vosmiura Wrote:@Dragg

Not everyone can go live in Japan for a year or two to help their Japanese learning. Also not everyone can go to quality classes either. A lot of people study on their own, and they are lucky if they even have someone to practice with from time to time.

AJATT is bunch of ideas for how to replace the lack of real immersion with DIY immersion for self study. And even for people who are living in Japan, AJATT sends a message that they have to study; living in Japan doesn't mean you will get good at Japanese like magic. Personally I think it has some very good ideas, and since I started using those ideas my Japanese improved a lot in a short time.

If you pay attention, Khatzumoto advises to start with basics and build up. Choosing your own sentences may not be structured, but on the other hand you should only be picking sentences that "You want to know right now!". In other words he suggests that you should not be learning everything you come across; you should not be learning too obsucre stuff; you learn stuff that you can put in a context that interests you right away.

By comparison, a course or a textbook may be structured, but it may have little relevance to you. You may never be a foreign exchange student... so learning the names of subjects in school, and "senmon wa nan desu ka" may be pretty useless to you.

Yes, Khatzu does imply that one should start with the basics in regards to the sentence method. However, at least as far as I have seen, he isn't very clear about what the basics are and how you should go about discerning them. This is a lot like telling somebody without construction experience to build a house. Language professionals make a living just by clearly defining what the basics are for us. That way, we don't have to go through the trial-and-error pain of figuring out ourselves! For example, if I'm browsing through the dictionary, as Khatzu recommends, and I come across a sentence making use of the Japanese word for dinosaur, "kyouryuu", I might think : "hmmm, this word seems basic enough for someone of my skill level, plus I am interested in dinos cuz they are kewl." So I add this particular sentence, and lo-and-behold, I don't hear or see the word for months on end except for in my SRS. Sure, it is being reenforced a little, but not in a real-world way. In fact, I get so used to the same sentence that I wouldn't even recognize the word for dinosaur if it wasn't part of that sentence. And even if I did, it would be on shaky ground at best and I would always be second-guessing myself. If someone starts telling me about their "kyori", hometown, I might have dinosaurs on the brain instead. Learning obscure words first often causes one to actively "look" for them in places they don't even exist. The homonym-heavy nature of Japanese makes this problem even worse.

So instead of subjecting yourself to making decisions about these things, why not pick up a good highly rated textbook that matches your skill level in which a professional has already determined what you should learn. Just skip over the classroom words if you want. You can use sentences from the textbook for your SRS, or better yet, you can make your own based on what you are learning from it.

Vosmiura:

I agree that textbooks are often too polite or contrived, but at least they deal with real words that make up a common base of Japanese vocab that every Japanese person would and should know.

Comic books, manga, anime, and other mass media uses a lot of slang and sometimes outright gibberish. Most people would rather err on the side of appearing overly formal rather than incredibly weird/rude.

Furthermore, I don't see how Khatzu's suggestion of mining from a dictionary is any better. Aren't dictionaries usually just as formal and stuffy?

Personally, I think your best bet at the sentence method is either mining from a textbook, or making your own sentences based around an efficient word base such as the JLPT words. If you want to, you could try to "informalize" the sentences before you put them in your SRS.

As far as learning in Japan, I know that not everybody you meet is going to be an enthusiastic teacher. However, I'm pretty sure that the average mcdonalds employee will help make a foreigner understand that they are asking "you want fries with that"? even if they have to point at a picture. This is what I mean by context-driven structure that adapts to your level.

Dragg Wrote:I agree that textbooks are often too polite or contrived, but at least they deal with real words that make up a common base of Japanese vocab that every Japanese person would and should know.

Great, what do you do when they answer you with casual Japanese? Understanding is much more important than being understood while in Japan.

Quote:Furthermore, I don't see how Khatzu's suggestion of mining from a dictionary is any better. Aren't dictionaries usually just as formal and stuffy?

Most definitions/example sentences in dictionaries I've seen use casual Japanese.

