Greetings! This is my first "real" post on this forum, and this is a very exciting point in my life. I just moved into a college dorm, and what do you know, my roommate is a foreign exchange student from Osaka! Sugoi! Anyways, I am going to use this topic as a blog for anyone interested in what a Japanese person might say about Heisig. He's already shocked that I want to learn to write the 2,000 kanji before studying Japanaese, and that "most japanese can't write them." Unfortunately, his English is poor, so communication is difficult, and sometimes I write out the kanji out to explain the meaning of a word. (That is sooo satisfying.)

Cheers!

Thats a pretty lucky break you got. VERY few Japanese students ever stay in community dorms. They generally go for homestay, apartment-style dorms, or private residence. I never met a single Japanese person in my dorm building which housed about 3000 students, despite there being several hundred Japanese exchange students on campus. There were plenty of chinese students though.

Sounds very cool, cj. I don't know any Japanese folks to impress with my kanji skills (such as they are)--somehow, my family just isn't quite as appreciative of this specialty as one could hope for.

Whow! That is so great. A living source of sentences!
About his english not being so great, this is even better. He'll have more motivation to teach you japanese!

Put in in front of your computer and tell him to put as many sentences as he can think of into your srs until you reach 10,000. (What have we become?)

lmao do his homework in exchange for SRS sentences

This is even better for you than you can imagine, being that you sound like you're pretty early in your Japanese studies. You have a fantastic source of cultural insight available at all times, a person to check over your homework (in exchange for you checking theirs, of course), and if you two hit it off *really* well, you'll be able to visit your roomie's family in Japan at some point for a tour of everyday life in good ol' J-hon.

The *best* part, though, has got to be the fact that you can now watch Jdramas and anime loudly, and your roomie will probably watch them with you. Or, in the very least, not laugh at you and call you a nerd.

Now is the best time to dive headlong into AJATT mode. Listen to the DailyYomiuri's daily (obviously) news summaries from Japan with your roomie over dinner. You might not understand much, but it'll be something. Plus, if this is their first time away from home, they might get homesick. Having someone around who cares about their culture and doesn't mind spending a Friday night watching movies in their native language *always* helps a person cope with culture shock and homesickness, that's for sure.

Congratulations on your incredible good fortune! Or, is it a sign from the gods that you are destined to live a life full of all things Japanese? (o_O)

Anyway, that's fantastic news. Just... stop reading *this* particular forum thread while your roomie is home, or they might start to think that you're creepy... *grin*

-ang

It's too bad there aren't a lot of native Japanese speakers here in the states, especially stupid ones like Arizona. I wish there were some way to find some Japanese speakers to hang out with here. Are there any other RTKer's here at least?

You might find better luck crossing the border into California, since it's the state with the most Japanese people in the US.

I showed him how the Heisig method today, and he seems to be damn impressed. On the other hand, the Japanese majors I've talked to say that "Heisig/AJATT sounds dumb, you need classes." I guess when you actually spend your entire youth learning kanji, the idea of learning them all in a few months is like "OMG..." (Or in my case a month...almost done! I NEED to start speaking Japanese ASAP!")

cjswanson1355 Wrote:the Japanese majors I've talked to say that "Heisig/AJATT sounds dumb, you need classes."

People may have their own varying opinions about Heisig and AJATT, but I would avoid the advice of someone who says you NEED classes. That crappy advice is a first class B.S. alert.

Classes are very useful, but classes alone will never make you good at Japanese. I'm a Japanese Language & Literature major (linguistics focus) /w JP->EN translation certificate, East Asian Studies minor (although I've taken very few actual JP language courses since I've had credits waived due to being below my level) and indeed I think that AJATT (the sentence mining aspect, immersion is an obvious boon and not exclusive to AJATT) is stupid, but Heisig is great for kanji (just don't try stretching the method too far into vocabulary and whatnot as some people here have tried, it doesn't fit).

