Bad iSoron, bad!

LOL

Tobberoth Wrote:I want to be able to go up to a random japanese person and have a natural correct conversation about how to get there. Not yelling "omae, eki doko? fukusatsu na michidakara sa. wakanai pyon." just because I heard those words in the latest anime I saw.

rofl lmao - too funny!!!

alyks Wrote:Textbooks are not "real Japanese"/ movies, internet, doramas, manga, anime, books are not "real Japanese"

Quoted again for emphasis. Seeing as Tobberoth has said a bunch of times he does learn/did learn Japanese and English from movies, internet and books that statement came out of nowhere and is confusing.

Dragg Wrote:I'm curious as to whether or not you are practicing verbal speech at all, and if not, at what point and how do you plan on incorporating it? Some, but not all, of AJATT adherents have a very rigid view as far as refusing to speak Japanese much at all for a long time. I understand that mistakes are probably more easily ingrained early on, but good textbooks and audio series often encourage output within limited structure that make such mistakes unlikely. Accent problems are also unlikely when the textbooks have accompanying audio CDs.

I seem to have seen this a few times around the forums that people say the AJATT way of doing things involves not much speaking even though the Kaz guy himself wrote on his site that you should read "aloud" every sentence that you do so really there is alot of speaking involved with the AJATT method just like all the other methods.

Hmmm.... Sooo... are these people really AJATT guys then, or some weird freakish new model only assumed to be AJATT because they share similar ideology?

I was afraid people would misunderstand the post iSoron linked to, I expressed myself in a very stupid way so I can see where that comes from. When I said "becoming native Japanese" is a stupid goal, i did NOT mean becoming natively fluent in Japanese, that's a great goal and one I think we all have. What I meant was literally becoming a native Japanese. It's impossible. We weren't born there and didn't grow up there. We can understand their culture, but never become a true part of it and this DOES carry over into language. Alyks likes to talk about learning like a baby, and I see what he means and I agree with much of it, learning from exposure only is in essence what babies do. But we are adults. We weren't raised in Japan by Japanese parents. Thinking this has no relevance is misguided. Languages are created from a group of people who shares a whole lot, they are dependant on the culture they grow out of. We can learn Japanese honorifics etc, but we can't really "learn" they way to look at honor etc in the same way a child raised in Japan can.

So what I mean is, a person can become natively fluent, but we can't become natives.

I'll say that I am someone who attempts to follow AJATT. But I will also say that most of what I write is not informed by what's on the AJATT site. It's based on the second language acquisition research I've read and studied and my experiences as a teacher and student of foreign languages in various types of classrooms and situations around the world using various types of methodologies. If that gets confused with AJATT, then I guess that says something about AJATT.

(As for whoever feels like saying, to each their own, why have this argument, I say that I like talking about SLA and hearing other people's perspectives helps me understand how various people view language learning. It also gives me the opportunity to strengthen my understanding of my own position. Perhaps someone can help me see something in another light. If you don't think this kind of discussion is useful, then don't read it. I find this kind of stuff fascinating. Impassioning even. Which is probably why I ended up writing so much before. --Sorry about that kazelee.)

tibul Wrote:I seem to have seen this a few times around the forums that people say the AJATT way of doing things involves not much speaking even though the Kaz guy himself wrote on his site that you should read "aloud" every sentence that you do so really there is alot of speaking involved with the AJATT method just like all the other methods.

Reading aloud isn't speaking. Reading just takes the ability to see characters and say them out loud. It trains pronounciation, not ability in conversations which demand on-the-go parsing and creative work using the vocabulary and grammar you know. None of that is trained by reading texts.

mattyjaddy Wrote:(As for whoever feels like saying, to each their own, why have this argument, I say that I like talking about SLA and hearing other people's perspectives helps me understand how various people view language learning. It also gives me the opportunity to strengthen my understanding of my own position. Perhaps someone can help me see something in another light. If you don't think this kind of discussion is useful, then don't read it. I find this kind of stuff fascinating. Impassioning even. Which is probably why I ended up writing so much before. --Sorry about that kazelee.)

Exactly. This is a forum. For anyone who has studied latin, it's pretty obvious what it was meant for: Discussing things. I'm pretty sure that if someone reads through all my posts in this topic, you will see my stances have changed a little, I've gone into more detail etc... this isn't because I'm crappy at writing forum posts (which I might be anyway), it's the input I get from everyone else, evolving my view of the subject. I have a basic idea, and as people argue against it, I go deeper in my views and try to explain them. Not just to everyone here but also to myself.

None is such a strong word.

Edit: at your previous post.

Tobberoth, thanks for the reply given your stress. I was there last week. Mecha stress.