Quote:Personally, I think your best bet at the sentence method is either mining from a textbook, or making your own sentences based around an efficient word base such as the JLPT words. If you want to, you could try to "informalize" the sentences before you put them in your SRS.

Mining from textbooks/beginner dictionaries is suggested by Khatzu. I would highly recommend to NOT make up your own sentences, no matter how confident you are, unless you have a native Japanese speaker sitting right there and checking everything. Switching from polite to casual, while usually fairly straightforward, often isn't.

Dragg Wrote:Yes, Khatzu does imply that one should start with the basics in regards to the sentence method. However, at least as far as I have seen, he isn't very clear about what the basics are and how you should go about discerning them. This is a lot like telling somebody without construction experience to build a house. Language professionals make a living just by clearly defining what the basics are for us.

Well he gives some pointers such as starting with a good particle book and working your way through every example. There are lots of sources that you can use as guides for what is beginner, intermediate & advanced.

The professionals each have their own ways, that don't always agree. For example one source may teach you "ga = but" in an early chapter, and another might keep it for a much later chapter. Which one is right?

Quote:That way, we don't have to go through the trial-and-error pain of figuring out ourselves!

Instead you labor through all the exercises in the textbook for weeks and months, all the while thinking you are making progress, but in reality it's moving quite slowly and won't get you very far in the real world.

Quote:For example, if I'm browsing through the dictionary, as Khatzu recommends, and I come across a sentence making use of the Japanese word for dinosaur, "kyouryuu", I might think : "hmmm, this word seems basic enough for someone of my skill level, plus I am interested in dinos cuz they are kewl." So I add this particular sentence, and lo-and-behold, I don't hear or see the word for months on end except for in my SRS.

I didn't think Khatzu recommends browsing the dictionary, fishing for things you 'might' be interested in. He recommends you learn things that you see and need. For example if you are reading a book and you see a word that you want to read, then you go and check the definition in a dictionary and add an example sentence in your SRS to help remember that word.

Quote:Sure, it is being reenforced a little, but not in a real-world way. In fact, I get so used to the same sentence that I wouldn't even recognize the word for dinosaur if it wasn't part of that sentence. And even if I did, it would be on shaky ground at best and I would always be second-guessing myself. If someone starts telling me about their "kyori", hometown, I might have dinosaurs on the brain instead. Learning obscure words first often causes one to actively "look" for them in places they don't even exist. The homonym-heavy nature of Japanese makes this problem even worse.

I used to be skeptical about practicing sentences in an SRS too. I suggest you stop assuming how it might be in theory, and start doing in practice.

In normal life we normally get a lot more input than we output. We're naturally good to learn language just from input. There are lots of words we pick up that we never speak. People who are speaking impaired are able to learn spoken language without ever speaking a word. One of Stephen Kranshen's publications highlights one person who was born with most of his body paralyzed so he could not talk or write, but he was able to learn English from listening and reading, and later when given a special typing device, was able to write perfect and elaborate English.

Quote:So instead of subjecting yourself to making decisions about these things, why not pick up a good highly rated textbook that matches your skill level in which a professional has already determined what you should learn. Just skip over the classroom words if you want. You can use sentences from the textbook for your SRS, or better yet, you can make your own based on what you are learning from it.

I was sutdying JFE (great textbook) before I started doing sentence mining ala AJATT. After I started mining, I decided to mine JFE for all grammar points that I didn't know.

It took only a few days to mine all of them. And then through reviewing it didn't take long to learn all of them. Far less than if I had worked my way through the 27 lessons (JFE is quite a dense material). After, I could read all dialogues in JFE except where I didn't know the vocab, so I decided I need to start bulking up on common vocab. And that's where Kanji Odyssey came in.

PS. I wouldn't recommend making up your own sentences to put in your SRS. You might learn something wrong or unnatural, uless you have a native to check them for you.

