@ AkiKazachan

Well, it's really hard talking sense into anyone studying foreign languages these days. The sad thing is that most people are in love with the "idea" of learning languages verses the language itself. I'm quite certain that some of your classmates are just fulfilling language requirements on their degrees as well. A lot of people don't want to throw their free time into a language when they are drowning in their other non-language based classes too. The best thing you can do is just study hard by yourself. You'll at least come out of all your classes with an easy "A" like I did.

LivingNexus Wrote:I am very much a person who needs to work at my own pace.

Is that a euphemism for "I am slow"?

LivingNexus Wrote:So here I am, a fairly sharp guy who displays a high level of competence in class but who bombs tests and rarely turns homework in on time. It doesn't matter if I understand the material better than most of my classmates, it doesn't matter if I'm able to process on a higher level than students of "the system." All that matters is getting the grade, which usually takes a combination of memorization and guesswork to figure out what the professor is going to test on (and hey, guess what I'm notoriously bad at!).

Sorry but to me, "I understand the material better than most of my classmates" and "I barely passed more than a few classes, and I failed my first class ever while in college" is a massive contradiction. If you understand the material better than most of your classmates, then you don't need to guess what's on the test. Perhaps you're not telling the whole story here?

I agree that tests are flawed in the sense that they are best for testing short-term memory but unless someone can devise a better system for testing the capabilities of students everywhere, tests will have to stay.

LivingNexus Wrote:As for classes, I hate them. Hate AAALLLL the classes. American "education" is a joke, at least after elementary school. I was so burnt out after finishing college last semester that I literally spent the last two months just recovering. I understand that some people do quite well in the current system, but that doesn't mean the system isn't broken. I am very much a person who needs to work at my own pace. My whole college career I've gotten compliments from professors on my speaking and writing ability, and several times have been told that I'm much too intelligent for my grades to suck as badly as they do. And Oh, how they suck. I barely passed more than a few classes, and I failed my first class ever while in college. This was despite the fact that I was taking very interesting classes with very intelligent professors whom I liked.

So here I am, a fairly sharp guy who displays a high level of competence in class but who bombs tests and rarely turns homework in on time. It doesn't matter if I understand the material better than most of my classmates, it doesn't matter if I'm able to process on a higher level than students of "the system." All that matters is getting the grade, which usually takes a combination of memorization and guesswork to figure out what the professor is going to test on (and hey, guess what I'm notoriously bad at!).

So I'll be the first to say "screw school!", but if you're one of the people who can make it work for you, by all means make the most of it. As for me, I'll stick to AJATT and actually have FUN learning Japanese, the way God intended.

You really need to drop the attitude you have.

One thing is that you think you're smarter than most people and you just have a few flaws, or you're not willing to work the system. Guess what? Nobody believes you or cares. You think you can process on a higher level than a bunch of other students but those students think the same damn thing about you. That is, the students who waste their time thinking about others in that way. You're not smarter than other people. You're normal. We're all pretty much normal. I'm sure you have a natural learning ability better than some people, and worse than others, but nothing significant in either direction.

You also say you need to work at your own pace. You'll never get to do that in your entire life, so you might as well learn to alter your pace now. You'll also never get to play outside of an annoying 'system', and some people will always be better than you at the system. So stop being so self-righteous about it.

Tzadeck Wrote:You think you can process on a higher level than a bunch of other students but those students think the same damn thing about you.

I remember there was a study of some kind that asked participants to rate themselves on something (could be academic ability, intelligence or something else) and the majority classed themselves as "above average".

Which is of course, statistically impossible lol.

I've encountered many students in my classes who felt that they were too good for the class, that the class was moving too slowly, that we weren't learning "real" Japanese, that their previous "study" meant they knew everything, etc. Most of these people did not actually know as much as they thought they did, and that was reflected in their grades -- I can't remember a student who I thought "yeah, they really do know a lot of Japanese but I wonder why they keep getting bad grades."

