So I'm studying a B Medical Science/B Arts in Int (Japan)
Next year i'll start doing some of my Arts in International Studies course at university (so far its been all sci) and i've decided to take up Remembering the Kanji during the holiday break. After finding this website...and also hearing about the AJATT method (which i dont think is very practical personally lol) it makes me wonder.

The basis of my Japanese course at uni seems to emphasis self study as the main component...where you have to log your self study resources n texts to hand in by the end of sem as well as lil tests/presentations in between etc. I've thought if anything this would push more study. I mean a excuse to actually learn kanji and watch/listen/practise japanese sure why not, i'd be wanting ot do that anyway but always feel guilty for it.

Not to mention it requires us to spend a year study overseas study if we pass all language courses ^^

So my question is do YOU feel that Japanese classes at university has slowed you down at all? I want to know your personal experience...

As a beginner, I think classes are useful.

From intermediate to advanced, I wish I could have a 2 hour lesson once every two weeks, to set straight any misunderstandings in my self-study, and to make sure I am not going down the wrong path.

Any more than that and I think classes would slow me down.

The exception is, sometimes, I work harder if I get stuck in a class that is +1.5 or +2 from my current level... ...it's like panic-study trying to catch up.

I agree with kfmfe04.

In particular, a visit by a Japanese tutor once a week or every other week along with self-study would probably be faster if you have the willpower. Might be cheaper than classes too. I found one available on my city's Meetup.com page and the rates were very reasonable.

I studied 4 hours a day in Japan, and my progress was fenomenal so no, I don't think it slows you down unless you LET it slow you down. It's very easy to progress farther in a year in selfstudies than how far a university course progresses over a year, that's a fact. If you let the course limit you, you will learn slower than if you didn't.

I've always found all classes at university to be slow. The teachers feel they can't go very fast or they'll leave some students behind.

My Japanese class was super slow, but I was taking it so I could remain full time while getting an easy A. It seemed like every day was just the teacher holding up pictures and calling on people to name what's in the picture. Or else everyone was just repeating the same thing over and over.

I have not done japanese classes yet. I would like to do it to find some study buddies, but I don't feel any need other than that.

I did classes for english and french. Both were traumatic. The english classes were forced upon me because of silly curriculum requirements.

The french classes I registered on, turned out quite good, but it is simply so much more useful to read and listen by yourself.

It depends a lot on the classes and the teachers. I had one teacher for the first 3 semesters of Japanese who really "got it." She worked very hard to teach Japanese in a way that was useful. Same for my 4th semester teacher. I had a lot of fun, even though we sort of ignored the drooling monster in the corner called "Kanji." We fed it a few of the slower students, we learned a few of its myriad names (maybe 200 after 4 semesters), but for the most part, we pretended it didn't exist.

The next two semesters were aimless as hell, but frankly you could blame a lot of it on the book, which was just wretched. (Intermediate Japanese, An Integrated Course by Bonjinsha. I still don't see what or how it was integrated with anything, other than the publisher's wallet.)

The teachers knew their stuff, but I couldn't quite figure out what we were supposed to be learning in class. We were learning stuff, but it seemed to be a grab bag of stuff. In the book, we would read a bunch of articles about Japan in the 1980s, (Wow, walkman cassette players are cool! Let's go to a karaoke bar!) and the book just threw vocab from the articles at us, with random explanations of random grammar in the articles. There weren't any explanations of, "This is why this grammar is useful for you." There wasn't a coherent way to integrate the grammar we learned into our Japanese language use. (What I would have given for an SRS then.)

A lot of important grammar stuff that wasn't in the book-- like turning adjectives into adverbs, adverbs into adjectives, nouns into adjectives, etc.-- had to be covered by the teachers in class outside of the book. Which was fine, I suppose, but it lacked depth.

But kanji? Don't get me started on that. We didn't have any kind of approach to kanji that brought any sense of hope that I would ever tame the Kanji Beast. The approach was the Standard Approach. Learn this vocab for tomorrow's quiz. Kanji were just random scribbles that had no real patterns to me. Memorizing was a chore.

Without any kind of approach to kanji literacy, I didn't see any point in continuing my Japanese studies, and that's why I lost momentum when I graduated, and RL hit. The idea of trying to wrangle them all in a grab-bag manner to get all of the joyo under my belt made me not want to waste my extra time on it.

The only thing that inspired me to get back into Japanese again was RTK. Without it, I wouldn't have tried again, because the "Kanji wall" was too high, and life is too short.