I live in Japan, and almost no one helps me learn Japanese. By this I mean, most Japanese, at least in Tokyo, are hell bent on learning English, so if you speak to them in Japanese they will answer in English. Ordering at McDonald's is always an English affair, it seems even fast food workers enjoy a quick convo in English to break the monotony. So even though I have my colloquial ordering language up to scratch it's really useless. Also, I'm a stay at home dad, so I don't really meet many people to speak Japanese with at all. Without sentences, Japanese TV and lots of reading, I would learn nothing at all in my supposedly wholly Japanese existence.

I can swear like children, though.

I assume this is all because I can't go the sleeping-with-the-dictionary route.

You know, there is a reason I will be giving this AJATT method a try, and it's not because it seems like it's the quickest route.

No; it seems like this path legitimately works for many people. Not only that, but here's my story with learning Japanese:

I've always been really into it. I tried teaching myself a bunch of times but never put as much effort into it as I could. Then, when I got to college, I realized "Hey, I can finally learn Japanese in a class! Hell, I can major in it!" So, that's what I did.

Now, Japanese classes at my college are all taught by very competent, older native Japanese women. There are three different levels that each span two semesters, plus self study one-on-one at the 4th year level.

Since I began to study here I've put all my time and effort into it. I pretty much do nothing but study Japanese. It's really the only thing that is fun for me, plus I can pass my "GenEd" classes by just breathing. When I started, I blew through Heisig's book on the Kana, and started the kanji book. I'm finally back to about 500, but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, classes went very well. I practiced all the time, got good grades, and enjoyed going to my teacher's office hours and just talking in Japanese (or attempting it). However, now that I look back, I discover that talking Japanese didn't help as much as it should. And making up my own sentences definitely hurt me a bit. Let me explain.

I've recently reviewed all my homework from the first and second year (I'm finishing up the second year (202) now). I've noticed that if I wrote something wrong on a homework once, I continued to get it wrong. It showed on the test, and on other homeworks. This was ONLY when I was translating from English to Japanese, or just plain old writing a paragraph in Japanese. The teacher correct it, and I rewrote it myself, but it didn't help. It implemented itself.

Now, we've gone through both Genki books, and I've done some self study on the side (no sentences yet), but can I read anything well? Nope. I can not. I can't read children's books; I can read children's magazines; I can't read manga; I can't read anything. Want to know what I CAN read? I can read the stories they put in the "kanji" section that are tailored to use our vocabulary and exactly our understanding of current grammar.

So, what does that tell you?

*New story

Sorry to make this post so long, but another story just popped into my head that backs the AJATT site.

So, I was hanging out with some friends, one of which was cooking a delicious home cooked meal, and one of my friend's roommates comes out. She's Chinese, and has been here since the 8th grade and is now 24. We were talking about all different things, and suddenly it comes up about how she learned English.

Basically, to break it down, she didn't do any kind of English classes; she also didn't study English very much. However, she did say, using an interesting term that caught my ear, that for about three years (until her senior year of high school) she was basically silent. Then, she said, she started talking and making herself understood in English. (A cute side note, she said how she was so proud the first time she understood what someone was asking her to do and she said, "Ok!" and held up the little hand sign that goes along with it).

This immediately reminded me of that theory that there should be a silent period during language "acquisition" (as we'll call it) that has one doing all input and no output. It seems to have worked quite well for her!

That's my spiel.

phauna Wrote:I live in Japan, and almost no one helps me learn Japanese.

I live in Japan and everyone helps me learn Japanese. Just today a friend of a friend introduced herself to me at school in English and we were just blabbing about little things on the way from class to lunch.

Another classmate of mine comes up and tells her in Japanese, "You know he speaks Japanese right." Then proceeds to force the fact by switching the conversation entirely to Japanese.

Every situation is different but ultimately you just have to forge the path you want. For example at McDonald's just order completely in Japanese. If you get a bad reaction then there is something wrong with your pronunciation, so have a friend fix the pronunciation of the menu items. (I'll admit I cheated a bit. I had a friend who had a part-time job at Mac and I had her practice with me a lot until I could order everything we could remember existed on the menu. She had a blast too!)

