vtx4848 Wrote:Can I ask another question? How does this acquisition method work for pronunciation

Well you just focus at one thing at a time before focusing on the next point in pronunciation. I've never heard about i+1 specificly being used for pronunciation though.

But anyways you wouldn't worry about pitch accents until you learn the simpler stuff first (for example)

What I meant was, if you're reading a sentence and can guess the word 直談判 based on the context (and in the case of Japanese the kanji), how would you know how to pronounce it じかだんぱん without looking it up? Or are you supposed to look it up with this method?

Each kanji has a number of 'readings' (on-yomi, kun-yomi), so you would have a clue as to how to pronounce a word. There are also tiny hiragana letters (called furigana) that sometimes go above the kanji telling you how the word is pronounced. Even in books for adults, furigana will sometimes appear the first time a word appears if it's reading wouldn't be generally known. So you have help. But you will probably end up looking up a lot for words too.

vtx4848 Wrote:Thank you for all the responses, I think I understand a bit better now. @RandomQuotes I actually did read that, but I didn't understand it, although rereading my responses I actually didn't put that in any of them.

So I guess "slightly" is a lot more slight than I thought, like not even using a dictionary type of slight.

Yes, i+1 input is far easier input than most language learners would use. Even around here, where most of us have at least heard the proposition that "easy is good" (from AJATT or Supermemo, or Krashen, etc., each suggesting a different incarnation of the same basic idea), the site is filled with posts recommending materials far above i+1 to people.

I guess it's just too counter-intuitive to accept that putting less effort into language learning is a good thing. People like to look at language learning as a challenge rather than a leisurely activity. I suppose that's why many of us picked Japanese to learn, instead of a nice cousin to English, like French or German.

vtx4848 Wrote:What I meant was, if you're reading a sentence and can guess the word 直談判 based on the context (and in the case of Japanese the kanji), how would you know how to pronounce it じかだんぱん without looking it up? Or are you supposed to look it up with this method?

As per Krashen, looking up words isn't very useful for language acquisition (because it's conscious learning, not subconscious acquisition):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

But Kanji aren't a language. When it comes to learning Kanji readings, things might be different. I doubt you can figure out Kanji readings subconsciously, the way you can the meaning of words. I don't really know, because I've been focused on spoken Japanese (and stuff wit furigana/Rikaisama), lately. I haven't been trying to read regular Japanese, but it seems unlikely.

Stansfield123 Wrote:But Kanji aren't a language. When it comes to learning Kanji readings, things might be different. I doubt you can figure out Kanji readings subconsciously, the way you can the meaning of words.

I've become obsessed with buonaparte's Listening-Reading method lately. I'll bet you could learn pronunciation with this method - but probably difficult otherwise.

Most of the people I know who are great language learners--much better than me--are just good with people and like using what they've learned to communicate. Is getting this conceptual really helping anyone?

When you ask a conceptual question, yes, a conceptual answer is appropriate.

Pace the above and without having read any of the references, to me 'i+1' means anything that fits in naturally and readily with what you already know.

In search space terms this means expanding one's frontier set by exploring the regions closest to it first, in the sense of being reachable with minimal effort.

The frontier set can be temporarily expanded using spurious associations to bring it closer to distant (i.e. difficult) items, which is just about everything at first. But once a base camp is well established in the new territory, one can expand directly from it without the need for such tricks.

RandomQuotes Wrote:When you ask a conceptual question, yes, a conceptual answer is appropriate.

I wasn't doubting whether the answers were appropriate responses to the question. I was questioning whether this discussion as a whole, the question and its answers, helps anyone learn a language.

Tzadeck Wrote:I wasn't doubting whether the answers were appropriate responses to the question. I was questioning whether this discussion as a whole, the question and its answers, helps anyone learn a language.

That, my friend, is the rub. Does this specific line of questioning help anyone learn a specific language? No. Can it help someone who is learning about learning languages? Yes, I believe so.

So, it seems like I+1 seems to fit nicely with extensive reading and not so much with intensive reading. I've not seen as much praise or recommendation for intensive reading either. As someone who has casually learned Japanese for years, using conversation with natives along with random bouts of intensive study using textbooks or Anki decks, I wonder what place any intensive study truly has in acquisition? I question it because my methods HAVE been doing what comes relatively easy (sort of what the I+1 discussion here is promoting), however I can't help but feel a desire to make some solid progress.

I also tried like hell to find out what someone like Krashen thinks of SRS or other such systems to aid the learner. As someone pointed out in this thread already, the readings for Kanji perhaps make Japanese unique in that more of this intensive, dedicated type study is required? There's nothing more frustrating to me than picking up a physical paper book and coming across a new word that's interesting, but being forced to reach for a dictionary. And not just any dictionary, but one that supports handwriting input (I like to venture a guess for the reading most times first though).

