Although I love the fact that forums like this allow Japanese learners the opportunity to get in touch with other like-minded individuals to exchange ideas and resources, I can't help but think:

Does anyone here actually know what they're doing?

In other words - how many people here actually have experience with language acquisition or linguistic training?

I ask because I have been teaching languages for over a decade, and a good deal of the advice I have come across on these forums contravenes almost everything I was taught in teacher training and have learned in my time as a professional language teacher.

At the risk of sounding abrasive, I would like to pose an open question to anyone who has offered advice here:

Where is your source for your advice?

Are you speaking from the perspective of an experienced language learner?

Are you advocating method 'X' because you've successfully used it and therefore know it's tried-and-true?

Or are you merely advocating something just because it happens to be the method you're using and you are therefore very hopeful that it works?

With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Or is this really a case of the blind leading the blind?

mc2mc Wrote:In other words - how many people here actually have experience with language acquisition or linguistic training?

Most do not, I think -- I've been teaching Japanese for 4 years now, but I also disagree with a fair amount of the stuff here.

Quote:I ask because I have been teaching languages for over a decade, and a good deal of the advice I have come across on these forums contravenes almost everything I was taught in teacher training and have learned in my time as a professional language teacher.

I agree with that, however, one thing to keep in mind is that this forum is geared towards people wanting to self study, not take a class. At least this forum advocates some kind of plan for language learning that can work for some people.

However, I do try to emphasize the fact that some of what I say here is based not only on my own personal experience with language learning but also observing several hundred students. I have some theoretical pedagogy experience but not a whole lot.

Quote:With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Of course, being proficient in Japanese doesn't have much to do with whether you are qualified to give advice to others on how to learn. I suppose I would be considered proficient in Japanese, and I would not recommend the method by which I learned to anyone (parts of it I would, but not the whole). Sometimes people will claim that you can't criticize or support a method you didn't try yourself, but I think that's nonsense.

To be honest I don't hold the position of professional language teacher in high regards.

Hello mc2mc. Could you give some examples of advice that you disagree with, and how you feel your own background and knowledge of particular linguistic areas (also, examples please) might factor into your disagreement?

I took classes for many years. I experienced many different teachers and teaching styles. Most of them didn't get me very far.
Using the advice of people on this forum, I think I've gotten pretty far.
I think it's pretty easy to quantify how effective a certain study method is. You either know something or you don't. How many new items do you learn each day? This is what it all comes down to, isn't it?
I can definitely tell you that I learn more things each day now, than I ever did in a class.

@Zarxrax
I agree with you on that. I;m definitely learning way more than taking a japanese class. And i have had my fair share in the past.

I'm not mc2mc, but the major thing I disagree with here is the constant advice of "Don't worry about studying X, you'll pick it up naturally through exposure." Most of the time I disagree with these statements out of direct personal experience, that I did not "naturally" pick up whatever X they're talking about.

(mc2mc: You're not likely to get much good response on this forum; this forum, like other language learning forums on the Internet, has essentially a sneering contempt for classes and language teachers -- at best they're considered incompetent and useless, at worst actively malicious in misleading students. It's very rare to see anyone say a good thing about a teacher or a class.)

Quote:I think it's pretty easy to quantify how effective a certain study method is. You either know something or you don't. How many new items do you learn each day? This is what it all comes down to, isn't it?

Absolutely not -- trying to quantify your language knowledge or progress in terms of numbers of words or kanji is a huge mistake, because it's not all or nothing. One person can make 50 flash cards with a Japanese word on one side and an English gloss on the other, while another person practices 10 words in context and studies the pitch accent and the correct usage of the word. You could still argue that the former person learned more, but it would be silly to say that he learned more purely because 50 > 10.

