I just arrived for four weeks of study in SILAC. Working to dig myself out of deep expired reviews hole now that my focus is firmly back on Japanese.

I was there..

Good stuff with silac, it's much better than AIJP IMHO.

No, but I am at ya mom's house, how about that?

Just read up a bit and that SILAC program seems like a great little program. Hmmmm....

Hey NestOr please tell my mom to pack for hot weather. Thanks!

After a week my impression of the SILAC program is positive. It was a bit of my blow to my ego to be placed at a relatively low level (I have made it through three years of University Japanese) but after a week I've concluded they are right, this is the right level for me. Although I have lots of stuff in my head, my speaking skills trail really badly, and that's the focus of this program. While all the grammar is familiar, I can't readily produce it accurately while speaking, as opposed to doing homework with books in front of me....

BTW, they don't teach kanji at all, which I think is also a positive for a RTK devotee. Minna no has the kanji in vocab lists, and they use kanji (always with furigana) in printed dialogues and homework sentences, but this way there is no conflict with studying kanji on my own -- instead it provides a way to start matching up the kanji with Yomikata at my own pace. Completing homework in kana dake is fine, kanji mo OK.

Harrow Wrote:BTW, they don't teach kanji at all, which I think is also a positive for a RTK devotee. Minna no has the kanji in vocab lists, and they use kanji (always with furigana) in printed dialogues and homework sentences, but this way there is no conflict with studying kanji on my own -- instead it provides a way to start matching up the kanji with Yomikata at my own pace. Completing homework in kana dake is fine, kanji mo OK.

they teach kanji but just in special classes once a week.... Compared to most RVK users (by user I mean someone who takes it really seriously .People who didn t get past the first 1000 and dropped before don t count) the pace is sluggish at best . I can t remember if it s 50 or 250 a semester .
.What class do you belong to ?

Harrow Wrote:I just arrived for four weeks of study in SILAC. Working to dig myself out of deep expired reviews hole now that my focus is firmly back on Japanese.

SILAC? Stable isotope labelling with amino acids in cell culture?

Sorry... biology joke.

Wow, the more I read about Yamasa, the more I wonder why it's considered a good school... it seems quite horrible compared to the school I attended in Shinjuku.

We learned approximately 6 new kanji each day, 50 a semester sounds like a joke.

Tobberoth Wrote:Wow, the more I read about Yamasa, the more I wonder why it's considered a good school... it seems quite horrible compared to the school I attended in Shinjuku.

We learned approximately 6 new kanji each day, 50 a semester sounds like a joke.

I just had a look at the site.
I thought it looked okay. For instance, they only ever use Japanese, and they never use romaji (2 massive steps up from where I learnt in Australia).

Note that the SILAC coarse is explicitly for conversation, so I would be quite disappointed if they did spend a lot of time teaching Kanji.
They run plenty of other courses that will teach you Kanji. e.g. http://www.yamasa.org/acjs/english/programs/ajsp.html


PS: what school did you go to in Shinjuku? Would you recommend it? If so, why?
I'm in Tokyo, and my Japanese is progressing, but it's slow going because I just don't get the hours. I've considered taking a month off work to do intensive study. I don't mind studying by myself, but it's my talking that is really lacking.

I did a 2-week refresher at Yamasa a couple of years ago before I went all over the country, and it was a godsend at the time. My Japanese was so rusty, it was pitiful. But the teachers there got me to a point where I could get basic conversations going again. It wasn't what I'd call an earth-shattering learning experience, but it was what I needed at the time.

And yeah, I was like you Harrow-- lots of book knowledge, but horrible at speaking.

Where are you staying? I stayed in the student village. Dorm life after living on my own for so long was a bit of a culture shock.

avparker Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Wow, the more I read about Yamasa, the more I wonder why it's considered a good school... it seems quite horrible compared to the school I attended in Shinjuku.

We learned approximately 6 new kanji each day, 50 a semester sounds like a joke.

I just had a look at the site.
I thought it looked okay. For instance, they only ever use Japanese, and they never use romaji (2 massive steps up from where I learnt in Australia).

Note that the SILAC coarse is explicitly for conversation, so I would be quite disappointed if they did spend a lot of time teaching Kanji.
They run plenty of other courses that will teach you Kanji. e.g. http://www.yamasa.org/acjs/english/programs/ajsp.html


PS: what school did you go to in Shinjuku? Would you recommend it? If so, why?
I'm in Tokyo, and my Japanese is progressing, but it's slow going because I just don't get the hours. I've considered taking a month off work to do intensive study. I don't mind studying by myself, but it's my talking that is really lacking.

