...except this thread doesn't read as a critique of anything, more like highly personal attacks on someone that borders on defamation of character in places. Of exactly the same type we've already seen and read in all those many threads about exactly the same topic. And then thinly veiled as some sort of "public interest" crusade to either stop people buying it, or "help" Khatz by offering criticism.

It just reads like some people are a bit obsessed... picking over every detail of his site to try to find inconsistencies or poke holes.

Yes, our society cares about business standards. If he does violate any laws, there's methods you can pursue to claim your money back. If you think that any of his terms are violating current regulations, your best bet would be to send him an actual email stating which ones, i doubt he's looking to break any laws or rip people off. But our society also cares about defamation too. And bullying.

Now, wheres all the threads about how awful and scammy the business model of dramacrazy.net is, and how they're trying to make money by having those horrible pop up ads on every single video, while providing links to materials online that were always illegal in the first place.

No? Of course not.

Once again, I am calling bullshit

Katz Working definition of fluency:

Reading: Can read a randomly selected general interest (e.g. newspaper) article aloud.

Listening/Speaking: Can listen to a randomly selected 60~90-second audio clip from prime-time television and repeat the dialogue.

Can express ideas directly or via circumlocution (can explain over, around and through any words you momentarily forget or didn’t yet know)

Writing: Can accurately transcribe a randomly selected audio 60~90-second spoken exchange from prime-time television or radio.

Can understand Japanese TV (95%), Japanese News (95+%), Contemporary Novels (95%)

Can read and understand Japanese only grammar/usage explanations and dictionary definitions — you use Japanese to learn itself: your Japanese is “self-hosting”

Can read, write and understand whatever an average Japanese high schooler can

Can read, write and understand whatever an average person in your field of expertise (e.g. college major/profession) can

On the phone and text chat, people occasionally (though not always) think you’re Japanese

Some Japanese people think you were raised in Japan, or have lived here for 10+ years, or are part Japanese

@Thora

One interesting thing I keep noticing, re: glowing testimonials and such, is the way the language blogging idea (specifically the egoistic types) feeds into that desire to be buddies with Khatz-the-hero-figure. I doubt we'll ever see them say anything negative.

At any rate, like I said before, I think any attempt at discussing AJATT here that isn't positive will result in a (willfully?) ignorant reframing as ad hominem hysteria. Attempts to get beyond that are met with more of the same until the critical thought about AJATT dies down—till the next thread or necropost. ;p

I don't think the attacks on him are really that personal. Which ones do you mean IceCream? (I didn't go through and read it again, so I might just not be thinking of them)

They're not stated eloquently every time, by myself included (I called him obnoxious), but it seems to me that the majority of the critiques are about the way he is doing the business, the price, speculations about what the service will provide, and the anecdotal nature of the evidence for his method. Seems to me that none of those is personal, even if the critiques are not always stated in a professional manner.

IceCream Wrote:...except this thread doesn't read as a critique of anything, more like highly personal attacks on someone that borders on defamation of character in places. Of exactly the same type we've already seen and read in all those many threads about exactly the same topic. And then thinly veiled as some sort of "public interest" crusade to either stop people buying it, or "help" Khatz by offering criticism.

It just reads like some people are a bit obsessed... picking over every detail of his site to try to find inconsistencies or poke holes.

Yes, our society cares about business standards. If he does violate any laws, there's methods you can pursue to claim your money back. If you think that any of his terms are violating current regulations, your best bet would be to send him an actual email stating which ones, i doubt he's looking to break any laws or rip people off. But our society also cares about defamation too. And bullying.

Character defamation would be more like "He is a kiddy fiddler and once killed a hobo for sport", not "His Japanese is demonstrably not as good as he claims so you might not want to spend a very significant amount of money for his ambiguous service or accept his word as gospel".

Re: business standards
I doubt what he's doing qualifies as a business. Is he registered as one? Does he have all accounting legal requirements fulfilled? What about privacy requirements? Is he paying tax on these moneys? Most likely it's the equivalent of paying the neighbor's kids $10 to mow your lawn. You have no real recourse if they ruin your flowerbed.

