Hey digitlhand- just took a look on your blog and nothing new for 2 weeks. How's it going?

@captal,
Sorry for the lack of updates, will try to make sure to post tonight.

How's it going for people? Are you still doing L-R? Are you seeing any progress?

Vaste Wrote:How's it going for people? Are you still doing L-R? Are you seeing any progress?

Quick reply here, yes progress is excellent! I tested watching an episode of Lost and understood a majority of what was being said... I didn't understand technical terms and high level vocabulary but inferred meanings from a majority of the words.

Apologies for the lack of updates, I'm juggling many experiments at the moment and haven't given myself time to update everyone.

I haven't had any time to study this week. It's been pretty hectic and when I have free time I have just been lazy. I'm basically going to start over this weekend, but with some improvements.

I've been doing LR at least 1 hr/day. Sometimes as many as 3-4 hrs/day. My approach has been to go through each book 4 times: Listen L2/Read L1, Listen L2/Read L2, then repeat.

So far I've noticed a marked improvement in my listening ability and I'm picking up words from context starting from about the 3rd pass. I'm on my 4th pass of HP1 and will move on to HP2 afterwards.

Good to see people are still going with this.

I had a 2 week holiday so haven't done any recently but the Harry Potter was nice and soothing after traveling around a bit and having to contend with all deferent accents!

Not sure whether to just do L2/L2 after done 1 each of L2/L1 and L2/L2...?? I understand what's going on L2/L2 but does only doing this hamper picking up new words?

Checking in. Just finished first pass of HP2.

I had a go at L-R with French, and I think it gave good results. I'm considering whether to try it with Japanese. Here's the story if anyone wants to know:

I had previously dissected the first 7 chapters of "Voyage au centre de la Terre" (and listened to the audio for those chapters a large number of times), so I tried L-R on the rest. I took one chapter at a time, listening to the French three times, reading French then English then French again. From chapter 20 I dropped the first step. By the last few chapters, processing both languages at the same time had become more annoying than useful, but I stuck it out until the end of the book.

Then I moved onto "Vingt mille lieues sous les mers" for the same-author bonus, but doing the more traditional method of reading a chapter in English by itself then reading/listening in French (with occasional reference back to the English when necessary). After 10 chapters of that I switched to just reading the English followed by the French, and listening to the audio later. So the L-R experiment was short-lived, since I was almost past the need for it already when I started. (And at chapter 18 I am sick of this book. It's full of technical vocab that I don't really know in English and don't care to know in French either. I guess I have more background knowledge in geology than I do in boats and marine life.)

Finished my 3rd pass of HP2. After my final pass I think I'll move on to Botchan since there's a parallel text already made for it.

Anyone have any updates? I stopped my Japanese studies so I could focus on a bunch of new things. Mainly drawing, learning how to play two different instruments, and getting ready to go back to school. So has anyone made any major progress with this method?

I fizzled out after going through the first book and part of the second one. I still listen to the audio on occasion, usually as background noise more than anything. It's hard to put the time in required to make it useful.

Hmmph. I'm assuming that everyone who's doing a listening/reading strategy is using balloonguy's interactive audiobook tool and generating .trs files for others?? ;p That's the only L-R you shoud be doing, imHo.

Oh! I am surprised! So L-R has not died yet?

Before or together with L-R:

Learn hiragana and katakana.
An idea about pronunciation (pitch accent, short-long vowels, whispered vowels, double consonats, rendaku, colloquial contractions, assimilations in pronunciations of kanji)

An idea about grammar:
verbs: -ru, -u, suru verbs
copula: de aru, da, desu, de gozaru
adjectives: A-i, A-na
pronouns: plenty of I, you, etc
politeness levels: plain, polite, honorific, humble
male-female speech
soto-uti

Kanji - how they work: strokes (rules are very simple with few exceptions), bushu (radicals) learn 214 classical radicals and their Japanese names
Use a mouse-over pop-up dictionary.


