thermal Wrote:It's not so much that it is detrimental, although it can be. I am just saying that it is largely a waste of time. It's like Stephen Krashen says, there is learning a language and learning about a language. Learning about a language doesn't hurt, but it doesn't really advance your true level. I put KO in this boat.

Yo man I have nothing against you but in this statement I believe the best response is "speak for yourself". Words like "largely waste of time" "and doesnt advance your true level" is something you can only judge individually bro. I, and i believe the majority of other people who started with this book, have experience exactly the opposite of what you have stated. I live in japan and I am only on kanji #625(book2 prod and recog). Japanese people who knew me before i started this book are in complete shock to where my level has gotten in just a half year.

thermal Wrote:When I review a KO sentence I feel nothing, further more the Japanese is unnatural so it doesn't reinforce my knowledge.

Again man, sorry but I hope you are speaking for yourself here. Would it be crazy for me to stay that I feel something when I review KO sentences. I can actually see the image of "ホテルが火事になったが、客は全員無事だった。" in my head. And because I am/was a beginner I had no freaking clue what 火事 or 無事 was and how they are used until came across this sentence. And guess what...after the very day I saw 無事 i started hearing it EVERYWHERE. which brings me into your next comment:

thermal Wrote:I disagree with the "KO increases passive vocab really quickly. Through immersion you can make these active." point because I think reviewing sentences is not about reviewing words. It is about reviewing phrases and sentences that were said in a real situation for a real purpose

I agree with you about reviewing sentences is not about reviewing words..but i dont see how this proves 'immerision making KO vocab become active' wrong. Especially when I look at myself and compare my active vocab now to before i started this book. I swear so many words that i learn from this book virtually jump out and slap in the face for the first time when i watch news/anime/music/. Actually I will go so far as to say the sentences in this book helps me remember words that i havent even learned from the book..my girlfriend trips when she will say a word that i didnt know then use it one week later on her. I wont give the majority of the credit to KO for this phenomenon..i put the credit in doing sentences,what i am trying to prove is even using this book still yields the same results you get from mining from natural sources(minus that native sound..that will work itself out by watching and listening). Katsumoto even states that the person who only does sentences will not get the results of native like sound if he/she doesnt spend enough time with media(movies/music).

You make some really good points about the sentence being unatural but i cant sit there and listen/read to you say this book is a waste of time. Cause man this book has been a huge stepping stone for mine and many other's on this sites japanese.

I encourage you all to choose whatever method best works for you. Take my words as someone who is further down the track (than some, obviously not all) you as the way things may go. When I did KO I also thought it was completely awesome.

Saizen, I am comparing using KO vs mining native sources. I am not saying KO is not useful or is necessarily damaging. I am not saying it wont help your Japanese and I don't feel I was damaged by the book. KO is a very fast way to get an initial grasp on words. I cannot fault it for this. However, I believe given it has unnatural sentences and more importantly we do not know the context for these sentences, it does not help you make Japanese like your second native language. Sorry, it is hard to describe. So I am saying going at 70% speed and using native materials is better in the long run. I believe your Japanese level is far more than how many words and grammar you know.

Let me give you an analogy. I think it is almost exactly like the choice to use a Japanese English dictionary or a Japanese Japanese dictionary. Using a Japanese English dictionary is fast and it does teach you. It is not a waste of time. There is the danger that it will damage your Japanese, but if you are careful this probably wont happen. Yet you wont understand the words like you would if you used a JJ dictionary. You wont get how the Japanese describe their own language. You wont start to just GET Japanese. (This is why I am not saying no one should use KO. It has its place, but like a JE dictionary if your overall goal is being awesome then it isn't the best investment of time)

I believe that the point where knowing Japanese gets really good is when you can just chill and be awesome. You can participate in rapid conversations. You can make subtle jokes. You can be exceedingly polite or humble or even arrogant and rude. I think the time it takes to learn this is much longer than the time it takes to learn the words that are commonly used. I don't see KO as helping with the former and I think that by doing it when compared to mining real sentences you are increasing the time it will take before you reach this level. (ie. KO doesn't help with it, real sentences do).

