Thora Wrote:Apparently Mezbup is still crying "classes suck." Perhaps we could replace "gimmicks" with "zealots" ;-)

Read it properly. Says "classes suck for learning kanji". Is true, always will be. The next part says I know quite a few people who graduated with a degree in Japanese and I'm quite impressed with their speaking and have no doubts about the classroom method in that respect. That doesn't mean I think that people who take classes won't learn Japanese, it means I think that if people who are taking classes want to learn Kanji seriously then they should go outside of the classroom methods to do that. You'd have to be nuts to think "classes rock at teaching kanji". They don't.

Ben Bullock Wrote:It's hard for me to see where in those two or three sentences I said anything about whether people are serious language learners or what results they might be getting.

Like others have said it comes across as overwhelmingly negative and that turns people off. If I read that I feel like it wasn't a good forum at all. Yet, it's a great one.

I'd probably rather use the words controversial and unconventional to describe things here. Anytime you get people who go against the grain you always get everyone else calling them crazy and telling them they're wrong. A long time later they wind up changing their tune because the people that had this "crazy idea" we're actually on to something.

*shrugs* if you ask me 50% of this forum is just arguments now. Getting kinda bored with that.

Ben Bullock Wrote:No, I'd like to know, and it surely would make this a more productive discussion. Since so many people are suddenly so passionately interested in reviews of web forums , I'd like to know why people think I should rate forum.koohii.com above, say, the JREF forum, or JapanesePod101.com forums.

I think most people just got a little miffed by your wholly negative review of this forum, which many people here see a great deal of value in. It was the connotation of your remarks on the site, not how many stars or whatever place it got in the list, that probably sets most people here off. Very specifically, it's using the words "dodgy" and "gimmicky" which really only can be taken in a negative way without talking about any of the redeeming qualities this forum does have going for it.

And I think you know that.

Anyways, if you want a list, such qualities would include the very active user base, discussions on alternative learning methods, group compilation projects, fast response to questions, overall cheerful and encouraging attitude, and posts on various interesting Japanese resources (music, television shows, websites, etc.).

Oh, and I wouldn't call this discussion passionate. Forum's a bit active and people are talkative, but that's about it. People are agreeing with you mostly, just not liking the way you went about saying it.

Edit: I suppose I said "wholly negative," though you may be thinking "This forum is concerned with the language, not Heisig's books." is a positive spin on the place. And I suppose you did give it 3/5 stars.

Jarvik7 Wrote:For what it's worth, I used to make heavy use of the FAQ when I started learning Japanese, and still have it in my bookmarks. I don't know if you're the original maintainer though.

I'm glad you find it useful, although it probably needs a lot of improvement. Unfortunately I've been the sole maintainer and the creator of those particular web pages since 1994.

The only reason I can think of that you might think they weren't originally mine is that there are three documents called the "sci.lang.japan FAQ", two of them made by other people. Originally mine was called the "alternative sci.lang.japan FAQ", hence the mysterious "a" in the "afaq" in the URL. Both of the other "sci.lang.japan FAQ" documents have been unchanged for more than ten years and don't mention any web forums, since web forums didn't even exist when they were created.

You can find the other two ageing FAQ documents at Jim Breen's web site, somewhere, or Google for "olaf meeuwissen FAQ" or "rafael santos sci.lang.japan FAQ". But, anything post-1997 is entirely my fault.

Ben Bullock Wrote:Unfortunately I've been the sole maintainer and the creator of those particular web pages since 1994.

So you've been learning Japanese since at least 1994?

I think this forum deserves a higher rating because it has nest0r. The end.

Thora Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:I should point out that I still do not have a very high opinion of RTK, by itself.

RTK was never intended to stand alone. It can complement -even facilitate - 'regular' learning.

