I've spent some time to find where khatz thinks you should begin speaking. Or is he just saying don’t bother trying to until you reach 10000 sentences and ‘enough’ immersion. This isn’t a criticism, I’d just like to hear where abouts in his study (he moved to Japan at 7000 cards?) he felt he was ‘ready’ to speak. If anyone else has this information I would appreciate it. I love love love how Jalup has a world level guide (including speaking). Am I missing something, or is this important figure (even an extremely approximate one) omitted from his site. I just don’t understand why he can’t directly say 'don’t attempt to speak before 10000 words+x hours immersion'. Or any other figure that’s at least around when he started speaking or recommends in hindsight to start.

The question: how many sentences before khatz attempted speaking? Did he hold off speaking until the ”’magical 10000 mark”. 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. But the closest thing I can find to that is his article titles. Nowhere does he even write anything close to a roundabout figure to start speaking. I would really appreciate a response. I know ajatt is notoriously vague. But I have a burning curiosity!! Please help.


Thankyou !

It's not like there's any data showing that Khatz' method was any more effective than any other. So you can think about it yourself and make up your mind. That's what he did.

As for me, I started Japanese by taking a course that initially focused on the spoken language. So I spoke Japanese for about a year before I even learned the kana. Over some years I eventually made it all the way to N1 and beyond with my Japanese, and looking back I don't think it would have made a big difference if I had done it the other way around--that is, if I had done reading and writing first for about a year and then speaking later.

Though, my general advice is to start speaking as soon as possible. Around the internet it sounds like a lot of AJATT-ers never get any speaking ability unless they actually move to Japan. Don't fall into that trap. Remember especially that listening will not teach you how to speak. The only way you learn to speak is by doing it.

Whenever you feel like it. The natural feeling he talked about is something that happens when you do a lot of reading. You start knowing how to correctly say things you've never practiced.

Khatz is not actually an expert in language learning and you should treat what he says the same way you'd treat what anyone on the internet says about how to do something. When he started speaking is really irrelevant to when you should start speaking.

Sorry I probably didn't word this question properly. But I was just wondering if anyone knew when this 'magically will become able to speak ability without speaking' that he always talks about comes about through immersion and sentences. Does he mean at the end of 10000 words? I'm just curious more than fully believing in his methods. I've started talking already at 5000 words and improving really quickly. Though I do struggle still, and wonder if this spontaneous ability to talk through pure immersion and srs alone is possible. Would like to hear an actual figure if anyone knows. This probably isn't possble, since if my assumptions are correct, he has never once even gave an approximate figure when this phenomenon of spontaneous speaking will occur

I actually had a similar question two days ago. Check out the threat "Speaking, AJATT, and Frustration", currently right above this one. The users here were kind enough to provide me with lots of advice.

After 10,000 hours of 15-24 hours a day of listening practice (with the addition of Japanese subtitles) and after fully understanding 10,000 sentences (which is what the AJATT curriculum recommends - which might roughly translate to 18-24 months of full-time study), one's input should be far enough along to start reading the sentences aloud and generally speaking, since all of the base elements of Japanese would have been learned to various extents.

IE, if you can read and fully understand 10,000 sentences (not just memorize them), then that means you should understand kana, kanji, vocabulary, grammar, and context. And after 10,000 hours of consistent listening, your brain and sense of hearing should have most likely developed a decent adaptation to the spoken language in general. After all of that effort, I don't see why someone wouldn't be able to begin speaking practice, if not earlier.

Remember that AJATT isn't really a light learning method. It involves seriously intense study. I think somewhere on AJATT khatz mentioned that around the 6,000 to 8,000 sentences mark (maybe 18 or so months in, not entirely sure) he considered himself to be relatively fluent, including speaking (which living in Japan helped to work out some of the grammatical inaccuracies of his spoken word Japanese).

Tzadeck Wrote:Though, my general advice is to start speaking as soon as possible. [...] Remember especially that listening will not teach you how to speak. The only way you learn to speak is by doing it.