ChandlerHimself,

When I first heard しかも I assumed it meant それとも by the time I realised this was not the case it was well set in my head. It took me about 9 months to undo this and be able to use the word. There are such things as bad habits.

One of my students in Japan was 60 years old. Her brother left Japan for the US when he was 20 and lived there for 40 years. During this time he almost completely forgot Japanese so my student was studying English to be able to communicate with him. I read his emails. He had a native level vocab and used idioms, however he made quite a few mistakes and overall it didn't feel natural. So clearly bad habits are not necessarily broken. BTW, I don't really think KO will form bad habits unless you mix it with English too much.

FutureBlues,

I don't have KO with me anymore, but I would translate "ホテルが火事になったが、客は全員無事だった。" as "The hotel caught on fire, but the customers were all ok". It's just way to simple to be a natural sentence. If it was the news for example it would be more "At 2:24pm today a fire broke out on the 20th floor of the crest hotel. It spread quickly to the the 21st and 22nd floors, but thanks to the diligent work of fire fighters it was contained. People staying at the hotel were all safely evacuated." If it was a more of a casual situation. "Hey mum, did you hear news? The hotel down the road caught on fire. You can see the black from the smoke on the walls. No one was hurt though".

I tried searching for even the cut down phrase

"火事になったが、客は全員無事" and
"火事になったけど、客は全員無事"

on google and zero matches. So whilst the phrases in the sentence are not unnatural, put together they are strange. So you are not really learning how Japanese flows together by studying this sentence, which I believe is the task which takes the longest before you can really enjoy and be awesome at Japanese.

EDIT: I should add. You can test what I am saying. Grab some sentences from real media and put them in your SRS. After you have reviewed them a few times compare how you feel about those sentences and KO sentences.

I find myself in the odd situation of agreeing completely with pretty much all that thermal writes, but still persisting in my belief in KO2001 as a valid and useful study tool (and one that I am currently using).

I believe the term is cognitive dissonance?

I think that your J-E vs J-J analogy is apt. Obviously J-J is much, much more helpful for developing natural japanese. But a beginner jumping straight into J-J dictionary with no prior study/exposure is almost impossible. You start with the J-E, then move to the J-J. Its a natural progression. Same with KO I think. I have no doubt it is not as helpful as natural stuff. But I'm not yet at the level where I feel I can adequately tackle the real life stuff. From what everyone has said in other threads, completing KO + Tae Kim gives you a sufficient grasp of the language to be able to sucessfully cope with real native material. So for me, I view it as a beneficial stepping stone because I'm too scared to jump straight in

I don't really get thermal's point here. Clearly native sources are better than KO. But for people who have only completed RTK, native sources are completely out of the question. KO is only a beginner's textbook anyway - it doesn't claim to "help you make Japanese like your second native language" (i.e. make you fluent) because it can't.

harhol Wrote:I don't really get thermal's point here. Clearly native sources are better than KO. But for people who have only completed RTK, native sources are completely out of the question. KO is only a beginner's textbook anyway - it doesn't claim to "help you make Japanese like your second native language" (i.e. make you fluent) because it can't.

Perhaps its a general warning for people using not so natural sources almost exclusively or for production or... it don't really know either.

No I'm saying it's better not to use KO at all.

I think it is reasonable to use a grammar book like a dictionary of basic Japanese grammar or something like Tae Kims (although I would avoid the English explanations as much as possible) to get your first leg up on the language. Then from your immersion there will be many i + 1 sentences that come along.

There is no need to use KO or something similiar. Plus it starts as a beginners book but goes well beyond that.

I like Katsumoto's explanation

Quote:But that’s too hard! I only understand like, one word!
Perfect. Now go to your dictionary and learn a sentence with that one word. Then go back to watching TV or whatever in the target language. And keep going, you will find another word. Keep at it.

So when native Japanese are growing up are they wasting their time by reading childrens books with tons of unnaturally simple phrases?

How can it be ok to get a "leg up" by using something like TaeKim's or other basic grammar books which do the exact same thing? Couldn't we just equally say that KO is a way to get a "leg up"?

Of course getting stuff from more natural sources is going to be better for acquiring the true feel of the language but KO doesn't stop you from doing this so I don't see where the issue is.