Judging study methods is actually quite difficult because it's hard to know if someone "learned" something or remembers it later, and since different programs emphasize different things, it can be hard to compare. The program I teach in emphasizes speaking at the beginning, so if you take early students (1st and 2nd year) they tend to be behind other programs in reading, but ahead of them in speaking. Now, our program does this because the people who set the program up believe that brings the best benefit in the long term. Whether it actually does or not is extremely hard to say with certainty. Judging in the short term is even harder -- it's impossible to compare student A who has studied only speaking for 10 weeks and can have simple conversations but not even read/write kana, with student B who has studied Heisig for 10 weeks and can't say a single word of Japanese but can write hundreds of kanji from English keywords. Obviously in functional usage student A is "better", but that ignores the potential long-term benefits of Heisig, and if you tried to say that student B is better you might be ignoring potential long-term benefits from the speech-first approach.

It's also very difficult because motivation is a huge factor, and can do a lot to compensate for a potentially bad study method. Some people are naturally motivated and more interested in self-study (you tend to find larger concentrations of them here), other people need a class to get them into a routine and force them to study. If a person didn't feel like they were making progress in a class, but then did self-study and felt like they were making a lot of progress, that doesn't mean that self-study is better than a class.

I don't know about learning strategies, but for Japanese, I feel like there's a whole lot of blind leading blind. There seems like there's a lot of people who study 1-2 years of Japanese and then begin to answer or correct others in regards to the little amount of Japanese they know.

It's a little annoying when people try to correct me when I'm offering correct advice.
I only help people with stuff I know with absolute certainly. I never guess!
I guess this is why nowadays I find myself offering less and less help for people who are studying Japanese or Korean. Even if they're asking for the help, they don't want to accept it gracefully.

mc2mc Wrote:With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Or is this really a case of the blind leading the blind?

With all due respect I've found that dedicated self learners, in almost any field, are usually the most skilled individuals in that field. Whether it be languages, business, computer programming, etc.

Not to mention most people in here aren't going at it "blind". Two of the most widespread tools/techniques used in this forum, that being SRS use and the following of the input hypothesis, are based on solid scientific research in those areas.

yudantaiteki: of course I wasn't trying to imply that you can compare apples to oranges.
But you can usually tell if one method is giving better results than another.

For instance, let's look at vocabulary acquisition. When taking classes, we would usually have to learn about 20 words a week. This was just basic "japanese on one side, english on the other" kind of stuff. And it often wasn't integrated well with the rest of the material for reinforcement. When we moved on to something else, the words rarely popped back up again. Most classroom exercises typically used a very small set of vocabulary that never changed, even after learning new vocab. Pretty much all the vocab that I learned in classes literally went in one ear and out the other.
Doing self study, I usually pick up about 10 new words a day, with context. With the help of my SRS, I also make sure that I don't forget them.
So for that case, for me, my self-study is the clear winner in terms of vocabulary acquisition.

I find this forum very useful and I visit frequently to find new learning techniques. I don't think you can use any one method to go from beginner to fluent. To keep your study interesting, dynamic and effective, I think you need to try new methods and adjust old ones as you progress.

There is a lot of advice in this forum, and certainly, not all of it is perfect. But, many people cling to certain techniques because they see great progress. Lots of people argue about the "don't study grammar, pick it up naturally" technique... if you were to try this approach, and you weren't making progress, isn't it common sense to just switch techniques? This grammar approach probably doesn't work for most people, but it may work for someone.

People on this forum continue to introduce and tweak methods that I would have never known about before. In a year and a half of self study of Japanese (guided by this forum), I have far surpassed my ability to understand French with 4 years of classroom study.

mc2mc Wrote:Does anyone here actually know what they're doing?

Through collective trial and error, I'd say yes. Linguistic training? No... I can see why that's required for teaching in a classroom setting but it's not something that's needed to experiment with self-study methods and then share your experience with said experiment. This forum shares the anecdotal data of such self-study experiments daily and I for one can say it has helped me to no end. If we had to be qualified to do so, who would post and what would they say? "Ok, turn to page x in Genki and work on that." Yawn. This is about thinking outside of a conventional box. The people that post here often are the ones that have been learning for ~1 - 2 years mostly and not people that have just been at it for ~ 1 - 2 months.

mc2mc Wrote:I ask because I have been teaching languages for over a decade, and a good deal of the advice I have come across on these forums contravenes almost everything I was taught in teacher training and have learned in my time as a professional language teacher.

