Well, a few years ago, there was littlo or no proof at all that RTK and AJATT worked.
But now we have an army here in this forum!

PrettyKitty Wrote:Has anyone had experience with native vs non-native Japanese teachers? Does one seem to go slower than the other?

I've had one teacher who learned Japanese and was also a native English speaker, she was a million times better than my current teacher who is a native Japanese speaker.

The native English speaker has a Ph.D and would go in front of the class and give us very good explanations for the grammar with plenty of examples. We would barely read from the textbook at all.

The native Japanese speaker married an English speaker and moved over here. Her idea of teaching is having us read the textbook. We're halfway into the class and nobody knows a damn thing about Japanese. Her explanations are vague and unclear, and unless we use her perfect textbook Japanese it's wrong.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Well, a few years ago, there was littlo or no proof at all that RTK and AJATT worked.
But now we have an army here in this forum!

Just a small point - remember that students have been buying RTK for 30 years. That is some evidence that it has been working for awhile. Even with paper flashcards. (The fact that my copy is 1986, however, might suggest that it didn't work so well for me... )

Wel, they kept quiet for too much time. We are making much more noise.

I took Japanese for 4 years in college. I even studied abroad in Japan for 1 semester. After all that work, I still couldn't have passed the 3級. I left school with a thorough knowledge of basic grammar (because we used the same constructions over and over), a few hundred memorized vocabulary words (too many situational nouns and not nearly enough verbs), and maybe only 300 kanji (and that's just reading, I could probably only write 100 from memory).

My teachers were actually the nicest teachers I've ever had. They were friendly, cute, and always had time to explain things after class. They genuinely wanted us to learn Japanese and encouraged us to speak and use it whenever we could. but the methods a university applies to learning a language are often the same as it applies to learning history and math. Basically: read an explaination in a book, have a teacher reword it in class, do a homework assignment, take a test, now you know it.

I am now nearing the seven year point in my japanese studies (though I did take over a year off after college because I lost all direction), and I've learned much more in the past year than I ever did in my expensive classes (I took 38 credits of Japanese, at $300 a credit that's $11,400 spent on something I could have done in a few months of SRS self-study).

My real education didn't start until I got a copy of Remembering the Kanji. After that I discovered this site, and through that I found AJATT and SRS. Now I'm optimistic that I can actually learn this language, as opposed to being a perpetual student.

zoletype Wrote:I think 90% of Japanese people I know think that Heisig is a joke and could never work, even when I show them that it does.

I posted some of my stories on Lang-8 and I didn't get the slightest negative response. A couple of Japanese people even supplied mnemonics that they knew of.

This thread is fascinating. I've done just a little bit of Japanese teaching. I'll probably do more in the future, and I'm curious about which texts and classes have worked for you & which have not.

I've used a variety of texts myself, but I have to say I am jealous of friends that used JSL in the beginning. The romaji does look silly, but the results with that text can be very good. Kanji and writing you can learn on your own, clearly, but learning to use the grammar and to speak naturally in basic situations with acceptable speed and beautiful pronunciation is so hard.

KristinHolly Wrote:I've used a variety of texts myself, but I have to say I am jealous of friends that used JSL in the beginning. The romaji does look silly, but the results with that text can be very good. Kanji and writing you can learn on your own, clearly, but learning to use the grammar and to speak naturally in basic situations with acceptable speed and beautiful pronunciation is so hard.

I bashed on JSL a couple of pages ago for its romajii, but I agree what you state as its advantages. Grammatically it is solid, and the speakers on the recordings are quite good. So it did give me a good basis from which to move forward in these regards.

esgrove Wrote:I took Japanese for 4 years in college. I even studied abroad in Japan for 1 semester. After all that work, I still couldn't have passed the 3級. I left school with a thorough knowledge of basic grammar (because we used the same constructions over and over), a few hundred memorized vocabulary words (too many situational nouns and not nearly enough verbs), and maybe only 300 kanji (and that's just reading, I could probably only write 100 from memory).

I don't mean to attack you, but were you actually working?

I know classes won't be the best method to learn, but if you take 4 years of Japanese at a university and can't pass 3級 then likely it's no one's fault but your own. If you aced the classes and all their quizzes/tests, then I'd admit something is really wrong.

In my 4th year reading/writing class right now the articles we read every 1-2 weeks are junior high level and loaded with kanji everywhere. Anyone in the class that can understand this material (some people are kind of lost in the class) can pass 3-kyu.

Anyway...

In my experience classes are pretty variable. Depends on the teacher and the material they are using.

Probably the hardest part with teaching a foreign language is that you have so many students at different levels in your class.

Just because the class is slow paced doesn't mean they don't make you work. Even though I demonstrated for the teacher that I can already write all the kana, I had to fill out pages of each kana on writing practice sheets that served me no benefit other than a sore wrist.