This same argument could be used against the Heisig method. Why waste time learning a single meaning and no readings when you could spend that time learning Kanji in the context of natural, adult level Japanese works? Reason: Because Heisig allows you to plow through the Kanji in a really efficient manner which gives you a good base of familiarity which eases learning when you DO ecounter them within the context of natural Japanese.

I look at KO the exact same way. It's just a vocab Heisig. It arranges vocab in a highly efficient order, with premade sentences and audio, which makes it extremely easy to add. This is turn gives me a degree of familiarity that makes it much easier to pick up things from other natural sources.


There is also the problem that you have already done KO. You can't really now come back and say it was a waste compared to not doing it at all as you can not seperate the knowledge you've gained from it. For all you know doing KO could be the key reason you are now able to pick up things so easy from all of the more natural sources you are now mining from.

Your "proof" that natural speaking ability is greater than having a large passive understanding doesn't really mean all that much either. Who said speaking ability is more important than understanding or reading ability? Speaking being more "impressive" to other people doesn't mean jack squat in terms of efficient acquistion of practical knowledge of the language. There are people that can speak pretty natural Japanese that can't read a single thing. Put that person next to someone that can't speak quite as natural, yet who can write 2,000+ Kanji by hand, type business documents in Japanese, and is reading adult level novels and I could care less if every person on planet earth says that the first guy is more "impressive". He might be more "impressive" to most people but the reality is his practical knowledge of the language doesn't compare in the slightest to the second guy.

activeaero,

I agree with most of what you say. I think it is a balance. Clearly learning exactly the same as a child by getting many years of contextful input with no coloring from other langauges will result in the most native like level of proficiency. However, this is too slow.

On the other hand, using lots of English and spoon fed sentences to help you is very fast. However, there is limit on how you good you can get and there is the risk of speaking broken Japanese and bad habits.

The trick is finding the right balance.

Tell me this, KO has about 3000 sentences. If it went up to 10,000 sentences and included things like 擬音語 and 擬態語, would you use only KO as the sentences you mine? 20,000, 30,000. Where do you draw the line, if at all?

Let's say mining from natural sources is 70% as fast overall. If two twins did the same amount of immersion, but one had 10,000 KO sentences and one had 7,000 i + 1 native sentences, who do you think would be better in terms of, reponse speed, gramatical complexity of spoken and written Japanese, ability to express thoughts, reading speed, listening comprehension, ability to make jokes, etc. ?

BTW, there is a difference between kids books and unnatural Japanese. Plus kids books have very strong contexts which are great for teaching children the language. My biggest beef with KO is there are no contexts to tie the words and grammar to.

(Does KO have audio for the sentences? I thought it was only for the words?)

activeaero Wrote:I look at KO the exact same way. It's just a vocab Heisig. It arranges vocab in a highly efficient order, with premade sentences and audio, which makes it extremely easy to add. This is turn gives me a degree of familiarity that makes it much easier to pick up things from other natural sources.

I was about to log on and say the *exact* same thing, almost word for word!

I was thinking about this last night, and I eventually figured out that *this* is why I believe KO is a useful learning resource despite being 'unnatural':

Heisig is an abstraction that allows you to more efficiently learn the kanji for when you encounter them in the real world. People have talked about it creating a 'container' in your head, or a 'spot' to put each kanji. When you encounter them in real texts you have a uch easier time understanding them because you already have this spot reserved for them.

KO works the same way for vocabulary. The sentences might not be 100% natural sounding, but what its doing is creating a 'locaiton' in your head where you can store each new word/reading. Then, when you encounter those words in real life its easier to approach them because you already have this spot all prepared in your brain and the information just gets put straight in there.

thermal Wrote:I tried searching for even the cut down phrase

"火事になったが、客は全員無事" and
"火事になったけど、客は全員無事"

on google and zero matches. So whilst the phrases in the sentence are not unnatural, put together they are strange.

I think the whole sentence is not so important; the importance is learning the clauses, "火事になった" and "全員無事". You can't learn every natural sentence, but if you learn common clauses you can then recognize them used in various real life combinations.

Doesn't Khatzumoto advise using short sentences?

