Every now and then, I check the Dope Japanese Hip-Hop thread to see if anyone's found any cool new music I should check out. The other day, I noticed that over 5 years had passed since I created that thread, and it dawned on me that since that time, I really hadn't come much closer to that coveted, ambiguous "fluency" that I've always wanted.

Going through my post history, I found a post where I mentioned I started studying Japanese in 2006, 9 years ago.

For most of that time, I was mostly concerned about speed and comprehensiveness. I wanted to be the next Khatzumoto; indistinguishable from a native over the phone. I spent a lot of time researching various methods, switching and starting over as soon as I found a new one that seemed promising.

Eventually, I seemed to have "settled" on a method of my own, drawing from what I had learned over the years. All the resources were in place. All that was left was to carve out some time each day to spend focusing on my studies. For a while, I did that. But not for long.

At some point, as always, some change in my life or schedule gave me a good excuse to stop studying for an extended period of time. I had listened almost exclusively to J-rap that I really enjoyed for something like 2-3 years straight. I was playing video games in Japanese. I installed a Japanese language pack for Windows. I went on Japanese P2P and downloaded hundreds of gigs of Japanese/dubbed tv shows and anime. I bought several Japanese learning books. Got through Pimsleur Japanese level 1.

But I never really kept up with it. When I did, it was really exhausting. The majority of the time I spent studying was using Anki with RTK 1 (third edition). For new cards, I would read the physical book, taking a mental note of the primitives and Heisig's story and keyword, which were usually awful (I have still never seen the word "decameron" outside of this book), then looking at the top-voted stories on RevTK to find one to copy-paste into my modded RTK deck (I added a clickable "show story" button to my cards, before the functionality was added to Anki). For reviews, I would usually use my iOS device with Anki Mobile, trying to remember the stroke order, and reading the story if I needed any help.

For months, I would brag about how I was studying Japanese and the method I was using. I would prove it by writing the kanji for "admonish" (a whopping 19 strokes) from memory.

But that's really about as far as my skills ever got. Don't get me wrong; I can read kana with the best of them (forget writing), as long as I use common sense to figure out the similar ones like mu and ma, but I just never got anywhere near where I wanted to be.

Thinking back, I understand why. I was focused on finding an efficient method that would work for me. I had gotten frustrated at one point and tried "RTK Lite," which omits all the non-primitive kanji that aren't used often. The problem I had with that is that there was such little primitive reuse that it actually made it much more difficult and time consuming to study and review.

I would go slowly, and get frustrated with my lack of progress over extended periods of time. I would go quickly, and suddenly experience the reckoning when I miss a day or two of reviews and suddenly have 250 kanji backed up.

I was very concerned with doing things the "right" way, and that way, which I learned from AJATT, was to learn how to read first and foremost.

Today, I think that is wrong. If you prioritize literacy over everything else, then you make Japanese pretty much as hard as it can be right off the bat. Khatz says "learn all the general use kanji, then learn the kana, then learn 10k sentences, and then you're fluent!" But it takes a long time to learn enough sentences to get through a simple book, and that's after the long time it takes to get through RTK 1. And almost that entire time, you're putting in a ton of work with almost nothing to show for it.

If I could go back in time and start over, I would have prioritized understanding spoken Japanese. Then I could comprehend music, anime, TV, movies, podcasts, the news, and the vast majority of video games. I could play through those DS games that have furigana. I would be able to note the increasing comprehension rate every day as I continue my studies. That good feeling would close the feedback loop: study, experience native material, comprehend more, feel good, use that as motivation to keep studying.

With the AJATT method, that feedback loop starts with the motivation boost you get from reading one of Khatz' articles. Then you study. Then, if you set up an immersion environment, you experience native material. Then you comprehend nothing, feel bad, and read another article for motivation, whenever you get around to it. In fact, until you get far enough into that sentence phase, the immersion environment is gonna serve as a constant reminder of how much progress you aren't really making at all, despite the hours you're putting in. Eventually, you get sick of not understanding OS error messages, and not comprehending any dialogue in movies/shows/anime. You switch it back to English. You turn subs back on. The music might stick around, but the immersion fades.