Good luck suing a guy in Japan from a foreign country about something that happened on the internet, especially if you never got fluent enough through the program to maneuver the legal system. Are you really going to pay a lawyer to regain a lost $1000? You'll end up spending more than that to get it back, plus wasting a lot of your time. Even if the court finds against him, there are no teeth to the laws to get him to pay the money. Debito still hasn't seen any money from his (default) victory against 2ch.

If he does run off with the money (which no one has said he will), he will be secure in the knowledge that there is ZERO recourse for victims (too late for even a charge back) unless there are hundreds of them and they band together (making it a significant enough amount of money that the feds will care).

Personally I don't think it's a scam so much as a service that will no doubt be underwhelming and probably won't continue for the full 18 months due to <some reason>. I of course think it's a massive waste of money, but it's your money to spend. It doesn't appeal to me so I wouldn't use if even if it was free actually (I don't read his site at all except when it's linked in a thread I'm following). Hell, maybe his Japanese is no longer extremely unnatural (though not bad) like it was 1-2 years ago.

... yeah, you're right, sorry, i looked back through & it's not this thread that has loads of personal attacks, that was a different one. There's so many i get mixed up. So, only defamationish comments here.

I'm not against criticism. There were critical points in my long post too. I do think there's valid criticisms that can be made. But i think people go too far when it comes to AJATT, like they're determined to see absolutely everything he ever does in a negative light. It's like some kind of "anti-guru" thing, where everything he ever does is bad or evil or lies. Since i've never really seen any guru worshipping of the guy in the first place, it becomes difficult to take such criticism seriously. Especially when there's tons of threads already filled with such criticisms, by mostly the same people.

I also guess i'm annoyed because i then feel compelled to write something to balance the overwhelming negative misrepresentation, when really i'm tired of seeing these threads at the top of the forum, about something that i'm not especially interested in to start with, since i have no intention of buying it, and assume that most people who take the time to read this forum also don't, because they're the type of people who do find learning materials for themselves to begin with generally anyway.

It just seems pointless, because everyone basically agrees on the subject, they don't want to buy silverspoon. Just that for lots of people, they can't fathom why anyone would want to buy it. But how can you have a conversation about whether silverspoon is overpriced if it has no value to you in the first place??

I'm also tired, cos i haven't slept lol.

Man, imagine if every guy who learnt English got this much attention.

I don't understand it at all.

dizmox Wrote:Man, imagine if every guy who learnt English got this much attention.

I don't understand it at all.

Same.

Until people started citing him as an authority on the forum here I never even heard of him.

dizmox Wrote:Man, imagine if every guy who learnt English got this much attention.

I don't understand it at all.

Well, English does not have kanji. And on top of that, English culture is boring (no anime, ecchi, stuff) compared to Japanese culture. Imagine, why there are so many ressources for learning Japanese. *ironic*

I never understood the popularity of the guy as he seems to just be promoting little more than Tony Robbins-esk enthusiasm. His claims are over the top, but were seemingly harmless as he wasn't charging anything and people enjoyed his blogs. When he starts asking $1,000 for as-of-yet unproven fantastic claims, it enters the realm of probable fraud. In January of 2013, he is either going to have to return all that money, be exposed as a thief for not doing so, or will have proof he can motivate to miracle levels as they all breeze through JLPT 1.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Character defamation would be more like "He is a kiddy fiddler and once killed a hobo for sport", not "His Japanese is demonstrably not as good as he claims so you might not want to spend a very significant amount of money for his ambiguous service or accept his word as gospel".

Well, it wasn't a comment about how good his Japanese i was referring to, more the accusation that Khatz has set up this deferred refund thing as a way to make more money from interest during the 18 months, that he's selling snake-oil and engaged in false advertising, that he thinks his buyers are suckers, that he's claiming that only he can give you the "secret method" to fluency, etcetc.

And yeah, i don't really think anyone's going to take him to court. But i don't think he's going to run off with the money in the first place, either. He's not the devil...

bodhisamaya Wrote:I never understood the popularity of the guy as he seems to just be promoting little more than Tony Robbins-esk enthusiasm.

A very interesting thread to practice my English understanding.