Saying "All X are bad" is lazy thinking, IMO. It all depends on individual experiences. So I won't say all classes are bad. Some are bad. Some aren't. The first four semesters I had were great. The last two were still a lot of fun, don't get me wrong-- but the material we covered never really sank in, and I couldn't tell you what I learned if you had a gun, a knife and a dog on me.

It depends on the school, the teachers, the department, the books, your classmates, the approach, a lot of stuff. Some classes are going to be awesome, some are going to suck rocks. The one thing 99% seem to fail at is kanji, though. (Except for that cool dude at UAA who taught an RTK class there last year! ) I have yet to see anyone come forward with a story about a class they took where they mastered kanji. Otherwise they wouldn't be here, trying to get some sort of grasp on it.

Whether or not it slows you down will have a lot to do with how the homework is handled. If they cover everything in class and call it a day, you've got all the time left to study on your own.

If they assign 3 hours homework for every hour in class (as college classes are supposed to) then you'll probably have 3 hours of busywork taking away your self-study time, along with your motivation since you have to deal with so much of it already.

Yeah, we always had a lot of work to do outside of class, so any kind of self-study just wasn't possible. Also, with a quiz/test every day requiring knowledge of at least 20 new vocab words, you needed to know that stuff pretty well. But that only meant knowing how to write the words in kana, or read the kanji and write the readings in kana. Only in upper levels were we required to learn kanji, and only then some of them-- not all of them.

I think the homework, assuming it involves real writing, is one of the best aspects of a Japanese class. We used to have good workbooks, graded journals etc. I never thought it was busy-work at all. Having the teacher look over your work and correct it or help you improve your style is great.

However, I suppose lang-8 can give similar help to motivated self studiers, but I think many absolute beginners might be more comfortable in a traditional classroom setting first.

I found classes extremely useful in the beginning, for learning grammar. After a couple of courses though, you have covered pretty much all of the basic grammar, and it was at this point that Japanese classes became pretty worthless to me. I got some forced speaking and writing experience which I'm sure helped me some, but by and large, it was just a waste of time.
Once you are comfortable with basic Japanese, and if you have the willpower to do self-study, then I think that is the best way to go, combined with having access to someone you can ask questions to, such as a tutor.

It depends on the person. Not everyone learns in the same way.

Recently, I have personally found that finding the right TEXTBOOK (for my current level) is actually a tremendous help.

A good textbook has grammar or vocabulary well-organized and well-explained with good examples of usage in context, which greatly facilitates understanding and retention via SRS (and mining!). It is concise, but presents information and examples in an interesting manner. There are various exercises to act as feedback to ensure that you have learned your material. Subjects are grouped into bite-sized chunks so you are not bored to death.

With a great textbook, there is less of a need for me, personally, to attend a class.

Or rather, I would attend a class for different reasons than plowing through a textbook.

My fear of taking college Japanese courses is simple. Classes are designed around learning information in order to pass tests that are designed for everyone regardless of one's own specific needs. If you get stuck in a crappy class that is going far slower than your actual ability you are still going to have to waste time studying the specific material they are teaching so you will be able to pass their test.

For example maybe in self study you are really focusing all your efforts on basic grammar mastery and are light years ahead of your college Japanese class in that regard yet every week your professor is dishing out assignments and/or random vocabulary that you need to know for HIS specific tests. Now it wouldn't seem like learning new vocabulary every week would be a bad thing but IMO it is if that vocabulary isn't something that is coming up in your own self study grammar sentences. You are now going to have to either try and incorporate those words into your grammar sentences or just pound them in via rote memorization. Either way is just a PITA and a waste of time when you already have a perfectly efficient method set up for learning both grammar and vocab......just not the specific vocab that YOUR teacher needs for his/her tests.

I'd just go through the text and add everything into what I'm currently studying. That way everything flows together smoothly. Worse case scenario is you ace the course.

The Genki books are really good learning tools in my opinion. My school uses them for Japanese classes. Of course though, by the end of 4 classes (4 semesters or 2 years worth of japanese classes) you only are taught to be able to write a little over 300 kanji by teh books Genki 1 and Genki 2; 2 semester per book. And by taught I mean memorize how to write them with no hints unless the teacher helps you which mine sometimes does.