Materials:
Pronunciation:
http://tisc.isc.u-toyama.ac.jp/pronuncia...tents.html
Pitch accent, etc. A few mp3 files are miissing.
Off-line version.
http://ifile.it/coa6jrg/pronunciation.7z

Grammar:
the best introduction to Japanese grammar is to be found here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm



L-R proper:
Available materials (audio + parallel texts):

Group 1
1. !L-R My Book of Bible Stories SmallCells.doc ! 9h 01min.m3u8
2. !L-R Saint-Exupery - Le petit prince.doc
3. !L-R Carroll - Alice’s Adventures in WonderlandSmallCells.doc
4. !L-R Murray - Breaking into J literature

Group 2
1. !L-R Learn From the Great Teacher SmallCells.doc ! 7h 49min.m3u8 (JW)
2. !L-R Rowling - HP1.doc and !L-R Rowling - HP2.doc
3. !L-R The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived Japanese-English.doc

Group 3
1. Natume Souseki
1. yumezyuuya
2. Bottyan
3. Kokoro
4. Wagahai wa neko de aru
5. Mitikusa
6. Mon
7. Sorekara
8. Kusamakura
9. Garasu do no uti

2. Dazai Osamu
1. Ningen sikkaku
2. Syayou

3. Kobayasi Takiji – Kanikousen

Group 4
Matuo Basyou - oku no hosomiti
Hyakunin isshu 百人一首



Legal parallel texts:
http://ifile.it/rpzn784/JW3xparallel.7z
My Book of Bible Stories Japanese-English.doc
Learn From the Great Teacher Japanese-English.doc
The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived Japanese-English.doc

I won't post the rest because of copyright issues (English translations). It is not allowed here.
Search Our Mother The Internet, I posted everything somewhere else before. You might find something if you're lucky.


Some L-R threads:
L-R the most important passages
http://learnlangs.com/Listening-Reading_...ssages.htm
L-R roundup thread
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...21098&PN=1
Most efficient way to spend 120 hours
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...21258&PN=1
New Online Tool: Reading-while-Listening
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...21591&PN=1
TAC 2010 - Team K: M. Medialis - RU JP FR
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...18499&PN=1

I can't make fun of L-R properly because no one has written a 140 character summation, but it's some kind of woo-woo (Tzadeck's terminology) learn Japanese by osmosis via English proxy thing, right?

Glancing through, I see some fluff about translations; take that out, I say (as anything but as a reference secondary to pop-up dictionary), add in a focus on subvocalization, and let's hone resources for interactive audiobooks. ;p

I do intend to get back into L-R, the problem is how much time investment it takes. I've just started a new internship and am working desperately hard so I just have time for Anki and listening to audio whilst doing other stuff, but to get into the reading you need longer sessions. I think L-R can be something I do in the holidays.

Blahah Wrote:I do intend to get back into L-R, the problem is how much time investment it takes. I've just started a new internship and am working desperately hard so I just have time for Anki and listening to audio whilst doing other stuff, but to get into the reading you need longer sessions. I think L-R can be something I do in the holidays.

This is where I get confused. When I see a noteworthy scholar like Blahah mentioning this, I hope that maybe you just mean 'shadowing' by 'L-R'? With translations thrown in as references to be consulted as necessary?

I read the book in English (or listen to the audiobook) then read in English with Japanese audio. Then read in Japanese with Japanese audio. Then repeat the last stage until I lose the will to breathe, then choose a different book. Yeah occasionally use translation for reference, but mostly try to use my own memory of the book to make sense of the phrases (because it's too slow to go to the translation, and too irritating to use parallel texts).

Noteworthy scholar eh? I think I might get a t-shirt printed...

Blahah Wrote:I read the book in English (or listen to the audiobook) then read in English with Japanese audio. Then read in Japanese with Japanese audio. Then repeat the last stage until I lose the will to breathe, then choose a different book. Yeah occasionally use translation for reference, but mostly try to use my own memory of the book to make sense of the phrases (because it's too slow to go to the translation, and too irritating to use parallel texts).

Noteworthy scholar eh? I think I might get a t-shirt printed...

The 'read in English with Japanese audio' is the part that instill eye-rolling feelings in me, even more than memorizing the L1 version or holding it in your mind or somesuch. Seems like it'd be vastly better, if you have both Japanese and English text and don't find parallel text placement handy enough, to conflate the two via mouseover popup. You don't want Japanese sounds and English text intermingling as you're learning the language, especially not in some passive, nebulous way. But that's just my humble opinion.

Hopefully it's obvious through context the difference between this and the monolingual definition thing, before someone opens that can of worms, hehe.

Until then, in my eyes you have lost 'noteworth scholar' status and are now... 'good at biology'. Okay, maybe 'real good at biology and also apparently OK at maths or programming or something?'

