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"Recommending any sort of language learning because "it's how children do it" is questionable because in many important ways we still don't know how children learn language."
It's not necessarily important to know how children learn languages to be able to imitate them with the same results. At any rate, I don't think children learn languages differently than adults, they study them differently certainly but learning is another matter. The only difference as I see it is that the child's brain is growing rapidly so the brain rewiring that a child can achieve in x amount of time possibly takes an adult 3 times as long. Having said that, I don't think this time value x is all that long anyway especially if learning via natural methods. I think the key point of 'natural' or 'learn like a child' language learning approaches is basically avoidance of translation, going from L2 -> meaning, rather than L2->L1->meaning which can massively complicate issues and bog you down in grammar (especially beginners). The key to natural child style learning is to accept that you don't understand everything yet but to trust the process and your instincts unlike the usual perfectionist adult learner who becomes frustrated easily and wants exacting explanation of everything.
Edited: 2010-07-20, 10:41 pm
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In terms of efficiency, my opinion and personal experiences is that a student gains maximum efficiency by working with material which is both at their level in terms of comprehension, and gradually pushes them so that there is the constant ascent in terms of skill. A beginner student who works with beginner material they are comfortable with, then gradually moves up the ladder of difficulty, progressing into intermediate, then advanced, practically always gains more skill–and more quickly–than a beginner student who overreaches themselves and drowns trying to swim in material with too much grammar and vocabulary that they can't comprehend.
I suppose what I don't understand about this method is how the listening comprehension skills gained are different from what you'd gained just by doing normal listening comprehension. I think it might be more efficient and better for rounding all the different listening skills by just doing normal listening comprehension: conversations, dialogues, music, movies, shows, etc. Audio books are also a wonderful form of media for training listening comprehension, but I just don't really comprehend how using translations etc. whilst listening to them would improve a student's listening comprehension more than listening to hundreds of short recorded dialogues and media clips designed for learners, for example.
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One other potential problem is that if you listen to something over and over again you can get to a point where you think you "understand" it but really you just know the meaning -- it's one thing to hear the opening sentences of Harry Potter and associate those with the English version, it's another thing to be able to take the words and patterns from the first sentences of HP and understand them in other contexts.
It seems to me this would produce better results in a language that is close to your native language (like learning another European language) because you can pick up on the grammar patterns much more easily.
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According to the originator of the method one needs many, many hours of NEW material. So reading the same HP book 100 times isn't enough. For some other languages it has been said that the amount of audio needed would be approximately 40-50 hours of new material. For Japanese it may well be 100 hours or more. If one listen-reads each book the recommended 3 times that would be 300+ hours altogether.
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Also according to the originator of the method:
* Contrary to popular belief, Japanese is one of the easiest languages.
* She achieved relatively high proficiency in listening comprehension in just one week and was able to speak using 2-3000 words and simple sentences. (6 hrs of Akutagawa short stories, TV news, and Jehovah Witnesses' Awake!)
*"natural listening" level (?) takes just one week.
* Writing and reading might take a bit longer: 3-500 hours should do it.
* One absolutely should not do not drill kanji using methods like Heisig.
* She treated kanji merely as a tool for identifying word segmentation when listening, but after x hours, she could read many texts in Japanese. (Her L-R texts with ease and new texts by looking up some readings.)
* After enough input, one can both speak and write without doing anything else.
*She planned to become fluent but was primarily interested in classical Japanese which was proving to be more difficult to find materials for. (?)
*LR is difficult, but not impossible, with unrelated languages
*We cannot scan Japanese text to make e-texts.
Oh...she also "penned a most unorthodox introduction to the Japanese language and culture – those familiar with Kanamara Maturi [penis festival] will know what to expect. Look for it in the depth of the boundless Internet, (but it is rather bulky: about forty giga bytes), ALL FREE OF CHARGE." In general, the bizarre content and tone of some of her posts as well as certain links in the LR list (such as a video of a girl shooting a gun and seductively rubbing her lips on it) are ... troubling.