I don't mind intensive study, but to what level of intensive is actually beneficial, I'm unclear on. For instance, I'm inclined to play video games in Japanese and usually go at it for a few weeks and just hack away at the unknowns, sometimes SRS-ing multiple look ups. I push onwards because the content DOES FEEL like its getting more comprehensible, however, the question weighs on my mind - is this efficient, or even useful for more general usage? It's a very tough question for me and I often cycle through methods without having the stamina to stick through any sort of method to the end.

It makes me believe that true I+1 is indeed the best way, but damn does it feel slow. Perhaps I just can never really find that sweet spot material enough.

Yawn. Zzzzzzz.

Tzadeck Wrote:Most of the people I know who are great language learners--much better than me--are just good with people and like using what they've learned to communicate. Is getting this conceptual really helping anyone?

Well yes. Breaking down something some people are good at naturally is meant to help the people who aren't good at it naturally.

kazuki Wrote:So, it seems like I+1 seems to fit nicely with extensive reading and not so much with intensive reading. I've not seen as much praise or recommendation for intensive reading either.

Intensive reading is just extensive reading that's unnecessarily interrupted from time to time.

kazuki Wrote:I also tried like hell to find out what someone like Krashen thinks of SRS or other such systems to aid the learner.

I think SRS is an easy way to find that "sweet spot" material that you mentioned. After all, with a large Anki deck (and we have several with 5-10000 sentences in them) you can easily pick and choose which cards to review and which to delete or suspend.

The price you pay for that is that the material is not as rich in context. You can of course fix that to some extent, by making your own sentence deck, out of more cohesive texts. You also pay a psychological price (I don't know how familiar you are with Krashen, but he goes into some detail about the effects of being psychologically involved with the input - in other words, with not being bored with it, the way you inevitably get when reviewing the same sentences over and over again).

P.S. The quip about intensive reading was a joke. I actually resort to intensive reading quite a bit, even though I do buy into Krashen's theory.

Yes, it is true that the act of looking up a word doesn't directly lead to language acquisition. However, when you are reading something with some volume to it (a novel, or a long manga), or even a blog from the same person, over a long period of time, doing a little intensive reading early on serves to familiarize you with their style, with the words and patterns they like to use, etc. Then, after a while, you need to look things up less and less, allowing you to start reaping the benefits of uninterrupted i+1 input.

Sure, first time you encounter a strange word in a novel, looking it up won't help you acquire language. In fact the second or third time you encounter it, when you might not have to look it up again but you have to stop and try to remember what it means, it still doesn't help you acquire language. But, by the fourth or fifth time, suddenly it becomes something you no longer have to pay special attention to. And that's because you looked it up earlier on.

john555 Wrote:Yawn. Zzzzzzz.

Good job, at being, productive. Since, I don't recall anyone asking for your opinion, how about if you don't find a particular topic interesting, don't insert yourself into it.

kazuki Wrote:So, it seems like I+1 seems to fit nicely with extensive reading and not so much with intensive reading. I've not seen as much praise or recommendation for intensive reading either. As someone who has casually learned Japanese for years, using conversation with natives along with random bouts of intensive study using textbooks or Anki decks, I wonder what place any intensive study truly has in acquisition? I question it because my methods HAVE been doing what comes relatively easy (sort of what the I+1 discussion here is promoting), however I can't help but feel a desire to make some solid progress.

Actually, yeah, extensive reading is another one of the big things Krashen supported. If forget which one of his hypothesis it's part of, but he basically says that extensive reading does the job of vocabulary learning.

I don't believe that Krashen ever mentioned SRS.

As far as I go, I think that SRS are extremely useful, however limited they might be. I use them to become familiar with vocab and grammar. Along the lines of can I pronounce it and do I vaguely understand the mean? I then supplement this with extensive reading, once and a while doing grammar exercises for things that I'm certain I know,

The Power of Reading - Stephen Krashen

Stansfield123 Wrote:Well yes. Breaking down something some people are good at naturally is meant to help the people who aren't good at it naturally.

I meant that understanding the concept of i+1, especially in a very specific way, might not actually be all that helpful in learning a language.

It is good to help people understand concepts that will help them, obviously. I was saying that this may not be helping anyone. Not that I'm 100% sure of that, of course--it's just my instinct. (Maybe useful for teachers and policy makers though?)

Tzadeck Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:Well yes. Breaking down something some people are good at naturally is meant to help the people who aren't good at it naturally.

I meant that understanding the concept of i+1, especially in a very specific way, might not actually be all that helpful in learning a language.

That's how I understand it too. It's only a complicated way to say: you're at a higher level.
The exact definition depends on how the speaker defines "level".
You understand that if it means "you've learned one more word", it isn't worth mentioning.

My idea is that if you want to learn a language, you just have to keep busy with it.