All Katz says boils down to this:
1. I did it.
2. You can do it.
3. I did it.
4. You can do it.
5. I did it.
6. You can do it.
.
.
.
.
.
67. Use Heisig - 'learn' kanji using SRS.
68. Listen to 10 000 hours, even in your sleep.
69. Mine 10 000 sentences.
70. Use monolingual dictionaries

Now I understand why he is so popular.

Well, I doubt the refund thing is so he can make interest (interest rates in Japan are nearly 0 and I doubt he'll get enough bites to make significant interest in a western bank after transfer fees). More likely he's just hoping people will forget about it or be lazy. That is exactly how mail-in rebates work.

I do think he thinks his buyers are suckers though and he does claim to have the ultimate truth. His advice and his products just don't seem to mesh to me.

IceCream Wrote:I'm not against criticism. There were critical points in my long post too. I do think there's valid criticisms that can be made. But i think people go too far when it comes to AJATT, like they're determined to see absolutely everything he ever does in a negative light. It's like some kind of "anti-guru" thing, where everything he ever does is bad or evil or lies. Since i've never really seen any guru worshipping of the guy in the first place, it becomes difficult to take such criticism seriously. Especially when there's tons of threads already filled with such criticisms, by mostly the same people.

I think the issue is less of an "anti-guru" attitude towards the guy himself and more of a "Wow Khatz is so awesome at Japanese, everything he says must be true. If I do everything he says I will own at Japanese in 18 months time!" attitude that it seems a lot of Japanese beginners who follow his advice promote on this forum/blogs etc. that annoys people.

Just as there is no crash course you can take to winning a gold medal at the Olympic Games, there is no single course for learning a language that will allow you to become fluent. It takes a lot of time, energy, motivation and dedication to even feel comfortable with the language, let alone becoming fluent.

If people really need some motivation to learn Japanese spend that $1000 on a ticket to Japan, rather than giving it to some guy on the internet who claims he will make you fluent in Japanese. Download your own dramas, podcasts and music. Buy a textbook or two to teach you the basics, use Anki and SRS to help you memorise words, try and find a language learning partner and by all means use the free advice he offers on AJATT if you think it will work for you.

People just need to use a bit of common sense...

Thora Wrote:Besides, there are already plenty of options better than AJATT out there.

What I find interesting is that you and nest0r keep saying this, but you give no examples. Furthermore I expect when you finally attempt to we will find that everything you reference as "better" is traceable back to either AJATT or the references used to create AJATT.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Well, I doubt the refund thing is so he can make interest (interest rates in Japan are nearly 0 and I doubt he'll get enough bites to make significant interest in a western bank after transfer fees). More likely he's just hoping people will forget about it or be lazy. That is exactly how mail-in rebates work.

I do think he thinks his buyers are suckers though and he does claim to have the ultimate truth. His advice and his products just don't seem to mesh to me.

is it a mail in rebate though, or are you just assuming that?

Also, i can't see where he says that he has the ultimate truth. It doesn't seem to be part of the promotion for silverspoon, he seems to be saying the opposite.

@SendaiDan: Obviously there's no crash course that will magically make you fluent. But it seems like the whole idea IS that you put in the time with silverspoon, not that you follow some secret recipe for success. Like someone said earlier, if you put in the time with any decent method, you're going to learn Japanese. And like i said, i don't think his claims about what counts as "fluent" are unachievable by any means. Like i said, there's plenty of people on these forums who've already acheived that. Though i would change a few of those points from my own experience, i'm assuming that they're sufficiently worked into the schedule to acheive them.

I mean is is the same theory as mail-in rebate profitability, not that is it a mail-in rebate.

The holder of the truth is what he has marketed himself as for years. I haven't read his description of silverspoon so I don't know his exact argument for it. If he is claiming not to have the truth this time then it's just another example of his long-term advice and his product not meshing.

well, if he automatically transfers the money back on day 596 then it can't be, right?

anyway, like i said already, i think he's doing that to try to choose his customer base, rather than make any profit in an underhand way. It's the only really reasonable explanation, i think.

edit@theedit: lol, he can't win either way then, can he... but when i read his blog back when i was starting out he also had a lot of stuff about putting in the time, showing up, etc, back then too. i think it's entirely possible that the whole guru-image has always been a misrepresentation on behalf of the anti-guru-ers. But who knows, maybe back in 2004 or whenever he did think he had the ultimate truth...?

