I think you're asking the wrong question. It's not whether you should self-study or take a class, but whether that class is worth ７０万円. I assure you it is not. Or, at least you can get as good or better an education for less.

７０万円 is a lot of one-on-one time with a tutor...

zoletype Wrote:Yeah public places are great for studying. I often use Starbucks or Mr. Donuts. In Japan it's perfectly acceptable for you to buy one drink and then stay in the shop for several hours. Mr. Donuts even has free refills!

Yes, in Japan Starbucks seems to be a continuation of the local public library.

There is a level check but of course if my reading/writing isn't up to par I would be put in the lower level, which is understandable. What annoyed me the most is that there was no kind of trial lesson or even the possibility of going into a classroom and viewing a lesson. It would literally be paying ７０万円 without any idea of wether it was good or not. Fair enough if you're applying from abroad but I'm already here..

There are other schools (ARC, Human Academy etc) but I found them somewhat bleargh.

I've thought about a tutor as well. I know of a good tutor (my friend studied with her, and he knows what he's talking about) who is pretty cheap, I think it was 2,000 for an hour and a half.

Along with that, I know of several volunteer programs where there are unqualified teachers available to help you out, which I think could also be good, especially for conversation.

７０万円 sounds really expensive, even for a full year of study.
See Jarvik's post above.

zoletype Wrote:What annoyed me the most is that there was no kind of trial lesson or even the possibility of going into a classroom and viewing a lesson.

It would literally be paying ７０万円 without any idea of wether it was good or not.

No way I'd be signing up for that!

Unless they have an incredible reputation it's amazing they would get any students, especially in these economic conditions.

zoletype Wrote:I've thought about a tutor as well. I know of a good tutor (my friend studied with her, and he knows what he's talking about) who is pretty cheap, I think it was 2,000 for an hour and a half.

Sounds ideal - good and cheap!
So what's the problem?

If you really need the "financial motivation" ("I've paid, now I have to go"), perhaps you could make some sort of agreement/contract with the tutor?

Maybe I don't need the financial motivation, but it will certainly help.

I think I'll stick to trying my hardest to stay motivated and self study. If it goes well then I'll probably stay on that road and just have a tutor.

If not, then I'll enroll in the school with a pretty good understanding of a lot of things and just take what I can.

These classes don't sound that great. They charge ７０万円 and they won't let you sit in and get an idea of what you're paying for. I agree with several other, go with a tutor and supplement with sentences.

If your communication skills are ok, but your reading and writing is bad I don't think taking classes makes any sense. Reading and writing is something you have to learn ON YOUR OWN regardless of whether you're taking classes or not. That'll probably be the homework ("Here is a list of kanji compounds, memorize them until tomorrow."), maybe you'll write a test to see whether you actually memorized them. But I don't see the difference of just using a SRS to test yourself. Rather, SRS beats one-time memorized world lists any day.

Especially if you haven't done RTK yet, I think it would be better to focus your time on that first, if you have 4 hours of classes everyday and 3-4 hours of homework, there won't be any time to squeeze RTK in (or it'll take quite long to finish at least).

Classes are great to improve your grammar and communication but that isn't your goal right? Paying money for stuff you probably already know to some degree and having to do writing and reading practice at home anyway doesn't seem like a good trade-off. Imo, it would make sense to explicitly focus on your weakness, ie. doing RTK and KO.
When I started doing RTK I wasn't sure whether I would have the motivation to finish too, but the tips on AJATT about how to get motivated and the SRS on this site in combination with all the shared stories has made this a quite enjoyable and comfortable journey through the diverse kanji zoo. Seeing how you have a lot of spare time, it shouldn't take very long, once the kanji fever has gotten a hold on you and since you live in Japan and seeing and starting to recognize the kanji you learn everywhere should be a huge boost too. (:

I went to school for 6 months in Japan at a school with a very good reputation (YAMASA). I found it very disappointing.