I help my friends a lot with their English, but I also refuse to associate with anyone who can't respect the idea that I am here to learn Japanese. Never associate people that just drag you down.

phauna Wrote:I assume this is all because I can't go the sleeping-with-the-dictionary route.

My roommate is proof that this is no guarantee.

I've found hanging out in bars to be much more productive. Make friends with the staff first and they can introduce you to the regulars. Most people will talk with you for an hour and sometimes more. Often they'll introduce their friends and if you go to the same place they'll bring new friends just to talk to you. Much cheaper than eikawa and you can just drink juice. Plus since most of the customers are male you won't develop girly Japanese!

I'm nearing the end of RTK1 and am intending to start down the AJATT route once I finish up, going through a dictionary of basic japanese grammar mining sentences. I am uneasy however about only reviewing from Kanji to readings and meaning.

So my question then, to anyone who has been doing sentence mining+SRS, do you find after a few reviews you able to produce (with effort, I don't expect them to just slip out) the sentences when you need to, or at least to form sentences using the same grammar structures from them?

I'm aware AJATT isn't just about the sentences method and immersion is all part of it, I live in a small rural village in Hokkaido where few people speak English so I have plenty opportunity to practice and am fairly immersed as it is.

If you're serious about kanji, I suggest using the readings on the question side to quiz yourself on writing the kanji. You will definitely learn how to write the words with their kanji then because you will be failing yourself if you can't. The other benefit from this is that you don't have the advantage of having the kanji there to help distinguish the large amount of homonyms in Japanese, so it is somewhat similar to as if you were actually listening in a conversation and had to pick out the word from context.

If you're using Anki, also use a second card model in which you just read out the sentence in its full kanji form. You can also just read this on the answer side when you answer the other card, but I find that having just written the full sentence in kanji kind of negates any challenge of reading it. Since anki will space card pairs apart, you can practice reading it without having just written it down. And I say practice (instead of test) because truthfully, if you can write it out, 90% of the time you can read it, but I still find it to be good practice and that it helps me be able to read more quickly.

tomusan Wrote:So my question then, to anyone who has been doing sentence mining+SRS, do you find after a few reviews you able to produce (with effort, I don't expect them to just slip out) the sentences when you need to, or at least to form sentences using the same grammar structures from them?

I'll often start to use stuff after they get to around a month for review time; but I definitely don't use everything I put in. ymmv.

It's a tad off-topic but: I am really, really bad at abbreviations and acronyms. Hence: what on earth does: ymmv mean?! Certainly it get's posted around a 100 times on these forums a day! (I am good at exaggerating though )

Your Mileage May Vary.

I agree with sutebun. I started going "both ways" in my reviews a few weeks ago, and I've already noticed a huge difference in my comprehension and in my ability to write. It was a royal pain the butt to go through the huge stack of cards I had created when I added a kana reading -> writing out the sentence form, kanji and all, from the sentences I already had, but I think it's been well worth the extra effort.

The one thing I'm sort of struggling with is trying to figure out how many examples of a concept I should stick in my SRS. Too few, and you don't see it enough. Too many, and you waste effort. I'm sure there's a sweet spot in there somewhere.

nest0r: A few people from this forum are using a book/CD called Kanji Odyssey. It has example sentences for lots of kanji readings. The CD version has sound but suffers from *ugh* pictures of text which means you still can't copy it into an SRS.

Nestor, there's currently not a preset regimen set out just yet. Hopefully in a short amount of time there will be a few Kodansha books put in spread sheet format to ease entry into an SRS. Now, I and others agree no one should get access to that spread sheet that does not have the original book.

Anyway, my "current" regimen.

1. RTK through 2042 - Done

2. RTK review altered to be Kanji to Concept AND Keyword to Kanji to Keyword - in process (ongoing).

3a. Sentences from Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar - Chapter one done (350 sentences), reviewed in Kana to Kanji and Kanji to Kana card format.

or (as in, I don't think you need to do both but not a guarentee at this point)

3b. Sentences from Kodansha books (Handbook of Japanese Verbs, Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs, All About the Particles) - none done, I assume it could be 1000 sentences and a GREAT basis for having Kanji and Grammar under your belt.