I studied at ISI Language School. It's situated in Shin-Ookubo, 1 minute walk from the Shin-Ookubo station on yamanote line (or 10 minutes walking from Shinjuku station).

I would definitely recommend it. The teachers are good, everything in class is in Japanese (in fact, we only used Japanese textbooks). The approach is still traditional of course, with exercises and kanji training, but there's a lot of conversation involved and the teachers usually introduce new things with stories.

The school is FILLED with Koreans and Swedes, those two nationalities easily make up over 80% of the students. I don't know how it is now, but when I studied there, we went partying with our class and our teachers on several occasions which was great fun and an awesome opportunity for training Japanese.

The school is mainly aimed at JLPT, so if you have no interest in JLPT what so ever, it might not be the best school. Personally, I think it's great to have a concrete goal though.

Tobberoth, knowing you were confused on the nature of the SILAC program what complaints do you have with Yamasa? IMO if I was going to do a directed language study program in Japan the last thing I would want to spend my money on is a course devoted to the JLPT. Improving reading ability is something I can easily do on my own as there is no real possibility for error. However, being able to practice speaking under constant correction is not something one can easily do.

Of course this is my opinion. I'm not knocking those that do JLPT directed studies. Just for me personally I'm not sure if the cost to benefit ratio is there knowing what can be accomplished through self study.

activeaero Wrote:Tobberoth, knowing you were confused on the nature of the SILAC program what complaints do you have with Yamasa? IMO if I was going to do a directed language study program in Japan the last thing I would want to spend my money on is a course devoted to the JLPT. Improving reading ability is something I can easily do on my own as there is no real possibility for error. However, being able to practice speaking under constant correction is not something one can easily do.

Of course this is my opinion. I'm not knocking those that do JLPT directed studies. Just for me personally I'm not sure if the cost to benefit ratio is there knowing what can be accomplished through self study.

Question is, do you believe the SILAC program makes you better at Japanese communication faster than any other Japanese school? I don't, and I'm sure most people who agree with the AJATT "teachings" agree, output can be trained, but not rushed. You can only become good at communication if you have the knowledge to back it up. If you HAVE the knowledge, output is actually quite easy to train.

My guess is, a focus on communication in a Japanese school in Japan gives less bang for your buck. We conversed all the time in our school and became really good at it, while still keeping a full-speed approach in learning "actual" Japanese. Knowing how to communicate is quite useless if you lack the vocabulary to say anything, right?

When I said the studies at ISI was JLPT focused, I didn't mean we only trained recognition and filling in the correct option, just that we learned the Japanese JLPT wants you to know. We had conversations etc all the time and trained a lot of production.

Tobberoth Wrote:Question is, do you believe the SILAC program makes you better at Japanese communication faster than any other Japanese school? I don't, and I'm sure most people who agree with the AJATT "teachings" agree, output can be trained, but not rushed. You can only become good at communication if you have the knowledge to back it up. If you HAVE the knowledge, output is actually quite easy to train.

My guess is, a focus on communication in a Japanese school in Japan gives less bang for your buck. We conversed all the time in our school and became really good at it, while still keeping a full-speed approach in learning "actual" Japanese. Knowing how to communicate is quite useless if you lack the vocabulary to say anything, right?

When I said the studies at ISI was JLPT focused, I didn't mean we only trained recognition and filling in the correct option, just that we learned the Japanese JLPT wants you to know. We had conversations etc all the time and trained a lot of production.

I completely agree that the SILAC program would not be a good method for complete beginners that truly want to become exceptional in Japanese. Like you said if you don't already have a good idea of what you should be saying then you're probably wasting a lot of time that could be better used improving actual comprehension.

My point of view, and I should have made this clear in my first post so I apologize, is coming from that of the general population on this forum. Meaning people that have been studying away on their own and that have acquired a good grammar and vocabulary foundation that have never really had a chance to put it to use. So from this point of view it seems like this type of program would be a really great supplement that keeps in line with the input method guideline of no speaking without absolute correction.

For example: someone stuck in America with hardly any Japanese native contact focuses all of their effort towards reading comprehension and within a year or two reaches JLPT2 level. If this person then went to Japan, haven never spoken Japanese in his/her life (not to any real degree that is), and had their first speaking experience in an intensively corrected conversation program this would seem to me like a really good recipe for developing exceptional speaking skills.