Yeah, I didn't want to go into a whole lot of detail, but there's quite a bit more to it than "Oh, I just didn't feel like doing the homework because I'm too smart for this class." Yeah..no. Good job judging me though.

Tzadeck Wrote:You're not smarter than other people.

See, the thing is, I'm NOT smarter than other people. Typically, from my experiences in my own classes, I'm just more engaged because I'm paying attention. That said, my ability to be engaged in class does not necessarily lead to the ability to take tests. A lot of time what I get out of a class isn't on the test at all, even though to me (subjectively) it was important information. This is why I like essay tests a lot better. I tend to do a lot better on those.

My point was, you can still be really smart and do awfully at school. I wasn't trying to talk myself up here - God knows I don't need to brag to you people XD I'm sure smarter people than me have done more miserably in school for various reasons, it's just that my case is the only one I'm eminently familiar with.

Tzadeck Wrote:You also say you need to work at your own pace. You'll never get to do that in your entire life, so you might as well learn to alter your pace now.

Actually I'm learning Japanese at my own pace right now. So much for that theory, eh?

As for the not-doing-homework thing, of course there are a lot of reasons why you wouldn't do your homework. I've been a teacher for a few years, and the more I teach the more it's obvious that most of the students who have major problems in school are those who have bad family lives. If they often don't attend school or do their assignments, there's a good chance that something is going on at home.

I'm not saying that's what's going on with you, but it's one of a few reasons why students fail to do the basic requirements in school.

Anyway, the fact is that your original post was phrased very pompously, and now that a few people have taken shots at you you've restated your position in a much more modest way. Next time just do that from the beginning. You say you're a good writer so you should have no problem controlling your tone.

As for going at your own pace, you can do that with Japanese only because it is a hobby. I didn't say it clearly, but I meant that you can't go at your own pace with any of your responsibilities in life. School and work are just two examples, but it goes beyond that. Try having a child and dealing with the difficulties of raising children at your own pace. I think you'll find that the baby is the one choosing the pace, not yourself.

Mainly I get tired of always having to pre-emptively defend myself, as it seems these days you always have to have some sort of disclaimer for your views; like people constantly saying "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" So I can see how it might come across as arrogance, since I didn't use any of that terminology. I did go back and re-read my post when people started taking shots at me, and I still don't really see what the big deal was.

Also, I didn't want to turn my post into a sob-story about all the myriad of things that I feel held me back from doing my best in school. As a teacher I'm sure you understand that it doesn't take much for a student to fall behind, and once it happens it's very hard to climb back out of the make-up work abyss. My point was that the American education system has an ominous trend of rewarding accomplishing tasks rather than actual intelligence or ability, which are both things that, I think, can be cultivated and stimulated without much trouble, if you know how. You have to really be ahead of the curve to be able to have fun and be creative with your schoolwork, because if you aren't it just takes too much time and effort. Everything I've read in this thread has only reinforced that fact.

Do I think that the American education system needs to be rebuild from the ground up? Definitely. Do I think this is likely to happen? Not unless something forces it to collapse, and people are able to take an honest look at why the system failed and create a new one that isn't driven by money.

LivingNexus I don't mean to flame you, but in this thread you blame the american education system for your failure at college, then in another thread you blame not having money for finding it hard to have an immersion environment.

Maybe you need to start looking at yourself and being accountable for your own life/ actions? Maybe when you stop blaming outside factors you can let go of that giant chip on your shoulder and just get on with learning Japanese.

Oh, I didn't mean to say that I failed at college per se (though I wouldn't really say I "succeeded" either, more like "survived"). I'm graduating in May. Took me a bit longer to do it, but yeah.

As for the other thread, I suppose it depends on how you define immersion. Khatzumoto's way seems to be "surround yourself with Japanese things." Well, things cost money, which I don't have a lot of. That doesn't mean I don't listen to Japanese music constantly or practice how to eat with chopsticks or learn and review kanji every day.

