nadiatims Wrote:I'd rather people just attempted to explain their ideas but whatever.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Inte...27re_a_dog
buonaparte Wrote:I'm not sure what you mean when you saynadiatims Wrote:I'd rather people just attempted to explain their ideas but whatever.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Inte...27re_a_dog
We're not people, we're cyberspace ghosts.
I'd rather Khatz produced something interesting and tangeable, then I could rip his site.
nadiatims Wrote:I don't really give a crap if someone on the internet calls me a troll or not, I'd rather people just attempted to explain their ideas but whatever.Now, you may not be a troll, but as seen in that banner ^^^ there are trolls in this forum.
TheKorv Wrote:Now, you may not be a troll, but as seen in that banner ^^^ there are trolls in this forum.The only trollish comments, in the form of various insults and negative personal caricatures, have come from those defending Khatzumoto's exploitation of beginning learners by claiming it's not exploitation and we must be silent about it, or that it is exploitation but we're not allowed to care or comment on it. I wouldn't call them trolls, simply because I think calling someone a troll, 99% of the time, is done in a nonsensical manner as a silly form of name-calling for people who disagree with you.
IceCream Wrote:.then, again, why do you ignore posts which actually contain responses to the serious things you talk about in favour of responding to the more dramatic posts. And why do you exaggerate and put up straw men even in your "serious" posts?I'm not ignoring things. When I get time to check in on this forum, I sometimes get distracted by a recent post (bright shiny object!) instead of going back to pg 1 (where I left off responding!). I'll try to be more chronological.
nest0r Wrote:Bravo to Thora and Tzadeck, et al.[edit:That should actually be nadiatims not me - she's doing a fine job responding to stuff here.] Her posts here are what I wish I could write. She is calm, no insults, on point, no exaggeration, logical, funny, subtle, accurate, fair and more. She offers some concrete examples and is balanced. She kinda guides people to think it through rather than attacking the idea or them.
dtcamero Wrote:at least AJATT has no bitter trolls
nadia Wrote:Bitter trolls are the price one pays for balanced information.
(from other SS thread from memory)
matto Wrote:That depends what you would otherwise be doing with your time. Since I believe there are more effective and less time (time=money, money=time) consuming ways to learn a language than what would appear to be the core of the AJATT method (and I used to read his blog and follow his methods) yes I believe it is detrimental to your progress. Is it better for your Japanese than doing nothing? No doubt. But you need to weigh up the cost (in lost opportunity) of that time. I said before that AJATT is "overkill instead of efficiency", ie. putting in more effort (cost) than is necessary (diminishing returns). In fact that phrase has now made it into Khatz's banner along with 3 or 4 other quotes from me.nadiatims Wrote:nadiatims wrote:I don't get this at all. Will my Japanese get worse by doing SilverSpoon?
Will you ask for your time back too?
nadiatims Wrote:That depends what you would otherwise be doing with your time. Since I believe there are more effective and less time (time=money, money=time) consuming ways to learn a language than what would appear to be the core of the AJATT method (and I used to read his blog and follow his methods) yes I believe it is detrimental to your progress.This is a criticism we keep hearing; silverspoon isn't worth it, as there are better more effective methods out there. Yet no one can ever provide a single URL.
aphasiac Wrote:Can you post a link to a fully fleshed out detailed plan, that ends with fluency? (bare in mind these guys don't want to do the planning part - so posting links to vague methods or forums and telling them to work it out for themselves wont help)I thought the point was that there is no such plan. If people can't dedicate themselves to planning how they are going to learn a language there is no way they will dedicate the effort to actually studying (in my opinion).
Amset Wrote:I thought the point was that there is no such plan. If people can't dedicate themselves to planning how they are going to learn a language there is no way they will dedicate the effort to actually studying (in my opinion).One of the silverspoon sign-ups directly addresses this point on his blog:
TheKorv Wrote:The main thing is, this argument is petty and unnecessary.I disagree as this is a forum primarily about learning Japanese and the discussion primarily concerns a learning resource. I don't understand why people continue to try to silence the conversation.
Amset Wrote:I thought the point was that there is no such plan. If people can't dedicate themselves to planning how they are going to learn a language there is no way they will dedicate the effort to actually studying (in my opinion).I don't think so — many times, what prevents people from doing something is that they don't have a clear, believable plan for succeeding at what they're trying to do; not knowing if something will work is what prevents many from doing what it takes. Also, figuring out a way to accomplish something by reading, hearing and then turning into something useful the myriad of conflicting viewpoints and discouraging arguments available in places like forums can be a very distressing task for a beginner, enough to discourage them from even trying.