Quote:Let's say mining from natural sources is 70% as fast overall. If two twins did the same amount of immersion, but one had 10,000 KO sentences and one had 7,000 i + 1 native sentences, who do you think would be better in terms of, reponse speed, gramatical complexity of spoken and written Japanese, ability to express thoughts, reading speed, listening comprehension, ability to make jokes, etc. ?

Normally though, you wouldn't have all your sentences be native sentences either though, right? Some balance, of taking native sentences you hear, plus some examples from dictionaries for words you need to know seems more usual. And in that case, KO sentences are not really different than dictionary examples.

thermal Wrote:(Does KO have audio for the sentences? I thought it was only for the words?)

The new version of KO has full audio for all of the sentences.

thermal Wrote:activeaero,

Let's say mining from natural sources is 70% as fast overall. If two twins did the same amount of immersion, but one had 10,000 KO sentences and one had 7,000 i + 1 native sentences, who do you think would be better in terms of, reponse speed, gramatical complexity of spoken and written Japanese, ability to express thoughts, reading speed, listening comprehension, ability to make jokes, etc. ?

BTW, there is a difference between kids books and unnatural Japanese. Plus kids books have very strong contexts which are great for teaching children the language. My biggest beef with KO is there are no contexts to tie the words and grammar to.

(Does KO have audio for the sentences? I thought it was only for the words?)

I don't think SRSing will help with your response speed, your ability to express thoughts reading speed, listening comprehension or ability to make jokes. Those things are beyond the scope of an SRS and IMO are best trained by interacting with people or reading books, etc. All I use an SRS for is memorizing things. Language isn't a bunch of sentences you memorize and then wait for the chance to use. KO is useful for learning vocab. That's all it advertises and that's all it does. It does this quickly so for me it's done it's job. When you don't have to worry about vocab you can focus on all the other things in Japanese.
I also agree with vosmiura. You don't really need all the extra info in an example sentence, just the important parts. For the record, if you search for
"If two twins did the same amount of immersion",
"I agree with most of what you say. I think it is a balance",
"there is limit on how you good you can get"
and "it starts as a beginners book but goes well beyond that."
you will get zero results. These are all things that you wrote and I would say are natural, but it seems nobody else on the internet decided to write them this way.
I appreciate the fact that you seem to want to help people by warning them and you've been civil even though we don't agree. I have 1 question though. Who told you the sentences were unnatural? Did a Japanese friend say they were strange or not to use them?

Chandlerhimself Wrote:I don't think SRSing will help with your response speed, your ability to express thoughts reading speed, listening comprehension or ability to make jokes. Those things are beyond the scope of an SRS and IMO are best trained by interacting with people

You could hook your Japanese friends up to an SRS. Periodically it alerts you to call them and talk

I have always felt they were unnatural. I was pretty good at Japanese before I started KO. The better I get the more stilted they sound.

Yes I think KO sentences and dictionary example sentences are largely in the same boat. So I would avoid adding either to an SRS.

I think I will leave it here. I think I have explained my point of view well enough. I would be interested to hear how many KO sentences you all would like though.

If you are interested in testing my ideas, add 10 sentences from real sources. In particular I recommend grabbing the audio from some anime or something and doing production and recognition on it. After reviewing them a few times the KO sentences will start to feel very thin and 1 dimensional.

I recognise that it is a problem, certainly. But I think the value gained from vocab acquisition outweighs it.

So what I'm left with is trying to minimise any potential harm that could be caused by any unnatural sounding sentences. I wasn't doing production before now (due to exam preparation I haven't had the time to add production cards) and I think that if I don't add production cards in the future I can minimise unnaturalness; I won't be actively practicing trying to produce unnatural sentences.

I don't think that's a problem at all. I like those kind of example sentences because they are clear and illustrate the vocabulary without adding an unneeded complexity. If your level is high enough that you find them too simple, then you shouldn't use them. But if that's the case, you should be past KO's target level anyway.

KO sentences may not be the most natural. Then again, neither are most anime sentences.

Like Codexus said, what you want in an SRS is clear, simple and SHORT examples of word usage. You don't want to get natural Japanese from reading your SRS sentences, those are WAY too short and specific. You get natural Japanese from exposing yourself to real Japanese AFTER you've learned the words.

