While browsing the sci.lang.japan faq I noticed that it includes a rating of Internet forums about Japanese. This forum is also rated.

http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/forums.html

It gets three stars and this comment:

Ben Bullock Wrote:Part of a website devoted to James Heisig's dodgy kanji learning books. This forum is concerned with the language, not Heisig's books. As might be expected, many of the users seem to love gimmicky learning methods.

I'm sure that this will prove totally uncontroversial. Anyway, I will check out the other forums on the list. I had never heard about most of them including the Japanese Wordreference forum which is highly rated by Ben .

http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

No idea who that person is (sounds like the name of an indie comic character ;p), but I also heard them talking about Tobberoth's mom. Ooooh you gonna take that??

All 'methods' are 'gimmicky' to people who aren't using them. It's no big surprise that people who didn't use the method think so.

I don't even use the the "gimmicky" RtK, but I find these forums great. In fact it's the first time I've ever made more than a few posts in any forum. These forums are very open with a lot different ideas and opinions, even towards RtK!

If anything, at least there's no "hiragana AND katakana is so hard!!!" kind of posts.

what's wrong with gimmicky learning methods? i love'em, s'long as they're free. and work. or let me do stuff in japanese.

i guess someone annoyed him though, since he couldn't find more than a sentence to say about this place. Nothing about the wicked group collaborations, the top quality answers to the questions about the language, people trying to help each other, the fun grammar battles, etc...

oh well

nest0r Wrote:No idea who that person is

He did come and post here a bit, so the opinions are at least not those of a pure lurker. (I'm wondering if it's the same guy who was around in various ucam newsgroups when I was an undergrad over a decade ago. The style is rather familiar...)

What's a gimmicky learning method? Anyone care to elaborate?

I love gimmicky learning . It works and I LOVE IT!

Apparently self-studying is gimmicky, and we have an average amount of traffic though it seems there are more daily posts here than in the sites listed as high. I might use a different description of RevTK forums and RTK, but I am biased. Still, "dodgy" and "gimmicky" as terms sound so biased as to beg a response.

No problems with that list though. It states it's "just" the opinion of one guy, and the list of sites were put up less than a month ago. A good number of sites are listed so one can find good places to lurk. Plus, it is an FAQ so that limits the number of people that are going to read it and find these sites. Though as an FAQ for a newsgroup, one would assume there's an opinion of the the various sites by the posters. After all, aren't the FAQ's themselves derived from what people tend to ask a lot.

I loath unmoderated newsgroups so I'm not going to bother checking out or even asking about how he came to some of his conclusions. Been easier if he stuck around here longer than 25 posts though.

Although "gimmicky" is a more negative phrase than I would use, I can see where he's coming from. As a general rule, this board does tend to reject things that are associated with traditional classroom methods of learning, and embrace (or at least be willing to try) things that are unusual and offbeat. This is a broad-brush characterization that doesn't apply to everyone, and I'm not saying that "unusual and offbeat" is necessarily bad.

I'd say his review of this forum is pretty much spot on, though it could of course use a lot longer review (so could all of the forums on that list). Depends upon his definition of gimmick methods though.

Some gimmicky things:

Using another sites lists of sentences (iKnow), organizing those sentences by an "intuitive" kanji order (2001KO) using a program developed by a member (Cangy, right?), then putting that list into another program to help study/review (Anki).

Actually, yeah, that is pretty gimmicky. It's not pre-packaged and you kind of have to know what you're doing to get the best benefit.

Other gimmicky things tried here:

Translate mangas for learning purposes
Transcribe dramas
Subs2srs
Dramascripts
AJATT (various techniques)
RTK
RTK Lite
DS3 Kanken
Shadowing
Drama Karaoke

So gimmicky is a fairly apt description (good call Yudan). It just has a negative connotation in English. If he had said the just as apt "experimental" then I doubt many would bat an eye. As I said before, he also used "dodgy" to describe RTK so I think he's using gimmicky in it's negative sense.

Nukemarine Wrote:Though as an FAQ for a newsgroup, one would assume there's an opinion of the the various sites by the posters.

The newsgroup is pretty much dying on its feet for lack of traffic (apart from a recent deluge of spam via google groups :-( ). The odd new post does tend to raise responses from the regulars, but there just aren't enough people there to sustain conversations, really.

On the other hand I can imagine that one question those remaining are likely to have would be "where has everybody gone and where can I find some decent conversations about Japanese?". So it's a useful list to have made up.

(On the substance of our entry, yeah, I agree with yudantaiteki.)

I don't disagree that this forum tends to have less common learning techniques, but as others have said, the phrasing is negative. When you say "dodgy" or "gimmicky," that tends to imply it doesn't work and that it tends to bear no fruit.

Oh yeah, the writer definitely intends gimmicky to be perjorative, I have no doubt about that. I don't disagree with his characterization but I disagree with the negative term he chose to describe it.

i dunno... i dunno if its really a rejection of classroom techniques as such, as much as a lot of people realising they can learn on their own, in their own way, a lot more efficiently than they can in classroom-style learning, especially large group traditional style classroom learning. There are a lot of good points from that style that could be taken on more as well though, i think, in places. um... yeah, so, i agree.