Amset Wrote:The other thing is what people often say, that people learn differently from one another. One plan may end in fluency for one person but not for another, without one person being "better" in any way than the other, just different.This argument, while true when it comes to motivation and efficiency, is often used as nothing more than an excuse not to do something or to justify a lack of commitment. Remember that children all around the world learn their native languages basically the same way, no matter if they "learn differently" or not — unless they have some kind of impairment, like hearing- or cognitive-related ones. When it comes to learning, even a suboptimal way is enough; the most important part is that the path is belieavable enough for the person to follow it consistently and all the way through. Trying to find the "perfectly personalized method" but not putting in any work where they could already be putting, because it's not how they "learn better", often results in nothing but no results at all where it counts.
chair Wrote:Anyway, after reading this thread I was wondering if any of the Silverspoon progress blogs has posted any of the daily emails in whole or in part.I think if Khatz thought silverspoon was worth what he's asking (or anything at all) he would post a few days or a week worth of it for free. If the content was so awesome people would want to pay for the rest. He could even charge the same overall price so he would lose no money (unless making the program less nebulous reduced sales).
bodhisamaya Wrote:Had Silverspoon been put into book form rather than daily emails with a retail price of $600, would anyone buy it? I think anyone who did would be thought of as insane.That's because of the psychological associations people have when it comes to pricing. My view is that any price is justifiable as long as there's anybody who's willing to pay for it, and that nobody's insane for paying too much for something they could get for much less — that's what keeps the economy going and entrepreneurs motivated to play this now pervasive game humans have created eons ago.
aphasiac Wrote:I wrote down a four point plan in either this thread or the other one, but I'll elaborate a little more here. Incase it comes off as overly authoritative please realise this is simply because I can't be bothered prefacing every sentence with "I think" or "In my opinion".nadiatims Wrote:That depends what you would otherwise be doing with your time. Since I believe there are more effective and less time (time=money, money=time) consuming ways to learn a language than what would appear to be the core of the AJATT method (and I used to read his blog and follow his methods) yes I believe it is detrimental to your progress.This is a criticism we keep hearing; silverspoon isn't worth it, as there are better more effective methods out there. Yet no one can ever provide a single URL.
Can you post a link to a fully fleshed out detailed plan, that ends with fluency? (bare in mind these guys don't want to do the planning part - so posting links to vague methods or forums and telling them to work it out for themselves wont help)
The closest thing is nukemarine's guide on this very site, but it's not for everyone. I roughly followed that guide, and sorry but studying core cards is boring as hell - I certainly couldn't make it past 1500. Also left me with zero speaking and listening abilities. It's a nice resource but no one's reached fluency using it yet have they?
aphasiac Wrote:Anyway I disagree with your opinion - I don't see the link between being able to plan, and being able to learn a language:The connection is that learning a language doesn't take a special skill, but takes effort and experimenting to see what works for you. If someone is a person who can't plan their day, I really don't believe they will be able to live according to someone else's plan of their day any easier.
gdaxeman Wrote:I don't think so — many times, what prevents people from doing something is that they don't have a clear, believable plan for succeeding at what they're trying to do; not knowing if something will work is what prevents many from doing what it takes.That's true, but I think the confidence that you get from having the believable plan is more important than the actual plan itself, because as long as you are studying somehow it's likely working.
gdaxeman Wrote:Remember that children all around the world learn their native languages basically the same way, no matter if they "learn differently" or not — unless they have some kind of impairment, like hearing- or cognitive-related ones.That's debatable, children are raised in different ways. To the point, though, I think any plan will work given enough time, and children do spend a lot of time learning their language(s). (The other thing about children is it's not like they need a detailed and believable plan to learn their languages BUT they do have confidence that they will).
nadiatims Wrote:i'm going to quote this whole thing because i think it's good. It probably deserves it's own thread for discussion, i think.aphasiac Wrote:I wrote down a four point plan in either this thread or the other one, but I'll elaborate a little more here. Incase it comes off as overly authoritative please realise this is simply because I can't be bothered prefacing every sentence with "I think" or "In my opinion".nadiatims Wrote:That depends what you would otherwise be doing with your time. Since I believe there are more effective and less time (time=money, money=time) consuming ways to learn a language than what would appear to be the core of the AJATT method (and I used to read his blog and follow his methods) yes I believe it is detrimental to your progress.This is a criticism we keep hearing; silverspoon isn't worth it, as there are better more effective methods out there. Yet no one can ever provide a single URL.
Can you post a link to a fully fleshed out detailed plan, that ends with fluency? (bare in mind these guys don't want to do the planning part - so posting links to vague methods or forums and telling them to work it out for themselves wont help)
The closest thing is nukemarine's guide on this very site, but it's not for everyone. I roughly followed that guide, and sorry but studying core cards is boring as hell - I certainly couldn't make it past 1500. Also left me with zero speaking and listening abilities. It's a nice resource but no one's reached fluency using it yet have they?