The SRS is there to teach you words. Everything else should come from USING Japanese. Learn from the anime by watching it, not studying it.

I'm hearing that KO could be harmful, if you do production, but I'm not sure what kind of production people mean.

I thought usually when we say production on KO cards, it is about reading the kana and producing the kanji. In that respect, I don't see how you can hurt your Japanese when all you're practicing is kanji writing.

Any kind of production cards intended to have you reproducing the same sentences from memory (e.g. given the English, produce the Japanese) is a very bad idea. 本当にだめだよ.

It's kind of the above thinking that's made me want to layer the learning when people want my help to get into this. Learn basic kanji (if you call 1000 kanji basic), learn basic grammar, learn basic vocabulary. At that point, a student can tell if they can go full native material or continue with: intermediate kanji (rest of RTK), intermediate grammar and vocabulary.

I think I'm at the intermediate stage. Pretty much 2500 kanji, all of Tae Kim and iKnow's Core 2k are mature cards in Anki. It's obvious reading books and watching TV that my ability to follow conversation is lacking to an outstanding degree. So now I'm moving on to native material, with prepared material (Core 6000, RTK 3, Kanzen Master 1 and 2) in the background waiting to be called upon when parts of them are needed.

It's this reason I'm weary of someone doing all of KO2001. 3000 sentences covering 5000 words (plus some) is a lot of time to invest. Then there's those that want to put vocabulary from the remaining KO2001 into iKnow. It will be useful, but it's a lot of time.

On the other hand, maybe a student wants advanced structured study. They're not willing to go into the deep end yet. What they'll learn will still be useful. This is all self study, so we're all going to have faults with a path compared to others. Jeez, just look at the flak Khatzumoto gets about his writing style and simple grammar used in conversation. I'm using subs2srs, so I know I'm cheating myself out of good legitimate non-conversational sentences like from the news or from books. I just like the convenience.

Nukemarine Wrote:Jeez, just look at the flak Khatzumoto gets about his writing style and simple grammar used in conversation.

I'm looking forward to the day when my Japanese is good enough for significant numbers of people to tell me it's no good

Khatz gets flak because he acts like the god of Japanese, not because he makes mistakes.

bodhisamaya Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Jeez, just look at the flak Khatzumoto gets about his writing style and simple grammar used in conversation.

I'm looking forward to the day when my Japanese is good enough for significant numbers of people to tell me it's no good

i LOL'd ...agreed

I went through both books of Kanji Odyssey, and my thinking is along the lines of Tobberoth's. I don't expect to develop the ability to produce natural-sounding Japanese from SRSing pre-canned sentences, but rather I expect to develop a solid base of vocabulary and grammar that will improve my ability to understand native Japanese media.

Right now I'm doing a pretty extreme version of what thermal recommends not doing: I'm systematically going through a (seemingly) comprehensive JLPT vocab list, looking up words in Yahoo! Japan and adding the example sentences into Anki. Rather than spend time debating the pros and cons of this method (and I know there are cons), I'll let you all know how it works out in a few months after I've finished and started bombarding myself with tons of native media.

I'm back This is my last wall of text I promise!

You see words, grammar and phrasing are tools. Actually the word bank is not a word that means "A place where people conduct various affairs relating to money", it is a tool you use when you want your father to come and pick you up and you are waiting in front of the bank. Some tools like bank have pretty simple usage and some have complex usage. For example when do you use advance as opposed to progress, develop, evolve and improve.

To translate KO (医学が進歩して、いろいろな病気が治るようになった。) Medical science has advanced. We can now cure many diseases.

So you review this sentence many times, but you don't know why it was said, who said it, who it was said to, where it was said, what tone of voice was used.. You don't get the context in which to use any of the words in the sentence. You manage to get the rough meaning of the one word you are focusing on in long term memory, but you are not putting the tool (by that I mean when it is used and for what purpose) into long term memory when you could be! Immersion may eventually do this for you, especially when you are still studying common words but why not do it with your SRS as well.