In my opinion, you need one of three things to effectively study Japanese:

1. Fun learning material

2. Lasting motivation

3. A strong work ethic

The problem with 1 is that the fun material is usually sorely lacking in content, or has other problems that diminish its effectiveness. This is one of the things a good teacher who follows the i+1 theory can provide; an enjoyable learning environment that actually keeps you learning at a decent rate by building on what you already know so that you don't get frustrated or bored. You can't really get that with free/cheap learning materials, though, so it's pretty expensive for something that you're really only doing for xyz not-very-strong reason.

The problem with 2 is that most of us simply lack it. If you have to learn the language, say, for work, then you're gonna do it because you don't really have much of a choice if you want to get/keep your job. My motivation was that I had gotten tired of fan translations and bad localizations, and wanted to experience the native material the way it was intended. That eventually changed to becoming a requisite of my dream job of working at a Japanese game development studio. I planned out a timeline of learning both the language and certain in-demand technologies. Of course, it was always a nice-to-have and not an imperative, so it wasn't a good enough reason to stick to the grind through the really bad times.

3, again, is something a lot of people just don't have. Simply accepting that the process is long, arduous, and often simply hard work (with no pay), and continuing to grind, day in, day out, until you get to a good point where you don't have to grind anymore.

I started learning Japanese in high school. My life has changed significantly since then, and I have gone through many changes as an individual, especially in how much time I have to study. I used to excuse my lack of study with lack of free time, and when I was a full-time college student, that was true; the most progress I ever made was during a 2-week winter break.

But now? I recently went 4 months without a job, and even with an aggressive job search, I had a lot of free time on my hands, but spent none of it studying Japanese.

Anyway, the reason why I made this post is because I've recently gotten back a bit of motivation to study again. I received a Gundam plastic model kit (gunpla) for Christmas, and it rekindled a passion for that hobby that had been laying dormant for 15 years, back when Gundam was a popular show on TV and gunpla was cheaply available in American stores. The thing is, the manuals are all Japanese. You don't actually need to read the language to build the kits, but none of the flavor text or designer interviews are translated anywhere online. Between getting into the kits and the shows again (and wanting to start reading the hobby magazines), as well as getting back into J-Rap, I really want to restart my Japanese studies.

And I think I'm gonna go about it using a different mindset, valuing audio comprehension over reading and writing. From audio, I can build vocabulary and get the grammar rules down enough to read basic text and manga; I can muddle through with a combination of Rikaikun and furigana. I'll also be able to understand most Japanese media, and that understanding will increase literally every day. I think I stand a much better chance of actually sticking with the program this time around than I did before, provided I can carve out 30-60 minutes each day for study.

I suppose my question after all this is, is anyone else in a similar spot, or has any recommendations?

My way of doing it was mostly to plow through anime with Japanese subtitles. You need some grammar (you probably have some already). You should probably try to get through genki. (I did and I am hopeless at textbooks).

Otherwise (or both) you can research the grammar online as you encounter it.

I Anki'd words and later sentences. I learned kanji but only in the context of actual words.

At first it is really hard pushing your way through anime (or anything else you want with Japanese subtitles but start with something not too complex) needing to look up most things. But it is much more exhilarating than just grinding.

After a while (depending how determinedly you do it) you are more and more watching anime and not just fighting your way through it.

But the point is, right from the start you are living Japanese, not just "studying".

It may not be the way for you or it may give you some ideas. I have gotten a pretty fair way using it. you can read about it in more detail here if you are interested

Sounds like you well understand part of the problem: "lasting motivation" and "strong work ethic". You probably already know much of this, but a little reiteration sometimes helps. Just a few practical tidbits I've learned from my own voyage of failings and successes. (I'll leave the study plan part to the pros.)

A plan: People who are generally the most successful at accomplishing things in life take the time to create a plan and write it down. Plan should include big goal/s, small goals to accomplish along the way, and concrete steps to get between goals. If you find a mentor/successful person to help you polish up your plan (maybe here!) so much the better!