If I had to give advice to someone just beginning Japanese, I'd still recommend classes. They give a good introduction to the language, structure, lots of opportunities to talk with natives, and feedback & corrections from the professor. However, I'd also recommend learning the kana before the classes even start, and if possible RTK. If they can't do RTK before classes start, then it should be one of their major focuses during the first year. Finally, I'd recommend they study Japanese beyond what's in class on their own time, 1-2 hours a day. Study ahead in the textbook. If you finish the book, study from next year's textbook. Study JLPT materials, study Kanken materials, etc. Finally, use an SRS, from the very beginning. Add every single word and grammar point they learn or are exposed to. My classes would have been so much easier if I had known about them when I still took language classes. I used to think that 150-200 new words a week was a heavy load, but now I do that almost daily no sweat.

That is so true. Jarvik. Nice classes should give you a nice direction. But this simply does not work. Classes want to tie the student to their slugish method of teaching.

I personaly think the best part of AJATT is the motivational part. Matsumoto convinced me to do RTK and do the sentences, I'm very thankful for it. These 4 months my japanese went from allmost zero to a very nice intermediate level.

The of AJATT I agree only partialy. The focus he gives on input, that he takes from antimoon is really great. That "listen to japanese while you sleep" is BS.

Reading lots of Japanese sentences are stupid? Learning grammar rules from professors is stupid.

See? I can do it, too. I just called what you do stupid without any substantial reasons. If you're going to post your opinions on here for everybody to read, don't be pompous about it. AJATT is not stupid.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I personaly think the best part of AJATT is the motivational part. Matsumoto convinced me to do RTK and do the sentences, I'm very thankful for it. These 4 months my japanese went from allmost zero to a very nice intermediate level.

Calm down alyks. No one said AJATT is stupid. Reading a lot of sentences is what I'm doing right now (I just finished my daily quota, actualy).

But Matsumoto overstresses some stuff like listening to japanese while you sleep. Sorry, but this specific thing is BS.

Actually, Jarvik did say AJATT was stupid.

But I believe the reason Khatzumoto says to listen while you sleep, is so you can start your immersion immediately after you wake up, so you don't stall and wait to get started.

This total immersion thing is what I dont agree. I believe the reason of the success of AJATT is mainly the sentences, RTK, witts and guts.

alyks Wrote:Reading lots of Japanese sentences are stupid? Learning grammar rules from professors is stupid.

See? I can do it, too. I just called what you do stupid without any substantial reasons. If you're going to post your opinions on here for everybody to read, don't be pompous about it. AJATT is not stupid.

Reading sentences isn't the same thing as hunting them down, spending a lot of time inputting them into an SRS, and drilling them. If anyone is being pompous it's you. Really, compare the tone of my post and yours.

Anyways, I'd agree that "learning grammar rules from professors" is not a great thing. My list of classroom pro's didn't include learning. You should be doing the real learning out of class.

cjswanson1355 Wrote:Unfortunately, his English is poor,

"Unfortunately" for him, not for you.

Hurry up and learn as much Japanese as you can before he becomes proficient at English!

Oh, and of course, help him with his English... but not too fast... lol

Just because I want to read sentences doesn't mean I have to hunt them down. How many sentence collections has the community posted online? As it stands I have more sentences to put in to Anki than I have the time to do.

Also, doing AJATT it is not necessary to hunt down sentences. The whole idea of the method is to build the immersion environment to the point where you are surrounded by Japanese 24/7. Then it becomes more of a "phrase picking".

AJATT works. I went to Japanese classes at university and dropped out after two months. The only person from that course who's fluent in Japanese now has spent a year in Japan.

I studied Japanese on my own without classes. I used Assimil and the accompanying audio to get started, spent most of my time watching Japanese movies, dramas or animes. Finished Heisig and according to my Anki stats there are nearly 1300 unique kanji in my collection. I can read more though.
I watch J-Dramas without subtitles and I'm halfway through my first novel in Japanese (sekachuu). It's not easy, but I'm getting there. If I keep my studies up (reading Japanese, watching movies, adding sentences to Anki), I'm sure that I can reach the level to read simple novels like sekachuu by the end of the year. And I got this far without any formal classes (the months don't count).

