like 50% aural comprehension to start getting good value out of what is going into your head. Probably not even that much.

Nothing I'm saying is super scientific here, it's just how I feel about this stuff from personal experience.

Linval Wrote:Immersion worked for me with english. I never "studied" the language, I didn't even use a SRS, I just... "did" things in english until it stuck. And I never even lived in an english speaking country to begin with. Ever. My environment was hardly "english".

Now Japanese is obviously a very different kind of beast, having a very "alien" writing system (alien to occidental languages that is). But immersion works. I mean, how could it not work ? Being constantly exposed to your native language is how you learned it in the first place. You were already fluent in your native tongue by the time you had your first grammar classes.

You know, I have a friend here who's lived in Japan for twelve years. He speaks four languages, including English perfectly. (It's not his native language, and now he works as an English teacher.) But despite having worked in a Japanese environment, having a Japanese girlfriend, and actively studying, he's still far from fluent. He says it's far harder than the other languages he's learned, and I tend to agree.

In fact, I take that back. I have three friends here who are all in that category: fluent in two or more languages, and despite having lived in Japan for years, still can't speak the language well, and not for lack of trying.

Why doesn't immersion work as well for Japanese? I don't know. Maybe the words are harder to form connections with. Perhaps the grammar is more difficult to wrap your head around. But I'm not making this up. It's not just me, or the people I mentioned. It's the vast majority of Westerners here. I don't think I'm saying anything that anyone who lives here doesn't know.

So when a beginner asks how to learn Japanese, "Just listen to a lot" seems like very poor advice. Just study a lot would be a far better plan, and one that many people here are actively pursuing through RTK and Core.

Before I started studying Japanese, I would listen to a lot of J-pop and watch anime, and all I really learned were a few basic words like "motto" and "ai".

My experience with Japanese is that there's no magic bullet to becoming fluent. Certainly, there are resources and methods that have improved my efficiency, but it's really been more of a lot of grueling study with immersion serving as the exposure necessary to solidify what I had already studied. That doesn't mean I've learned nothing from immersion, and I do think it's necessary for retaining the knowledge and improving recall, but I'd say most of what I learn first comes from more focused study.

I have a guess. Not anything so advanced as a hypothesis, but a guess.

If you believe Stephen Krashen, if you believe that comprehensible input is the only way we really learn a language, comprehensible audio input is really hard to get unless you're a baby/toddler and you have a parent/caregiver spending a lot of time having very simple conversations with you. (I've never had a romantic partner who spoke a different language than me -- I guess that COULD be the best way if they were patient and savvy about simplifying things and didn't just switch over to a different language when things got rough.) The kind of audio immersion you get from TV or radio or conversations that aren't deliberately slowed down/simplified for you just aren't comprehensible enough to help.

Which is the case for all languages, not just Japanese.

But with languages that are written with the Roman alphabet, you have the advantage that you've been reading Roman letters your whole life (well -- if you're from North America, South America, or Western Europe, at least). The difference between reading immersion and audio immersion is that you can read as slowly as you want, you can take time to look up words if you want, and you don't have as much interference from weird accents, mumbled words, background noise, etc. So reading can act as a really important bridge towards listening comprehension, as you get used to the structure of the language and the vocabulary in a sort of sanitized environment.

And it's much easier to take advantage of that bridge if you're a person who grew up using Roman letters, learning a language that also uses Roman letters, because you can process those letters so quickly and on a subconscious level. I've used my French very little in the last ten years or so -- I'm hideously out of practice -- but I can read French at 300 words a minute, and English at 600 words a minute; I can read maybe 100-150 words per minute in Japanese, even though my Japanese is much better than my French at this point.

Even after you've learned enough kanji that they no longer pose a serious problem to reading comprehension (which in itself is quite an endeavor), just getting your brain to decode Japanese test as swiftly and smoothly as it does Roman-letter text takes a really long time.

(My immersion prescription is lots of low-level, deliberately slow audio, like podcasts for language learners, plus lots of low-level reading. So easy you feel vaguely insulted by it, if you can manage to find anything that easy.)

