After reading that article I remember that guy. I read his book 'Blink', and I agree he's one of those extreme over simplifiers. I don't like his writing style at all.

I will be unpopular and say that's why Khatzu is also popular. He says some good stuff but then he goes too far and says something like 'fun' is the most important thing in language learning. What the hell? Then why does he have a blog full of a million pointers, and why have a consultancy? He seems to have read and assimilated stuff from lots of sources, but then goes and tells everyone all you have to do is this one thing, have fun. Forget all that other stuff I just told you, just have fun. It drives me nuts.

I'm grateful that he told me to do Heisig and use an SRS, though.

I found out not too long ago (via a grind based MMORPG called Runescape) that a mistake people made was trying to put something in number of days. They'd say "Oh, you can reach that level in 2 weeks" or "2 months and you can get that skill this high". They were talking about the same skill.

It became clear that these guys needed to put their comments in the context of hours. Doing something 10 hours a day would be accomplished 10x faster than if you did it 1 hour a day. Yeah, it's common sense, but on the large scale everyone wanted to use the term "days". What both meant was if you did something for 100 hours, you can get the skill level you want. Gods, I shudder thinking about the time wasted on this game.

Back to real learning (not fake imaginary character learning). At least hours makes sense, but now we use the term "sentences". This gets mixed up with another term "immersion".

Here's how I look at it:

Sentences are not really sentences. It's either a grammar concept or a vocabulary word wrapped in a sentence.

Each Sentence will take about 10 minutes of your study time over the long term (more if you write it out each time, less if you just read it).

10,000 Sentences then equate to about 1500 hours of studying where you learned 10,000 unique vocabulary and grammar concepts reinforced by the surrounding words of the sentences you put them in. At three hours a day, that can mean 1.5 years. In College terms that's 30 credit hours if you followed the 2 to 1 rule (that nobody does, freaking slackers).

The 10,000 hours bandied about in AJATT I argue means engaged listening or watching. You're paying attention (hence the need for it to be enjoyable), but you're not interrupting the flow to look up every new term. You can include your study time (3 hours a day) and add on 9 hours of fun watching, iPod listening, manga reading. Twelve hours a day can be almost 2 years before you pass the 10,000 mark.

Does that mean we'll be fluent? Not a clue. Common sense says if you study Japanese 2 to 3 hours a day, progressively improving your knowledge in it then watch or read or listen to Japanese another 8 to 10 hours every day, you should be damn in Japanese if not fluent in 2 years. Hell, in one month you'll surpass a person taking college Japanese. In six months at that rate of study and immersion you should be able to bite into that much vaunted JLPT 2 test and maybe even pass it.

Isn't that what this has all boiled down to? It's common sense, yet it seems to not be commonly applied.

Nukemarine Wrote:Each Sentence will take about 10 minutes of your study time over the long term (more if you write it out each time, less if you just read it).

10,000 Sentences then equate to about 1500 hours of studying where you learned 10,000 unique vocabulary and grammar concepts reinforced by the surrounding words of the sentences you put them in. At three hours a day, that can mean 1.5 years. In College terms that's 30 credit hours if you followed the 2 to 1 rule (that nobody does, freaking slackers).

The 10,000 hours bandied about in AJATT I argue means engaged listening or watching. You're paying attention (hence the need for it to be enjoyable), but you're not interrupting the flow to look up every new term. You can include your study time (3 hours a day) and add on 9 hours of fun watching, iPod listening, manga reading. Twelve hours a day can be almost 2 years before you pass the 10,000 mark.

Nothing against you here Nukemarine, but I feel like commenting. Khatzu's sentence method isn't so much about studying sentences. It's closer to taking your fun watching, iPod listening and manga reading and learning from that. Example with me: I'll be really into the story of whatever I'm reading, and I'll quite often skip words instead of looking them up. But at the same time, if I run into something I don't understand and I really want to know what happens, nothing in the world is going to stop me from figuring it out.