Basically what it comes down to for me is the following: accumulating listening and reading practice to get used to the patterns/phrasing and pronunciation/rythm/etc while also steadily accumulating new vocabulary and idioms with some light grammar only if/when it becomes strictly necessary. If you have the opportunity to write and speak in Japanese too, then these skills will improve as you accumulate practice and also as your other (so called passive) skills improve. So the question is how to do this as efficiently and painlessly as possible and getting the biggest bang (effect) for your buck (time).
As a beginner the biggest boost in comprehension are going to come from steady growth of vocabulary. The fastest way to do this is to make use of the advantage you have as an adult, fluency and presumedly literacy in your native language. While theoretically you can learn the language without using the written form and I know one foreigner who is native level but illiterate (after 11 years in Japan), for the sake of argument lets assume for practical reasons it makes sense to become literate. I propose learning hiragana first. Then Move onto Kanji. Kanji would be learned in Heisig order (not strictly necessary but probably easier) by learning vocabulary which uses the different major readings of the characters. This would involve writing the words out in kanji, writing their pronunciation in hiragana and meaning in English. This kanji learning phase would end once one feels they have a decent recognition of say 90% of the words. The purpose of this phase is to demystify the writing system. Basically you should understand the radical system, recognise most of the primitives, have a good amount of kanji readings and a bit of base vocabulary. The next phase would be to do go through the same word learning process to learn katakana but I suppose it could be deferred.
While the learner is learning the writing system and bunch of vocabulary, they would also be making use of dead time (commutes, exercise, cleaning etc) to listen to the target language. I would recommend starting with an audio course, because the translations can be used to comprehend and learn the material. A lot of the vocabulary learned from the kana/kanji study will be recognised, activated and reinforced. Words learned from this passive audio study will also pop up in the kana/kanji word study and be reinforced in the same way.
Once the written system is more or less mastered in this way, it is time for the learner to begin on easy authentic content, or if that is still too difficult parallel texts or phrase books or anything with translations. Something like L-R method might also work well at this point (I've been intending to experiment with it). The point is that by using translations, the texts can be understood quickly and new vocabulary can be gained easily with limited use of a dictionary. Otherwise if the learner feels ready they could jump straight into authentic texts making heavy use of a good electronic or web dictionary. New words should be learned. This might also be a good point to quickly skim through a grammar explanation. Just read through it, reading the example sentences and translations and as always extracting the new vocabulary. Don't bother with any of the exercises.
Keep reading and listening to authentic content, learning new words, and checking grammar if/when necessary. If you have opportunities to speak and write. Do so and those skills will improve further.
No need to bother with:
Sentence mining
Sentence cards
flash cards (optional, see vocab method below)
searching for and inputting sentences
making cards with audio/pictures
subs to srs
searching for subtitled media
software
fill in the blank exercises
monolingual dictionaries
short interval review of anything
grammar (unless it is felt necessary)
*Regarding vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning during either of the phases above will basically be done in the same way. I recommend limited long interval review involving writing out the words by hand using a method I've written about in other threads. Basically:
-use an A4 notebook
1. Start a new word list to be filled with 30 or so new vocabulary on a fresh page.
2. write the date above the list.
3. Write the words in 3 columns. First column is the word in kanji or kana, second column is the pronunciation in kana, third column is the meaning in your native language.
4. Ignore that list for a decent chunk of time (I usually do 2-3 weeks)
5. check which words you still remember.
6. Rewrite the forgotten words in a new list
7. Write the date above the list.
Keep repeating steps 4-7 until all items are remembered.
-when one notebook is finished start a new one. You can write the number of words each book contains on the front of each notebook (calculated by multiplying the rough number of words in each by the number of double pages in the notebook). This way you can easily track how much vocabulary is in the system. If you feel it is necessary old completed word lists can be re-reviewed. I can clarify this method further if requested.
* theoretically you could also just do standard mass SRSing of vocab in the usual manner. It's pretty effective but the reviews will start to pile up, and much of it is redundant. The method above is based on the idea of minimal work by letting items naturally enter the long-term memory rather than trying to force it in by spaced review. Anyone can test this method for themselves by writing a vocab list and ignoring it for a decent chunk of time. However many words you remember, it should prove that the short interval review you might have done on those items is in fact unnecessary.
ta12121 Wrote:@nestOr lol. Not sure how I would ta12121212121efied this threadta12-ification is the irruption into threads of Temporary Autonomous Zones operating in 12 dimensions, also known as TAZ12s or abbreviated as ta12s, as induced by the user codenamed ta12121.