The right group of friends/associates: When the days get long and one grows weary, nothing beats an study/exercise/なになに buddy to pull your from your daze and keep you going. Seriously, hanging out with the right group of people can be a big part in helping you accomplish your goals; I've seen this in myself as well as others.

Habit: Creating the right habits allows you to autopilot through certain things, e.g., you don't have to waste valuable brain power on deciding whether or not you want to study for 30 minutes at 9:00 a.m. every day; it becomes habit so you can use your brain power on actually studying. If you get the chance, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is a great read (you can also find summaries of the process out there if you're in a hurry, but the stories in the book help his points sink in).

Willpower: As you indicated, language learning takes a lot of willpower sometimes. But willpower is something that can be built up to a roaring iron forge (just start small), and I've found that to also be one of the benefits of language learning: it provides me with stronger willpower for other areas of my life, which is a great boon to my existence as I've had plenty of days of ZERO because willpower was lacking. (Willpower and habit are pretty connected. More good habits, less emptying of willpower reservoir.)

Exercise: Recent research has been showing more and more the mind-body connection and how much the brain's powers are augmented by exercise, e.g., you get new neurons that if coupled with learning processes "solidify" and strengthen or as one German study showed, a 20% speed increase in vocab learning after exercise.　悪くないでしょう。 And there are tons of other benefits somewhat related to learning: lower stress/anxiety levels, better attention span, stronger willpower... (Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain provides a pretty reader-friendly look at all these.

I've found that many things in life that are worth doing take a formidable amount of time. I like efficiency and shortcuts when they can be had, but the road is often long, so I've learned to rely on some of the strategies above in order to plow through weary/boring times. And of course when I bite the dust, just means I have to get up and keep going. Anyway, sounds like you've still got interest and are are still trying to figure out how to get your prize, so just commit to it for the long haul. As you've probably realized, there's no perfect way (not saying there aren't better ways), so once you've got some solid advice from members here, stick to that plan for a good while, and even if it's not perfect, you'll make progress. Good luck!

Edit: This link may be pertinent: What are the worst / best things you've done for studying?

I think to anyone starting out reading this, they should actually work through rtk and a textbook at the same time. Maybe do 500 before you start and then jump in and do it in tandem with other stuff. As for fun textbooks... Japanese the manga way is cheap and fun. It doesn't have exercises but if your aiming for comprehension not litracy that shouldn't be a problem, just anki it. Once your about halfway through the textbook start immersing and most importantly shadowing. Its important to gain a good pronunciation and flow early on because otherwise, every time you read anything you reinforce a bad accent. Then try a bit of core 2k, probably still doing rtk at this ppint. And then jump into subs2srs. Or just be like me and do about 700 kanji and not touch them for months. I can actually recognise many I've not studied in words but I can't work out words from context well so I will be heading back into kanji.

In terms of recxomendations, obviously as I said, subs2srs. Watch the anime/drama with Japanese subs. Feed the video and jsubs into subs2srs (don't use any English sub's as the back of the card, they are usually awful translations). Then set up morphman to sort the cards so that cards with only 1 unknown come first. When you go to review the new card, it wont have a definition, but it will tell you which word you dont know, and youjust paste that word into jisho.org and quickly enter the definition Don't do this in bilk at the beginning, that's tortureous. Then you have a clever building deck from meaningful content. Meaningful content is a key for motivation. The only thing that got me to 700 kanji is when I opened up a Naruto manga at the 200 mark and realised how much I could suddenly pick up just from kanji. Anyway, then you go through the cards, then relisten to the audio of theanime/ drama only when your in the car or whatever. Its quite rewarding.

Also for shadowing, you can use anything. Podcasts and interviews and stuff. Or clips from that same drama/anime above. Its best to have listened to it a few times first, so the drama would be ideal. Preferably only shadow people of the same sex. There are also books for this called Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese. There are 2 books in the series.