Whether people disagree with it or not, the best explanation of AJATT is to not "study" but "enjoy". Khatzu spent all his time watching movies/shows and reading websites/books that he wanted to to read/watch and took sentences from those. I have a hard time believing Khatzu spent 18 months doing things he didn't look forward to. I guess it's easy to say "But I hate using a monolingual dictionary. I guess not everything can be fun", for example. But he wanted to use the monolingual dictionary. It was probably a challenge for him that he was constantly looking to get better at. I myself enjoy a challenge, and a majority of my time spent learning to use a monolingual dictionary was with curiosity and interest. It was difficult and frustrating, but it was something that I looked looked forward to doing.

The way I see it, the difference between fun and and drudgery is "I have to spend the next hour studying these sentences" and "[true story]Oh, it's 2:30am. I guess I should put down my manga and get some sleep". If I had an hour to spend each day and I could choose between a textbook (Which I personally dislike, I think they're boring. Not trying to argue which is better, just making an example with my likes/dislikes.) and a book I enjoy reading, why wouldn't I choose the one that I find more enjoyable? I'd rather look forward to reading the book everyday than force myself to study the textbook.

I don't particularly want to disagree or start an argument here, I just want to say that whatever you do, be it KO, iKnow, minna no nihongo, manga, production sentences (I hate production sentences with a passion, which is why I mention it here), monolingual dictionary, I hope you look forward to doing it. 'Cause if you don't, those 10,000 hours are going to seem a lot harder than they should be.

Okay sorry for the hijack, that Gladwell guy, what a tool, get a haircut mate.

Alyks, I think you misunderstand what I said about "studying". If you are reading your manga, come across a word you didn't know, stopped reading and begin the process of putting that word, sentence and definition into an SRS then you're studying. Yeah, it's fun and it helps your enjoyment of the book. When you're reviewing your sentences, you're studying. Again, it helps your enjoyment of your books and anime and dramas.
When you pause the TV to look at the subtitle longer than it'll normally show, you're in study mode.

It's not drudgery, and it hypes you up to do more. That's why there's merit to mine sentences from stuff you like. Each word you learn is more of the book or anime you comprehend.

Yeah, it's not about the sentences. I commented elsewhere I found the sentences kind of a short cut to get you enjoying your Japanese entertainment more. Similar to how RTK is a short cut to get us reading sooner.

Hey, I'm astounded by people that study 8 hours or more a day. I just can't do it. It's a pain to get me to 2 hours. Then I sit down and watch 3 episodes of "ノダメ　カンタベル" straight through and want to watch more. But realizing that that studying helps me have more fun watching and reading has made studying more fun. I begin to see the benefits of vocabulary.

I guess I'm assuming that if ALL you did was read manga and watch TV, without bothering to look up anything, or without using the sentence method and an SRS to help retain it, that you're going to learn Japanese very, very slowly.

Again, I know you mine sentences from your manga (is it still Death Note or did you move on?). That's a fun form of studying for you. I'm sticking to iKnow as it's fun at the moment for me. I can't get back the time I wasted procrastinating or going about this the slow way. But I am still learning and having fun.

I should clarify that I am not really a proponent of the AJATT method. I was just using it as a reference about something interesting related to language study. Also, I like Gladwell, but I do agree he can be unneccessarily reductive at some points. Still, I think a lot of people take potshots at him without realizing what the very simple point of each of his works is. Outliers, for instance, is not about genius. It is about success, and I think he makes some very good points as to the way success is misunderstood.

erlog Wrote:I should clarify that I am not really a proponent of the AJATT method. I was just using it as a reference about something interesting related to language study. Also, I like Gladwell, but I do agree he can be unneccessarily reductive at some points. Still, I think a lot of people take potshots at him without realizing what the very simple point of each of his works is. Outliers, for instance, is not about genius. It is about success, and I think he makes some very good points as to the way success is misunderstood.

