alyks Wrote:Granted, thinking that listening while asleep will help you is a bit misinformed, Khatzu himself does not claim that's why you should do it.

And stop badmouthing AJATT. I'm an AJATT fanatic and proud of it. Even if the average guy does go up and blindly accept everything he says, that's still the method that got Khatzu fluent in 18 months. By no means is it bad.

I didn't badmouth AJATT, I badmouthed AJATT fanatics who take his word as law. As you yourself said, when he named the site All Japanese all the time, he didn't actually mean ALL the time. The same can be said for a lot of his theories on his site. He's trying to motivate people, sell his idea of how Japanese is best learned. He isn't writing a bible. Every single word on his site isn't supposed to be taken literally.

Even IF he became fluent in Japanese in 18 months, that doesn't mean everyone who reads his site and considers his words the words of God will become fluent in 18 months. Working hard at learning Japanese might get you there (though I doubt it), trusting 100% everything you read on ONE website made by ONE young American who learned Japanese won't. You are very very correct though, the "AJATT technique" is by no means bad.

Tobberoth Wrote:Another AJATT fanatic who read what Khazu says and take it as law. "Japanese all the time" isn't to be taken literally. Listening to Japanese 24 hours a day won't make you good at Japanese faster than someone who listen to Japanese activly 10 hours a day or even 5.

Please don't disrespect me by calling me names when you are clearly unaware of my reasons for listening at night. Even before I started learning Japanese, something on at night, be it a movie or just TV helped me to fall a sleep. And it still continues to do that with Japanese.

Whether I'm learning at night or not doesn't matter to me. It doesn't bother me, and I like it; therefore, I do it.

KREVA Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Another AJATT fanatic who read what Khazu says and take it as law. "Japanese all the time" isn't to be taken literally. Listening to Japanese 24 hours a day won't make you good at Japanese faster than someone who listen to Japanese activly 10 hours a day or even 5.

Please don't disrespect me by calling me names when you are clearly unaware of my reasons for listening at night. Even before I started learning Japanese, something on at night, be it a movie or just TV helped me to fall a sleep. And it still continues to do that with Japanese.

Whether I'm learning at night or not doesn't matter to me. It doesn't bother me, and I like it; therefore, I do it.

If that's your reason, I'm sorry. I got the idea from your posts that you meant listening 24 hours a day, literally, was what was implied in the AJATT method, and that's what I "flamed" so to speak. If you find it a good way to relax etc, great. A good way to combine studies with overall life.

Ah, I see the problem. Don't think of listening to Japanese all the time (even if you're sleeping) as the active studying part of your learning. It's not studying, it's conditioning. You can listen to Japanese and do all your required English stuff (study, watch the kids, work).

The listening while you sleep is not subliminal. It's that 10 minutes prior, couple of times when you wake up in the night, that rare (though less rare with time) you dream in Japanese because of it playing while you sleep, and while you get up in the morning and prepare for work.

I'm in Japan, so it's easy. I can turn on a TV (well, except on base or when my ship leaves port). If you're not in Japan, well, find out and play it.

If the thread is any indication (thanks to that wonderful quote summary above), the listening got us able to parse the native level speed of what we're hearing. We don't know what we're hearing, but it's there. We study to slowly be able to comprehend what we're hearing. I even separate it into active and passive listening. Active would be I'm sitting down, trying to watch the show. Passive is I'm doing other things, on occasion catching what I hear. The active part is the most effective, and definitely not something I can do for long periods of time (very tiring). The passive, well, no problem.

But Tobberoth, let's ask a question. Why does one always hear that the BEST way to learn foreign language is to move to that country that speaks? The so called Immersion Environment? What's occurring that allows one to learn that's not studying?

My point is, the moving to the country thing sounds like you remove your native level audio and text and replace it with the native level audio and text of the country you move to (in addition to culture absorption). If that's the case, why is a life changing and expensive study method (moving to Japan) considered the best, but a cheaper alternative (changing your own environment) not effective?