4. Kanji Odyssey 2001 - Upto 15 kanji (hey, just started, give me a break).

I'll be honest in that I "WANTED" to finish UBJG, but typing in all those sentences is a big chore. On top of that, I had to convert the kana to kanji, add in the definitions and then input them into the SRS.

For those that think typing in each of the sentences is important, I disagree because my method for each sentence is: Define new words (via jcewp for now), WRITE the new sentence for the initial review and from then on out. It still takes upto an hour to do 15 sentences even with a ready made spread sheet.

The group effort of KO2001 really got me back to my SRS again. Great job to everyone there.

I have a somewhat similar approach, but for me, about half of this is review/refresher stuff. (I had 6 semesters, then walked away for 2-3 years.)

1. RTK- done with all 2042. Reviewing on this site daily. I'll tackle RTKIII some other time.
2. K.O. -- doing it in Anki, both ways. Sentence full o'kanji-> Recognition/Reading, Reading in kana->Write out sentence, kanji and all. Takes longer, but it's more effective for me. At about 45 kanji in that so far, but that's a deceptive number. There's LOTS of vocab to learn there, so things can bog down. I'm plowing through it, because I want to finish it up as fast as I can. For some of the tricker compounds, I wish I could find smaller, easier sentences so I can focus on them separately. Duh. I may just get them off of excite.co.jp's Kenkyusha dicts.
3. UBJG-- already finished parts I and II. Scanner pen helps tons here. I'm scanning straight into Anki. Going both ways isn't as effective here. Not as much kanji. It's a handy book, but really dull, vocab-wise. Lots of sentences, though, and the verb section has lots of repetitive sentences. Useful.
4. All About Particles-- Checked it out of the Uni library, and I'm scanning it into an excel sheet now, to add a little later. Probably after I finish scanning in UBJG. Not really sure how to incorporate it all, though. It's a bit dense, and the idea of just learning all the は particle stuff, then all the が particle stuff seems weird. (But breaking it all down by function sounds tedious.)
5. Kitchen Sink full of Kodansha Books. I'll probably add some stuff from the adjective/adverb book eventually, as well as some of the sentence patterns, if I feel like it. I'll probably also plunder some stuff from other books as well. I'm a sucker for Kodansha books.

I haven't really figured out how to approach the Basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar yet. I don't really want to go through it in alphabetical order... that just sounds silly. I suppose I'll try to find a list of all the grammar on the version of the JLPT I'm aiming for. (Probably 2... although I don't know if I can pass that this year.)

The tricky bit is figuring out what to add and when. Too much kanji and not enough grammar makes Jack a dull boy who can't make a complex sentence. Too much grammar and not enough kanji and you're stuck talking about eating and going to school. (Which is fine, if that's all you ever do.)

The other tricky bit is figuring out how many sentences are enough. Not enough, and you don't learn a concept efficiently. Too many, and your brain just sort of checks out and ignores it. (At least mine does.)

So yeah, after RTK, it's easy. (Lie.)

EDIT: For audio, I just listen to a lot of JP stuff. I listen to the Intermediate JPod101 podcasts while I work out. Since they're about 80% Japanese, it's pretty good. I also download/watch JP TV shows. One thing I noticed is that I need to work on my accents. Mine are kind of all over the place.

That's an interesting approach - only doing Kanji to Pronunciation (recognition) for UBJG. It makes sense as there is a lot of repetition and monotony in the book (which Khatzumoto warned a little about in his entry about it). In fact, I'm less likely to break up sentences that I like to have together for context if I do it that way.

As KO is perfect for writing and reading practice, that'll be the duel card layout.

Man, when I say my "current" plan, I really mean I will change it as it suits me. This suits me. Thanks for the nudge.

For Kodansha, nothing wrong with going with samples for areas you did not know about. You're right about Ka and Ga, so probably skip them and go for the rest.

That scanner pen is sounding more and more tempting. Argh.

