urpwnd Wrote:The grammar doesn't exist thing is more of a joke. For all of you that didn't read the posts that I linked to, they basically state:

That grammar does exist, as an abstract concept, because we say it does

That you don't need to spend a ton of time learning it

With adequate exposure, you'll pick it up naturally anyway and end up sounding like a native (as opposed to sound like grammar-bot 5000)

This works in almost any language. A good friend of mine, a Japanese native, was born in Tokyo. He lived in Pennsylvania for a few years during elementary school, moved back to Tokyo, and has lived/worked there ever since. His English is ****** fantastic*. At elementary school levels, you aren't doing grammar. When he got back to Japan, he spoke better English than his "English teachers" in school, and didn't bother with any other formal training. All his exposure since then is purely through media. He reads a lot, watches American TV and movies, and picks up stuff via the web.

I'm not saying studying grammar is a waste of time, I just think it's not as important as people make it out to be. I mean, really... how much do you study grammar in your native language? Did you speak well, grammatically speaking, before getting into REAL grammar study in roughly middle school? Massive exposure will have you speaking like Japanese people speak, which is kind of the point, right?

The most important part is to do whatever works for you, have fun, and stay motivated. If you like grammar, go nuts, study it like crazy. It still counts as exposure. ^____^

Basing your argument on a friend who was in elementary school in the States is ignoring the fact that kids and adults learn differently.

Adults have powers of abstraction (such as the ability to spot and use grammar rules) that kids don't have, so why not use them, if it helps you? In fact, all of RTK is based on the premise that adults have powers of abstract thought that kids don't, and so we can use what we've got (abstraction) instead of trying to get back what we've lost (extremely plastic spongelike kiddy brains).

That said, massive exposure is still important. But learning grammar rules can help adults learn more efficiently. Not learning grammatical patterns is like doing kanji by rote for ten years, IMO.

It's also based in the fact that non-native speakers of Japanese can make correlations between the kanji and keywords in their native language. The Japanese can't do this (at least not at first) because they are learning it without an equivalent frame of reference.

They may take 9 years ( The last three years are non-jouyou ), but they also internalize the kanji, learn how to write it elegantly, practice writing it elegantly, learn readings and multiple meanings, compounds and more. Not to mention grammar.

To say that a foreigner adult can do in less than 1 year what it takes a Japanese person 9 years to do is a little disingenuous when RTK basically just teaches how to write it along with a one-word meaning.

urpwnd Wrote:With adequate exposure, you'll pick it up naturally anyway and end up sounding like a native (as opposed to sound like grammar-bot 5000)

What is "adequate exposure"? I lived in Japan for 2 years, interacting almost completely in Japanese, and spent a lot of my free time either playing text-heavy Japanese video games, reading Japanese books/manga/magazines, or watching Japanese TV. I passed JLPT 1. Despite that, I had numerous serious errors in my structure that I had to go back and fix later by studying basic grammar again, and I still don't think I sound like a native.

If two years of living in Japan is not "adequate" or "massive" exposure, then how much exposure do you actually need for this magical "talk like a native" thing to work? Isn't there some point where the amount of exposure is large enough that it's more efficient to study some grammar?

(I always find the opposition to grammar strange because a lot of the arguments that people make against grammar can also be made against RTK. Everyone seems fine with using RTK, a book that's almost entirely in English and teaches you no Japanese, because of the long-term benefits. And yet when I suggest that studying grammar in English will also produce long-term benefits, suddenly you get the "exposure = everything" argument.)

It is a year old thread. To be fair Yudan, I think the there's less anti-grammar feel to the forum than there once was. Let's face it, we have threads dedicated to Tae Kim and Kanzen Master and Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar which are all grammar texts.

You're right, with the necropost I didn't notice the thread age.