Finalrpg Wrote:Is there any figure (ie. 7000 sentences) that he thinks is approximately where this ‘natural’ feeling to speak will occur.
I guess the most obvious answer would be 10k sentences.

I think you missed the part about reading 250 books. 10k sentences is a trivial amount.

Though admittedly that and the immersion does begin to sound like one of those revolutionary methods that only works if you are prepared to apply it 12 hours a day for 10 years.

カモ: Your method didn't work, I want my money back!

詐欺師: You didn't do it enough!

(The difference being that the reading part really does seem to work).

Tzadeck Wrote:I also think that if Japanese is your only goal in life, your life is boring. You need to make time for other things.

Just because I take Japanese seriously doesn't mean it is my only goal in life, but nobody great ever achieved anything by going half-assed at it. My work ethics isn't up there with those great people obviously, but to go as far as to say investing time into something that you want to achieve over pure recreation is a waste of time seems like giving up on making any progress.

In terms of myself, I'm at school from 8:10 till 18:00 and my other hobbies include playing the guitar (my listening to Japanese rock music actually inspired this), tennis and writing (I entered a short story competition a few months ago and was shortlisted but didn't win any of the prizes). Japanese isn't my whole life I just take it seriously. And passive listening on my bus and at other down time does not interfere with me playing the guitar or something. I do the listening when

Also on the subject of active study being more effective than passive listening, yes, active study is necessary and you will feel much greater tangible benefit from it. This does not make passive listening redundant. Active study is your practice and your listening is your performance. You study actively and gain vocab, then listen to reinforce it and to get you vaguely familiar with things you will study in the future. e.g. I have said many times I never finished core 2k, which means I never matured the cards because I deleted the deck. However, there is one card I have a photographic memory of, and I also remember when and where I first saw the card etc. The word was 翼 and the reason I remembered it with no effort is because I had the song 夢見るつばさ on my ipod. I didn't even like the song before then and so I only listened to it about twice but as soon as I saw that word it all came flooding back and I remembered the word on the spot (this was this time last year btw). However, if you do no active study, you have nothing to base your listening on and you will be letting a lot of vocab fly past you because you'll never be reinforcing it. I usually make sure my passive listening material has an active base. E.g. I watched a video with Jsubs or watch a video and look up some words I hear or straight up subs2srs it and then I rip it and put onto my ipod for passive consumption. That adds a lot of more tangible value to the passive listening.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an AJATT lover, I take advice from everywhere and see if it works and a mixture of active study, active listening and then passive listening works for me, and I contest the idea that passive listening could ever be a straight up waste of time.

I would like to ask a question btw, to the people who really think they dow't want to spend any time on passive listening: What is your strongest skill out of reading, listening, writing and speaking?

The thing about massive input is that it's meant to be comprehensible. Immersing oneself in a sea of ちんぷんかんぷん in the hope of magically understanding it is where things get 'controversial'.

Though having said that, like Helena I had picked up a few words from listening to music long before I had any business knowing them.

E.g. when 幻 came up in a pre-made deck I was relieved to discover that I had picked it up from listening to Kanon Wakeshima's Shinshoku Dolce album - it would have been a difficult reading otherwise.

Roketzu Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I also think that if XXXXX is your only goal in life, your life is boring. You need to make time for other things.

Anyone could say this about anything, in the end it's all opinions and personal preference, and judging others' lives never comes off well. What is hell to one person might be paradise to another, yadayada.

Are you judging me for judging the values of others? Hehe.

How dare I? And how dare you?

ryuudou Wrote:I'm pretty sure you only have 500 card and are in no position to lecture anyone.

It's not really a card or hours of passiveness competition, yet everything said about speaking in real situations in this thread has been ignored in favour of this discussion.

I really consider active listening and passive listening to be two sides of the same coin, because all passive listening is is active listening that's been put on the back burner in favor of something else at that point in time, but which hasn't been turned off, yet is still capable of seeping into someone's sense of hearing all the same. That's really all passive listening is.

Passive/active listening does require time that not everyone can afford or is willing to afford to spend to just one thing. Whatever reasons they have. However, IMO, I'd rather be able to dedicate a large portion of time per day over a relatively short period of time in the long-term to something (if I didn't procrastinate so much that is), than spend a scant portion of time per day over a period of ten years or so. And that's where AJATT and immersion come into play.

Passive listening, in a sense (when coupled with active listening), is similar to RTK in how there have been several posters who say that they don't like RTK, don't see how it's useful, and will call it unnecessary and a waste of time, etc. Yet then there are posters who have found RTK very useful and who say that their Japanese studies might not be as far along as they are if it hadn't been for RTK being available.