Well, if you need sound sources that go with the sentence sources, there's always JFE. Someone on the board has already converted it into an excel sheet, and you can find the audio from it if you look around on the web a little bit. (I still can't remember where I found it.) I've been pondering if I'll use that as well... but again, I don't want to wind up repeating stuff too much.

And yeah, now that I know how to make the scanner pen work, I find it's pretty quick. I went through the first 8 pages of part II in about an hour or two. That's about 40 facts/80 cards.

rich_f Wrote:Well, if you need sound sources that go with the sentence sources(...)

I reccomend you to check 情熱大陸＋P

Here's a link to the Japanese for Everyone discussion. The link in the very first post will lead you to the site hosting the Excel spreadsheet with all the sentences in it. He even went so far as to convert the kana to kanji, saving you a huge amount of work.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=222

You *really* need to have the book to make the most use of it, though. And also, from a copyright fairness issue, you should also have it. I found it used locally for $10-20, so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

Genki is also a good textbook series... but textbooks are, for the most part, textbooks. I do think that Genki's approach to teaching verb conjugations is a little better than most, because it uses the Japanese kana rather than spelling out conjugations in romaaji. I find it's easier to remember them that way, but that's a personal preference issue.

Rich, are you tagging your facts (or cards) so you can later seperate them?

Not to criticize anyone's methods, but I think, at least according to the AJATT guy, you're doing a little too much work that could be counter productive.

I think his message is to read things that interest you (the beginner's and intermediate's grammar dictionary is fine) and to take sentences that you can connect with and strike home with you. So I don't think it's productive to copy every single sentences from the grammar dictionaries, but maybe one or two that you find amusing/interesting/etc.

I could be misinterpreting though; and, if it works for you, then go for whatever.

I don't bother tagging cards. Japanese is Japanese. The way I see it, if I can read it/understand it, then that's fine. If not, then I fail it.

@Ryuujin
Actually, everyone takes from that page what they want. What he did was pretty straightforward-- he tossed everything that wasn't Japanese out of his life, and surrounded himself with it as best he could. The sentences were a useful way to study, and to surround himself with even more Japanese-- Japanese that's grammatically correct. His whole thing (which I agree with) is that proper input precedes proper output. The more proper input, the better the chance you'll produce proper output.

How you implement that is up to you. I don't agree with everything he says. To me, "fun" is irrelevant. I'm doing this because I want to. If that isn't motivation enough, then what is? I don't need it to be "fun." I find the act itself enjoyable.

I did the Japanese courses while I was in grad school, and I found that overemphasizing output too soon left me with nothing to say, and no way to say it. Telling me, "Just say whatever you want," didn't work for me, because I didn't have the tools to say what I wanted to.

So I'm putting a lot of stress on input. The sentences serve an important function for me-- they're all grammatically correct Japanese. I'm trying to reinforce good language habits for now, rather than get into bad ones again.

I also read/watch/listen to a lot of Japanese as well. Don't get me wrong. I don't just do sentences all day-- but I do make sure that the sentences I review do as much as possible for me. I'm not cramming just anything in, either. I'm being somewhat selective.

But there's no sin in working hard for something you want.

I thought I was adding a lot of cards a day, from JFE, KO and UBJG, but it sounds like you two guys are hooning along. How many do you review, and how many do you add a day? Because I'm not really typing sentences in much anymore it's getting quite fast to add more, I review 80 to 100 a day and add maybe fifty more. I couldn't imagine doing front to back and back to front at this pace.

A lot of people seem to love grammar sentences here, there is just something i would liek to throw out there for people to think about.

Although sentences in text books and grammar guides are grammatically correct and great when starting to learn Japanese. They are often quite unnatural Japanese. try not to take them too seriously. Just understand the grammar and move on. I would really recommend authentic texts as soon as you can dive into them. otherwise you will be able to speak Japanese but it will sound rather unnatural. even though your getting input it isn't authentic! so you will sound like a text book which is just not real Japanese. If you look in an English text book for foreigners I'm sure you will think what i would never say half of the sentences in here?! same thing.