But don't take the 24/7 thing as law. It's the maximum. You cannot have anymore input past that point. If you think your can achieve the same results with less, go for it. Just report back here with results so we (or those that follow) can refine our methods.

For me, I'm realizing the passive listening is less effective the more you do things in English (or native language). Walking to work, doing manual work, riding my bike, exercise, etc. all seem ok. But having it play in the background while I'm surfing English sites is not effective. Drama audio feels more effective than music audio. Talk show format (from Junk site podcasts) is more effective than news. Smooth transition is more effective than the random play. Just personal opinion.

Active listening, well, English subtitles are akin to passive listening while surfing English sites (not very effective at all). Use rarely if at all if you can help it. Japanese subtitles I wondering if it's a mix blessing. With Japanese subtitles, I get much better context. Now that I think about it (just now), maybe its cause I'm forced to watch the show to understand it. I can't walk away and slip into passive mode. It's making me realize the definite difference between the active and passive listening. As Tobberoth points out, that active part cannot be done 24 hours a day. So, just some experiences I'm having with the listening part of AJATT.

I'm not saying the cheaper alternative (changing your own environment) isn't effective, but yes, I am saying it is less effective, for several reasons. I can't list all of those reasons here, the post would be gigantic, but I'll give some examples to show my train of thought:

* When you're living in Japan, you're forced to actively parse Japanese, all the time. You can't passively listen to your waiter when you're ordering, you HAVE to be active. You can't passivly listen to your 管理人. When you're changing your own environment like stated in this topic (listening to Japanese while your mind is on other things etc), your not active. If it weren't for your own motivation and your own set of rules, you could be passive constantly.
* Your own environment is your own creation. You decide what you'll get the input from, be it films, podcasts or music. In Japan, the environment is forced upon you, you don't have the luxury of listening to the stuff you want to listen to all the time.
* When you change your own environment, you decide when and for how long. "I want to listen to Japanese radio for an hour". Great. In Japanese it can be like "Crap, I have to listen to this Japanese conversation for an hour".

My main point is that while you CAN make your own immersion very effective outside of Japan if you have the self-dicipine, it's forced upon you in a different way in Japan. Lets not forget the easy access to native speakers at all times.

Well, my own opinion is that passive listening isn't really good. I'm not saying it is bad in any way, it has ZERO detrimental effect. It might even have some positive effect on pronounciation. I don't think you learn much from it though... vocabulary, grammar, expressions... Your brain is hearing it, but not working with it. Active listening on the other hand, THAT is extremely effective. Parsing Japanese on the go gives you that extra step outside of simply memorizing phrases and words, it forces you to connect the dots, fast. It forces you to understand, not translate.

I've always looked at passive listening as a way to make it really easy to slip into active listening. The point being that all those small moments throughout the day where you're not actively focusing on something is when you turn your mind to the audio.

Tobberoth Wrote:

KREVA Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Another AJATT fanatic who read what Khazu says and take it as law. "Japanese all the time" isn't to be taken literally. Listening to Japanese 24 hours a day won't make you good at Japanese faster than someone who listen to Japanese activly 10 hours a day or even 5.

Please don't disrespect me by calling me names when you are clearly unaware of my reasons for listening at night. Even before I started learning Japanese, something on at night, be it a movie or just TV helped me to fall a sleep. And it still continues to do that with Japanese.

Whether I'm learning at night or not doesn't matter to me. It doesn't bother me, and I like it; therefore, I do it.

If that's your reason, I'm sorry. I got the idea from your posts that you meant listening 24 hours a day, literally, was what was implied in the AJATT method, and that's what I "flamed" so to speak. If you find it a good way to relax etc, great. A good way to combine studies with overall life.

Yeah, I have a hard time sleeping when it's quiet. Used to be able to do it back when I was in kindergarten->junior high school, but not anymore.

Even if the time I spend listening to it to help me sleep has no effect, I still consider those waking hours crucial, and yes I'm learning then. It could be that you're right and the pay off I have been experiencing is due to merely my listening environment during my waking hours as opposed to both.