The problem is IMO that the way they learn to teach Japanese at university is very poor. Japanese teaching as far as I can tell is far behind English teaching, which is already crappy. Here is a typical day in my schooling.

1. Teacher enters classroom, chats with class for 1 minute.
2. The weeks vocab is reviewed through (kanji showed and we read, pitch is typically over pronounced by the teacher).
3. A new grammar point is presented usually without any context. This means this.
4. A handout is given to all the students with sentences with blanks in them. We fill in the blanks with the grammar, making sure to use the correct form.
5. At the end the teacher asks some students to read out each one (ie Tom please read your answer for 1, Sarah please read your answer for 2.. Usually it will just go around the room)
6. Students then do the next section, there will be sentences with blanks, but this time the grammar is already there, you need to choose a word appropriate to the sentence for example 高かった！以外にも＿＿＿＿ (It was expensive! However, to my surprise, _____).
7. Again once finished students are prompted to read out their answer for each one.
8. Same again, but this time the blanks will be the other side of the grammar eg ＿＿＿＿＿、以外にもおいしくなかったです。(＿＿＿＿＿＿、However, to my surprise it wasn't delicious)
9. Feedback again.
10. Do some dialog with humor aimed at 12 year olds probably involving someone having a crush on someone. You practice in pairs.
11. Now comes the fun part of the lesson, there will be a dialog where you can change the blanks each time you do it. This is done with a partner. Often there isn't time to do this.

Homework is more sentences with blanks to be filled. Repeat a lesson like this 4 times each day. The teacher talking time is about 90% and then the students that are outgoing get about 2% each, the rest are lucky to get 1%.

I taught English for 2 years in Japan and have a CELTA teaching qualification. I have also read books on teaching. Not saying I am that great, but I know the theory pretty well. This school sucked and from what I can tell it is not unique. I tracked the improvement of my classmates over the 6 months and it was pretty minimal. I also studied a bit with the top class and their speaking was horrible. I actually wrote a 40,000 character report on the school and sent it to my teachers.

As you can probably tell I am a bit bitter. Most of the other students had no clue on the best way to learn languages or teaching, so they could enjoy it for what it was. I on the other hand was painfully aware of how bad they were. Studying on my own was many many times more valuable than that school.

So my advice is don't go to school. Even if you find a awesome school where lessons are really fun and involving, it won't be worth the money. Why don't you do homestay? It will be much cheaper and more valuable IMO.

Also, you should probably read everything on http://alljapaneseallthetime.com/ about "fun" and "study". RTK1 should be about the extent of study you do, at least for long periods. Once you finish that you can choose to take a path that involves study (eg KO2001), but if you don't feel like doing it or get bored, stop but keep Japanese involved. Other than doing SRS reps and adding to my SRS I never study these days.

Thermal, you just described every single class in my Japanese 101 unit!

thermal Wrote:I went to school for 6 months in Japan at a school with a very good reputation (YAMASA). I found it very disappointing.

Thermal that sounds utterly horrible. Question: Could there be any redeeming value in it at all for anybody in terms of learning Japanese?

Thermal, sounds like Yamasa has an unjustified reputation, my school in Tokyo was far better IMO (but still had several things I disagreed with). For one, new vocab and grammar was ALWAYS introduced first by the teacher telling us a story from his life, so we heard it used and realized the worth of the grammar before we even started to study it.

Tobberoth Wrote:Thermal, sounds like Yamasa has an unjustified reputation, my school in Tokyo was far better (but still had several things I disagreed with). For one, new vocab and grammar was ALWAYS introduced first by the teacher telling us a story from his life, so we heard it used and realized the worth of the grammar before we even started to study it.