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:So when a beginner asks how to learn Japanese, "Just listen to a lot" seems like very poor advice. Just study a lot would be a far better plan, and one that many people here are actively pursuing through RTK and Core.

I guess we have a different understanding of immersion is what is going on here. Definitely, advocating to somebody to simply "listen a lot" without regard for actually training their ear is potentially a bad idea, especially early on. You need to doing stuff like listening repeatedly to things which you have the scripts for, or conversely, reading something which has attached audio. But I also think "just study a lot", depending on how "study" is interpreted, can lead people down the garden path to a point where they know all these cool 四字熟語 that nobody ever uses thanks to cramming 講談社 books (not at all talking about myself here *ahem*) but still don't know so many of the basic phrases and words that are used day to day. They can write that hard kanji, but still can't feel comfortable picking up a book to read, still can't follow everyday conversations.

With the long-term foreigners who can't speak the language, you certainly can't deny that Kanji pose a significant barrier for non-Chinese people, and that barrier needs to be broken down with a lot of elbow grease. But even here I (and many others I am sure) screwed myself over by spending hundreds and hundreds of hours over the years writing those things down again and again, and nowhere near enough time reading texts (with furigana etc) that would help me get a feel for the logic of how they are combined or pronounced. But you can bet I felt happy with myself for all that productive "study" I was putting in. These days I can't write them much at all, but I can read just about anything non-classical. A much better strength/weakness combination for almost any occasion. Even the JLPT doesn't require that you write any of them, and when filling out forms at the yakusho you can always consult your phone.

Also, many long term residents who can't speak Japanese have a micro-environment that is very much dominated by their native language. It is easy to over-estimate how much Japanese we are being exposed to simply by living in Japan, and easy to under-estimate how much of it is still English like our thoughts or web browsing (where did that hour go?). I know in my own case I ended up spending less time on Japanese when I was in Japan in 2011 than in the year leading up to going, because I was being more social (mostly with other foreign students).

Finally, I think hard-core study is a leading cause of burnout because we often tend to push ourselves too hard. Once you get to a certain point, contact with comprehensible material that is fun can be sustained even when you are really tired/stressed out. I can't say the same for study. You gotta have some stuff you are very much into of course. And a good beanbag. Man I miss my old beanbag...

Danchan Wrote:But even here I (and many others I am sure) screwed myself over by spending hundreds and hundreds of hours over the years writing those things down again and again, and nowhere near enough time reading texts (with furigana etc) that would help me get a feel for the logic of how they are combined or pronounced.

As for the logic of kanji compound formation, the thing that helped me most was taking a year of Chinese in college. The kanji compounds make more sense when understood through the lens of Chinese grammar.

Danchan Wrote:I guess we have a different understanding of immersion is what is going on here. . .You need to doing stuff like listening repeatedly to things which you have the scripts for, or conversely, reading something which has attached audio.

I think we might be on the same page. I was talking about passive audio, since the The OP mentioned "passive listening immersion"--learning simply through being surrounded by the language. The listening you're describing is what I'd call studying.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:So when a beginner asks how to learn Japanese, "Just listen to a lot" seems like very poor advice. Just study a lot would be a far better plan, and one that many people here are actively pursuing through RTK and Core.

You are misunderstanding me. I never said that "just listen to a lot" should be your only plan. The OP asked if audio immersion works, and yes it does work. And starting listening to stuff early is never going to hurt. It develops skills that can only be acquired through exposure.

However it has, of course, to be supplemented by several other stuff, something active, like reading and looking up words you don't know and putting them in your SRS for instance. Limiting yourself to only one kind of learning activity, whatever it is, is dumb and is never going to work.

And since you seem to like bringing "friends" on the topic, I have a friend who has a japanese girlfriend, and who speaks superb japanese with little accent. He is now the official interpreter for Konami executives in France. He listened to a lot of Japanese, and constantly spoke Japanese with his girlfriend, and read a good dozen of japanese books a year plus a ton of mangas. He did it throuh near constant exposure. All the while never leaving France.

Living in the country is not a guarantee. However, if you constantly challenge yourself through massive input, then yes, language is going to come quite naturally.

JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

Danchan Wrote:I guess we have a different understanding of immersion is what is going on here. . .You need to doing stuff like listening repeatedly to things which you have the scripts for, or conversely, reading something which has attached audio.

I think we might be on the same page. I was talking about passive audio, since the The OP mentioned "passive listening immersion"--learning simply through being surrounded by the language. The listening you're describing is what I'd call studying.

Yeah I had a feeling that was the case.

While I think its important to listen to things you understand, you can also say that its good to listen to things you feel like you want to listen to. For example, at the beginning stages of Chinese right now I am doing two things.

1. Anki sentences with audio attached of core vocab.
2. Listening to a radio show.

With #2, I enjoy the quality of the audio of particular show and the clearness of the speaker's mandarin. I also like the sounds of their voices and feel like they have a good rappor going on. That gets me in right away. I've tried other radio shows where its just that much harder to pay any attention at all because they are slurring more, or speaking faster, at a frequency that makes it hard for me to pick up. In either case I don't really know what they are talking about, but with one I can hear "words" while with the other not so much. So, for reasons other than how much vocab I understand, I find it easier to listen to some content more than others.

Now of course, I think this is not the most efficient way to go. If I was more serious I would go with listening to stuff I have the transcript of. And I might do that eventually. But I do enjoy diving right into native stuff because you get to enjoy noticing where things you learned via #1 suddenly stand out, and also you can start to get a feel for those little things people use a lot in conversation (dui... dui... bu cuo...).

Linval Wrote:And since you seem to like bringing "friends" on the topic...

I know we can all get a bit affronted when people disagree (or appear to disagree) with our views on language learning, but seemed a bit aggressive. I think Ken has a different idea of what "immersion" means is all.

Check this: http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/part...languages/

I don't see a point in listening without paying attention to it, and you can't do that for that long. Also try italki, it's awesome to get you going with especially speaking and other parts of the language at the same time. Japanese tutors are actually quite cheap there.

Also hard studying with Anki is a waste of time in a long run, 30 - 60 minutes if you need to and no more. Use cards to review, not to learn new facts. That's what I've came to after using Anki like mad, few hours a day. Not worth it at all.

You can live in Japan and still not learn anything, it's not about where you are, but about how often you use the language. No need to leave your home in this age to use Japanese as much as you want.

Danchan Wrote:

Linval Wrote:And since you seem to like bringing "friends" on the topic...

I know we can all get a bit affronted when people disagree (or appear to disagree) with our views on language learning, but seemed a bit aggressive. I think Ken has a different idea of what "immersion" means is all.

Sarcastic, maybe, aggressive, no. Sorry if it looks otherwise, that was not my intention.

And you are right, Ken has a different idea of what immersion means, but I was simply responding to what I consider to be a misconception, namely that living in the country = immersion. Many foreigners living abroad tend to create of bubble around them. Sure, they might be confronted to the language outside, but at home, they are immersed in their native language. I am guilty of this ; I've lived / am living abroad, and my home is a french / english (and now / Japanese) haven lost in a foreign country. This is not immersion, and it will do you absolutely no good if you want to learn the local language, even though it's all around you.

And on the whole, it seems that we agree ; there are no effortless ways to learn a language. Whatever route you take to fluency is fine as long as it works for you.

Prosody, tone, rythym, etc. in Japanese is important, but not as essential as it would be with, say, English. While phonetic languages use sound as a primary component to process the language; orthographic languages tend to use logographs and pictures to give meaning. Thus, auditory, incidental learning might be more effective for phonetic languages because of the way phonetic languages are structured and processed, through sound.

The distinction between "child and adult" is a bit vague, possibly opinionated. To "learn like a child" may be to learn without bias, to be open-minded, and to view what you're learning as new and interesting. People with an L1, maybe an L2 may process/understand words with prior knowledge; a more technical distinction between the two groups.

The goal of auditory, incidental learning (according to Krashen, etc) is to reduce overhead while learning a phonetic language. Perhaps extensive reading would work better with orthographic languages like Japanese. There's also subs2srs, Epwing2Anki, Core, etc; for a more deliberate approach.