This is what I've noticed as well.

nest0r Wrote:Gladwell's a douche, honestly.

Here's a good review of Outliers: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WM8ELIFZG...r_rdp_perm

.... interesting. Not what I'd call a good review... but interesting...

Nukemarine Wrote:Alyks, I think you misunderstand what I said about "studying". If you are reading your manga, come across a word you didn't know, stopped reading and begin the process of putting that word, sentence and definition into an SRS then you're studying. Yeah, it's fun and it helps your enjoyment of the book. When you're reviewing your sentences, you're studying. Again, it helps your enjoyment of your books and anime and dramas.
When you pause the TV to look at the subtitle longer than it'll normally show, you're in study mode.

I guess I did misunderstand what you meant by "studying". But I do believe a good mindset is "enjoy the ..." where your definition of study naturally happens with ease, as opposed to "study the ...", like you said above. Really, though, only the first paragraph was meant as a comment on what you said.

Right now it's a combination of the book リング and manga 涼風 with a lot movies and shows.

Well, I might as well add my 1 yen's worth. Regarding Gladwell, I agree his books are over simplifications that go way beyond any real evidence. Nevertheless they are the sort of thing that you might pick up at an airport bookstore for some easy reading on a flight and I find them reasonably entertaining.

I thought his first book was probably the best. I don't know much about his latest book, but the ideas are nothing new. I read a similar article on a related theme a couple of years back in Scientific American.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind

Also regarding the 10,000 hours, I think that 10,000 hours is to be an expert. The top in your field. It doesn't take 10,000 hours to learn chess or how to play the violin. And I expect you can become very good in far less time. If you want to be a virtuoso then that is where the 10,000 hours comes from. I know people that have become decent at Japanese (reading, writing, speaking) in a couple of thousand hours.

The defense language institute has done some work on the number of hours of study required to reach proficiency in different languages (sorry I can't find a link to the original study at the moment). But here is a link to a table similar to ones I have seen before:

http://www.ii.umich.edu/umich/v/index.js...setNameEnd

(Not sure if that link will work, but it says Category IV languages such as ARABIC, CHINESE, JAPANESE, KOREAN take 1320 hours to reach level 2 speaking proficiency). I think if you double that, you will be pretty skilled.

Similarly this article states that at the Defense Language Institute it takes 64 weeks of intensive study to reach their proficiency standards in a Category IV language.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarti...x?id=51675

So lets say 3000 hours (as it is a full time program). [Estimating 50hrs per week]. My understanding is that the standards at the DLI are reasonably high, and graduates are pretty fluent in their target languages. I notice that a number of languages you might expect (Arabic, Korean, Chinese, Farsi etc) also have intermediate and advanced courses available (each of approx 1 year). That would take the number of hours of study up to say 7000 hrs for I'm guessing what you would call an extremely high level of proficiency.

nest0r Wrote:I wrote this rant about why I dislike Gladwell, but I'll just ignore him. The research cited is from Ericsson and others' decades-old research on musicians, and the other domains of expertise are sort of thrown in to make generalizations about the '10,000 hour'/'10 year' rule.

Have you read the book? Because, he does go far beyond just citing Ericson's research. He talks about the birthdays of pro hockey players, Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, and then transitions into talking about the importance of being intelligent enough but that using IQ as a measure of anything doesn't tend to work.

It's not like he cites some guy's research then goes off on a tangent. He does start at the research and birthdays, but the stuff he finds after that is extremely compelling.

nest0r Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:.... interesting. Not what I'd call a good review... but interesting...

Yea, it's not a 'good' review, it's an interesting, informed, negative review. Apologies for the vague qualifier.

