I was recently introduced to the website http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/,
if you've explored this website and its methods, what do you think of them? Are they wise to pursue? Any opinions about the site and its methods are welcome.

thecite Wrote:I was recently introduced to the website http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/,
if you've explored this website and its methods, what do you think of them? Are they wise to pursue? Any opinions about the site and its methods are welcome.

On this forum you'll find many people who have strong opinions about AJATT one way or the other.

Personally, I think a lot of Khatz's ideas are interesting and worth pursuing but don't take everything he says literally. He's a bit crazy and overdoing many things. But if applied with moderation and a bit of critical thinking his methods are worth a try.

Also I find many of his posts annoying but that's more a question of style than content.

Hmm, what happened to the sticky? http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=682&page=35

I pretty much agree with everything he says, except maybe the idea of a "QRG" or setting up any type of "rules". I like(d) the experimenting nature of it all. You should experiment to find what works best for YOU - you don't need someone telling you "you should review 15 minutes in each go! Not 5!", you should experiment to see what works best for you.

I agree on parts about immersion, fun, and just enjoying the ride in general. And not being over-concerned with your level, because it's going to get better, so long as you show up.

Codexus Wrote:

thecite Wrote:I was recently introduced to the website http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/,
if you've explored this website and its methods, what do you think of them? Are they wise to pursue? Any opinions about the site and its methods are welcome.

On this forum you'll find many people who have strong opinions about AJATT one way or the other.

Personally, I think a lot of Khatz's ideas are interesting and worth pursuing but don't take everything he says literally. He's a bit crazy and overdoing many things. But if applied with moderation and a bit of critical thinking his methods are worth a try.

Also I find many of his posts annoying but that's more a question of style than content.

I'm really swaying. I thing his idea of lots and lots of sentences is a good idea, you should be immersed in the language as much as possible. But adding so many sentences would take lots of time, and that's where my concern is. Should I dedicate myself? I could use the time to go through grammar points and then read Japanese. Writing heaps of sentences would be a long process, but undoubtedly helpful. Not only this, but finding these loads and loads of balanced grammatical sentences will be difficult.

To quote a wonderful post by igordesu in another thread:

igordesu Wrote:Dude, here's the deal. 10,000 sentences is not the goal. Japanese is the goal. Tell yourself that every. single. day. 10,000 sentences (in the words of so many other AJATTers before me) are merely a product of the goal of Japanese.

When you start out doing sentences, you don't look for sentences. You look for interesting Japanese. When you come across something that you *really enjoy* while reading interesting Japanese that stretches your knowledge a bit (and be selective) put it in your SRS to remember it.

If a majority of your sentence deck is built like this, reviews will be more fun. AND, on top of all that, you get to delete sentences when you get sick of them. And if you don't feel like doing reps, you have tools that others have made/discovered for you like timeboxing.

Dude. Worry not. You'll own this 日本語　thing like a piece of cake. After you finish RTK, suffer the reviews for a few months and you'll be home free.

thecite Wrote:I'm really swaying. I thing his idea of lots and lots of sentences is a good idea, you should be immersed in the language as much as possible. But adding so many sentences would take lots of time, and that's where my concern is. Should I dedicate myself? I could use the time to go through grammar points and then read Japanese. Writing heaps of sentences would be a long process, but undoubtedly helpful. Not only this, but finding these loads and loads of balanced grammatical sentences will be difficult.

That's my problem as well. If I spend my time SRSing sentences, I don't have much time left for reading, watching Japanese TV or anything else.

But in my opinion using sentences to learn vocabulary works and it works really well so I'll continue doing that. Then I think reading is the most important part. Watching anime or playing video games just doesn't give the same return on investment (even though it's fun) so that's a lower priority for me.

Would anyone recommend/not recommend doing RTK2 and using the AJATT method? I've finished RTK1 and was planning on completing RTK2 (haven't got the book yet), and still am, but am interested to hear what you think.

thecite Wrote:Would anyone recommend/not recommend doing RTK2 and using the AJATT method? I've finished RTK1 and was planning on completing RTK2 (haven't got the book yet), and still am, but am interested to hear what you think.

Do Kanji in Context. Far more useful than the compounds in RtK 2, covers all JLPT 1 vocab and includes sentences and interesting rare compounds.

FutureBlues Wrote:

thecite Wrote:Would anyone recommend/not recommend doing RTK2 and using the AJATT method? I've finished RTK1 and was planning on completing RTK2 (haven't got the book yet), and still am, but am interested to hear what you think.

Do Kanji in Context. Far more useful than the compounds in RtK 2, covers all JLPT 1 vocab and includes sentences and interesting rare compounds.

While it may give me compounds etcetera, it won't give me a method for remembering the on-yomi and kun-yomi.

thecite Wrote:While it may give me compounds etcetera, it won't give me a method for remembering the on-yomi and kun-yomi.

That's the whole point. Many people don't feel the need to use a method to remember the readings.

Codexus Wrote:

thecite Wrote:While it may give me compounds etcetera, it won't give me a method for remembering the on-yomi and kun-yomi.