This fits mostly with my experience as well except listening was a huge park of speaking because conversations die really fast when you can't understand well enough to come up with a response. In addition I found repeated shadowing of key phrases, basically to the point where I had memorized them, to help as well.

(Actually considering how big mane (impressions?) is in Japanese entertainment culture this has a lot of uses. You could definitely make some bar friends being able to repeat popular catch phrases in the right intonation! )

As I said in the other thread about roughly the same thing: to get better at speaking, speak. (And know how to 相槌.)

My experience: a few years of mostly input-focused methods (mostly for JLPT prep) did *very* little to help me with speaking. I had enough knowledge to pass N2, and still couldn't hold a conversation beyond the very basics.

What helped me with speaking was speaking. My big passive vocab didn't help me when I needed to access a big active vocab. The only thing that made my active vocab bigger was *using* the words repeatedly. That means speaking or writing. (Or both.)

Thanks everyone! Really really fantastic replies and one in particular answered my question exactly.


What a lovely learning community.

ところで、今日は。僕の誕生日！^_^

The answers were a great present. Thanks again!

rich_f Wrote:As I said in the other thread about roughly the same thing: to get better at speaking, speak. (And know how to 相槌.)

My experience: a few years of mostly input-focused methods (mostly for JLPT prep) did *very* little to help me with speaking. I had enough knowledge to pass N2, and still couldn't hold a conversation beyond the very basics.

First of all N2 is relatively basic. Secondly your input likely wasn't as large as you think if you were focusing on JLPT prep. There's no one who rakes in 6000-10000 comprehensible sentences and 6000-10000 hours of listening and can't perform a basic chat.

ryuudou Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:As I said in the other thread about roughly the same thing: to get better at speaking, speak. (And know how to 相槌.)

My experience: a few years of mostly input-focused methods (mostly for JLPT prep) did *very* little to help me with speaking. I had enough knowledge to pass N2, and still couldn't hold a conversation beyond the very basics.

First of all N2 is relatively basic. Secondly your input likely wasn't as large as you think if you were focusing on JLPT prep. There's no one who rakes in 6000-10000 comprehensible sentences and 6000-10000 hours of listening and can't perform a basic chat.

A full-time worker does about 2000 hours work a year. This is completely unattainable for an average person studying Japanese. Without any guarantee that this will make you a decent speaker, it'd be crazy to make such an incredible investment into passive learning when you could just experiment with production at the same time.

Personally, I find the interactions I have with people on a daily basis in Japanese to be a far cry from those I see/hear in manga, movies, anime etc. Exposure definitely builds your naturalness "sense" among many other things, but it doesn't necessarily make one-on-one situations any smoother if you're not actually dealing with them on a regular basis.

Speaking at length is pretty much a luxury anyway. Even if I said you should spent 1000 of those 6000 hours speaking, you'd be lucky to get up over a hundred. If you can communicate enough so that the conversation isn't painful for the listener, then I don't see any reason for actively avoiding opportunities to practise.

jimeux Wrote:A full-time worker does about 2000 hours work a year. This is completely unattainable for an average person studying Japanese. Without any guarantee that this will make you a decent speaker, it'd be crazy to make such an incredible investment into passive learning when you could just experiment with production at the same time.

The thing about AJATT is that at one point Khatz mentioned the concept of "The time you have is the time you make." Meaning, if possible, one is supposed to work around their busy schedule.

Passive listening is probably one of the easiest aspects of learning Japanese under that method, since all it entails is listening to Japanese as much as you can throughout the day. That includes while you sleep, walking around with an mp3 player and headphones (if the person can do it at work all the better), listen during a commute, listening while doing things around the house, listening while getting groceries, etc.

Sleep, getting ready in the morning, and a decent commute could net around 10 or more hours of passive listening a day.

TsugiAshi Wrote:That includes while you sleep

I'm gonna get them to put Japanese tapes with me in my coffin, with a little solar panel on my tombstone to keep it going. I'm sure my soul will be f'in great at Japnese. Just ask my ghost--you'll find me haunting Khatz, whispering in his ear, "You know, hypnopedia doesn't work, you f'in dope."