Actually the reading in E with J audio is the most tedious part - because I already know the story in English it always bores the hell out of me to do it this way. I would never read a book twice normally, I can just think about it again if I want to relive the experience. It might be worth eliminating this stage altogether, which would make it more fun. The J-J part is fun anyway because it's a puzzle, and solving the puzzle is what makes the process work.

The problem with the mouseover popup would be what a huge effort it would be to create the resource for each book. In general these days I'm shying away from anything which can't be easily automated using a tool someone else made - programming is fine but it's sooooo boring.

Incidentally I'm mediocre at maths and quite a lame programmer, I can cobble something together to do whatever I need to do by stealing bits and pieces from other examples, but can't write anything complicated from scratch myself, I just lose interest too easily. Damn good biologist though... I suppose I'll cancel the t-shirt order.

Once you're left with Japanese text and audio, that's when I say bring in the interactive audiobook tool! You just need to listen-read in Transcriber once, using hotkeys to synch them together periodically where you see fit, then voila you've got the .trs and the audio to open together in the .html file whenever you want to do controlled shadowing, and since it's a (highly portable) set of files united in the .html, you can use Rikaichan if you don't have Stardict, and to boot you can edit the .html formatting, which leads us to:

If the prime purpose of the English text is a kind of generalized reference point that needs handy placement, seems like it'd be easy to do a find/replace and wrap sentences separated by periods or entire paragraphs in a tooltip/popup thing triggered by mouseover. Maybe assign them to a sequence of 'anchors' that can be automatically roughly matched to similar formatting (periods/paragraphs) in the Japanese text. Doesn't need to be real precise sentence-by-sentence matches since it's just a reference point, the prime focus is the Japanese text/audio, and you've already got individual definitions via popup dicts not to mention should hopefully be planning to study stuff up front to minimize overhead anyway--a reading of the English, for instance, or studying stuff in Anki, and making sure the text isn't too far out of your league.

I think that above description sounds more complex than it is, I know for a fact generating interactive audiobooks is easy esp. when you get the hang of it, and if you're going to be reading and re-reading and sharing, definitely worth a little pre-design/strategizing.

I also want to re-stress subvocalizing, I think that's too often overlooked as something to actively cultivate using audio and text.

digitlhand Wrote: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.

Quote:If we can all just be patient and wait a few months to have actual evidence this [debate]wouldn't be necessary.

Quote:Apologies for the lack of updates, I'm juggling many experiments at the moment and haven't given myself time to update everyone.

The last blog post was Sept 28 (started July 3). Perhaps life or the other experiments took priority. Or, hopefully, just no time to write updates.

digitland, (if you read this) if you were able to continue the Japanese experiment, I think folks would be interested in hearing your results. Again, I think of L2 listening and reading as one of several useful techniques. I'm more interested in your experiment which involves using a particular type of L-R method exclusively and without any previous language knowledge.

Not exactly L-R, but it might explain some aspects of L-R proper.

Mad Flow: become absorbed in your book
http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/20...your-book/

Extensive reading: what convinced me
http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/20...vinced-me/

buonaparte Wrote:Not exactly L-R, but it might explain some aspects of L-R proper.

Mad Flow: become absorbed in your book
http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/20...your-book/

Extensive reading: what convinced me
http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/20...vinced-me/

I prioritize 'condensed reading' as a concept: http://writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej32/a1.html

Previously copy/pasted (reading 'students with access to corpora' as 'self-students with subs2srs/other tools for creating materials'):

Corpora and condensed language exposure

Language learners in countries where the target language is not widely spoken often lack opportunities for the rich language exposure that is essential for developing the ability to recognise patterns. Extensive reading (Nation, 1997; Susser & Robb, 1990) is believed to facilitate language learning, because it exposes learners to real language use in context, and in amounts far larger than the short texts and dialogues usually preferred for the presentation of new language items. Extensive reading is also regarded as an effective way to help language learners develop intuitions as native speakers do (Krashen, 2004). The pattern-recognition example in the previous section gives an indication of how focused language exposure can be used actively, in order to formulate intuitions about language use.

Representative corpora can offer condensed exposure to language patterns. It is not argued here that corpora should be the sole vehicle for the development of reading skills and strategies, [12] nor is it argued that corpus use can replace out-of-class reading. Rather, what is being suggested is an approach that shares characteristics of both intensive and extensive reading--what might be called condensed reading. The reading of corpus samples is intensive in the sense that learners focus on the behaviour of specific language features; it is extensive in the sense that learners examine language features in a larger number of texts than in conventional text-based techniques. Condensed reading enables learners to engage with language use in context in order to formulate and check, though not necessarily consciously, hypotheses about language structure and use.