As for passive listening, I find it easier to hear Japanese without trying to figure out what it means. When I first started listening, I always tried to actively listen to it and would miss a lot of the dialogue because I was focusing too much on each little syllable. But now I can just have it on, loud enough to hear, and I'm listening to it right now, understanding it while typing out this post. I think over time, the passive and active start to blend. I used my native language English as sort of an experiment. I listened to some english dialogue both passively and actively, and I understood them the same. I'd like to reach this point in Japanese as well, slowly seeing signs of it leading that route.

Tobberoth Wrote:Well, my own opinion is that passive listening isn't really good. I'm not saying it is bad in any way, it has ZERO detrimental effect. It might even have some positive effect on pronounciation. I don't think you learn much from it though... vocabulary, grammar, expressions... Your brain is hearing it, but not working with it. Active listening on the other hand, THAT is extremely effective. Parsing Japanese on the go gives you that extra step outside of simply memorizing phrases and words, it forces you to connect the dots, fast. It forces you to understand, not translate.

I wouldn't be so sure that the brain isn't working with it, though. I remember reading through the results of some (sort of) recent research about how language learning in toddlers is a sort of data mining operation. It basically consisted of showing the subject multiple images at the same time while reading out words simultaneously. The toddlers, then, were able to untangle the mess of noise and accurately match words to pictures when tested later. Now, the cool part comes with the adult version of the study, which involved twice as many words and images being shown at the same time. Despite the fact that the adults tested felt they had learned absolutely nothing, they showed results significantly higher than would be caused by chance when tested.

The implication being that the brain is just naturally capable of assimilating language data. The study showed that the more context the data is given, the better, but the learning can occur on a level the student is not consciously aware of.

And, while I'm not going to go around saying sleep learning is awesome, since the brain shuts out all external stimuli in most phases of sleep and I don't like getting laughed at, I will say that in the hypnogogic state right before sleep you are not only able to hear but extraordinarily receptive to sound and likely to dream about whatever you're hearing. Not that useful to Japanese learning, but fun nonetheless. I mean, everyone brags about their first dream in a foreign language right? Now you can force it into your head!

Oh, and if you've conclusively figured out what sleep is for, and that it's because the brain needs rest, I think there's a Nobel prize in it for you.

/Rest is good, please get your sleep kids.

phauna Wrote:Here is the problem, people blindly accepting something without thinking about it. Khatzu says something and you all accept it immediately.

Tobberoth Wrote:I didn't badmouth AJATT, I badmouthed AJATT fanatics who take his word as law..

Do people like this exist? Really?

Eh... probably...

Will they go very far?

Um... probably not...

Me personally, I believe you can learn Japanese by watching Dubbed anime

Lip reading!

Mcjon01 Wrote:I remember reading through the results of some (sort of) recent research about how language learning in toddlers is a sort of data mining operation. It basically consisted of showing the subject multiple images at the same time while reading out words simultaneously. The toddlers, then, were able to untangle the mess of noise and accurately match words to pictures when tested later. Now, the cool part comes with the adult version of the study, which involved twice as many words and images being shown at the same time. Despite the fact that the adults tested felt they had learned absolutely nothing, they showed results significantly higher than would be caused by chance when tested.

So these subjects were asleep when they were tested?

I think it would be hard to show someone an image or test them while sleeping. lol

phauna Wrote:So these subjects were asleep when they were tested?

Well, now you're just being contrary. You know very well I wasn't talking about sleep learning at all in that part. The part where I brought up sleep learning was in the next paragraph, where I said it was stupid. What you quoted, I was connecting to the idea of passive listening being not totally useless, seeing as how the study dealt with processing of information presented in a way that couldn't be consciously learned.

Mcjon01 Wrote:

phauna Wrote:So these subjects were asleep when they were tested?

Well, now you're just being contrary. You know very well I wasn't talking about sleep learning at all in that part.