I'm sorry that my "attitude" seems to be tripping you guys up. Let me simplify my logic for you:

Learning should be fun --> School makes learning not fun --> School should die --> World becomes a better place


Verbal passifiers: This is just my opinion, this is only one perspective, your mileage may very, and of course, there's nothing wrong with that!

Ah OK, so now it's our inability to understand your flippant and underdeveloped argument that's the reason why you are failing to make yourself understood. I get it now...

Tip of the day ---- Think it through before you type it.

jankensan Wrote:Ah OK, so now it's our inability to understand your flippant and underdeveloped argument that's the reason why you are failing to make yourself understood. I get it now...

Tip of the day ---- Think it through before you type it.

Hey, no need to pile it on. The guy apologized and simplified everything.

LivingNexus Wrote:Learning should be fun --> School makes learning not fun --> School should die --> World becomes a better place

I don't think learning should necessarily be fun. Learning should appeal and build on our natural curiosity on how the world works, but sometimes it's a lot of grinding and repetition.

I'm reminded every time I pull out my JLPT study material and put in 40 more cards in Anki, as it's a pain to go through all the definitions of the words... but it helps immensely when I actually read or watch a film or something.

It's fun when I learn a new technique in martial arts, but it's not fun when I have to repeat it over and over to get it to a natural speed, and when I fail I get punched.

It's fun to see how the shape of a wing can change the aerodynamic properties; it's not fun to calculate the exact drag and lift every single time, but after doing that over and over, you intuitively get the feel of how a wing will react with a given shape.

I generally agree that the education system needs to be reformed, especially in regard to pacing. I limped out with shaky foundations and terrible but passing grades in some of my advanced mathematics classes and when I had to take the applied mathematical engineering classes, I had no hope no matter how much I reviewed.

However, I do think there is value in doing tasks repetitively and the completion of said tasks are more important than perceived ability and intelligence.

Like @Tzadeck said and I totally agree, we are all pretty much normal when it comes to intelligence and I add, what makes you truly different is how much you are willing to sacrifice and that's how you raise yourself above the average.

Maybe if you were a true genius you'd get so tired and used to being praised that you'd never learn how to work hard enough to accomplish your goals, just saying.

American school might not be the best (depends what kind of college we're talking about), but it's a bad idea to blame the school for failing. I think we've all done it at some point before realizing that it's stupid. As others have said, we all see ourselves as above average. But then you ask yourself: If that class really is easy, why am I not succeeding?

[Zgarbas]

Aw man.

So our teachers have this...thing. In order to be allowed in your exams you need to take a preliminary test. On which you need to score 8 to pass. Usually about 80% of the class fails it for various reasons(time pressure does it for me...), and isn't allowed into the exams. Anyway.

So we had it Wednesday. An Erin short video+3 questions about the content, a kana stroke order point, translations from Romanian to Japanese and making sentences using given grammatical structures...in 20 minutes.

The Erin video was from the sekai section(so real-life speedy talk), kana stroke orders are always hilarious, we had never done translations into Japanese, only viceversa... and never from Romanian. This is always frustrating as all our learning materials are in English and it is very had to associate a Romanian word for things once you're used to the English one, and since we rarely is ever practice input the example sentences were eerily timeconsuming. And I'm a slow writer. Was sure I'd failed it. I also always forget where we stopped in school and have to guess what exact structure she's looking for.

Teacher walks back in with the results... apparently no one got a grade over 7 and she didn't want to fail the entire year, so she allowed the ones who only got over 5(about 13 people) to take the exam. Exam which was a piece of cake, btw.

I hate the preliminaries. I should really get around to practice writing speed =/.