I don't agree with everything here either. I do think RTK, SRS and a Tonne of input IS a good thing but I think the "everything will come naturally" sentiment is a bit of a fallacy. What are the sort of things you are talking about? I'd like to hear about it from your perspective given your experience.

mc2mc Wrote:At the risk of sounding abrasive, I would like to pose an open question to anyone who has offered advice here:

Where is your source for your advice?

The source? Actually giving things a go, keeping what works and chucking what doesn't. You'll find people here have tried a lot of different things and after a while finally settled into something that really works for them.

mc2mc Wrote:Are you speaking from the perspective of an experienced language learner?

In school I learned Spanish or should I say "learned spanish greetings and self introduction for 3 years in a row". That's vastly different, I know, but I used to love Spanish and all that had changed by the 3rd year.

That being said, to answer your question I feel like someone who has self-studied for a year and seen good results is a far more experienced language learner than someone who has taken a class for a year (and seen the expected results) because they A: have the motivation it takes B: can make it on their own C: are resourceful D: aren't held back by any ideas of "this is how it works, this is how you do it".

mc2mc Wrote:Are you advocating method 'X' because you've successfully used it and therefore know it's tried-and-true?

Or are you merely advocating something just because it happens to be the method you're using and you are therefore very hopeful that it works?

There are times when you look back on your progress and go "holy crap I have come SO far". It's those times that you know what you're doing is working for you. It's never just "cross your fingers". If something ain't working, chuck it.

I can say with confidence that the skills set, tool set, wealth of ideas and experience that I have gained in learning Japanese so far would be absolutely invaluable to me if I were to repeat the process with another language. I'm sure I'll learn a lot more about how to learn as I continue to do so and once I'm done I definitely want to take on another language.

mc2mc Wrote:With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Or is this really a case of the blind leading the blind?

In terms of proficiency in Japanese I've still got a long way to go. In terms of having refined my method for learning Japanese, I'm 90% finished with that! From here on out it's honestly just a case of sticking with what I'm doing because I can see how well it's working for me.

I get advice from the highest authorities all the time, it's when I speak and a native gives me a correction and make sure to retain that information and apply it. That to me is language acquisition.

From my observations of foreigners in Japan who studied or are studying Japanese in college, I would say those who are being led by the blind are those who are studying language at universities. I am not fluent, but I am at a higher level than most of them.

I have been self-studying online for less than three years using free websites I learned about on this forum. I took two years of Spanish in high school and one semester of German in college. What a waste of time and money that was!

Meeting with a private bilingual tutor once a month one on one would be beneficial I think. Other than that, I can't believe people waste time and money trying to learn a language in a classroom environment.

It seems to me that when people say, "It will come naturally," they mean, "Don´t worry about it yet, you have other things to worry about. Eventually this may cause you problems, and when that time comes you can bust it out, but for now what you need is exposure."

Hmm. Where did this come from? I'm usually so cynical.

yudantaiteki Wrote:It's very rare to see anyone say a good thing about a teacher or a class.

Well, being a language teacher is better than being on unemployment.
For society.
Arguably.

mc2mc Wrote:Does anyone here actually know what they're doing?

Does anyone with paper credentials? A degree simply means you've passed the required course work. Being a teacher for umpteen years doesn't mean you are a good one.

Quote:With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Sorry, "with all due respect," tends to mean the exact opposite.

It is very possible to give a detailed explanation of ha vs ga, without reaching some arbitrary level of proficiency. What's important is giving accurate info.

Quote:I ask because I have been teaching languages for over a decade, and a good deal of the advice I have come across on these forums contravenes almost everything I was taught in teacher training and have learned in my time as a professional language teacher.

How about you give it a try and then compare? That's what I'm currently doing. The tried and true, endlessly credentialed approach is losing. I make the mark, but I don't really learn much.

Also, list some of these contradictions you've come across. It will make this post seem less like an inflammatory troll.

kazelee Wrote:

Quote:With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Sorry, "with all due respect," tends to mean the exact opposite.