That's the whole point. Many people don't feel the need to use a method to remember the readings.

That would practically be heading into the territory of rote learning then. While RTK1 is useful, simply knowing a keyword isn't going to be able to help me learn the 9, 000 or so different compounds of Kanji necessary to read easily in Japanese.

thecite Wrote:That would practically be heading into the territory of rote learning then.

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut. Learning a language is learning the vocabulary.

Codexus Wrote:

thecite Wrote:That would practically be heading into the territory of rote learning then.

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut. Learning a language is learning the vocabulary.

Kanji and vocab are two different concepts. On-yomi makes associating kanji with vocab easier.

Codexus Wrote:

thecite Wrote:That would practically be heading into the territory of rote learning then.

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut. Learning a language is learning the vocabulary.

You're right. On-yomi and kun-yomi is a waste of time. Months of learning, and really, it may not help you out that much at all. Vocab should be focused on. Thanks.

thecite Wrote:That would practically be heading into the territory of rote learning then.

A large part of RtK (apart from the pure and semi pure groups) is just rote learning. You may as well rote learn them while doing actual sentences, and at least get some benefit out of the process.

The Movie Method is a useful way to learn the readings if you do it instead of the standard RtK process. I'm sure it would still be useful even after finishing RtK and you can give it a shot if you want; but most people want to get into actual sentences by this point.

Also as someone pointed out earlier there is already a (huge) thread about AJATT. Its around 40 pages, you should check it out. I'm sure it answers all of your questions and then some. Most people on this forum do what AJATT describes or some variant of it.

I agree with the overall ideas behind the AJATT philosophy, I just think Khaz has some very odd ideas sometimes, even contradicting. Because of this, many AJATT people propose and support ideas which really make no sense in the long run.

It's a site worth reading, but Khazu is not a person worth to idolize and use as a perfect guru.

I see AJATT as a format or template for whatever you're doing. Having come from the "Structured Japanese Classes" world I tend to default to text books only as a guide.. So for "AJATT" my routine often is to create sentences using a textbook (Minna No Nihongo) and to put them into ANKI. This is to just remind me of what I already know/have studied.

I suggest not going willy nilly with random Sentences from random places.. Instead find some sort of structured course and apply AJATT's sentence concepts to that. For example.. Find a text book that challenges you to create sentences with a certain grammar structure then add those sentences you've made to your SRS program with a tag corresponding to the lesson, grammar rule, page #, or whichever. In a short time you will amass plenty of sentences that correspond to a book that you'll be able to use for reference if you're still unsure of a grammar rule or need refreshing.

Japanese studies, in my opinion, is all about learning the very simple basics first then building upon it incrementally with new grammar. Start simple and work your way up. Cutting and pasting sentences from the Japan Times verbatim is going to frustrate you and turn you off. Get a Genki book, Minna no nihongo book, or something and just SRS all the exercises in it.

Cheers!

~Josh

Well I don't think anyone still living out there is a perfect guru.... Maybe even jesus , buddha , confucius would'nt live up to the hype .
Lately I'm quite hooked by steve pavlina and tim ferris . And while those guy have definetely great ideas I'm afraid the bulk is so-so and sometimes even crappy (raw vegetable diet for pavlina who obviously has never been out of the united states , language maintenance for tim ferris ) .What's more most of the time those guy are so obsessed about their ideas , so psyched up about their "system" that they fail to think out of the box : they just substited a box to another one . It can become quite pathetic with martial art school and pick up artist . Even so they still brought something new to the community once . It just takes one great and awesome idea to make you special .

So maybe khatz is overdoing it but his method heisig-SRS-immersion is so simple and obvious (like all great ideas) that it makes up for the rest .

BTW what do you refer to when you state he's contradicting ?

Codexus Wrote:

thecite Wrote:While it may give me compounds etcetera, it won't give me a method for remembering the on-yomi and kun-yomi.

That's the whole point. Many people don't feel the need to use a method to remember the readings.

RTK2 doesn't really give you much of a method either. You get on-groups, but it's all memory from there, and there's nothing good for learning kunyomi. A lot of verbs & adjectives are kunyomi, so if you don't learn them you still can't read squat.

The methods with KIK, KO, RDMKTK (and other books) is context, and recurrence; easier to remember readings like this than doing them in isolation. The context helps remember words, and you learn several words for each kanji, and bingo you know the kanji reading.

Another thing that makes worthless the on-kun system is is totally randomness....
I mean how many times did you try to figure out the reading of a new word just based on your abstract knowlege of reading ? how many times did it turn out that it was kun when you expected on and inversely ? how many times did you hit a 熟語 with some special reading ?

Except if you intend to pass the kanji test (no need to say extremely useful....) there is absolutely no point in learning this way .

Specifically learning words that follow on-yomi phonetic groups is useful, though. Combine that with lots of reading, and you'll get pretty good at guessing jukugo readings.

I can read a novel meant for Japanese natives and I don't even know whether a pronunciation is on or kun. I'm not saying that to show off, I just wanted to say that it is possible just by reading a lot.