Shrug. It's just some dude's personal website editorializing. I could point out a dozen similar blog/personal site opinions of RTK/AJATT/etc. that are biased toward a narrow perspective. I only point this out because I don't think we have much to work with here, in terms of a premise for turning this thread into a 'pros and cons of the forum' thread. ^_^

IceCream Wrote:i dunno... i dunno if its really a rejection of classroom techniques as such, as much as a lot of people realising they can learn on their own, in their own way, a lot more efficiently than they can in classroom-style learning, especially large group traditional style classroom learning.

That sounds like a rejection of classroom techniques to me. But what I was thinking about was the general dislike of grammar explanations, use of English, textbooks, J->E dictionaries, textbook-like "exercises", classes themselves, teachers, and so on.

hahah, it kind of does, doesn't it?

wellll, i kind of get the feeling that, although probably individual people dislike individual parts of the classroom learning methods, well, i guess there's always been people around here who have been fairly balanced about things, but, in general, it seems like people become more balanced through time & doing japanese. Of course, if all the language learning ideas you have come from ajatt, people won't be as balanced. But people tend to find the holes in their learning methods, & fix them as they go along, i think...

as an all-out position, i still favour the pick up a video + some subs and get on with it over the sit-in-a-classroom-and-work-through-a-textbook-for-a-year-before-you-should-even-think-about-watching-an-anime attitude. by a long way. all of the specific classroom techniques can be fit in somewhere, i think, just maybe not in the order or speed a classroom presents them in...

Transparent_Aluminium Wrote:Anyway, I will check out the other forums on the list. I had never heard about most of them including the Japanese Wordreference forum which is highly rated by Ben .

http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

I rate that highly (with the caveat about the very strict rules at that forum) for the main reason that most of the people answering questions are Japanese native speakers. If you have an opinion to share about it, let me know.

I'd agree with him if he said "unique" and "unconventional" instead of "dodgy" and "gimmicky" respectively. It's just his opinion, so it's ok. But personally I think he sounded as harsh as this:

Part of a website devoted to Random Author's dodgy grammar learning textbooks. This forum is concerned with the language, not Author's books. As might be expected, many of the users seem to love boring learning methods.

As for traditional learning methods, I think the majority of the members here also agree that systematic methods are very effective at least in some areas at certain stages of language learning. Also, only the most extreme learners would say every single teacher/course sucks. I don't think many people would think it's useless to get answers from a qualified teacher and make friends who share the same interests.

Similarly advocates of traditional learning methods would also agree that not everything can be learned through courses and textbooks. Only the extreme advocate would say that transitional methods are the only way to reach fluency. If anything, I guess many serious learners who reached high fluency would say they have learned more things from actual interaction with language than studying.

If those textbook advocates are "unbiased," I think many of the posters here should also be considered balanced. Just because your opinion is more prestigious/traditional/conventional/popular/whatever doesn't mean your view is balanced.

Anyway, I think it can be annoying when a person who likes a little less exiting stuff uses "gimmicky" to describe other people's favorites regardless of whether he is right or not. This is more so when he uses "dodgy" for good measure.

The forum looks like a large version of the "What's this word/phrase?" thread. People ask questions and seem to receive speedy answers. It appears pretty active but a few individuals seem to be using it as a personal tutor or as a live dictionary, judging by their number of posts. Look at Steven2 for example. He's so lazy: "What does めぐるmean?". "It means: install rikai-chan, thank you." It also has a no chatting rule...

Still, I understand why you would recommend it for learners or people wanting to get an answer about a specific question. It offers an excellent service without the "noise" that you get on a traditional forum.

Ben Bullock Wrote:http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

This does look like very good reading! It is a whole "Ask Magamo" forum.

The great thing about this forum is someone here has tried every gimmicky angle possible and can report whether it worked or not for them. I can say the methods presented here worked for me and in a very short amount of time compared to traditional university study. I do not have to pay back a $40,000 college loan to boot!

The heart of this forum to me is found in here Essential resources. Every other thread is just commentary on it.

Nukemarine Wrote:...we have an average amount of traffic though it seems there are more daily posts here than in the sites listed as high.

OK, but it's a little more work than I wanted to do to count the posts in each of those forums every day to make sure I'm being fair to them, for a page which, until yesterday, had an average of less than one visitor a day:


When you state that "there are more daily posts here than in the sites listed as high", there are (were) only two sites listed as having high activity, Wordreference and JapanesePod101. Without actually counting, the number of posts in JapanesePod101 has gone down a lot since I put that rating there, whereas WordReference seems to have kept on with a very high activity level. I've downgraded JapanesePod101 to "medium".

Transparent_Aluminium Wrote:The forum looks like a large version of the "What's this word/phrase?" thread. People ask questions and seem to receive speedy answers. It appears pretty active but a few individuals seem to be using it as a personal tutor or as a live dictionary, judging by their number of posts. Look at Steven2 for example. He's so lazy: "What does めぐるmean?".

Steven2 is someone who's been behaving a little oddly over the past few days. Several of his questions have been closed by the moderators.