It's less about imbibing while you slumber and it's more about keeping a consistent stream of Japanese going throughout the day. It's pretty much just like listening to soothing sounds or music while sleeping, just a background noise. So that way if you wake up in the middle of the night on occassion, you're still hearing Japanese, and same upon waking up and getting ready for the day. It's just on and it's there ready to go.

It's definitely helped my listening comprehension over the long term, even if just to get me used to wanting to listen to Japanese consistently, because it can be very easy to switch back to English language media.

Besides, it's basically harmless.

It isn't harmless: there's an opportunity cost, for one. Spend your listening time on something useful or life enhancing--good music, podcasts, books on tape, etc. Not on input that will do little if anything to improve your Japanese. And when you need to concentrate on something, don't be listening to anything; do it in silence and do it right.

Also, in general, don't make weird unnecessary life sacrifices to learn a language.

Tzadeck Wrote:It isn't harmless: there's an opportunity cost, for one. Spend your listening time on something useful or life enhancing--good music, podcasts, books on tape, etc. Not on input that will do little if anything to improve your Japanese. And when you need to concentrate on something, don't be listening to anything; do it in silence and do it right.

Also, in general, don't make weird unnecessary life sacrifices to learn a language.

Chances are if it's someone's desire to learn Japanese, and they are actively learning it, then there isn't any opportunity cost to listening to the Japanese language during sleep because aside from sleeping, someone isn't even concentrating on anything anyway. It's a harmless practice.

Also, in the context of learning Japanese, time spent listening to Japanese (be it in the form of good music, podcasts, books on tape, etc) is useful. Passive/active listening has/does improve people's Japanese ability, as posters on this forum, Khatz on AJATT, and myself personally have noticed and have made mention of.

Concentrating on something with Japanese in the background isn't necessarily doing anything wrong. It might split someone's focus, sure, but at the same time I personally like something playing in the background when I'm doing something else like studying. I can get bored and frustrated when there's just silence. However, that could just be me.

Granted, it is generally better to concentrate in silence, but that thought doesn't conflict with passive listening in general and in certain regards.

Passive/active listening isn't even a life sacrifice, though. It's just utilizing generally unnoticed moments in time to help improve one's language ability by simply putting on a pair of headphones. Same as someone utilizing their commute time for anki reviews.

But I also mentioned that AJATT is a fairly intense learning method. It isn't necessarily for everyone.

Tzadeck Wrote:It isn't harmless: there's an opportunity cost, for one. Spend your listening time on something useful or life enhancing--good music, podcasts, books on tape, etc. Not on input that will do little if anything to improve your Japanese. And when you need to concentrate on something, don't be listening to anything; do it in silence and do it right.

Also, in general, don't make weird unnecessary life sacrifices to learn a language.

It can also be said that doing those other things have an opportunity cost at the expense of less time for Japanese input.

ryuudou Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:It isn't harmless: there's an opportunity cost, for one. Spend your listening time on something useful or life enhancing--good music, podcasts, books on tape, etc. Not on input that will do little if anything to improve your Japanese. And when you need to concentrate on something, don't be listening to anything; do it in silence and do it right.

Also, in general, don't make weird unnecessary life sacrifices to learn a language.

It can also be said that doing those other things have an opportunity cost at the expense of less time for Japanese input.

I agree with ryuudou here. If your aim in life is to achieve success in the things you set out to do, then you should be spending time on those things and time when you are unable too working on those things should be the time you consider lost. Not the time you spend on those things where you could be doing a string of normal but useless things.

Tzadeck, you are working towards learning Japanese. If you want to succeed in Japanese, you need to take the attitude that any time spent towards Japanese is time well used and any time at all that you purposefully use to recreationally listen to English music, waste time on English podcasts or consume English books that are not informing you about something you really need to know, when you know you could spend that time on Japanese, no matter how small the progress it will give you, is wasted time. If you want to listen to music, find some good Japanese music. Wade past the most popular artists and find stuff you actually like. Another thing that makes passive listening more comprehensible, is to relisten to stuff you've listened to actively, passively. E.g. listen to the audio from a drama you watched.