One printed page contains 500 words on average. [13] The British National Corpus contains 90 million written words, or the equivalent of approximately 180,000 pages. A six-year language teaching programme of five one-hour lessons per week amounts to a total of about 1,000 lessons. To gain exposure through reading to the amount of language evidence contained in a 90 million word corpus, a learner would need to examine about 180 pages per lesson (in the case of classroom or intensive reading), or read about 80 pages every day of the year for six years (in the case of out-of-class or extensive reading), the equivalent of two to three books per week.

Through corpora, learners will experience types of texts that they may not choose to read out of class, or that teachers and materials writers may not deem appropriate. It seems clear, then, that learners may benefit from using corpora in addition to pedagogical materials and authentic texts. [14] The considerations listed here also highlight the limitations of pedagogies that avoid the use of materials and a pre-planned focus on language, such as the ELT translation of Dogme (Thornbury, 2000). These approaches tend to favour class discussions loosely structured around topics, with the teacher and learners acting as the main, or even sole, sources of language exposure. In doing so, they offer limited exposure to language, which is usually further restricted to the teacher's language variety and preferred usage.

Bonus:

A corpus in the mind?

Intuition, or 'a feel for the language,' is what learners aim to develop. Native speakers develop that 'feel' partly through exposure to language in use and the recognition of patterns. Through this exposure, native speakers build the mental equivalent of a corpus (Bod, 1998). Intuitions can be seen as the results of the informal analysis of this mental corpus. It follows then, that by working on representative examples from language corpora, learners will be helped to recognise recurring patterns of structure and meaning. As Stern states, language learners need to be helped "to see a particular feature ... not merely as an isolated item but as part of an evolving system of interrelationships which should become increasingly differentiated as it grows" (1992, p. 145). The wealth of instances of use of a specific item that corpora provide can offer the amount of evidence required for learners to refine their perception of it.

Edit: I haven't had time to read it, but glancing through, this looks like a previous study involving something simialr to the idea of 'condensed reading', 'breadth-depth':

Breadth and depth of lexical acquisition with hands-on concordancing

Abstract: One of the biggest challenges in English for Academic Purposes is to help students acquire the immense vocabulary they need in the short time available for their language instruction. This challenge has led course developers to choose between breadth (learning from word lists) and depth (learning through extensive reading). Both methods have distinct advantages. Computerized concordances can help resolve the breadth-depth paradox. In this paper, the author describes how students, in effect, become concordancers, using concordance and database software to create their own dictionaries of words to be learned. This method combines the benefits of list coverage with at least some of the benefits of lexical acquisition through natural reading. The method is further enhanced by computerized learning activities based on the principle of moving words through five stacks as they are reviewed and learned.

Well, since people are interested in updates from the experimenters of this method I can give a quasi-update.

I started trying out the L-R method with HP1 when this thread started. Went through the whole first book with minimal effort/repeated listening. Read in English with Japanese audio, read the Japanese with Japanese audio, then listened a few times over with no text here and there. At that time it was all somewhat overwhelming, but I could pick out words and phrases here and there. I noticed some moderate improvements in my ability to follow the Japanese text, but nothing stellar.

Go forward ~2.5 months, after not listening to HP1 at all for a while I thought I'd give it a whirl again and this time (just audio, no text) I found myself understanding a word or two in every sentence, if not the entire sentence.

What happened in those 2.5 months? I listened to audio blogs, news casts, _whatever_ every day (almost) for at least one or two hours. A'la AJATT I just kept audio on in the background as much as I could, and would spend a little time on focused reading (i.e. textbook dialogues, or other high-focus material -- not background audio).

I thought: Wow, something's working! I'll try listening to HP2, as I've never read the story before and have no idea what it's about, it will be a good test! Results? My understanding was not as good as with HP1, but not too bad.

For me, I realized the merit of the English text is that it gives my mind a rough starting point for everything I'm hearing in Japanese. I read the first chapter of the HP2 book and listened some more and it was much easier to pick out phrases (of course, there is some bias with the repeated listening making things easier too).

I will try reading the next chapter of HP2 and then listening in Japanese to get a better sense of what my understanding is and how much having the rough English story in mind helps.

Finally, regardless of the L-R method or my quasi-L-R method approach above, my new goal is to find audio books which I know (and like) the story of and make those my primary listening samples.