If you have to write several pages of really simple Japanese for homework. You will gain a mastery of the very basics, have done a lot of work, but not have actually gotten that far along overall.

I don't know esgrove's situation, but I know a lot of classes are a whole lot of work for very little learning. (That applies to all classes in general, not just Japanese.)

tokyostyle Wrote:I only have experience in Japan, so I'll post the first 7 semesters of our curriculum. (I wasn't able to keep up with this pace, but if you studied double the class time I think it's possible.)

Tokyostyle, which school in Japan did you use?

tokyostyle Wrote:I believe specialized language schools go a tad bit faster. They are designed to get you JLPT1 after two years of study. (Or 1 year if you are a native Chinese or Korean speaker.)

Why faster if you're native Chinese/Korean?

Because of the kanji knowledge?

Because a heisig graduate would have similar knowledge to the korean person. When it comes to readings we all start from the same place..

zoletype Wrote:Why faster if you're native Chinese/Korean?

Because of the kanji knowledge?

Because a heisig graduate would have similar knowledge to the korean person. When it comes to readings we all start from the same place..

It's not just knowledge of characters that gives them a leg up. Something like 70% of Korean words (and probably 50-60% of Japanese words) are Chinese compounds, even if they no longer write them with hanja. This means that Chinese and Korean people already know a very hefty chunk of the vocabulary and just need to adjust their pronunciation. Korean grammar is also very similar to Japanese grammar.

A Chinese friend of mine once told me that if he didn't know a Japanese onyomi reading, he would guess the closest thing to the Chinese reading (Mandarin presumably, I've never thought to ask). He said a lot of the time he guessed right. I think I saw a chart comparing them once, but I'm not totally sure how far this would go.

MeNoSavvy Wrote:Most american undergraduates seem to be mostly interesting in drinking, partying, etc.

That's going a bit overboard. Certainly some colleges and universities have a bigger problem with drinking than others. But you have to remember American news tends to repeat the same things (in not much depth) over and over, because they are all about getting the ratings. I am saying this with some second-hand knowledge from people in other countries who watch both American and their native news.

Alcohol is a bigger problem at four-year universities, especially with the largest student bodies or best sports teams. Some kids really don't want to go to college or don't know what they want to do with their life, so they pick a college by its "party" reputation.

Among two-year schools with no dormitories (everyone commutes by car or bus), it is a very small problem, especially among the working adult students, but also among the young students. Still, there are a variety of four-year colleges near my home, and some literally have the reputation as the home for geeks and bookworms almost exclusively.

I would say most four-year colleges are somewhere in the middle, and even then maybe because quite a few students don't really want to be there. The colleges in my area really are all like that, I think -- not too extreme. I think when you get to a school that measures its students by tens of thousands, you can almost guarantee its a party school whether its curriculum is rigorous or not. I wouldn't sent my kid to one of those schools unless they were really mature for their age.

I actually know people who changed schools to get away from the party atmosphere.

But does the lowest common denominator bring down the level of quality for the rest of the students? Absolutely. Again, though, there are particular colleges which are almost the opposite! Some students party, but not too hearty.

shakkun Wrote:A Chinese friend of mine once told me that if he didn't know a Japanese onyomi reading, he would guess the closest thing to the Chinese reading (Mandarin presumably, I've never thought to ask). He said a lot of the time he guessed right. I think I saw a chart comparing them once, but I'm not totally sure how far this would go.

On'yomi readings are Chinese readings, so it's not odd at all. The problem for Chinese people is that the readings for Japanese characters were taken from China over 100 of years ago, some were taken waaaay before then. So the readings currently used in Mandarin might not correlate 100% to Japanese readings, but certainly so much that it's guessable.

yeah I often go past Chinese restaurants and other shops. Sometimes they have both kanji and romaji for their name (other times it'll be English words, which are often but not always the same meaning). Quite often the Chinese sounds are similar to the Japanese on-yomi, though not often identical.

Tobberoth Wrote:

shakkun Wrote:A Chinese friend of mine once told me that if he didn't know a Japanese onyomi reading, he would guess the closest thing to the Chinese reading (Mandarin presumably, I've never thought to ask). He said a lot of the time he guessed right. I think I saw a chart comparing them once, but I'm not totally sure how far this would go.

On'yomi readings are Chinese readings, so it's not odd at all. The problem for Chinese people is that the readings for Japanese characters were taken from China over 100 of years ago, some were taken waaaay before then. So the readings currently used in Mandarin might not correlate 100% to Japanese readings, but certainly so much that it's guessable.

Quite often the phonetic components are the same, I believe. So even if they're a bit different, there's still an alignment.

TerryS Wrote:

MeNoSavvy Wrote:Most american undergraduates seem to be mostly interesting in drinking, partying, etc.