In regards to passive listening, there are simply people who find it unnecessary and a waste of time. And there are those who have found it useful. Granted, it isn't really necessary, to be honest. But necessity doesn't exactly fully equate to being beneficial and helpful, since RTK isn't necessary either.

Tzadeck Wrote:

Roketzu Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I also think that if XXXXX is your only goal in life, your life is boring. You need to make time for other things.

Anyone could say this about anything, in the end it's all opinions and personal preference, and judging others' lives never comes off well. What is hell to one person might be paradise to another, yadayada.

Are you judging me for judging the values of others? Hehe.

How dare I? And how dare you?

To be honest, I doubt a lot of people retain Japanese things as their only interest or goal in life. And spending 18-24 months dedicated to Japanese AJATT-style isn't necessarily correlative to Japanese being someone's only life goal or life interest

[Zgarbas]

Man, I made *amazing* progress when Japanese was my only goal in life. Seriously, you should try it. Pretty much the most rewarding 2 years of my life, far better than when I had no goals in life. That being said, now that I *need* Japanese and have other goals, it's not going so well. I guess that as long as you have *some* goals and work towards them, then anything goes. Tzadeck, it's not very nice to diss people's goals in life like that =(.

Passive listening does nothing for me; seriously, if passive listening did much then my exposure to French throughout my life would've left me with at least A1 level French, and that's a language that is much easier to relate to than Japanese. Like, I do actively listen to a pretty serious amount of French music, and have since I was in kindergarden, I've watched numerous French movies and tried memorising a considerable number of French poems. I've listened in on dozens (hundreds?) of French conversations, and a lot of the shows I watched as a kid were in French. Just, nope. Nothing. I mispronounce 'Je ne parle pas français'.

Re: listening to stuff when asleep... I thought that noises and lights in your sleeping environment inhibit melatonin production and lead to poor sleep/possibly depression?

I'm not sure about the brain chemistry involved, but what I've read to be the best recommended sleep is total darkness and silence alongside consistency in getting to bed at the same time, preferably with somewhere between 8-10 hours a night of actual sleep.

Based on that, I think what you said about sleep is most likely true. But at the same time, meditation practices can involve soothing music/noises in order to relax someone, maybe even cause them to lull off.

I have to say I wouldn't listen to anything when I'm sleeping. The only time I've done that is when I'm in pain and I need to sleep, that's when it actually helps to soothe, otherwise it's just going to keep me awake.

I think there is a limit to how much passive listening I'm gonna do, as in I am not going to jeopardise my sleep by listening in bed or jeopardise important work (some work is okay with it, usually maths or something else non linguistic) with it. But the argument I was arguing against earlier is whether passive listening time is better spent listening to English music or an audiobook. I wouldn't spend that time doing those things either.

[Zgarbas]

I think that listening to something you enjoy is what matters. If you prefer English music I don't see why you'd deprive yourself of it, and if you prefer Japanese music I don't see why you'd avoid it... I don't consider listening to audiobooks a passive activity as it involves active listening if you want to actually hear what's going on. It's your time, you get to choose how you spend it, and there is no *best* way to do so.

Zgarbas Wrote:Tzadeck, it's not very nice to diss people's goals in life like that =(.

Some prefer nettles, I guess.

Just out of interest, while I agree that listening in your sleep isn't of enormous value and certainly doesn't, as far as I am aware teach you anything very noticeably, I have found that while doing it the sound often works its way into my dreams.

At one stage I used audio in which a lot of questions were asked with pauses for answers and would dream that someone was asking me these questions (or rather something dreamy based around the sound of them - but I was very aware within the dream that it was Japanese). Now I am using more sophisticated native materials I still find that they work their way into my dreams and I am still dream-aware that they are Japanese. So clearly on some level the mind is processing them.

Whether this teaches you anything in an obvious way is doubtful. The meaning of what is being said gets scrambled in dreams (it is the same in English as I have found when I fell asleep listening to something back when I used to listen to English media).

However in terms of "getting used to Japanese", I suspect this might well be useful. Some of what one is doing is learning to hear the Japanese "rhythm" and the general sound of Japanese. Children begin learning by babbling in imitation of speech without saying real words, but Japanese infants sound vaguely Japanese just as American infants sound vaguely American. It is an important step in learning, and I would not personally be too quick to write off the value of sleep exposure (though neither am I fully convinced of it).

However it isn't any investment of time at all, since one would be sleeping anyway! (Naturally if it disturbs your sleep that's another matter. I sleep fine with it and find it comforting).

Of course it won't teach you the language. I don't think anyone imagines it will.