Of course it can't stand alone, what I meant there is that I don't have a high opinion of RTK when a learner is left up to his own devices to figure out what to do after finishing it. I really think that in the next edition, Heisig should get someone else to write the introduction to say more about this -- given that he's asking you to do something very unusual and that has a short-term negative affect on your Japanese ability, I think he owes it to the learner to explain what this is going to do in the long term and where to go after finishing RTK 1. The few hints he does give in RTK 1 and 2 are vague and sometimes contradictory, and he makes a lot of dogmatic, strong statements that apparently aren't really true (judging from the way this community uses the book).

SammyB Wrote:I think this forum deserves a higher rating because it has nest0r. The end.

You're posting with three accounts now?

I think JREF tends to have very beginner level questions or questions of translation that are a characteristic of those with passing interest. Japanesepod101's forum is largely inactive, and I don't know if the discussions there are better either.

I don't post here too much anymore, but I do check back on occasion to see the latest "gimmicky" learning methods people are using. LOL. I do think this community is the best I've found for keeping up to date on the latest Japanese language learning resources, and it's progressed a lot since the days of "Katzumoto is GOD! RAWR!" That said, I'd still rate How-to-learn-any-language as a more informative community for language learning in general, although the information there is more diluted and the geek quotient much higher.

Ben Bullock Wrote:

thurd Wrote:

thurd Wrote:I've searched a long time for Japanese learners forum and this is just in a class of its own.

Forum is defined by its users, in this case users that are not afraid to try something new, experiment with "gimmicky" methods in order to get some (hopefully) good results. I think we have here representatives of every methodology thats out there and it's much better for progress than following a set of rules defined X years ago when world was completely different and learning tools were sparse and primitive.

OK, so it's the "new-fangled" learning methods that you like about this forum.

Wouldn't you agree there's more detail to his opinion than simply liking "new-fangled" learning methods? Considering the bolded text above, it seems that he believes the strength of this forum is that the users experiment with different learning methods and then report their results. Often, others will take up the same learning method someone else has experimented with, and then try to replicate their results. A certain method usually becomes popular here when many people successfully replicate the same results. Therefore, the usefulness of this forum stems from the sheer number of results reported and the discussion surrounding those results.

From my own point of view, I find the wealth of learning resources available here and the reviews of those resources just as valuable, if not more, than users' reports on their learning methods. Many of the resources that can be found here are simply not available elsewhere. SmartFM's Core2000 and Core6000, if you're familiar with them, are both available here as anki decks sorted by kanji frequency. What this means is that each new sentence in the decks introduces the fewest number of new kanji as possible, which clearly allows new readings and vocabulary to be more easily digested. This is just one example, but there are plenty of other resources, including entire textbooks, that have been transcribed into anki decks. In addition, many users post detailed reviews of the resources they use, including textbooks and media. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned all of the textbooks that are discussed here. Everyone seems to have forgotten that textbook learning is common here as well.

Ben Bullock Wrote:No, I'd like to know, and it surely would make this a more productive discussion. Since so many people are suddenly so passionately interested in reviews of web forums , I'd like to know why people think I should rate forum.koohii.com above, say, the JREF forum, or JapanesePod101.com forums.

One thing I notice, as far as negative reviews go, the reviews of either the JREF forum, or the JapanesePod101 forum, or even the WordReference forum aren't 100% positive, yet nobody seems to be complaining about that.

Maybe your reviews of those forums aren't 100% positive, but your review of our forum sounds 100% negative. I think people wouldn't have minded if there were more balance to it.
I think the strongest aspect of this forum is that it is frequented by self-learners.
Years ago, I took some Japanese classes for a while, didn't make much progress at all, but I had to stop taking them after a while. Once I stopped taking classes, I *wanted* to continue learning Japanese, but I honestly had absolutely no idea how to go about it on my own. I tried reading through my textbook, and doing the JapanesePod101 thing, but it didn't help at all, and my net Japanese knowledge was actually decreasing, as I was forgetting more than I was learning. So reluctantly, I just stopped studying at all, and forgot most of it.
Later, I began taking some classes again, at a different school, again wasn't making much progress. But then I found this forum, and I realized that it actually *IS* possible to learn the language on your own, it doesn't have to be boring, and you can make progress faster than in a class. If it weren't for this forum, I wouldn't be learning Japanese today.
I think a lot of people are like me, and have absolutely no idea how to learn a language on their own. And this forum has a wealth of materials on it. Compared to other forums, this forum has a ton more discussion about HOW to study (various methods and how effective they are), as opposed to just generic questions about the language.