Now how do I keep motivated? Mostly I just stopped listening to English music. Music is powerful. And I watch dramas and anime regularly, no sub's, or jsubs. And more recently, I met a Chinese girl who is like Japanese boss and I want to be better than her. I always put my efforts towards understanding what I want to and I never have a plan. People seem to blindly stick to plans like going through all of 6k before they touch anything they enjoy but dont see how they could totally be reading that manga NOW. I don't have a plan because if I get bored of one thing I just do something else. I think that's motivating, and likely to keep me going than a real plan. Obviously I have short term goals though. And longer term goals, but I only have a plan in terms of what I am going to do next to acheive my goal, not "this is how I will learn Japanese right and reach fluency!!!!"

I thought this thread was going to be really demotivational, but it makes me feel better about not having a plan, and sucking at reading. (That's my next goal btw, to stop sucking at reading. I also makemy goals as I go along by analysing myself rather than deciding on a method in advance that may not suit me in the future).

The problem is that 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + ... + 0 = 0

0 is the only number with this property.

If you want to make progress, you can do any amount per day that you want, except zero

I find it interesting that lack of understanding during immersion demotivated you to the point where you put the subs back on and stuff. I remember 6 years ago reading Khatz articles all in one night, getting a huge hit of motivation and starting AJATT the next day, loving it and hit fluency 2 ~ 3 years later. For me when I was doing immersion at first I could only understand a small percentage but I looked at it the exact opposite way. I took it for granted that I didn't know the majority of what was being said and I was super happy when I could understand even a few words. As I studied every day learning new kanji, words, phrases etc. I slowly understood more and more and every single day I remember seeing a word that I learned the week or day or month before and put into Anki, and i'd see it in the wild and this time I would understand it and I was like...hell yeah! This shit is working! Just gotta keep at it!! So, I found immersion + anki to be a hugely positive feedback loop that drove me to succeed.

There are so many different ways of learning Japanese... I guess the 'right' way really depends on your personality.

@mezbup

This is how I feel. Apart from the fact that I was never motivated enough to finish rtk. I always beleive I can understand anything now, and I set my threshhold for understanding low. If I can work out the story of a drama from some bits of dialogue, facial expressions, setting etc. I'm happy. And if I can understand it more a second go round, I'm on a rush that will keep me motivated.

@vgambit
If you plan to focus on listenning comprehension my advice would be to register on Japanesepod101. There are levels, so it's hard to be overwhelmed. Same thing with FluentU.

I have just the same experience as mezbup. I found the first year of immersion with little to no understanding of the language to be absolutely awesome. The small wins, like recognizing a kanji or word in the middle of Japanese gibberish, was a great feeling.
I did the whole no Norwegian / English immersion for one year and had the time of my life. It was a very isolated experience and probably not something I would do again, but at the time it was absolutely amazing. I think going on a trip to Japan first, getting a crush on the language, culture and hot Tokyo-girls in combination with finding AJATT gave me such a huge motivational boost that I could easily grind day in and day out.
The funny thing is that I have never been able to repeat the process - I've tried with French, Mandarin and German after learning Japanese, but I always lose interest, as I don't have a strong enough connection to the countries where those languages are spoken.
So I just figured - what the heck, in stead of learning another language, I'll just keep on improving my Japanese further, as I don't get bored of it. At all.

Hey vgambit, your story sounds quite similar to mine, only I've been studying even longer
Hell, I even got a freaking bachelor's degree in Japanese, but I can't have a two minute conversation with my soon-to-be Japanese mother-in-law.

About 2 months ago, I hit the realization that my Japanese was going nowhere, and in the time since then, I have been sorting out what to do about it.

The big thing, I think, is to make sure you are constantly learning something. It doesn't matter what you are learning, but just learn something. A great way to make sure you are doing this is to keep a simple japanese progress journal that you make notes in once a week or so. Just jot down what you have learned, what progress you have made, or just what you did in Japanese that week. If you make this one thing a priority, then you can quickly identify if you are getting into a rut, or you can clearly see if you aren't giving Japanese the attention that it deserves.
I spent at least a year or longer just reviewing old words in the core6k deck. I told myself that I was studying Japanese. But I wasn't learning anything. I was just spinning my wheels reviewing old crap. Don't fall into that trap. Keep moving forward.