Good points on becoming native versus native-like fluent and reading aloud not being speaking.

To your previous post, I spoke of dialects/slang not as a necessity for production but a necessity for getting along in a conversation, even if it's only for comprehension. I reckon your girlfriend can understand most slang/dialectal usage that is common wherever you live even if she doesn't choose to use it. To say otherwise is to say whenever dialect comes along she must ask what it means or use context clues to figure it out. If it's common I'm guessing she doesn't have to do this. I feel it's important for learners of any language to have exposure to slangs and dialects so they get a feel for variations in the language and are prepared for wherever and whoever they may end up talking to. (Perhaps my opinion on this is skewed from living in the inaka in Kagawa where 'oru' is often used instead of 'iru' and 'kara' becomes 'kin' or 'ken' in most contexts and situations excepting official public speaking, for just a few examples.) But I also might anticipate your rebuttal: most of the conversation will use language found in textbooks and then afterward exposure will fill in the blanks. And that's my same argument for emphasizing certain genres when acquiring through exposure which may leave holes in one's language abilities.

It is true that "hard" evidence is hard to come by when investigating language ability, language acquisition, etc. But to say there is no evidence regarding explicit knowledge(what you usually get from textbooks) and implicit knowledge (what you usually get from comprehensible input) is inaccurate. Linguists and cognitive scientists have come up with some pretty clever ways for using various types of linguistic, brain, anecdotal, case study, etc. evidence to interpret how the brain acquires and uses language. Most (all?) evidence points to a specific part of the brain set aside for linguistic competence that is distinct from and functions differently from the memory parts of the brain. Many linguists interpret acquisition through input as putting language directly into that specific part of the brain whereas textbook learning puts it into the memory. Some people believe over time with practice or exposure that learning can get transferred to the language part of the brain. If it doesn't get transferred, then a learner must always spend mental energy accessing the linguistic knowledge from memory before implementing it in conversation/writing.

This brings up something I didn't highlight earlier. One of the advantages of exposure is avoiding this transfer step. Textbook learning generally requires putting lots of linguistic knowledge in long-term memory to later be transferred. From my experiences as a language teacher and student, understanding how a language works is difficult for most students so getting the explicit knowledge in memory takes much effort and frustration. Only a handful can really grasp the concepts. I think for many people wanting to learn a language, learning through exposure can save them lots of headaches. And I think for quite a few people, trying to learn a language through self-study is just not advisable: the concepts in textbooks being out of their reach and the overwhelming amount of incomprehensible language in exposure being too formidable. A professional can give them better chances at being a successful language learner (whether it's through textbooks or input).

So did everyone reach a decision on what is considered "basic" grammar yet?

PrettyKitty Wrote:So did everyone reach a decision on what is considered "basic" grammar yet?

Seems that most people agree that what is covered in the most common low-level textbooks can be considered basic. I'd say about 40 of the 50 chapters of MnN covers basics, the rest covers a bit more advanced stuff which you might not come across (especially sonkeigo and kenjougo). I've only looked in Genki 1 so I don't know how far it goes over the whole span... but I'd say Genki covers the basics too (it's used in a lot of Swedish universities).

mattyjaddy Wrote:Long post

Well, she understands the slang where she lives, just like I do. Tokyo. There really isn't much slang to talk about. The good thing about slang is that it's commonly pretty obvious what it means, it's relatively easy to learn from context. I would consider understanding 100% of the slang and dialects to be WAY above normal conversation skills since it would take ages to get that much exposure, I couldn't speak to someone from rural kansai unless they actively tried to keep the slang and dialects down, naturally. Of course, the same is just as true as for exposure students. My idea was that going by the textbook, you can start conversing for real earlier. That will expose you to a lot of slang and dialects compared to reading japanese sources since slang and dialects are usually part of conversational language, not written.

As for the parts of your post about explicit and implicit knowledge, that's very interesting. But I don't agree with your notion that you get explicit knowledge from textbooks and implicit from real sources. What's the difference between a textbook and a novel? You're still being exposed to sentences showing the grammar and the vocabulary. Yes, you ALSO get explanations, but that isn't even the majority of the studies. On one chapter of MnN at my school, we spent about... 5 minutes where the teacher told us about how the grammar worked. The rest of the time (4 hours a day, usually several days on each chapter) we read dialogs, example sentences, worked with exercises where you fill in the blanks. I'd say that while I got some explicit knowledge from the explanations, most of my knowledge game from the seeing it used in the dialogs and in the example sentences. My explicit knowledge helped me understand those examples while I worked with them, so I consider both parts vital to the speed of learning.

