Nope sorry, that is for the spoken part. The written is of course learned differently and from another text book as I already stated.

It all started with an innocent question. I should have figured that the Jorden method would be cause for discussion.

I took one term of the speaking class (400 level) and hated it. I couldn't believe that we were spending so much time out of class memorizing and time in class going around in a circle, the whole class listening to each student be A-san then B-san. Painful.

The writing class (200 level) was more helpful.

[I wasn't a Japanese major I was just taking classes here and there when I had a chance].

Next question:

What schools are using the Jorden method?

Portland State University is (because the director of foreign langauges is a Jorden disciple). I imagine Cornell is. My aunt's community college is (it is near Cornell).

Who else?

I'm not attached to any method. That's just what we used at Texas Tech University and I have certainly moved on since then but I felt I should defend it against some of the more uninformed comments of which I have heard all before. I get tired of people doing it wrong and then blaming the book. It all depends on your goals and what you wish to accomplish I suppose. I read some of that AJATT site and thought it was pretty ridiculous actually and not at all professional. Spaced learning? Yeah that's new if being invented 100 years ago is new. Also it has no bearing on the this topic. As for our class, I recall going through the mock conversations all at once as pairs and then being called on randomly. Most of the class was spent doing other exercises and drills with props like pictures or other items. The teacher never had to speak one word of English the whole course. It was designed for self study by reading the explanations and preparing outside of class and then practicing it and putting it to use in the class.

OK. So Texas Tech is another one. Anywhere else?

rich_f Wrote:And I *really* dislike her system of teaching Japanese. Romaji should only be used in phrasebooks for people who aren't going to bother learning the language. Otherwise, it should be in the dustbin of Bad Ideas. Separating the writing from the rest of the language just feels unnatural, and needlessly delays you learning and mastering hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Every day you put it off, the harder you make it on yourself long-term.

Game time!

rich_f Wrote:And I *really* dislike his system of teaching kanji. English should only be used in dictionaries for people who aren't going to bother learning the language. Otherwise, it should be in the dustbin of Bad Ideas. Separating the writing from the readings just feels unnatural, and needlessly delays you learning and mastering Japanese. Every day you put it off, the harder you make it on yourself long-term.

Now, I don't give a hoot about whether the book is good or not. I'm sure there are people out there now who are fluent who started out with it, just as I'm sure there are people who tried it and failed miserably. I don't see the point of getting so worked up, and I'm not just talking to rich_f here. I just felt like quoting him since I found it funny.

I think the main difference between separating kanji writings from kanji readings and written language from spoken language is that isolating kanji readings makes it easier, while isolating the spoken language does not.

Learning vocabulary without kanji is very confusing. There are lots of similar words. Also, almost every Japanese word is composed by two or more morphemes. Without the kanji, this is not so clear.

I wouldn't even go so far. For learning a language you need input. If you only do the spoken part of the language, you'll be limited to spoken input.

There are little sources for spoken input. It is not that it is a bad idea, but it is strategicaly flawled.

On the other hand, written material is everywhere, and it is easier to understand.

megaboyx Wrote:Like it or not, a language is 90% patterns. You can't be "completely creative" and make any sense. You have to speak within a structure of the language. Of course you are free to substitute any vocabulary and topics you want and in fact that is how the Jorden books work, using pattern sentences. If you don't practice the responses to perfection then you will be at a loss when the time comes to say something. Or else you will flounder with some English translation of what you want to say which comes out sounding unnatural. The drills help reinforce previous vocabulary and master the grammar patterns. There's nothing wrong with that and it is quite different from Pimsleur. I don't get your point about saying "moshi moshi" without thinking. Are you supposed to think when saying set expressions?

No, you're not supposed to think when saying set expressions and that's the whole point. You're simply a robot, you hear a sentence and answer the proper set expression. Your Japanese will be stale and boring, people will easily hear that you're using set expressions. When I hear a foreigner speaking Japanese, I'm impressed when they mix their language up a lot, just like Japanese people do. Ask them something and they will answer in one way, ask them something similar and they will answer in a completely different way. They do not use set expressions when speaking Japanese, neither do you when you speak English, so why should you when you speak Japanese?

The key to fluency in a language is thinking in that language. When i want to say a sentence in Japanese, English doesn't even enter my mind. I do not translate sentences in my brain into Japanese, I simply say the Japanese sentence as it comes to mind. That way, my Japanese becomes creative in a way set expressions could never make it.

I think what your idea of what a 'set expression' is, is a bit off. Every single thing I say in English is an example of set expressions mixed up and put together as I see fit. For example in your speech, You're not supposed to X; that's the whole point; Ask them A and they will X, ask them B and they will Y; When I want to A, I do B; etc. etc. Practicing these patterns do help you think in that language, only by doing it many times while imaginging the situation you may be in at the time, and making it as real as possible, can you start to 'think' in that language rather than simply translate thoughts in your head.

Also iSoron, what you are talking about only applies to an advanced stage of learning and mainly in the written language. Conversational Japanese is very clear about what words you are talking about or else you couldn't use them in a conversation! They would be too ambiguous. Again, I'm not saying not to learn the written language too, just that it has no place in the Jorden spoken language text book, that is all. And in fact we learned all the Jouyou kanji during those 2 years as well as lab classes on Tue-Thu that had quite a bit of reading and writting practice. I don't understand why everyone keeps bringing up irrelevant points about this. Learning vocabulary without kanji is confusing? How they heck do the Japanese kids do it then? (that's a rhetorical question by the way.)

