I was watching a video by Steve Kaufman and he pointed out 3 things why learning languages is so much easier now that it was 10 years ago:

1) Mp3 players.
2) Internet dictionaries.
3) Endless amount of avaliable material.

What will come next?

Implanted brain devices. You just need to download the language into your implant and you can speak the language fluently. It also comes built in with a calculator so you can work out any calculation in your head. Alarm clock that you can set just by thinking of the time you want. Forget where you left your keys? Not anymore, it remembers where you set them. It comes pre-loaded with every encyclopedia ever made as well.

Hey.. 100 years ago they never would of imagined something like the internet. You never know :p

4) Mecha the size of minor galaxies that will simply put us in Japan when we so desire.

Seriously, though, I can't really think of any new innovations that would make it easier (obviously, or I'd just invent them myself, making some money in the process). I think we'll just get more, and better, versions of what already exists.

Also, the list of resources available today should include electronic SRSs. This site and Anki really put traditional paper flashcards to shame.

To become a true AJATT devotee, you have to sacrifice your individuality and become a part of the collective.

alyks Wrote:To become a true AJATT devotee, you have to sacrifice your individuality and become a part of the collective.

LOL. Interesting.

What makes AJATT works is the same thing that makes every other method work.

Just do it!

alyks Wrote:To become a true AJATT devotee, you have to sacrifice your individuality and become a part of the collective.

Sounds like AJATT captured the spirit of Japanese culture perfectly then.

I too believe memory techniques etc will be superfluous in the future. There's allready that famous cybernetics guy who has claimed he will be the first living cyborg.. he has various computer chips inserted in his body... I don't know the finer details, but for example he and his wife has a chip which lets them share emotions, and it actually works, they can "feel" how the other one is feeling because of the electrical inpulses etc.

If something like that works allready, it's pretty much garanteed we'll have working memory chips within 100 years where you simply need to read or see something once and it's there.

I don't see the point of mentioning AJATT (again) in the title since all those things are equally relevant to us, the heretics not following AJATT religiously.

Codexus Wrote:I don't see the point of mentioning AJATT (again) in the title since all those things are equally relevant to us, the heretics not following AJATT religiously.

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated into the AJATT collective.

The title was more catchy that way.

Btw, I really like the brain implant idea. Anyone heard about the monkey that grew an arm in his brain?

We learned about some very old theories on second language acquisiton in my linguistics class that basically says the difficulty in a second language is that you carry habits over from your native language. They thought if they could catalogue all the differences between two languages and teach to overcome those areas that languages would become very easy.

Of course that's bullshit. There's some truth in it, but language is a much more difficult beast than that. I'm totally on board with input, seeing language as a habit/living in it and other ideas like that. But I realized that to try this approach in the 50s would be impossible without either going to the country or moving in with a community/family of the target language.

So yeah, as technology changes and people also have more ways to interact language learning is rapidly changing. Linguistics too has to keep pace. I think in the next 20 years we're going to see a lot of stuff rethought on learning language. Specifically with regarding to trying to learn a second language like we learn our first language.

Read my next sentence after the last one in the quote.

It's a good strategy to use in some areas and to understand some difficult parts, but more needs to be done. You can't simply look at the differences to become good at using the language. One of the people supporting this theory in the 50s wrote something like "languages are not difficult in themselves, but rather are difficult because we carry habits formed by our first language into the language we are trying to learn".

I can't say for sure, but I don't think anyone here would argue that languages are only difficult because our first language has made learning another impossible. That's what I'm overall criticizing, not utilizing comparisons to learn.

Even when using comparisons to learn though, ultimately practice, input, and immersion will play out to be more important. You can do the latter without the former and get good at language, but trying to learn without the latter won't get you anywhere.

sutebun Wrote:You can't simply look at the differences to become good at using the language.

There's no 1 thing you can do to learn a language. You have to use multiple methods and sources, that's all there is to it. You can't simply argue that any 1 thing doesn't work in isolation because -nothing- works in isolation.

-a deep bow to wccrawford-

tokyostyle Wrote:I think that "languages are not difficult in themselves, but rather are difficult because we carry habits formed by our first language into the language we are trying to learn" is a very insightful statement. I have seen wave after wave of exchange students making that exact fundamental mistake. They try to impose the rules of English onto Japanese.

I always assumed that's what the AJATT method was about. Surrounding yourself with "proper" Japanese so that you start to get a sense of how the language is used rather than trying to focus on translation so much. It is creating a system to try and keep you away from your native language as much as possible.

Aye. That's what I've been thinking myself. Some people here seem to think my "being afraid of English" is a little extreme. But this is exactly why I think it's necessary.

I'll be more qualified to answer a question after 1 year.
My japanese is not good enought yet.

But I fell the same. The first language cant hinder the progress of the second/third language. But only if you let it.

I would suggest that the difficulties in learning a new language have a physiological basis. These "habits" are probably connections that have formed in your brain in childhood and have been reinforced to the point of permanence. When you are trying to learn a radically new language you are trying to forge new connections that in some cases conflict with the existing ones. It would take a lot of effort to achieve (as we know). In fact your trying to create two sets of pathways (one for each language), and train yourself to follow the appropriate set of connections according to the input stimulus (i.e., which language you are hearing).