But, it doesn't particularly matter to me whether you change the review. I had some time, so I thought I'd contribute to the discussion.

There's a reason I made a thread Why do you still visit RevTK Forums. It points out by the users the benefits this forum offers.

The thing is, when you self study you have to be gimmicky. If you self study in US with Broadband it's different than self-study as an ALT in a rural area of Japan versus a forward deployed base near a combat zone (my situation for only two more weeks). This forum offers not only ideas, but resources to effectively learn Japanese on your own outside the ability of living in Japan or taking a college level Japanese course. Those ideas help one tailor to a unique situation (job, family, illness, etc.). Infinitely more useful than the pat "Go to a college Japanese class".

As far as RTK the "book" goes, we've debated that in this forum in a number of threads. I remember a number of others and myself posting a number of problems with the book that this forum (and website) helps solve.

Now I don't frequent many other Japanese learning forums. The only other one was "The Japanese Page" which has very little traffic like Bullock posted. I could not fairly comment about many of the other forums on the list for good or bad. Granted, the reason I don't visit others that much is a quick lurk reveals I'd get the same benefit if not more just from this forum (without all the annoying signatures and animated avatars and ads).

I can say this: after 2 1/2 years I can listen to and read native Japanese material in addition to speaking and writing. My progress is SLOW compared to many on this forum, and I'm not close to fluent or literate, I would never have been at this point without this forum (thanks again Fabrice, have another 10 dollars this month).

Though I would not get all the benefits I was getting 2 years ago, I have no problem sticking around hearing about advanced ideas and helping on basic ones. There are others on this forum that do the same. Given all that is offered up here (with a low spam rate to boot), I'd rate this one of the better forums.

Pretty much second everything Nukemarine and Zarxrax said. Completely agree with everything both of you said.

Also second a lot of what others said. I don't think anyone here is suggesting this forum doesn't have it's owns quirks/issues, but using the words "gimmicky" and "dodgy" to describe the main aspects of it just gives it a negative tone. It doesn't matter if you like the forum or not, anyone who doesn't already know anything about this website is pretty much given a red flag to stay away. Personally, gimmicky and dodgy are words I relate to infomercials and stuff... "My name's *insertnamehere*, and I lost 55 lbs on the Taco-Bell drive-thru diet!!" Now THAT's gimmicky and dodgy.

Also, this is the only, and I mean ONLY, forum I've ever posted more than once or twice on (and I do realize I have a low post count on here too). And even still, I only ever posted on 1 or 2 other forums in my life. I try to stay away from forums because I get sucked in and tend to not get anything done, but while I'm here, it's almost a guilty pleasure for me. At least if I don't get my real life Japanese done because of reading the forum too long, at least I usually learned something about Japan or studying anyway I love hearing everyone detail their experiences with study methods, living in Japan, movies, JLPT, etc. That's one of the awesome things about this forum. There are topics about everything in Japan and the language. And because there are a lot of regulars here, conversations are actually continued and usually maintained for a bit. Another great thing is the low amount of spam and trolls in general. The few debates I've read and taken part in have usually been very controlled and informative. Most people have enough respect to respond fairly and appropriately, instead of the usual "u go fk urself bcuz i is rite and this is the internetz!" that plagues so many forums.

Just my two cents.

See... this forum has great people! One of BB's criticisms of another thread was that regulars caused threads to lack focus. hmm I wonder if this forum doesn't strike a nice balance between sharing of knowledge/experience and a certain camaraderie. I prefer getting my cold hard facts with a bit of personality.

Questions often elicit more than one answer - sometimes even discussion. I'd be surprised if many incorrect answers went unnoticed.