Kind of like the phrase 'having said that' (

- ~30 seconds in).

Being a language teacher is like being a doctor. If you are seeing him too often, you need a better one.
Being a language teacher should be similar to being an enlightened sage. He gives you some advise, then you go off and put it into practice for a few years before seeking instruction again.

mc2mc Wrote:Does anyone here actually know what they're doing?

Yes, many people in fact.

mc2mc Wrote:In other words - how many people here actually have experience with language acquisition or linguistic training?

That's completely different from your first question. However, we all have acquired at least one language. Many have acquired at least two (their native language and English). Quite a few have acquired Japanese as a second language. As for training, there are a couple on here that are experienced in teaching Japanese (one is Japanese). I and others are also teachers but not of languages, though there's reasonable carry over of skill sets.

mc2mc Wrote:I ask because I have been teaching languages for over a decade, and a good deal of the advice I have come across on these forums contravenes almost everything I was taught in teacher training and have learned in my time as a professional language teacher.

Probably true. Like Yudan pointed out, this forum is geared more toward self study which requires a different approach now and again. However, if you can give good examples and counter them most are willing to discuss if not try it out themselves.

mc2mc Wrote:At the risk of sounding abrasive, I would like to pose open questions to anyone who has offered advice here:

Fixed that for you.

mc2mc Wrote:Where is your source for your advice?

Depends on the person. Mine's mainly from anecdotal evidence from these forums and my own personal experience.

mc2mc Wrote:Are you speaking from the perspective of an experienced language learner?

Depends on your term experienced. I've been at it for two and a half years if that helps qualify myself as an example.

mc2mc Wrote:Are you advocating method 'X' because you've successfully used it and therefore know it's tried-and-true?

I can't try every method. Some of the methods I used which did work I would not advocate because a more efficient method came along. For example I started with RTK, but I advocate doing RTK Lite using the KO2001 Kanji. Part of that is on experience of what Kanji I've been encountering during later phases and part of it is the reaction people to RTK Lite and KO2001 sets.

mc2mc Wrote:Or are you merely advocating something just because it happens to be the method you're using and you are therefore very hopeful that it works?

No, I usually preface experimental advice as such. I try to come back and give updates to how I am doing on it. I've changed up and adapted my approach far too much to make the claim there's one true way to this.

mc2mc Wrote:With all due to respect to people generous enough to have taken the time and effort to help others become proficient in Japanese - have you yourself reached a level of Japanese proficiency where you can offer such advice?

Yes. You don't need to have all bases covered to offer advice on one point.

I don't need to Deadlift 800 pounds to get a guy started out at 200 pounds. I will take advice from a guy that deadlifts 800 pounds and adapt it to myself and the guy doing 200. Think of it like a pyramid training scheme that actually works.

mc2mc Wrote:Or is this really a case of the blind leading the blind?

Given what I've seen on this forum, I don't think so.

I don't know which advice you're referring to, but I think some members of this forum are giving relatively conservative advice.

For example, as yudantaiteki already said, he has been teaching Japanese at graduate school for four years and occasionally emphasizes merits of traditional learning methods. It's quite obvious he has an excellent command of Japanese, and I think most of us respect his knowledge and experience. Aijin is a native Japanese speaker and studying "Japanese as foreign language" at Stanford University. It seems that she also has a conservative opinion when it comes to language learning.

If my memory serves me correctly, Thora is a translator who sometimes expresses her concern about learning methods a la AJAT and related advice that might mislead gullible learners. I don't think they're the only frequent posters who are against some of radical learning methods.

I'd say anyone who simply ignores their advice and follows a random unconventional method for no apparent reason is stupid. I believe most of the people on this forum who prefer self-learning techniques that contradict what you have learned in teachers training and your own experience have their own reasons.

That said, as far as I know, no frequent poster on this forum has a Ph.D. in Japanese or linguistics or has been teaching the language for more than a decade. If these kinds of things are required to talk about language learning on an internet forum, we have to admit that we don't know what we're doing here. Some have teaching experience, but I don't think anyone has been a qualified language teacher for more than a decade.