IceCream Wrote:And like i said, i don't think his claims about what counts as "fluent" are unachievable by any means. Like i said, there's plenty of people on these forums who've already acheived that.

His 'working definition' seems very loosely defined. His extra definitions seems pretty far-fetched, including:

-Can read, write and understand whatever an average Japanese high schooler can
-Can read, write and understand whatever an average person in your field of expertise (e.g. college major/profession) can

So when you say there are people on these forums who have achieved it which are you talking about?

(Just interested, I'm not anti AJATT)

I have never met anyone who claims to have attained the level of fluency he claims his system will help you achieve in 18 months. There is no proof he actually reached it in that time frame himself, and I am skeptical he did. He is selling daily cookie-cutter advice already collected over the years if I am reading his webpage correctly, and that is hardly worth the $1,000 consultation fee. If it was worth it, he would have approached a book publisher for a bigger payday and recognition as an legitimate self-help author.

tokyostyle Wrote:

Thora Wrote:Besides, there are already plenty of options better than AJATT out there.

What I find interesting is that you and nest0r keep saying this, but you give no examples. Furthermore I expect when you finally attempt to we will find that everything you reference as "better" is traceable back to either AJATT or the references used to create AJATT.

Ok, allow me to suggest a better use of your time than AJATT.

1. Expose yourself to some new material everyday. This could be new vocabulary or grammar sourced from wherever you like, word lists, textbooks, media. Do a minimal amount of long interval review of old material. Focus on learning new material rather than endlessly reviewing old material.

2. Listen to Japanese whenever possible (during commutes etc). Make use of dead time.

3. Read Japanese whenever possible.

4. If the opportunity arises engage Japanese people in conversation.

That's it.

Do not waste your time on the following (suggestions from AJATT):
sentence mining (inefficient and unnecessary)
fill in the blank exercises
monolingual dictionaries (inefficient and unnecessary)
reorganising your entire life (unnecessary, diminishing returns, potentially harmful to your life)

@caivano: yeah, those are the two points i would change from my experience. I would also change 95% to around 90%, just to be sure, because things vary.

It's only the writing that sounds particularly difficult to achieve to me in that though. I would also add "about" to make it clearer that it's not like you can actually read and understand with the same level of fluency an average Japanese highschooler can, but can read and understand the same subjects.

The same goes for your field or profession. It's mainly a question of learning a specific set of vocabulary and practising listening to it and reading it. But there would definately need to be a good few months dedicated to that alone for it to be feasible.

But i think if you had enough writing practise, you could write "about" the same things an average highschooler could, in mostly natural Japanese. I remember seeing Zorlee's lang-8 entries, and he had really few corrections, along with loads of people complimenting it's naturalness. Nuriko too, though she's been learning a bit longer. On writing like an academic, i do think that's pushing it a little. I did write a passable scholarship application in Japanese, but it was hard, took a good few hours, and i couldn't express myself as well as i can in english.

Mezbup's acheived the speaking fluency bits, so that's also doable with enough practise in that time.

I think one of the hardest things is maintaining ability in all of those things though. Once you move on to something else, your level in the things you did before drops, i think. Not to nothing, of course, but if you spend a month doing fiction, you find your science fluidity of reading has dropped in the meantime, and your understanding of the news that you were perfectly fluent in understanding every day a few months ago is even worse, etc.

nadiatims Wrote:Ok, allow me to suggest a better use of your time than AJATT.

1. Expose yourself to some new material everyday. This could be new vocabulary or grammar sourced from wherever you like, word lists, textbooks, media. Do a minimal amount of long interval review of old material. Focus on learning new material rather than endlessly reviewing old material.