To relearn Japanese, I took an extended work sabbatical. It's doubtful I would have stayed so motivated without this site. It worked out well which meant the financial hit was worthwhile. I also learned so much here about more than Japanese language: including computers, open source, gadgets, media, etc. People are very generous with their time in that way. I had no hesitation recommending this forum to several people - beginners, advanced learners and native speakers.

PS I've never followed or participated in another forum. I did, however, take a long stroll through forums and blogs when I 'researched' AJATT. A couple of them seemed informative and civil, but imo they lacked the range, depth, collaboration and innovation of RevTK.

^^ what they all said.

the big deal here is the community. i've never participated in a forum before either, but i love this place. everyone's willing to help each other out. if someone's struggling with something, and posts about it a ton of people try to cheer them up & help them out. There's members who've been learning japanese for a long time as well as short, so we can all bounce ideas off each other and find out the most strong and weak ones. questions about the language aren't met with disdain, incomprehensible answers, or someone copy-pasting exactly what you just read & didn't understand. there's a ton of people here i would love to be friends with in the real world too!! the amount of shared resources is amazzzzing!! it makes me wanna share stuff too, and get involved in stuff i would be too lazy to do on my own. basically, it's great! ：Ｄ

Jarvik7 Wrote:

SammyB Wrote:I think this forum deserves a higher rating because it has nest0r. The end.

You're posting with three accounts now?

Ha. Actually Jarvik, what makes you think I haven't already been posting with three accounts?

The AJATT site, this site, srs anki. Without them i would probably be taking more classes of japanese, which i found so bothersome. Sure anyone can get good marks, but that doesn't mean your learning anything. I just looked at my srs anki sentence deck just today and it stated that it's been 6 months of doing sentences. I do have other decks, but so far it's been 6 months of srs and immersion. Kanji reading abilities have improved to pretty good level, but not where i want. I want to learn around 3000+ before being satisfied as well as their context if possible. So far i know 1100+, still away to go but i'm confident by in a few more months it will jump to 2042 and beyond.

nest0r Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:

SammyB Wrote:I think this forum deserves a higher rating because it has nest0r. The end.

You're posting with three accounts now?

Ha. Actually Jarvik, what makes you think I haven't already been posting with three accounts?

sometimes i wonder if your ALL nest0r

IceCream Wrote:sometimes i wonder if your ALL nest0r

All nest0r, all the time. Keeping all these personalities separate is hard sometimes.

Nothing like a bit of criticism to rally the troops for a Love In. haha

Thora Wrote:Apparently Mezbup is still crying "classes suck." Perhaps we could replace "gimmicks" with "zealots" ;-)

Mezbup Wrote:Read it properly. Says "classes suck for learning kanji". Is true, always will be. The next part says I know quite a few people who graduated with a degree in Japanese and I'm quite impressed with their speaking and have no doubts about the classroom method in that respect. [...]You'd have to be nuts to think "classes rock at teaching kanji". They don't.

My post should've been 2 separate lines - separate ideas. On the first part: I just thought it was amusing that while I was typing that we are past being anti-classes, you were typing an anti-class post. That's all. But I guess I'm nuts, Mezbup, because I don't share your views on classes and kanji learning or spoken abilities. But it's a bit off topic, so I won't go into it here.

For the second part: One thing I noticed when reading through other forums was that the overall impression of this forum changed over the years. Before, we were sometimes portrayed more as RTK cultists or kanji freaks. More recently, we're more likely to be described as SRS OCDs. When I mentioned "zealots", I was referring to the tendencies of some folks to focus on quantitative measurements, efficiency, speed, etc. above all else and report their ongoing statistics. (Others are quick to balance the herculean efforts with less impressive figures to salvage the egos of mere mortals.) :-)

Quote:*shrugs* if you ask me 50% of this forum is just arguments now. Getting kinda bored with that.

Yeah, the "faster, harder" stuff doesn't particularly interest me (beyond enjoying seeing people succeed.) I can see that others are motivated by friendly competition or quantitative results though. I don't need to read or respond to it, so it never occurred to me to announce my boredom...