It is slow taking classes but some people need extra motivation for Japanese especially when you have a full plate of classes for a BS in Finance. <@:^( I want to tell my head person of japanese classes at my school about the RTK thing. Maybe he would find it useful to tell his future japanese students who are serious about japanese learning.

personally, i think classes are good for people who don't have a lot of time but for people who have a good bit of time to spare, self-study can carry you to levels that you never thought were possible in short periods of time... using iKnow!, after i got to step 5 i read the first genki book in 2 days and understood perfectly clear the 1st time just about everything that was in it. learning a language, in my opinion, is mostly just a battle of time... if you can force yourself to study 6 hours a day everyday for a month you will really surprise yourself in the end i bet... i studied 6 hours a day for the last couple of days and my comprehension of japanese is on a whole other level. i think it has something to do with just being constantly fed japanese all day... after so many sentences you hear and read it just starts being easier to understand everything... you start to be able to hear the sentences and just pick out what you don't know out of them and then you look it up and you got it it's just a constant process of doing the same thing over and over again until one day you say to yourself "hey, i understand everything they are saying"

University classes are run by professional academia, unlike blog sites by the dude who made AJATT.

I don't see why you should worry about classes slowing you down. That only means one thing, you get your fundamentals laid down and implanted into your brain (by extensive reading and what not). I don't understand why the mentality for learning these days is all "faster = better". Have some patience and take time to enjoy what you're studying.

That being said, level 1 university classes *are* a waste of time. If i could go back, i would have self-taught the level 1 stuff and enrolled straight into level 2. If you're a good learner, then try study further and deeper into the syllabus form a relationship with your teachers (not that kind) they *love* to teach (hence their career choice).

But this goes with any subject, all my engineering classes are a waste of time. We spend 12 weeks on ~8 chapters from a book which i could learn in 2 weeks by myself.

In conclusion, undergraduate study in general, is a waste of time. But hey, you may as well have fun while you're young

hey now... old people go to college too!! haha!!! (ok i'm only 25 and i got about 3 more years of college left) i had my fun.... it's time to get to business now and study

liosama Wrote:But this goes with any subject, all my engineering classes are a waste of time. We spend 12 weeks on ~8 chapters from a book which i could learn in 2 weeks by myself.

1. you must be one smart dude
2. your school is too easy
3. or both 1. and 2.!!!

Engineering classes years ago were not so easy at my school:

http://www.cooper.edu/

i'm sure it all just depends on a person's study habits...

kfmfe04 Wrote:

liosama Wrote:But this goes with any subject, all my engineering classes are a waste of time. We spend 12 weeks on ~8 chapters from a book which i could learn in 2 weeks by myself.

1. you must be one smart dude
2. your school is too easy
3. or both 1. and 2.!!!

Engineering classes years ago were not so easy at my school:

http://www.cooper.edu/

I'm not saying that i actually do those things, i'm just saying its possible. Considering that's how i've had to self-learn some subjects with horrible lecturers where i don't even attend class. Or when i had to cram the whole subject for a final with only a week to go.

Now, I get a better sense of what you mean.

If it's more along the lines of "schools can't teach you much"; rather, "schools are an environment where you need to exert yourself to learn", then I agree 100%.

Everyone learns from a good lecturer, but you can still learn from a bad/hard lecturer, if you prepare enough before class.

But if the class is too easy, then there is not much you can do, unless you switch classes...

My advice is don't do it. I have never studied Japanese at university, but I am studying 4 hours a day at school in Japan at the moment and it sucks. The only thing school is good for is motivation, yet if you can't motivate yourself then I doubt you will get good at Japanese anyway.

The problem is that the number of people that know both good self study skills and good teaching skills is very very low. As such odds are you are going to be in terminally boring classes and have a heap of boring and ineffective homework. I think I could go much faster studying by myself for the moment, but for visa reasons I can't quite school.

The big factor is how much talking (as in students talking to students) is there in the classes that you would take. This is the major thing that you can't get studying by yourself. If there is a lot of this then you will have an outlet to help quickly internalize all the grammar and words you are learning in your own study. You also have to hope your classmates are better than you or learning fast so they can understand. The other thing is make sure that no English is used or allowed in the classroom.

If you can confirm that you will be able to talk a lot about a variety of topics then it sounds well worth it. However, in all likelyhood this is not the case and it sucks (I speak about 1% of my classes.)

I hate Japanese class. I had to give up valuable reading time to go to class and do homework. It irritated me that I had to stop reading the book I was really into to go to class and sit around for two hours listening to the ear grinding noise they call "Japanese".