Why is everyone so down on Megaboyx and the Jorden method? McJon wittily points out that we are here at RTK because we are willing to try somewhat unorthodox methods to increase our literacy. It seems silly to unduly criticize the Jorden method because it doesn't fit our preconceptions of " the right way to learn".

Re: oral drills. I'm with Megaboyx on this one. You need to have a repertoire of fixed expressions under your belt, and a base of proven sentence patterns that work. Not as a crutch or to turn you into a robot, but to give you the power to branch off later into more self-expressive language.
If you listen to the conversations in an office or on the street or at school in English or whatever your native language is, and you will hear that they are mostly just combinations of well-used, well-worn expressions strung together with appropriate tense and pronoun changes. Truly creative self-expressive English is rare, and hard to understand, frankly--it's called poetry. No Japanese poetry for me, thanks. At this point in my learning, I'd be very happy to be unimaginative, but understood, in Japanese.

I can attribute a lot of my fluency in French to audio-lingual drilling (similar to Jorden)which gave us no time to think as we performed substitutions and transformations of sentences and answered questions following patterns that subtly altered each time. The overlearning and habit formation was useful. It doesn't make one a slave to the pattern; it makes the pattern a tool to be used and played with.

As for Romaji, it helped me to learn a hell of a lot of grammar and sentence patterns in an extremely short period of time, when i moved there without any previous Japanese study. If someone isn't planning to go there for a while, maybe it's better to skip it and start from hiragana and katakana, but if you need to get "up to speed" quickly, it can be helpful. I don't feel it hobbled me in any way. When i learned hiragana, I switched over without any big problem.

As well, when i moved to Japan, i learned Katakana first, not hiragana. This was extremely useful in reading menus in Italian and Family restaurants in those first few weeks, when i had no idea what the hiragana was referring to. When i saw Katakana, at least i knew i would understand the thing it was referring to, (except for a few German words). My Japanese teacher was scandalized, but I would recommend that order of acquisition to anyone who has to go to Japan NEXT WEEK with no time to slowly acquire the different systems of writing.

So lots of "heresy": Audiolingual methods, Romaji usage, Katakana first. But hey, it worked for me...

(sorry for rambling more than a bit)

What was the question? Oh, yeah, the Jorden method....

I agree. If you are at japan, with a huge potential for imersion in real japanese, definitely an audiolingual method would be great. But for someone like me, that lives in the other side of the globe, it doesnt fit. There simply not enough chance of input. I did pimsleur when I started, but that was just the basic of the basic.

Thanks Ji_suss. I also agree that katakana should be learned first. That is only logical and certainly I have read that in several books so it's hardly a new idea. But in reality both can be learned in under a week so it hardly matters. You do have to be careful and practice katakana a bit more though because you don't see it as much. I remember having a few relapses when I first started, as such and such katakana would go blank when I needed to write it. But that was just during the first few months and with a little practice goes away. I still feel that you need to be able to write quickly in both romaji and kana/kanji. Romaji is easier for me if I'm making tiny notes in a book for example and when time is of the essence (making notations as someone is talking) because it is more compact and faster to write. Also you see it a lot in various forms: official, hepburn and other variations. So you have to be familiar with it. Japanese themselves are taught romaji in school as part of computer lit. usually, and because many signs have romaji written on them and the kanji are very difficult even for Japanese to read. It's just part of learning Japanese and I'm speaking out of 18 years experience of study here.

I still cant write katakana >_<'.
Whow, I'll never write faster in kanji than in romanji.
In my school, from 1st to 8th grades, we were made to copy everything that was written on the blackboard.
Basicaly some of us invented our own shorthands. I can write romanji in a way that only I can understand, and way fast. For those who never seen it, it might look like some kind of waveform.

megaboyx Wrote:I think what your idea of what a 'set expression' is, is a bit off. Every single thing I say in English is an example of set expressions mixed up and put together as I see fit. For example in your speech, You're not supposed to X; that's the whole point; Ask them A and they will X, ask them B and they will Y; When I want to A, I do B; etc. etc. Practicing these patterns do help you think in that language, only by doing it many times while imaginging the situation you may be in at the time, and making it as real as possible, can you start to 'think' in that language rather than simply translate thoughts in your head.

I agree that there are patterns to languages and that it's important to learn them to speak like a native, but that doesn't mean you should learn standard expressions for various situations.

"Remember kids, if someone asks you "genki desu ka?" you have to answer "hai genki desu!". You shouldn't answer "Hai, totemo." and you shouldn't answer "maa maa, kyou ha chotto kibun ga warui desu." Answer with the proper expression so you don't make an idiot out of yourself." The patters you are talking about isn't something you study by repeating it, it isn't set expressions. It's called grammar at work. For example, grammar tells us that when comparing two things in japanese, you use the は particle instead of the が particle. That means that everytime you want to compare two things in one sentence, there will be two は particles in the sentence. That gives a noticeable pattern, but not an expression you should learn. "A は X, Ｂ は Z". You don't have to study it like that, you just need to know the grammar. By knowing the grammar of the は particle at work in this situation, you can use that in other expressions and sentences. But if you simply learn that set expression, you can only use that. It certainly limits your creativity IMO.

So yeah, I see your point that learning expressions is a good way of making your japanese feel a bit more native-like, at the expanse of your japanese going stale. I would recommend it for people who are just starting out, and I would recommend some expressions to go with grammar points where they make sense, but IMO it isn't viable as a full-on technique for learning japanese.