Aspiring Wrote:While phonetic languages use sound as a primary component to process the language; orthographic languages tend to use logographs and pictures to give meaning. Thus, auditory, incidental learning might be more effective for phonetic languages because of the way phonetic languages are structured and processed, through sound.

That sounds very reasonable, and matches with my experience.

I originally tried to learn Japanese only by listening and speaking, with rather mediocre results. Once I started studying kanji though, it all made sense.

Maybe that's why you see subtitles frequently used on TV. Or why a book written in hiragana is much harder to read than a book written in kanji. The sounds of the words are far less helpful than the symbols.

Just agreeing with some of the above here. If you don't do audio immersion you could very well end up like me being able to read novels without much trouble and yet easily get lost in TV shows and conversations. Speaking from experience, having 10k mature cards in Anki won't help as much as you think when your ears aren't trained enough to distinguish the sounds well. Now when and how extensive the immersion should be is more debatable and varies from person to person.

Warning: I'm about to use some terms that I define as I go.

Passive Immersion (= listening without paying much attention. speed reading/skimming. etc.) will help you (in the early stages) get used to the sounds and rhythm of the language, and, (in the later stages,) help you reinforce patterns, grammar and vocabulary that you already know through repeated exposure.

Active Immersion (= studying by examining text, audio, conversation, etc. made by and for native speakers) will give you new words and expressions, teach you how to speak in different circumstances and just increase your knowledge of the language overall. This is, however, quite hard to accomplish at lower levels so most language learners opt for some sort of grammar guide or textbook to boost them past "beginner." I think this is a good thing.

Both are invaluable- it all depends on what you want. Does listening to gibberish in the beginning help you learn new things? No. Does it help you get -used to- sounds and rhythm? Yes. The more you listen, the more you'll be able to -hear-. Listening comprehension was, for me, by far the biggest hurdle to cross in my language learning adventure. I may be more or less bilingual now but I attribute my ability to understand what's being said, as well as my native (albeit very, very Osakanized ) accent, to the large dose of passive AND active listening that I received from Day One.

Also, I wouldn't suggest listening to material made for learners of Japanese. You may feel warm and fuzzy inside being able to understand the ultra-clear pronunciation but it will be of little to no help when you encounter real, native Japanese. If you don't follow the "just get used to it" philosophy in any other area- I would highly suggest it when it comes to listening. At least for listening- this is something I STRONGLY advise. Other people may disagree. To each his own!

[RawToast]

Daichi Wrote:I agree with this statement. I started off with a lot of listening, I can't say it got me very far by itself. I think you need a suitable balance of actual study and immersion.

I had the same experience. I listened to a lot of music whilst doing RTK and I got very little out of it outside of the 'sound of the language'. For example, listening to a popular Blue Hearts song I would only have been able to distinguish and understand few basic words like: リンダ、ネズミ、僕、君、and some of the conjugations; however, I could make out where most of the unknown words begun and end.

Daichi Wrote:I mean, it might not be as enjoyable but it's probably somewhat practical to learn a bunch of vocab in Core2K and listen to the audio of those cards that you are somewhat familiar with already.

To take this further, it's probably practical to take a TV episode with a Japanese script and learn every bit of vocab in that one episode. Then after you do that, listen to it a bunch of times. That way all your input is actually meaningful.

This is a good step to take. I am currently embarking on some subs2srs decks, which essentially is the same thing, just with native media. It's easy and beneficial to compliment a subs2srs deck by making vocab cards for any new vocabulary.

I also have some cards for words from songs (after reading the song lyrics) and it does seem to make the listening more beneficial. Even if I am just listening to the music (not actively attempting to translate on the fly) I notice the words as they appear. I had the same experience, just far slower and not as targeted, from studying the core decks.

Carrying on from the previous example, I now can listen to the song and understand it without really paying attention -- here's only 2 lines where I need to actively listen to.

Quote:If you don't do audio immersion you could very well end up like me being able to read novels without much trouble and yet easily get lost in TV shows and conversations.

I can relate. Last summer I could rush through the N5 reading and could pass the N4 reading; but if you were to give me the listening...