[A short summary: Gladwell's basic thesis is that, in order to be successful in life (i.e. an "outlier" beyond the norm), being lucky and being privileged matter." However, anyone looking for any self-help should go somewhere else, notwithstanding the highly misleading subtitle, "the story of success." (Unless perhaps you are a Korean airline pilot, then Gladwell might be able to help you, since there is a lengthy excursus on pilot error). Oh, also being very talented does indeed matter, but not as much as we think, and practicing a lot matters, but it is probably too late since you had to start young enough to put in 10,000 hours. There you have it. ]

The first line of that paragraph and many others sentences are the reason I question the "good"; not the negativity. There seems like an unnecessary amount of criticism. To point out the flaws is normal. Comments such as [He is a science writer with little ability to read or evaluate science. Behind the patina of words the empirical foundation is quicksand. It feels more "truthy" than "true." ] give me the feeling the writer of this review is already a bit bias, though. He/she goes on about Gladwell not considering rebutal but does the exact same thing in this extremely argumentative review.

I'm not making an argument for or against Gladwell as I've yet to read his books. And I probably won't as I've heard most of the things reviews say the books are about before through other means. I'm just telling my thoughts.

Quote:I never really understood why people think the AJATT page is so inspirational in terms of his platitudes and writing style. I was impressed at the idea of the sentence method, but mostly because it cleverly brought together a bunch of stuff I already wanted to do... I found a few good ideas there and check in regularly, but after I reached a certain level of comfort with the sentence method, I found I agreed with him less and less and just generally skip over most of his posts.

The mark of a person who recognizes there is no one true way. Respect .

"Oh, also being very talented does indeed matter, but not as much as we think, and practicing a lot matters, but it is probably too late since you had to start young enough to put in 10,000 hours."

Is someone saying there is an age that is too old to put in 10,000 hours and become expert at something? 10,000 hours/ 40 hours per week= less than 5 years.

If you enjoy something then 10,000 hours to become an expert at it is no sacrifice. Like a full-time hobby after your full-time job.

For reference, here is Ericsson's updated summary of the research Gladwell cites:

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/....perf.html

It's not just time but how the time is spent. Also, I think you could make some interesting connections between Heisig's method for remembering kanji and more recent findings that higher level performance is affected by how a person organizes the information: ". . . the difference between experts and less skilled subjects is not merely a matter of the amount and complexity of the accumulated knowledge; it also reflects qualitative differences in the organization of knowledge and its representation."

I think it says you have to start young because you have more free time when you are younger. If you're working 40 hours a week and have a family, you most likely don't have enough time left over to devote to mastery of a hobby unless you get your family involved in it somehow, or just ignore them. And that's also assuming you only enjoy that one hobby. It's not that you're too old to learn, it's that you're less likely to have that kind of time after all your other obligations.

iSoron Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:Respect Gladwell or not, the thing about 10,000 hours, I think, was found through research, not the ramblings of one overoptimistic individual.

Given the loose definitions of 'field', 'expert level' and 'hour of study', I find that very improbable. But then again, I have not read the book.

I take that back, partially. There are a few research papers on the subject, but they don't state what the book seems to state, namely, "you attain expertise if, and only if, you practise for 10,000 hours". Ericsson et al (1993) is pretty clear on this:

Quote:Our review has also shown that the maximal level of performance for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as function of extended experience [...] To assure effective learning, subjects ideally should be given explicit instructions about the best method and be supervised by a teacher to allow individualized diagnosis of errors, informative feedback, and remedial part training.

So, studying for 10,000 hours is no guarantee of attaining expertise. You do need good methods.

Now for the converse, what bugged me most was that they did not take knowledge transfer into account. Let's say you've spent 10 years studying guitar. You don't need another 10 years to learn piano. You already know a lot about rhythm, melody and harmony. So, as our previous background knowledge vary, it is only natural our required training time will also vary.

I thought 10 years was the time needed to become world-class in your skill area, not just to "learn" something?

I find Outliers very inspirational because it makes sense, and knowing the information in the book could help you see areas of opportunity you might have otherwise ignored. Yes, we're all shackled to the state of the world as it is at the age we are, but this doesn't mean that you can't make different choices so as to try to be more effective in becoming an outlier.