Thora Wrote:More recently, we're more likely to be described as SRS OCDs. When I mentioned "zealots", I was referring to the tendencies of some folks to focus on quantitative measurements, efficiency, speed, etc. above all else and report their ongoing statistics. (Others are quick to balance the herculean efforts with less impressive figures to salvage the egos of mere mortals.) :-)

Haaah, you hit the nail on the head. (For me.)

I think, once I reached an advanced enough level, it was hard for me to feel like I was making progress when I read. But reading was still hard enough work that I didn't want to read just for the sake of reading.

And I have the sort of personality that's motivated by seeing measurable progress. When I'm working on writing a novel, too, I'll do a chart of how much I need to write and mark off the progress that I'm making.

So even though I'm not one of those people making herculean efforts -- just 15-20 cards a day -- it's hugely motivating to feel like I'm putting a dent in my ignorance, little bit by little bit. And even more so when I see a word I just studied in a book that I'm reading!

nest0r Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:

SammyB Wrote:I think this forum deserves a higher rating because it has nest0r. The end.

You're posting with three accounts now?

Ha. Actually Jarvik, what makes you think I haven't already been posting with three accounts?

I have to admit some random Australian dude with a crazy Russian guy for an avatar does make an interesting alias...

Thora Wrote:For the second part: One thing I noticed when reading through other forums was that the overall impression of this forum changed over the years. Before, we were sometimes portrayed more as RTK cultists or kanji freaks. More recently, we're more likely to be described as SRS OCDs.

This forum has improved a great deal since the first time I looked at it. You can see if you look at the very old archives that this forum was really RTK-oriented and there wasn't much help beyond that, there were a lot of "I finished RTK 1, now what?" questions with not very many good answers. In fact, I remember the first time I looked at this forum it actually increased my dislike of RTK because it seemed to me like this was the ultimate in the sort of "Heisig betrayal" I had imagined; a community of RTK likers who weren't able to actually learn Japanese because they had no idea what to do beyond RTK. This was a hasty judgment and unfair, of course, but I don't think it would be possible to draw that kind of conclusion nowadays.

Offshore Wrote:Also second a lot of what others said. I don't think anyone here is suggesting this forum doesn't have it's owns quirks/issues, but using the words "gimmicky" and "dodgy" to describe the main aspects of it just gives it a negative tone. It doesn't matter if you like the forum or not, anyone who doesn't already know anything about this website is pretty much given a red flag to stay away. Personally, gimmicky and dodgy are words I relate to infomercials and stuff... "My name's *insertnamehere*, and I lost 55 lbs on the Taco-Bell drive-thru diet!!" Now THAT's gimmicky and dodgy.

This may shock you, but is it possible for you to imagine for a moment that I kind of actually DO have some negative opinions about some of those learning methods, and I actually DO want to raise a red flag? As it says at the top of the page,

Quote:The list was compiled by the FAQ maintainer alone, and the reviews and ratings under each forum are merely the personal opinions of the FAQ maintainer.

Regardless of this, whatever learning method you choose, I wish you good luck with it.

Ben Bullock Wrote:

Offshore Wrote:Also second a lot of what others said. I don't think anyone here is suggesting this forum doesn't have it's owns quirks/issues, but using the words "gimmicky" and "dodgy" to describe the main aspects of it just gives it a negative tone. It doesn't matter if you like the forum or not, anyone who doesn't already know anything about this website is pretty much given a red flag to stay away. Personally, gimmicky and dodgy are words I relate to infomercials and stuff... "My name's *insertnamehere*, and I lost 55 lbs on the Taco-Bell drive-thru diet!!" Now THAT's gimmicky and dodgy.

This may shock you, but is it possible for you to imagine for a moment that I kind of actually DO have some negative opinions about some of those learning methods, and I actually DO want to raise a red flag? As it says at the top of the page,

Probably that comment at the beginning of the thread would have reduced it to half its length...

BTW, what are "good learning methods" for you? What are "the best"?

Note that I don't ask this in order to provoke a flame war, I'm just curious about different points of view and experiences.