(we're still N5 level here)

I get low grades because I'm bad at writing, and it's the one skill that I feel no drive for improving right now. I wish my Uni focused more on anything other than that =/. And I hate it how our tests get JLPT like timing despite it not being at the same level, since it takes far longer to write out the answers than to just pick an option.
(I also don't like how the teachers basically humiliate certain students, and then you get points off for skipping, and then you get more humiliation and that's why I got held back).

^^ What kind of ***** system is that...seriously...

"In order to take the test which you need to pass the class, you need to pass a prior test to take that test." In the US system its common to be able to exempt the exam if you are making an "A" (like 90%+). But to be able to take the test?....wtf

[Zgarbas]

It's a really messed up system. Apparently the Japanese section has gotten so many complains over the years that the Uni is not even bothering with it anymore...

Exams are pretty much mandatory here, regardless of the course type. But the preliminaries are a thing that so far I have only ever seen at my section in school. Ever. And we already have an official "preliminary", sort of, settled by the school.

Actually, that exam is in an hour. Last week's group had reading comprehension on 7 medium-sized texts(3 at first sight). This will be interesting...

Wish me luck!

Hmm? I think it's amusing that you guys are getting so worked up about my supposedly arrogant comments.

kainzero Wrote:I'm reminded every time I pull out my JLPT study material and put in 40 more cards in Anki, as it's a pain to go through all the definitions of the words... but it helps immensely when I actually read or watch a film or something.

To me this says that at least SOME part of the learning process is fun enough (in your case, the results) to keep doing it, even though other parts of it might be painful to work through. If this isn't the case and you simply have the energy to keep doing something that you don't enjoy, then, well, more power to you I suppose. I certainly don't.

kainzero Wrote:However, I do think there is value in doing tasks repetitively and the completion of said tasks are more important than perceived ability and intelligence.

It depends on the task, really. For a construction worker, or some other building profession, all that matters is that you do the job right, which usually involves precise, repetitive tasks. However, for something like writing, there's more to it than simply putting words down on a page. A novelist who approaches writing a book with the mentality of a construction worker is what one might call "a bad writer."

Eikyu Wrote:As others have said, we all see ourselves as above average. But then you ask yourself: If that class really is easy, why am I not succeeding?

Because it takes more than an above average intelligence to succeed in (or rather, despite) a system that isn't suited for you. Some of Einstein's quotes about education are interesting on that point.

Einstein - Autobiographical Notes Wrote:. one had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations,
whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect
that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration
of any scientific problem distasteful to me for an entire year.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of
instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry;
. . . I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of
prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to
force the beast to devour continuously . . .

I really don't get it. Your complaint is that the American education system is dysfunctional and obsessed with a task based achivement system. This apparently turns your classes into an environment thats not "fun." But I'm confused, is the learning not fun because the material is dry, or is the learning not fun because the teachers "force" you to take tests and then give you Fs because the system is 'so below you.' If its the later then you should simply drop out and go and do a Japanese language school or something.

Really the whole point of college these days is to get a piece of paper that says you took classes. Plus you get a GPA which you can show to businesses that reflects your work ethic. Businesses are going to look at your time at college and based on the GPA decide if you really put forth the time in your classes.

If you just want to take the classes to learn and improve your Japanese then just audit the classes to do that. You don't have to do homework, you don't have to take exams, shit you can even skip classes if you want. But don't sit here and state it like "College education is so last century, they have yet to catch up to my superior concept of the way education must be done." and then turn around and curse the system when they give you an F when you went and put yourself in that system.

vix86 Wrote:Really the whole point of college these days is to get a piece of paper that says you took classes.

That's entirely the problem. Many incompetent people do well at school because they are better at short-term memorization and do better at tests, not because they actually know how to use what they've "learned."

Couple this with the wildly inconsistent standards in terms of hiring. In today's tighter job market, having a degree isn't really any guarantee that you'll be able to get a job, especially in your field. On the other hand, some people get accepted solely on the fact that they have a degree, even though the position is far outside their field. This actually happened to my mother, who had several years of experience related to the job she was applying for but got beat out by a guy who had just graduated with a degree in something completely unrelated. I'm not saying he didn't "deserve" the job, maybe he did quite well. I'm just saying there's no logic to it.