Don't take anyone's word as gospel. You read blogs, and methods, and people tell you "this is how you should do it". It's all bullshit. Everyone is different. What worked for someone else might not work for you. Figure out what works for you, and mix it up. If you hate something, find a different thing to do. If you hear a good idea for studying, try it, but don't get so absorbed into the idea itself that you push further and further into it with no evidence that it's helping you. There is no One True Way to Japanese. Just keep moving forward, that's the real One True Way.

I think you're wrong, and ultimately speaking as a person that still doesn't have the authority to suggest that "prioritizing understanding spoken Japanese" is the best way because, as you said, you never progressed.

Khatz's method is fine. RTK is a drag, yes, but reaching an adult level of all-rounded fluency in 18-24 months takes a bit of a sacrifice for that rapid kind of progress, and that includes kanji. RTK is a solid way to knock them out. If you feel there's too much time with nothing to show for it (vanilla rtk first is kind of hardcore and boring) then, as you mentioned, you can always knock out RTK-lite in a month and jump right into sentences. Or even do RTK-lite in two blocks of 500 with sentences in-between.

As for sentences around the 500 mark you have a solid grasp of the very basics, and around 2000 you start to have enough of a grasp to jump into easy native materials (think easy shounen manga).

Please don't insult other users.
Zgarbas

OH I am glad this thread hasn't turned out demotivational after all.

One thing I think is really really important is using Japanese to talk and write to other people.

In Japanese there is a wonderful expression 頭の開店. Things that go around in your head (just like 回転寿司). When you are in contact and communication with people in Japanese (especially when you establish exclusively 日本語 relationships), your 頭の回転 has to be in Japanese.

It isn't just what you actually say/write or hear/read. You think about what they said, what you said, what you might say, what they might say. The whole 頭の回転 connected with the relationship is English.

Conversely if your relationship is in English (like here for example) the associated 頭の回転 is forced into English. You think in English to read this. If you agree with me you think how you might agree in English. If you think I am a バカの人形 you don't think that, you think "stupid doll".

I think this is important on psychological and emotional levels that are deeper than just how many words you think in what language. But even if you think I am a バカの人形 there you can see how it works on the purely quantitative level.

Now of course it depends on your level, but even if you have to write in spaced hiragana and talk about the weather you can do it a little. I am associated with a forum where we communicate in Japanese only. It is a little slow at the moment, but it is gradually picking up steam.

Some people consider it too kawaii but if you don't like it, that's fine. Start talking in Japanese here or anywhere. I'll join you. I don't mean switch to Japanese, but use the language where you can. Build relationships in Japanese. I think that is vital. You can manage without it, but doing that is one of the things that makes moving your mind into Japanese so hard.

Your story reads like a horrible 'what if' for me. I started off pretty hardcore about AJATT methodology but quickly jettisoned it for something I made up as I went along but loosely based off the AJATT stuff. I still thing it's broadly a good idea, but it's still messed up and isn't going to work as a general method. Obviously it was fine for Katzumoto but that's just one anecdote - there's no evidence it works for anyone but him.

If I understand you right - you got caught up on the learn-kanji-first step?
Even though I'm sure it would be of great help to me now if I'd slammed through kanji first - I'm really glad I didn't. Getting to the good stuff first and bypassing kanji was completely worth it. Knowing all the kanji without any context gives you almost nothing - you can understand nothing and do nothing except write a bunch of squiggles that you don't really understand. That's the only problem I have with RTK - the idea that it should be done first. Kanji is one of the least important parts of Japanese. Not knowing it won't affect your understanding of anything spoken or anything with furigana.

Of your three things:
1. subs2srs is still the best thing ever. Delete any cards that aren't N+1~2 and it's as fun as grinding language can possibly get.
2. I must admit that living in Japan does wonders for the motivation, but I think having smaller goals was much more motivating. 'I want to keep reading books' was a really good one. Once you start reading you quickly hit things that are harder but that you want to read, and it would be a waste to stop studying.
3. I absolutely don't have, but I have something better - habit. Once you've done the same thing every day for a month, it becomes easier to keep doing it. It takes almost no effort. Not doing it becomes unimaginable. Especially if it's easy. Actually - that's probably the key point. Nothing should be difficult. If you're straining and stressing over memorising something, something has gone wrong.