A good site for grammer is: Tae Kim's http://guidetojapanese.com
But grammer is so easy in Japanese, it just takes getting used to. I could read through the whole site in 1 day. And instead of learning those grammer rules I just have fun in Japanese with reading manga and when I meet a grammer structure I understand it because I read it once on Tae Kim. If I encounter a grammer structure I forgot I just quickly look it up.

I just think "learning grammer" doesn't exist, only "getting used to" so I would advice just reading Tae Kim's site once, and afterwords use it like a dictionairy for grammer when you forget something.

How to focus your time?
*I do Anki Reps 2 hours a day. (goes a lot faster if you only do recognition, I am doing production on all my cards so)
*I listen 1 hour to podcasts on my iPod while on the way. (I found some real funny ones about 3 schoolgirls through AJATT)
*I read manga while at the computer for about 4 hours a day. While I am reading I add sentences to anki.
*I speak only Japanese every day. ^^ (I live in Japan)

Only the last step is difficult if you don't live in Japan, but PodCasts is really awesome, since you can have it on all the time. Even when doing homework or when you are working out.

Mesqueeb Wrote:I just think "learning grammer" doesn't exist, only "getting used to" so I would advice just reading Tae Kim's site once, and afterwords use it like a dictionairy for grammer when you forget something.

You're giving good advice, but I think you're still in the honeymoon period with Japanese grammar. Tae Kim is great for global basic Japanese grammar constructions, but there's a lot more grammar stuff to learn after that.

There's a lot of idiomatic sentence constructions that need to be memorized before you can feel comfortable understanding a lot of native text. Take a glance at どんな時どう使う日本語. Almost all of it is different sentence constructions that there's no way to figure out logically. They don't make any sense when broken apart. They have to be learned as an entire unit along with what situations they tend to be used in.

Mesqueeb Wrote:A good site for grammer is: Tae Kim's http://guidetojapanese.com
But grammer is so easy in Japanese, it just takes getting used to. I could read through the whole site in 1 day. And instead of learning those grammer rules I just have fun in Japanese with reading manga and when I meet a grammer structure I understand it because I read it once on Tae Kim. If I encounter a grammer structure I forgot I just quickly look it up.

I just think "learning grammer" doesn't exist, only "getting used to" so I would advice just reading Tae Kim's site once, and afterwords use it like a dictionairy for grammer when you forget something.

How to focus your time?
*I do Anki Reps 2 hours a day. (goes a lot faster if you only do recognition, I am doing production on all my cards so)
*I listen 1 hour to podcasts on my iPod while on the way. (I found some real funny ones about 3 schoolgirls through AJATT)
*I read manga while at the computer for about 4 hours a day. While I am reading I add sentences to anki.
*I speak only Japanese every day. ^^ (I live in Japan)

Only the last step is difficult if you don't live in Japan, but PodCasts is really awesome, since you can have it on all the time. Even when doing homework or when you are working out.

I'm quite a bit past Tae Kim's grammar level (using Dictionary of Intermediate Grammar), but he still has a few interesting points there that I haven't learnt before, thanks.
I should explain:
I've been learning Japanese at middle and high school for around 4 - 5 years which has been completely useless, I've mainly progressed from tutoring lessons that I had every fortnight (which was still unbelievably slow, looking back). As an 11 to 15 year old, obviously you don't question whether the schooling method of Japanese is correct, you just assume it's the only way to learn Japanese (with revision etc. as well, and I did try to learn new stuff, just very ineffectively). I did an exchange to Japan last year, and from about that time made the effort to be much more of an independent student, trying to learn most of my content outside of school rather than in, but had no particular method, and therefore it was slow and uncertain. This combined with my longstanding tutor not being able to teach me anymore by means of an extreme coincidence (became my school teacher, start of this year), for the first time I was by myself, no more dependence on other people teaching me. I was lazy for the earlier part of this year, as I thought that computers were my passion, but a month long international holiday changed my ambitions completely, languages all the way. I found out about RTK1 by chance on the net, and after investigation decided to try it out. I completed the whole book and reviewed all cards once on Anki (over a few days, ouch), and only found out about this site after the Anki programmer included a new feature in which the downloadable RTK1 deck now has a link to the specific page for every keyword on this site. Any later, and I would have cemented many of my weakest stories, but instead I was able to incorporate many of the wonderful stories from here in my Anki reviews, and it has made the world of difference. Although by this point I was steamrolling towards learning Japanese at a much faster rate, after searching the forums on this site, I now have the method to help me head towards fluency. I'm certainly not JLPT2 level yet, quite far from it, but am not at JLPT3 level either, quite far from it. So I'm somewhere in between. Schooling/tutoring is crap, this site has opened up to me that concrete idea, which before I had not fully realised.

From here, I'm now planning to learn JLPT2 grammar (using various books) by typing the rules into Anki, reviewing them for a week, then switching only to lots of example sentences for them.
As well as that, I'm doing the AJATT sentence method, for vocab, kanji and of course grammar points. Combine that with 2001KO, also reviewing that in Anki, and a heck load of listening and reading, and I have no reason not to be confident.
Geez, this has been a long post...