Or you review the line from some commercial "Our shavers have advanced to a new level of precision!" said in boastful daring tones. You review this sentence many times. From this you get a growing feel for the word as you recognise the advertisers goal of making the shaver sound as awesome as possible and the way they are using the tool advance to do this. And not just the one tool, all the tools in the sentence including the tone of voice get progressively tied to the position the advertiser (or rather the actor sayint the lines) is in. You also recognise the how the tone is different from regular English and this reinforces the context. (This is why I think it is best to use audio that you get from an authentic source as opposed to something only written)

Then someone makes a joke about the backwards technology in your home country and without any thought you simply feel that the context and "Well actually in recent years our technology has advanced a lot". I can see you all thinking "But immersion will get you there anyway!". Yes, if you get enough it eventually will. Just as immersion is enough to teach you words without ever using a dictionary or an SRS. However, it is slow and the better you get the less you will hear words you don't know and thus the harder it is to really get them from immersion.

And you see this is what happens every time you hear a word, some grammar or a phrase you don't fully get yet. Your brain goes and analyses the context and bit by bit pieces together the usage of the tool. However, it can't do it one go. Each time you get it a bit more and the feeling for the sentence and word you are trying to learn deepens. You then hear it from immersion and when it comes up again in your SRS you combine these angles and most likely reach an even deeper understanding of the sentence and word.

This is why Katzumoto is so good. Because he knows (feels) the Japanese to deal with thousands of contexts. Further more he can interpret the context by the way the tools are used (IE reading, listening). Immersion will get you there, but you can fast track it by putting real contextual language in your SRS (much like you can fast track your vocabulary by putting words in). Every time you review it you will remember the context and the link will strengthen.

These links (situation/purpose to language) are relevant in all areas of using your language ability. This is why I implied earlier that 7000 sentences with real contexts is more valuable than 10,000 KO style sentences. Reading, writing, listening. Everything except for passive vocab. The 7000 sentences will result in much more and stronger links and less broken ones which result in mistakes and unnatural sentences (Not a big deal, the number and strength of links is the big issue). Note that these links are not just to single words, but to ways of phrasing, pronunciation, idioms etc. They are the crack you need to rock at Japanese. And it isn't like one link is one sentence. They can be (particularly idioms), or there can be many in a sentence (which allows you to predict what will be said, because just like their brain, your brain is constantly recognizing the context/situation and the language it connects to is there for you).

If you are just using an SRS for vocab, then why not just have single words with English definitions. You could get the Anki JLPT lists and learn faster than with KO, then leave the rest up to immersion. Or if you don't want to involve English, just have only the words or a Japanese definition.

I leave you a quote from a Katzumoto blog post. Not that he is necessarily right about everything, but I think he is often on the money.

Quote:Personally, I haven’t found pre-mined SRS items to carry enough of the je ne sais quoi weirdness that is the staple of my life…but this may be a temporary problem. Keep in mind that I am old man of sorts; I have my way of doing things now. It may just be the inertia of well-formed habit that keeps me doing things my way. Or it may in fact be the case that SRS cards that one makes oneself sit in the memory better, complete with the context in which the information was originally found — this lack of context definitely looms quite large. But, really, I don’t know.

I wont post them all now, but if you search for "context" on his site you can see that he is generally in favor of real native contexts. ALL HAIL KATZUMOTO!

EDIT: I should also say that I am not saying "OMG never do any sentences from textbooks!". I just suggest you be aware of the difference between doing a textbook sentence with no context and a real sentence and plan your study accordingly.

barf.. stop licking his shoes...

Don't be so black and white. You can do immersion AND study. In fact that's the best and fastest way to learn. Whodathunkit?

Textbook sentences are intentionally textbooky. They are meant to show the concept they are trying to describe as succinctly as possible so you don't possibly get hung up on some other aspect that isn't part of the lesson. Don't confuse textbooky with incorrect.

Personally I think textbooky sentences aren't a problem if you use them as a tool to learn and not as a model for your output. Mining sentences to put into an SRS turns them into a model though. It's the same story for every other flawed input source (girlfriends, anime, manga, etc).

That's one of the major reasons I don't mine sentences. The other being the enormous amount of time it takes to make cards compared to simple word:definition ones.