Good luck getting back into it.

Aikynaro Wrote:I still thing it's broadly a good idea, but it's still messed up and isn't going to work as a general method. Obviously it was fine for Katzumoto but that's just one anecdote - there's no evidence it works for anyone but him.

The majority of the advanced and fluent people here used AJATT to do it. I'd even say vast the majority of non-classroom learners of the English world who have achieved success with Japanese in the last 8 years were influenced by AJATT. The site is dead now, but nothing really matches the outreach and influence AJATT had in it's golden years. It's clearly not a singular anecdote.

ドリーもAJATTから大きな影響を受けました。

ドリーも勝手に自分の「AJATTみたい」システムを使いました。

日本語が下手だけど、出来ますよ。

ryuudou Wrote:

Aikynaro Wrote:I still thing it's broadly a good idea, but it's still messed up and isn't going to work as a general method. Obviously it was fine for Katzumoto but that's just one anecdote - there's no evidence it works for anyone but him.

The majority of the advanced and fluent people here used AJATT to do it. I'd even say vast the majority of non-classroom learners of the English world who have achieved success with Japanese in the last 8 years were influenced by AJATT. The site is dead now, but nothing really matches the outreach and influence AJATT had in it's golden years. It's clearly not a singular anecdote.

What people are saying is that AJATT in the pure form mostly spoken about on Khatz blog is just an anecdotal method that worked for Khatz. Everyone has been influenced by AJATT, but people who succeed don't follow what Khatz did like its gospel. They adapt it. Khatz certainly didn't say no nothing about Core decks. In fact, he never said much about anything apart from sentence mining, immersion, timeboxing and motivation. If you followed AJATT perfectly you're bound to fail because I cannot imagine that there is one person who does not have some problem with some part of that system. And as soon as you have a problem with your whole method, you loose the fun and the motivation. No-one ever said that people weren't influenced by AJATT, Aikynaro was just referring to the fact that you have to slightly adapt AJATT to work for you.

Helena4 Wrote:If you followed AJATT perfectly you're bound to fail

Countless success stories are a direct contradiction to this. AJATT is not a "method", but it is a system (SRSing Japanese sentences + RTK + immersion + emphasis on fun) that of which, when followed "perfectly", has directly led to the fluency of many and is definitely not a singular anecdote like he implied.

Helena4 Wrote:Aikynaro was just referring to the fact that you have to slightly adapt AJATT to work for you.

No. It would've been fine if he said just that, but he also mentioned "but it's still messed up and isn't going to work as a general method" which is of course a false statement and is contradicted by a large majority of proficient users here and all across the Japanese learning communities. Even the jlvlup guy did unmodified AJATT (he did RTK and then mined his entire deck from native materials while doing the AJATT immersion environment thing) and has that to thank for his fluency. Tweaks here and there are great (though utilizing pre-made decks doesn't automatically mean you're no longer doing AJATT; it encourages picking sentences from wherever) but the system in unmodified form is definitely not "messed up" and/or "isn't going to work" as he said.

I don't know how many people have actually "done AJATT" but I suspect some of the ideas have been influential far beyond AJATT itself. Jalup is a kind of civilized AJATT (civilized in tone, I mean) in many respects.

I haven't used the AJATT system by a long, long way. I haven't done RTK, I use sentences, but very differently. I am not sure if Khatzumoto-san talked about "interactive immersion" talking and text-chatting and foruming with anyone and everyone in Japanese whenever possible. To me this is vital. If he didn't it is still in the spirit of All Japanese All The Time.

I am not saying that my belief in making Japanese one's default language comes from AJATT, or that I wouldn't have it without AJATT. But certainly AJATT and AJATT-influenced sources have been important in developing the outlook.

I have invented a great deal of the way I learn Japanese (which is why I blog about it) but if AJATT hadn't existed I would have had to invent a lot more.