I might take the JLPT2 this year to see how well I would do on such a formal test. In that case I'd have to study grammar though.

mentat_kgs Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:I personaly think the best part of AJATT is the motivational part. Matsumoto convinced me to do RTK and do the sentences, I'm very thankful for it. These 4 months my japanese went from allmost zero to a very nice intermediate level.

Calm down alyks. No one said AJATT is stupid. Reading a lot of sentences is what I'm doing right now (I just finished my daily quota, actualy).

But Matsumoto overstresses some stuff like listening to japanese while you sleep. Sorry, but this specific thing is BS.

Ok, once again, what's stupid about falling asleep and waking up to Japanese being played? The only time doing something like that is stupid is: It bothers someone else in the room or you're physically unable to fall asleep because of it.

At no time did he say this is some mystical, learn by osmosis method. It's getting an extra 15 to 30 minutes of your day experiencing Japanese. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. It's no more stupid than going to sleep to Beethoven, Led Zeppelin or The Daily Show.

Yes, we're getting off topic, but I think this needed to be addressed (yet again).

Jarvik7 Wrote:

alyks Wrote:Reading lots of Japanese sentences are stupid? Learning grammar rules from professors is stupid.

See? I can do it, too. I just called what you do stupid without any substantial reasons. If you're going to post your opinions on here for everybody to read, don't be pompous about it. AJATT is not stupid.

Reading sentences isn't the same thing as hunting them down, spending a lot of time inputting them into an SRS, and drilling them. If anyone is being pompous it's you. Really, compare the tone of my post and yours.

Anyways, I'd agree that "learning grammar rules from professors" is not a great thing. My list of classroom pro's didn't include learning. You should be doing the real learning out of class.

Jarvik, you said you think that the sentence mining aspect of AJATT was stupid. You offered nothing else aside from that. You then dismissed the immersion advice, forgetting that AJATT encourages extreme immersion when you don't have the ability to live in Japan, then gives tips on how to achieve that. That's akin to the dismissals we hear time to time of RTK because "mnemonics based on the radicals have been around forever". There's a bit more to both, and those that subscribe to either method are bound to be a bit rapid in response to negative criticism.

Now had you said "Random sentence mining from pop sources nets alot of upfront effort a majority of persons are not able to do. RevTK revealed that shared stories created better success with Kanji than the mindset you had to make up your own stories. Likewise, I think that the idea you should mine your own sentences is equally meant for a small set of persons. Shared sentences derived from formal, organized sources that follow the progressive pattern textbooks offer will be more beneficial to a larger portion of persons learning Japanese." Well, we could have debated some merits of that thought (the quoted portion are my own thoughts on the matter BTW).

I've been reading you're ideas, Nukemarine, and I find myself agreeing with you. Until you get to a certain point, it's not worth the time and effort to attempt reading through real Japanese stuff (like manga). But I do think the number of sentences you quote (was it around 3000?) is a bit higher than necessary. I think you can get to that level in under 1000 sentences (possibly less if you use the movie method). But I'm not counting readings.

Well, I like those discussions about learning methods because it helped me a lot in improving my own learning techniques.

That is why I wanted to add that only because one method works for most it still might not work for everybody.
I was thinking about this because someone mentioned the ASSIMIL books. When I started I used that book because it sounded like a good method, but I must say for me it was not.
I was always wondering about the grammar behind the sentences and for me the book did not explain enough. I knew I was not supposed to worry too much about the grammar but as I am very nosy I could not help thinking about it.
To make a long story short only when I started taking Japanese classes I made real progress because my need to understand the grammar behind the sentences was finally met.
But still I think, when you reach a certain level of experience, AJATT will boost your language skills more than any class ever can.

And by the way congrats to your new roommate. I hope you will get along fine.