I can't beleive that you really would consider time spent on Japanese a waste of time, and listening to English music as a better use of time.

Pretty sure Tzadeck already knows Japanese and you're in no position to lecture him about it.

I'm of the opinion that as a beginner, AJATT-style immersion is a waste of time, and I'm of that opinion because I tried it and it had no obvious effect whatsoever. Maybe I just wasn't hardcore enough, but giving up silence for incomprehensible noise is a significant sacrifice. If I were to try it now it might be useful, but I burnt up that sort of raw enthusiasm a while ago.

I did exclusively listen to Japanese music for a long time and have come to the conclusion that by-and-large it's just not as good as the English language music of comparable bands. But sure, it's worth doing for a while. Pretty sure it didn't help much language-wise, but at least I can rattle off Japanese bands that no one's heard of when a Japanese person asks me what music I like. That always feels good.

Incomprehensible input is little more than a waste of time.

Aikynaro Wrote:Pretty sure Tzadeck already knows Japanese and you're in no position to lecture him about it.

I'm of the opinion that as a beginner, AJATT-style immersion is a waste of time, and I'm of that opinion because I tried it and it had no obvious effect whatsoever. Maybe I just wasn't hardcore enough, but giving up silence for incomprehensible noise is a significant sacrifice. If I were to try it now it might be useful, but I burnt up that sort of raw enthusiasm a while ago.

I did exclusively listen to Japanese music for a long time and have come to the conclusion that by-and-large it's just not as good as the English language music of comparable bands. But sure, it's worth doing for a while. Pretty sure it didn't help much language-wise, but at least I can rattle off Japanese bands that no one's heard of when a Japanese person asks me what music I like. That always feels good.

Sorry, not trying to lecture anyone, it was more of a counter argument with some advice mixed in for anyone to take, not trying to attack Tzadeck. And no I'm not in any position to lecture anyone, I just think that is the right sort of attitude that keeps me motivated. I need to real back my writing and make it sound less like I'm attacking people I've realised recently, sorry.

I do find that same thing with Japanese music, hahaha. I can't find any Japanese hip-hop stuff that's worth listening to for very long. I love Japanese rock though. Apart from maybe Greenday, I never really enjoyed the work of any English language rock band enough to follow them, but I like a lot of Japanese rock (mostly pop-rock or something punky not metal (except babymetal :lol or Visual Kei). Hahaha, I can roll of a few random bands like Number Girl and School Food Punishment. I have mentioned SFP to a few Japanese people online and they don't know them. I think if I went back and investigated English language rock with my new more rock orientated mind I might find stuff better than what I listen to, but I don't really care any more - I'm in too deep.

Aikynaro Wrote:I'm of the opinion that as a beginner, AJATT-style immersion is a waste of time, and I'm of that opinion because I tried it and it had no obvious effect whatsoever. Maybe I just wasn't hardcore enough, but giving up silence for incomprehensible noise is a significant sacrifice. If I were to try it now it might be useful, but I burnt up that sort of raw enthusiasm a while ago.

I did exclusively listen to Japanese music for a long time and have come to the conclusion that by-and-large it's just not as good as the English language music of comparable bands. But sure, it's worth doing for a while. Pretty sure it didn't help much language-wise, but at least I can rattle off Japanese bands that no one's heard of when a Japanese person asks me what music I like. That always feels good.

RandomQuotes Wrote:Incomprehensible input is little more than a waste of time.

Basically, these two posts summarize my position: I think active studying improves your Japanese but passive consumption does very little if anything. I never tried AJATT, but I've lived in Japan for nearly seven years so I get tons and tons of Japanese as background noise. I only notice improvement when I actively study.

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

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.

Aikynaro Wrote:Pretty sure Tzadeck already knows Japanese and you're in no position to lecture him about it.

I'm pretty sure you only have 500 cards and are in no position to lecture anyone.

Aikynaro Wrote:I did exclusively listen to Japanese music for a long time and have come to the conclusion that by-and-large it's just not as good as the English language music of comparable bands

This is a completely subjective opinion.