Alcohol is a bigger problem at four-year universities, especially with the largest student bodies or best sports teams.

Even that is a bit of an exaggeration I think, it is just that the drinkers are the loudest (EDIT: I should say that the difference between four-year universities and two-year programs is most likely due to age of the student body, not the fact that these types of universities foster a party mentality). What I heard about Britain from a friend who went on a study abroad program was that there were many more heavy drinkers and the curriculum was not taken as seriously (although that is just one person's account about one particular school).

I think overall in America, even in the big public schools (I went to one), there are many many MANY people who are very good students and serious about their education, but they are not the ones you hear about. Even if people do see college as a time to experience alcohol and whatnot, it is more common than not that those people will still do their best academically. I don't mean to be defensive, but America seems to be getting a bad rap about everything these days, when actually the people here are generally very kind, normal, hard-working people.

Quality of language education is another story.

Speaking of the quality of language education, I'd like to share my horror story of taking Japanese classes.

The JLPT states that to achieve the JLPT1 certification, 900 hours should be spent studying the language. I had studied Japanese at school since I was five years old, right up until the end of high school. That's well over 2000 hours of "learning" but in the end I could barely even string a sentence together. In retrospect I can definitely see how flawed the language education system is in this state (and country? and world?). When people ask me how long I've studied Japanese for, I feel ashamed to say this is my 15th year, so I just say "a while".

I began university Japanese last year, and to say the least, it sucked. One thing that did it for me was when the teacher asked me "how should I teach kanji?". This was a NATIVE Japanese speaker, a university lecturer asking ME how kanji should be taught. I hated all the stupid tests which we'd cram for, the repetitive and dull audio about Mr. Smith and Mr. Tanaka, having to watch poorly produced video skits (Mr. Miller from Minna no nihongo), and having shaky conversations in a classroom of thirty students and one teacher. There was very little Japanese input involved, it was all about filling in the blanks and then being told you're wrong.

In my second year of university I had timetable clashes and had no option but to self study with Japanese. Using the AJATT method, this year has been by far the most productive year for me learning Japanese in my life.

I agree, that number of hours listed on the JLPT website to achieve the different levels of proficiency is totally unrealistic. I probably studied around 500 hours of Japanese before becoming disillusioned and giving up several years back (recently I restarted my study) and I probably would have only just been able to pass level 4 !!.

Certainly the people I knew in Japan who passed level 1 of the test admitted they probably spent at least 4 times the official 900 hour figure. Usually they studied japanese in college for at least 3 years, plus many hours of additional study.

There used to be some charts on the site that showed how many hours people spent studying for the test (I can't see them at the moment), and it was way more than the official figures. Also keep in mind that the majority of people taking JLPT1 are chinese speakers so they had the additional advantages of already knowing the characters.

Thanks for posting the curricula from Sophia University that was interesting.

Is the textbook used in the earlier courses "Situational Functional Japanese" by the Tsukuba University language group? Those books are really good, I've browsed them several times, but never actually bought them because they are a little bit more expensive due to having to buy separate volumes for the notes, and exercises.

Well, so far I've spent about two years studying Japanese on my own. Besides learning grammar and vocab, I've watched tons of Japanese dramas to help immerse myself in the language, and also have a Japanese friend who helps by correcting my mistakes. I haven't tried to take the JLPT4 yet, probably because the only place they offer it in the UK is in London. I've heard that it's pretty easy - is this true? Could anyone give a slight outline of what you need to know for it?

I'm planning on taking Japanese in university, just so that I can have some "proper" education in the language. The universities over here don't seem as slow as those in the States - by the first year students are expected to know hiragana, katakana, around 200 kanji, and have basic language skills. (Would still be a bit slow for me, but hey.)

julz6453 Wrote:I'm planning on taking Japanese in university, just so that I can have some "proper" education in the language. The universities over here don't seem as slow as those in the States - by the first year students are expected to know hiragana, katakana, around 200 kanji, and have basic language skills. (Would still be a bit slow for me, but hey.)

After 14 years of studying Japanese in a classroom I must let you know that it is a painfully slow method of learning Japanese. I guess it depends on what's more important to you, a degree in Japanese, or fluency. Before registering for a university course, I highly recommend that you check out the AJATT method.

USA, UK, Australia, I can't really imagine that language education would differ too much.

The JLPT official figures work if you're talking language studies in Japan (where most of the tests are taken). If you're talking university Japan outside of Japan, they are indeed WAAAAY too low.

Regarding the integrated approach book that was talked about earlier. Does anyone know if there is any online workbook/question quizzes to test yourself on the stuff in this book? I have the official workbook that was made for it but it really sucks. The questions at the end of each chapter are mostly role play so that's not helpful either. Genki did a much better job of testing your knowledge of the material before moving on. Anyone know anything that would be helpful? Thanks