Making Japanese the default language, ie change from:

Unless there is a reason to be using Japanese, use English (which is what is happening right here)

to

Unless there is an *extremely good* reason to be using English, use Japanese.

Is, in a sense an extension of the AJATT philosophy of self-immersion.

I think a lot of people who don't like AJATT as a "system" (and I can see why one wouldn't) still owe a lot to the ideas it helped to promote.

ryuudou Wrote:AJATT is not a "method", but it is a system (SRSing Japanese sentences + RTK + immersion + emphasis on fun) that of which, when followed "perfectly"...

The creator of that system does not even advocate using the "sentence" part of it anymore. When the creator of a system comes out and tells everyone "hey guys, that major part of my system that everyone focused really hard on, you can sort of just ignore that, I'm not doing that anymore", then how can anyone follow this constantly changing system "perfectly"?

Zarxrax Wrote:

ryuudou Wrote:AJATT is not a "method", but it is a system (SRSing Japanese sentences + RTK + immersion + emphasis on fun) that of which, when followed "perfectly"...

The creator of that system does not even advocate using the "sentence" part of it anymore. When the creator of a system comes out and tells everyone "hey guys, that major part of my system that everyone focused really hard on, you can sort of just ignore that, I'm not doing that anymore", then how can anyone follow this constantly changing system "perfectly"?

MCDs are sentences. That was just him trying to sell something. The fundamental structure has never changed.

ryuudou Wrote:The majority of the advanced and fluent people here used AJATT to do it.

That's a pretty bold claim, do you have anything to back it up?

Reading AJATT is what first motivated me to get stuck into RTK, way back when 10k sentences sounded like a lot

Something consistently advocated by Stephen Krashen, Katz, JapaneseLevelUp & co is "input before output" - i.e. developing passive skills first, so that you acquire an intuitive feel for what makes sense instead of constructing identikit sentences in the absence of error-correcting feedback. This is what the sentence mining and immersion stuff is all about.

AFAIK the efficacy of the method is widely acknowledged.

CureDolly Wrote:I think a lot of people who don't like AJATT as a "system" (and I can see why one wouldn't) still owe a lot to the ideas it helped to promote.

This is true. There are parts about it you can not like as a system, but the newgens here who don't know their history sometimes say silly things like it being "messed up" or "not working". It's not "messed up". You may need a personal tweak or two, but that has nothing to do with it inherently not working.

Not only is it not "messed up", but it's the sole reason that the standard quote for fluency in Japanese is still not 6-8 years of hard study like it was pre-AJATT (learning Japanese online before 2006) and is now 2 years (passing N1 with a comfortable margin and being able to pick up adult novels and read them). The idea of using a SRS to learn the readings of Japanese sentences/words in a context is an idea that Khatz used to success in 2004 and then essentially single-handedly injected into the Japanese learning community with the AJATT "method", and from there on the SRS became central to most popular acquisition methods of Japanese out of the classroom. Before that Supermemo/SRS usage was essentially confined to small pockets of eastern european communities with no stake in the western world, and for the most part still is. I'm pretty sure SRS never majorly took off in any other language learning communities besides English (polish people like to use it to learn English) and Japanese (Khatz's doing).

I would not use SRS to learn a West European language (certainly not a Romance one). The vocabularies are so closely related that it is far better to work out the relationships:
Fr/En
doigt / digit
chien / canine
homme / homicide

Etc. etc. Most abstract words (those ending in -ation for example), are just dialectical variants between the languages.

With Japanese you are starting from scratch like a baby, associating sounds with concepts with no handholds at all (except katakana European words that are not organic to the language).

SRSing Romance language vocabulary would be like using an elaborate arrangement of ropes to lift a suitcase because you haven't noticed the handle!

I think the purpose of SRS in Japanese is to give one sufficient structure to build on - somewhere to hang the doors and windows and lay the new bricks. At some point though (at least if one is aiming to make Japanese one's second first language rather than a "foreign language" one learns) one will need to take the SRS training wheels off and continue in a more organic fashion.

So because French is easier, that's a reason to use less efficient methods to study it?

The cognates you mention don't need SRS because they don't need studying at all (for recognition).