As for my source for my advice, it is:

1. My friends who started learning my mother tongue as adults and reached native/near-native fluency including this woman who mastered the language to the extent that even local people assume that she was born and raised in the region, i.e., she acquired the local dialect to local people's fluency.

2. My own experience of learning a foreign language.

3. Some of articles about first/second language acquisition. I don't buy everything radical researchers like Stephen Krashen say or think the study of second language acquisition is as mature as other sciences such as math and physics. But what happened to my friends supports some of their ideas.

Also, this isn't a reliable source, but I have to admit that anecdotal evidence on the internet influenced my view of language acquisition to a degree; when you see people speak/write your native language fluently, it's so convincing it's hard to ignore their opinions.

I only recommend methods/techniques that seem to have worked for me. I can't say I'm satisfied with my foreign language skills, but at least I can say they "seem" to be working well. Of course, it's almost impossible to tell what actually worked when you tried various methods because language learning isn't that simple. But giving advice from my own experience is the best I can do.

Fortunately my view of second language acquisition is similar to the traditional view of first language acquisition. Hence, if I were totally wrong and a very young, ignorant member believed what I say, my advice wouldn't do a great disservice. So I don't care much about gullible people who always forget to take cum grano salis and believe anything a random guy on the internet says; it's not my responsibility to take care of their stupidity.

I think I have answered your questions. So may I ask you some questions too?

You said you have been a language teacher for more than a decade. And this is a forum for Japanese learners. So I assume the languages you have been teaching include Japanese. Am I right?

How many students have you taught and how many of them reached fluency to the extent that they might pass for native speakers?

Is your native language Japanese? If not, could you translate what you have said into Japanese and answer my questions in Japanese?

I know just because you can speak a language doesn't mean you're a good teacher. Good instructors may not be good players. But language learning is tricky in that you can't assess students' fluency if you're not a good speaker. So, I think language teachers are required to have an excellent command of the languages they're teaching.

I understand this can sound rude. But I don't think it's not unfair to ask this when you questioned reliability of people's advice and asked if we know what we're doing. I'm sure I can pick up on unnaturalness in long posts if your Japanese isn't very good.

Oh, and if you're just a troll, well, you did a good job. I fell for it.

I think due to the nature of this website being one revolving around RTK, there is a bit of tunnel blindness here with regards to learning methods. Not exactly the blind leading the blind but I'm sure you understand my point.

Womacks23 Wrote:I think due to the nature of this website being one revolving around RTK, there is a bit of tunnel blindness here with regards to learning methods. Not exactly the blind leading the blind but I'm sure you understand my point.

Tunnel blindness = open-minded and flexible about learning. I totally understand what you mean.

Actually, the RevTK forum only occasionally addresses some aspect of the RTK method. I haven't reviewed in over a year. Not even sure that section of this website works any more.

nest0r Wrote:

Womacks23 Wrote:I think due to the nature of this website being one revolving around RTK, there is a bit of tunnel blindness here with regards to learning methods. Not exactly the blind leading the blind but I'm sure you understand my point.

Tunnel blindness = open-minded and flexible about learning. I totally understand what you mean.

No not what I mean. For starters even the basic effectiveness of RTK is hotly debated among Japanese learners and teachers. So a website based on that method is going to have a certain amount of tunnel vision. In addition I'd say pretty much the only methods being advocated here are RTK, KO2001, Kanzen Master, Tae Kim, Subtitles, AJATT...the tunnel vision on this site is related to those, more or less. A lot of the stuff posted here is just tweaks of those foundations. Not saying these are not effective just that from my point of view I think the community here is slightly over-fixated on the X set of learning methods. Compared to other forums about learning Japanese.

Womacks23 Wrote:In addition I'd say pretty much the only methods being advocated here are RTK, KO2001, Kanzen Master, Tae Kim, Subtitles, AJATT...

There are other methods and tools being mentioned (like word lists; they're swell). I would say it's more like the MMA of language acquisition.

If you must attach vision on to it, laser vision seems more suiting. Cut away all the BS. Attack the language in the most efficient manner.