Sorry, I actually missed that bit. I'm not against passive listening, but to think you can do any other activity at the same time seems far fetched to me. Passive listening while drving to work, okay. Passive listening while doing cards in your SRS, highly dubious value.

I don't think that people are going around saying you can learn from listening while you sleep. That's kind of silly. And it has been debunked many, many times.

However, what about that period before you fall asleep? I know I often have a lot of trouble actually falling asleep. During this time, I could be getting Japanese input, right? If I happen to fall asleep while doing it and "wake up with my headphones having fallen off", well, I don't think I'll claim I benefited while I was sleeping... but I'll be damned if you can convince me I didn't benefit from while I was trying to go to sleep.

phauna Wrote:Sorry, I actually missed that bit. I'm not against passive listening, but to think you can do any other activity at the same time seems far fetched to me. Passive listening while drving to work, okay. Passive listening while doing cards in your SRS, highly dubious value.

I would agree with the part about listening while doing cards in the SRS, if only because I'm sure having Japanese audio coming out of my headphones would make it hard to hear my audio cards, also coming out of my headphones.

Other than that, I don't see the harm in it. Music helps me concentrate. If I don't have something to concentrate on while I'm trying to concentrate on something else, my thoughts just sort of start to fly everywhere, you see, and then nothing gets done.

Music is good. Random Japanese shows in the background while reviewing is just distracting, though.

kazelee Wrote:Music is good. Random Japanese shows in the background while reviewing is just distracting, though.

In many video programs you can disable the video so you just hear the audio, I find that helps when I have a bunch of work I need to focus on.

Just watched the fuckin interview. That was some totally fuckin badass shit. I'm glad his bitchass finally got interviews and shit. I was kinda fuckin' wondering to myself if he was really for fuckin' real, you know? And like, that motherfucker can actually speak Japanese!






*****.

@samesong. tourettes...

stehr Wrote:@samesong. tourettes...

I think he was making fun of the interviewer...

(Which, if you were, funny )

I'll just let my 2 cents on the listening thing here:

Imagine your mind with a little hole. And everything you want to put in your mind goes trought that little hole.

The hole is small, but it is open 24hs/day.

All you have to do is have a huge tank of knowledge that will keep the small hole active all the time.
I is simply to tiring to do sentences all day long. The same with active listening.
Passively listening keeps the tank full.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I is simply to tiring to do sentences all day long. The same with active listening.
Passively listening keeps the tank full.

I think that's what's not so clear from Khatzumoto's explanations. Listening to random Japanese is just a fallback for when you're too tired to actually focus. It helps a bit, but not much. If you do can focus, there are better ways to spend your time.

But you have to notice that this is just one way to see the picture.
It is basicaly the worst case.

If you are look at ii a little more optimistically, you'll see many ways on how it gets better and better.

For instance, once you do some passive listening, you'll notice that you won't be passive all the time. Sometimes you'll get distracted of your distraction and will be listening actively, hurray!

So, in fact, you will be giving yourself more oportunities to learn actively. This last one is what Katz talks all the time.

You must give yourself all the chances you can get to be surpreended by japanese.

I was born in the UAE, grew up in germany, and I live in the UK, now.
I am pretty fluent, in all those languages, immersion helps a hell of alot, what Khatz is saying is true. Immersion really is the best way to learn a language.

What I found though, like mentat has been saying, is ''Why couldn't I learn Japanese the same way I learned English?'' It didn't take me long to learn english at all, I guess I was close to fluency after 4 months of living here, non-stop english noise in the background.
The TV was on Dexters Lab (stuff I could not understand at the time).

So I tried to kick it up a notch, dump all the english, listen to Japanese all the time. Apart from the times where I was in lessons, and had to listen to my teachers, or the times I was sleeping. I had that japanese shit on the whole time. I guess I am getting closer to my goal of being fluent in japanese everyday.

It is really a given. When you have something playing all the time in the background, you will subconsciously pick it up along the way. You have to have alot of input before you get output.

Thats my two cents.
(no trolling please!)