Tobberoth, just curious what school did you go to? I find it really unlikely I'm going to find anybody that has gone to the school I'm planning to go to

koyota Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Thermal, sounds like Yamasa has an unjustified reputation, my school in Tokyo was far better (but still had several things I disagreed with). For one, new vocab and grammar was ALWAYS introduced first by the teacher telling us a story from his life, so we heard it used and realized the worth of the grammar before we even started to study it.

Tobberoth, just curious what school did you go to? I find it really unlikely I'm going to find anybody that has gone to the school I'm planning to go to(Bunka)

ISI Language School in Shin-Ookubo.

I've never met a person who was decent in a language after just taking classes. Not even If they had 8 years of them. It's just not possible if you don't work on your own and input some serious hours into this. By working I mean watching cartoons, anime, movies and reading everything you can get your hands on

So forget about classes, man up and start "working".

Oh and I feel sorry for you thermal. I always used language classes as social events to meet new people maybe even pick up girls but I guess you didn't even have chance to use them this way

thermal Wrote:1. Teacher enters classroom, chats with class for 1 minute.
2. The weeks vocab is reviewed through (kanji showed and we read, pitch is typically over pronounced by the teacher).
3. A new grammar point is presented usually without any context. This means this.
4. A handout is given to all the students with sentences with blanks in them. We fill in the blanks with the grammar, making sure to use the correct form.
5. At the end the teacher asks some students to read out each one (ie Tom please read your answer for 1, Sarah please read your answer for 2.. Usually it will just go around the room)
6. Students then do the next section, there will be sentences with blanks, but this time the grammar is already there, you need to choose a word appropriate to the sentence for example 高かった！以外にも＿＿＿＿ (It was expensive! However, to my surprise, _____).
7. Again once finished students are prompted to read out their answer for each one.
8. Same again, but this time the blanks will be the other side of the grammar eg ＿＿＿＿＿、以外にもおいしくなかったです。(＿＿＿＿＿＿、However, to my surprise it wasn't delicious)
9. Feedback again.
10. Do some dialog with humor aimed at 12 year olds probably involving someone having a crush on someone. You practice in pairs.
11. Now comes the fun part of the lesson, there will be a dialog where you can change the blanks each time you do it. This is done with a partner. Often there isn't time to do this.

I went to the other highly regarded school in Japan (I'm not going to say which one in public because they seem to monitor all internet communications and I never want anything to do with them again, but if you email me I'll happily tell you) And it was Exactly like that, except I would have said the target age for the class was about 7 and not 12 and this school totally ignored kanji believing that it was too hard for westerners.

These places are fine if you want to play at being a 外人 for a few months, going to some meat market every Friday with a bunch of loosers trying (and probably succeeding) to take some random Japanese girl to a love hotel. If you want something more serious/fulfilling than getting treated like a little kid and having meaningless sex with strangers then it might be tough to find. Personally I wouldn't do it at home, so why do it in Japan?

I didn't go to a language school in Japan, but I did take Intermediate Japo & Int. Business classes at 上智大学　（じょうちだいがく）. The University is regarded highly, but not very well known outside of Japan. (If you graduate you can get a job anywhere. No joke, ask anyone from Tokyo.)

All in all, the level Japanese teaching is below American teaching. The goal is always finish the book/syllabus regardless of the circumstances. Japanese teaching in is 'learn at home' then 'review' in class. Everything is based on memorization of standardized lists.

My Japanese class used Integrate Approach to Intermediate. The pace was 1 chapter every two weeks, with 4 back to back quizzes in week 1, reviews in week 2, followed by an exam. The quizzes covered all the vocab and kanji (90-150 vocab, 50-100 kanji per chapter).

We followed basically the same schedule as thermal. In the end I barely passed, because I didn't study enough (15-30 hrs every 2 weeks). I didn't learn much, neither did many/most of the other people in the class. The one's that knew a lot of the material before taking the class were probably the only one's that benefited because they used the class as a review/clarification.

On the other hand, I met many who had great result with Language Schools.

However, self study using the sentence method as a backbone continues to work wonders for me.