The reason why a martial art (or other sport) takes years to learn is that you are doing just that: forging new pathways in your brain so you train yourself to respond in particular ways to particular stimuli.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in that field, so this might be total rubbish. However, it's a model that seems to fit with my experience.

wccrawford Wrote:You can't simply argue that any 1 thing doesn't work in isolation because -nothing- works in isolation.

I absolutely agree that nothing works in isolation. However. I think it's fair to argue some "techniques" in learning are more important than other. I pointed out it doesn't work in isolation because from my linguistics class's reading, there were people 50 years ago who thought doing these kinds of analysis would be the savior to language learning. While I'm sure they didn't mean it works in isolation, they were putting it on a very high pedestal.

@Tokyostyle

I don't really see it as insightful. It kind of seems like common sense to me. As for people always making the mistake, the important thing to consider is not the mistake itself, but why they are making the mistake and how to fix it.

I think we both seem to agree that people have issues with translating their native language into a language they are trying to learn. I guess what I should have explained better is the method to overcome that problem. I said they want to teach and fix those areas, but what I didn't make clear was that they want to fix/teach those areas through using their analysis.

These mistakes are usually just caused by a lack of knowledge of how to express something in the language. Since the person lacks the knowledge, they try to use a structure from their native language. In my opinion, immersion/constant exposure to the language and seeing structures used in many different situations will tend to trump those mistakes. Your point about AJATT is pretty much spot on, and I agree with it. However, what I was trying to explain earlier is nothing like AJATT.

What I was explaining earlier is very much English involved (or whatever your native language is), doesn't focus on getting a sense of how the language is learned, and does focus on translation a lot. From what I got in my reading, they would try to use a one - one analysis of grammar points in two different languages. However, seeing a one to one analysis of grammatical structures side by side, language by language, on paper will not help if the student doesn't get the proper exposure. Some expressions also don't translate very well between languages sometimes and it's hard to say X in Japanese will always mean Y in English.
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So, in short. I don't disagree native languages can hinder foreign languages. I don't disagree that looking at translations or seeing comparisons of grammar is bad. But teaching by trying to boil down everything to a one-one comparison won't work in the long run. Languages don't work like that; they are far more dynamic and complex.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'll be more qualified to answer a question after 1 year.
My japanese is not good enought yet.

But I fell the same. The first language cant hinder the progress of the second/third language. But only if you let it.

Exactly. Some things are much clearer when you understand them through your first language, other things you just have to adapt to. Knowing what these things are is also a skill, imo.

Take care with the word skill. We are not building skills here. I'm talking about developing passive habilities.

The strategy is simple: To be able to read and listen for fun, as soon as possible.
For that price I did RTK and other "skill building" methods.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Take care with the word skill. We are not building skills here. I'm talking about developing passive habilities.

The strategy is simple: To be able to read and listen for fun, as soon as possible.
For that price I did RTK and other "skill building" methods.

I wasn't talking about building skills either. It's either something you have or you don't.

I think that the hardest thing about learning a language is the MASSIVE amount of things necessary to memorize before you even have to worry about sounding natural.

esgrove Wrote:I think that the hardest thing about learning a language is the MASSIVE amount of things necessary to memorize before you even have to worry about sounding natural.

A learner shouldn't look at it that way. Instead they should learn to enjoy the process of discovering the language (how corny is that?) instead of trying to go in with the mindset that they have to memorize a ton of stuff that will end up being boring and take a long time to get anywhere. I'm talking about "I need to memorize all the vocab and grammar structures in this textbook before I'm at an advanced enough level to read this book" type of thinking. (Though, it's not like you said the opposite here, I'm just ranting against the mindest that statement generally has behind it. And I'm DEFINITELY not saying there's not going to be a lot of memorizing.)

I've been reading what you guys have been talking about in terms of methodologies. But to me this doesn't mean anything. I have three rules that I follow:
1, Read a lot, watch/listen a lot. Get a lot of exposure to the language from a lot of sources.
2, No other language is allowed to help learn the target language. It's better to be on the safe side than to decide when it's ok and not ok to use a language I already know.
3, If I can't say it I can't say it. Just because I'm an English speaking adult, that doesn't mean I need to express my English adult thoughts in Japanese. I need to learn how to be a Japanese adult, so I can express my Japanese adult thoughts in Japanese.

Simple and effective. By following these rules, I simply won't run into the problems you guys mention.

Meh, pronuntiation is the simplest part of all languages. And it seems that all you have to do is get it right from the beggining.

But I agree with you both. It is a huge memorization task. More that that, you have to make the language yours.

I'm not saying it matters HOW you memorize the components of a language, only that knowledge of voabulary and grammar are essential. Addtionally, there are thousands of smaller points that require meorization, such as certain arbitrary rules for when to use or not use a word in a given circumstance.

I know a little Japanese girl who has watched Disney movies in English a bunch of times and has become adept at mimicking American accents. Her accent is practically flawless, except that all she can say in it is gibberish because she doesn't know any vocabulary.

I also know a middle aged woman who began learning English as an adult through memorizing words from the dictionary. Everything she says sounds like its coming from a katakana robot, but she can understand me pretty well.

If I had to choose which of these two is better at English, I'd pick the Japanese robot over the fluent-sounding blabberer.