As for your other comments concerning me specifically, I have no interest in defending myself to people who seem to like putting words in my mouth. Suffice to say that my performance in school has nothing to do with my opinion of the school system as a whole. I actually graduated high school with a 3.5GPA, and I don't think I've ever actually failed an assignment that I managed to turn in. I may have failed a test or two in college, but if I did, it was only barely. (I can't actually remember failing one, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.)

Most of the people I've talked to about this, including several of my professors, agree that the system as it stands is inadequate and needs to be retooled. My opinions tend to be quite a bit stronger on the matter simply because I feel more victimized by it, and I'm sure that comes across. But even if I had aced all my classes, I think I'd still feel the same way.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that I was talking specifically about Japanese classes. I have taken several language classes, but not any about Japanese in particular because they were never offered. However, my experience with language classes is very similar to what others have described in this thread. My comments were about classes in general.

There are plenty of 16 year olds that could/would/should be getting paid more than their teachers in high school but instead they're encouraged to stay in school learning things as vitally important as shakespeare. I suspect the education system is one of the most deeply ingrained of the parasitic institutions in existence and will be the hardest to kill.

Life sucks - give this guy a rope.

Haha this thread sounds exactly like me at 15. "Ugh I hate school, school sucks, why do I have to study things I don't enjoy!"

But I'm at university now and I love it. There is, however, still a sizeable contingent of people who like to moan about 'the system'. I think it's a personality thing. No doubt the same people who will moan about their company in 5 years time, and will be moaning about the government in 20 years time, and will be moaning about those 'evil nurses who are trying to kill me' in 60 years time!

LivingNexus & nadiatims:
I'll direct this at both of you since you both seem to be for the same concept.
I'd be wary of how you phrase your desires about the "education system." If your issue is with the fact that the business world has taken higher education or the requirement thereof, and perverted it, then I would state that. But I believe it wrong to state that it is the fault of education that the system is bucked up and we should tear down education to correct what the business world put in motion.

It is not the fault of the education system that people are encouraged, persuaded, brow beaten to enter high school and college.
It is not the fault of the education system that GPAs are of such importance.
It is not the fault of the education system that degrees are required as a requirement for jobs.
It is not the fault of the education system that incompetent people enter college for that degree.
It is not the fault of the education system that (US) colleges now operate as businesses.

It is the fault of American corporations.

LivingNexus Wrote:This actually happened to my mother, who had several years of experience related to the job she was applying for but got beat out by a guy who had just graduated with a degree in something completely unrelated. I'm not saying he didn't "deserve" the job, maybe he did quite well.

Your mother was beaten because the guy could be paid less to do the same job; more than likely.

Tefhel Wrote:But I'm at university now and I love it.

This biggest life changing thing to occur in my life was a shift in perspective about school. I attribute it primarily to the fact that college costs money and that makes people be less idiotic and more focused in school, than what I dealt with in high school; but I'm not really sure about that.

In high school I was focused on my hobbies and the classes that touched on those--computers mostly. But midway through college I shift in perspective and realized that in every class I was in there was something I could learn and find interesting if I stopped grumbling about how useless and tangential to my major it was. History, one of the most boring things to me since I could remember, something that was always just dates and wars, suddenly became interesting when I started to think about it more. One of the things I love about college is that your teachers know their field so well, which is something my high school teachers didn't necessarily fit. Try asking your professors some time what they did their doctoral dissertation on, or what their current research is about (if you are at a university/research college). Ask questions about it, what kind of importance there is to it, why it interests them. If you legitimately enjoy learning, this is one of the most interesting things to do and you are bound to learn something interesting. And if for nothing else, you have at least shown yourself to be an inquiring mind to your professor which can take you a long way.