Actualy, AJATT ideas are not new. They are very, very old. People learned languages that way for ages.
But these concepts were just impraticable before internet, mp3 players, super dictionaries, anki, etc...

Pimsleur is an example. It has all the ideas that are in AJATT, but limited to its age: Audio Tapes.
Same for textbooks. They were invented in a age that information was not so easy to get as today.

Today, Pimsleur and Textbooks are out of context. We have infinite amount of free material to study from, very easy to reach.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Today, Pimsleur and Textbooks are out of context. We have infinite amount of free material to study from, very easy to reach.

Unfortunately, the free material is never comparable to the material you can buy. EDICT is crap compared to kenkyuusha. Tae Kim is crap compared to 日本語文法辞典. In the same way, reading random texts you find online won't compare to texts specifically chosen for easy and fast learning.

That is only your opinion. Not necessarily the truth.

iKnow is kinda free. Tis far better than that Rosetta Rock software.......

kazelee Wrote:iKnow is kinda free. Tis far better than that Rosetta Rock software.......

Yeah, I didn't say everything you buy is good. Just that you get what you pay for, you know? iKnow is a bit special since it's an actual company with economic interests (I even have some contact with a guy working for them) but you're right, some free things are very good as well.

Saying textbooks etc are out of context just because some guys on the internet put up some free resources though... nah, not in a long shot.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Actualy, AJATT ideas are not new. They are very, very old. People learned languages that way for ages.
But these concepts were just impraticable before internet, mp3 players, super dictionaries, anki, etc...

Pimsleur is an example. It has all the ideas that are in AJATT, but limited to its age: Audio Tapes.
Same for textbooks. They were invented in a age that information was not so easy to get as today.

Today, Pimsleur and Textbooks are out of context. We have infinite amount of free material to study from, very easy to reach.

My biggest problems with AJATT are the ideas of putting output on the back burner and the over-reliance on the sentence method. Those concepts seem fairly new in terms of adult language education. Pimsleur doesn't seem to be a very good example of AJATT because it requires output early and often and has a fair amount of English.

There is plenty of great material avaliable for free, but my point is not about freeconomics.

I believe is that real text intended for natives is always best.

Books made for language learners are sacrifices.
If you believe that you get what you pay for, the price for Minna no Nihongo is boredom.

Your opinion is biased by your successful personal experience.
Mine is too. I consider myself a successful language learner and I never cared for grammar.

@Dragg

I agree. To think of Pimsleur as pre-AJATT a bit of imagination is needed ^_^'

The way I follow ajatt, the sentences are just a way to remember the writing system. My personal goal is to put all the joyo kanji in my cards, and then cover the most comoon readings.

I get most of my "grammar" practice by listening. I believe that the "grammar" base of the language is actually very small and that you get enought of it just by listening (a lot).

For me, the "grammar points" from JLPT are just vocabulary. They follow always the same patterns that are inside this uncharted grammar kernel.

I recently started listening the news. I cannot understand much of it, but I notice my biggest drawback is vocabulary. It is still small. I feel that I already unconciously recognize sentence patterns but I choke with new vocabulary.

This experience gives me the impression that I have already learnt the major part of japanese grammar and that all I need is practice (a lot of it).

The problem with learning through dialogues designed for natives as opposed to those designed for language learners is that there is often no attempt to ease you into the language.

To use a child learning native English as an example, the parents will automatically talk to the kid using the simplest structures just as a good textbook tries to do with text or a good language series tries to do with audio.

As an example, a parent will tend to say, "I really liked the cool movie," instead of "I thoroughly enjoyed the profound film." In this way, almost all kids will learn the most common useful words that everybody should know first. Sentence mining of "fun" sources like mangas, etc. aren't always so efficient.

Dragg Wrote:My biggest problems with AJATT are the ideas of putting output on the back burner and the over-reliance on the sentence method. Those concepts seem fairly new in terms of adult language education. Pimsleur doesn't seem to be a very good example of AJATT because it requires output early and often and has a fair amount of English.

And that is a bit of a leap of faith. It really is. But me and a few others are willing to try it. I know at least both me and Mentat are learning Japanese "hardcore" with input before output. So you can definitely expect us to report on our thoughts as time passes.

kazelee Wrote:I think though, Mr Alysk was just throwing out examples not anything really set in stone.

Sorry Kazelee, but this is really starting to irritate me. It's "ALYKS".

@Tobberboth
In my experience, some slang is needed. My wife is Japanese, so most often I hear or participate in conversations with family or close friends, and I often trip on very casual/slang speech.

All textbooks I've seen don't even teach simple casual talk like "~chau" that's used all the time. EDIT: I'd be curious if MnN did.