Credibility is an issue,imo.
In short, digitlhand strikes me as a far better embassador for this 'method'. :-) [edit: it turns out that digitlhand's experiment is different than the originator's method, which includes getting a basic foundation in pronunciation, kana, grammar, politeness, kanji radicals, etc beforehand.)] You might want to consider directing people to somewhere other than the method originator's posts. That stuff might end up scaring people away. lol
I'm a fan of L2audio + L2reading, but some of the recommendations and claims associated with this method seem absurd. Oregum's qualifications wrt skill level, reading and efficiency strike me as more reasonable.
Sorry if this is a bummer post digitlhand, but more detailed and balanced info in a thread promoting a method is helpful for learners, imo.
[edit]
Edited: 2010-11-30, 5:34 pm
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Just because the original author enjoys writing with some style (I understand not everyone appreciates that type of humor) doesn't make her less credible. I know that she recommends doing a much higher number of hours per day of L-R. In the original thread, one will find many who tried the method found that the higher the L-R exposure was per day the faster it worked. I don't have that much time to *actively give L-R per day.
That post is a bummer post... it doesn't use facts or user experience to repute what she wrote, just assumptions that it won't work.
I can't freely say that the method works for Japanese yet. So we can keep posting that I believe it will and others believe it won't until the cows come home. Lets wait another two months and see what my personal experience is with it. I recommend that those who doubt the method works continue using whatever they were using before until there is proof that it works with Japanese by those willing to experiment.
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Keep your spirits high, digitalhand. You've clearly motivated a number of people to try this method -- I myself am giving it a shot. I'm not going to judge it after 4 days and say it's ineffective. I've dedicated enough hours to RtK that the idea of spending 10 hours to read HP in Enlglish with Japanese audio and 10 hours to read it in Japanese with Japanese audio is a drop in the bucket. In fact, I've only been doing it for three days and in the very least I've picked up a bunch of new vocab! (I've completed RtK, and Core2K and basic grammar [Genki I + Genki II]). I think it's great to be able to read enjoyable English material and learn Japanese at the same time, regardless of how effective it may be.
My biggest concern right now is how to find works like, for example, a novel by Hemingway in Japanese Audio... Part of me says it must exist, but then... Maybe not. I am aware of the free audio book archives, but I'd really rather focus on some western fiction I know and love for now. I'm going to talk to my university librarian (at least one of them!) today and I'll report what I find out.
k.
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digtlhand, I look forward to hearing your results and am not trying to discourage you. Each person who experiments will help to fine tune the method. Your stated goals are to receive encouragement and inspire, as well as introduce others to the method. It's natural that people will want to question and discuss the merits of a 'new' method. Trying to block reasonable criticism and clarification seems artificial to me.
Bilingual text and audio reading have been around for a long time and we know they work, so I'm not really sure what the big question is. I understood you were trying to test how quickly and effectively it could be done as the sole method.
To the extent that the method originator is being used as a success story and reference, I think it's fair to include other quotes as counterbalance. The actual content and her success claims (not just style) damage her credibility. Some information is incorrect and she sometimes reveals a lack of knowledge about Japanese. It's a colletion of her own words - readers can make their own judgments.
Some of the skeptics in this thread have experience both learning and teaching Japanese. In my case, I used to hire students to record Japanese texts for me b/c I found it to be an effective method. (only L2audio/L2text though.) I've used bilingual texts, but to a lesser degree. Based on my experience (and that of others) I can say with some confidence that her claims of easily being able to read, write and speak Japanese are a bit far fetched.
She listening for 10 hrs/day for 7 days. You've been doing approx. 5 hrs per day for 3 weeks. Do you have high listening comprehension? (listening to regular Japanese without text) Can you speak in basic sentences with a 2500 word vocabulary? I bet you're making great progress, but perhaps not quite what the method originator claims it will be. Hopefully people will be able to link to your blog in the future for more credible information and results. So keep it up! :-)