2. Listen to Japanese whenever possible (during commutes etc). Make use of dead time.

3. Read Japanese whenever possible.

You described a SilverSpoon day perfectly. Even better Khatzu has a solution for the speaking part, your #4, when you don't have Japanese people around. (It happens to be the exact same solution suggested in various places on this site.)

nadiatims Wrote:sentence mining (inefficient and unnecessary)

I've found that sentence mining and reviewing takes almost no time. It doesn't seem a big problem for me. On the other hand it's finally become necessary for me to get a JLPT cert so a lot of my study these days is pretty focused on that.

It was a godsend when I was first learning Japanese, but I can understand ditching it once reading becomes trivial.

nadiatims Wrote:monolingual dictionaries (inefficient and unnecessary)

Having my "go to" dictionary be a J<->J dictionary has been insanely helpful. The definitions are so much better than any J->E dictionary I know of.

nadiatims Wrote:fill in the blanks
reorganising your entire life (unnecessary, diminishing returns, potentially harmful to your life)

AJATT has several posts about how bad fill in the blanks are. Check out his rant on grammar textbooks.

Also I think "reogranising your entire life" is just your way of trying to force a negative frame to prove your point. AJATT is suggesting you set up an immersion environment which is of course an excellent idea.

tokyostyle Wrote:You described a SilverSpoon day perfectly. Even better Khatzu has a solution for the speaking part, your #4, when you don't have Japanese people around. (It happens to be the exact same solution suggested in various places on this site.)

righty then, so why do you or anyone else need silverspoon again? About the speaking thing, lemme guess his solution is chatrooms/skype and or thinking in Japanese...?
Not exactly groundbreaking.

tokyostyle Wrote:I've found that sentence mining and reviewing takes almost no time. It doesn't seem a big problem for me. On the other hand it's finally become necessary for me to get a JLPT cert so a lot of my study these days is pretty focused on that.

Just read more. The hardest part of JLPT is always the reading section.

tokyostyle Wrote:Having my "go to" dictionary be a J<->J dictionary has been insanely helpful. The definitions are so much better than any J->E dictionary I know of.

Get a decent dictionary. The only time I've ever used a monodic is to confirm that they are indeed 99% pointless for language learning. If I want to know the meaning of りんご, just tell me the word apple. I don't need a detailed description of the fruit. Monodics are for obscure words you don't know in your own language.

tokyostyle Wrote:AJATT has several posts about how bad fill in the blanks are. Check out his rant on grammar textbooks.

wait a minute. I thought he was a big proponent of cloze-deletion SRS cards. Are these not fill in the blank cards? Wasn't this the whole point of his MCD cards (or whatever they were called)...?

tokyostyle Wrote:Also I think "reogranising your entire life" is just your way of trying to force a negative frame to prove your point. AJATT is suggesting you set up an immersion environment which is of course an excellent idea.

Depends what is meant by immersion environment. All you need is some media that you enjoy. The idea that having a kanji poster, having a bookshelf full of books you can't read and listening to music you can't understand 24/7 is necessary or even desirable is ridiculous. As is the idea of replacing all your media with Japanese equivalents.

Wow. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

Now I haven't purchased SilverSpoon but I will as soon as he comes out with a version for people who have already completed RTK1. I don't see a point in spending that time again since I've done it on my own.

Why will I purchase it? Because I have previously studied French, German, Croatian and Mandarin but never got to a point where I was comfortable with the language. While I pick up some things quickly, languages does not appear to be one of them.

Also, people complaining about $60 or $100 a month, why do you care so much what other people choose to do with their money? Are you against people earning money? If Khatz earns $100,000+ from this and it works, I say great for him. $1000 is not going to break my budget. In fact, I've probably already spent more than that on tutors and other things to try out different learning methods. My Japanese girlfriend has spent way more than $1000 learning English and while her English is decent it is far from fluent. $1000 is a great deal for being fluent in under two years and if not, then I'll ask for my money back.

I don't see how in any way this is a scam. It's a scam only if he takes your money, doesn't deliver on his guarantee and then doesn't give your money back. That is the only way it could be a scam. As far as I know, other people who have dropped out before have gotten their money back. Sure he has changed his guarantee policy but I believe it's for the good of the learning rather than for money purposes. It makes sense to me and I have no problem with it.

I can't believe the amount of negativity (and most likely jealousy) for him.