vgambit Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:When I read books, in languages that I know, I tend to move my lips and voice the words in my head. I don't do this with Japanese, at least not yet. I know that it will happen, and I am looking forward to it.

That's called subvocalization, and all it does is slow down the reading process.

[...]

As far as dialect, that's irrelevant. If it becomes an issue, I'll deal with it. Until then, I don't care if I sound like I'm from Kansai, Tokyo, or Osaka. As long as I sound like I'm from Japan.

I think Nagareboshi was saying that subvocalization is an indication that your speaking ability is not far behind your reading ability. It may very well slow down reading, but reading without subvocalizing has an extremely limited effect on your spoken skills.

I personally do try to read outloud, or else very softly, but the experience with Japanese remains frustrating because even if I know every word, I'm still unable to determine the pitch for most words. You may not worry about mixing up dialects, but the likelihood that you would ever sound like you are from Japan after 5 years of downplaying the importance of the spoken language are all but non-existant.

In any case, we've determined that your own personal perfect plan has not yielded any satisfactory results for your spoken skills since you still aren't fluent 5 years later. Perhaps it's time you ask the community how to improve your plan.

vgambit Wrote:As far as dialect, that's irrelevant. If it becomes an issue, I'll deal with it. Until then, I don't care if I sound like I'm from Kansai, Tokyo, or Osaka. As long as I sound like I'm from Japan.

You won't sound like you're from anywhere other than overseas. You don't magically develop a consistent accent from a given region by doing nothing, you develop a random 六本木外人-mix that will occasionally cause confusion and sound anything but native. You can hope to be understood most of the time, but I'd give up the 'sound like I'm from Japan' dream if you're not going to work at it.

AlexandreC Wrote:I personally do try to read outloud, or else very softly, but the experience with Japanese remains frustrating because even if I know every word, I'm still unable to determine the pitch for most words. You may not worry about mixing up dialects, but the likelihood that you would ever sound like you are from Japan after 5 years of downplaying the importance of the spoken language are all but non-existant.

In any case, we've determined that your own personal perfect plan has not yielded any satisfactory results for your spoken skills since you still aren't fluent 5 years later. Perhaps it's time you ask the community how to improve your plan.

"Five years ago, the moment I decided to learn Japanese, I instantly knew what I had to do in order to become fluent, and started spending all of my free time on studying the language."

Tell me when I said that, and I'll start responding to your posts again. Until then, we're done professionally. I'm tired of you putting words in my mouth.

Subvocalization isn't the same thing as moving your lips or reading silently to yourself. Subvocalization refers to any movement of the vocal chords while reading, and research has shown that essentially everyone does it when they read, no matter how quickly they're reading.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Subvocalization isn't the same thing as moving your lips or reading silently to yourself. Subvocalization refers to any movement of the vocal chords while reading, and research has shown that essentially everyone does it when they read, no matter how quickly they're reading.

Whatever. You know what I mean. It slows you down.

I thought it just referred to hearing the words in your head while you read, which I think is inevitable. The accuracy of this subvocalization will likely depend on the amount of listening practice one has gotten. I don't think reading aloud is necessary in order to speak with a decent accent. Getting bucket loads of native listening practice is though.

vgambit Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:Subvocalization isn't the same thing as moving your lips or reading silently to yourself. Subvocalization refers to any movement of the vocal chords while reading, and research has shown that essentially everyone does it when they read, no matter how quickly they're reading.

Whatever. You know what I mean. It slows you down.

It is over simplify statement to claim that sub-vocalization slows down reading. Well unless you are referring to speed reading and then we can debate that. Anyways, we all know this isn't about speed reading. Maybe you need to be more clear, or restate what you "mean."

There is a difference between "speed reading" and "reading speed." Your reading speed is limited by how fast you can speak if you choose to say the words you read out loud or "hear" them in your head. There is no limit if you decide not to do that.

Thus, subvocalization (or whatever you want to call it) slows you down.

vgambit Wrote:There is a difference between "speed reading" and "reading speed." Your reading speed is limited by how fast you can speak if you choose to say the words you read out loud or "hear" them in your head. There is no limit if you decide not to do that.

Thus, subvocalization (or whatever you want to call it) slows you down.

Slows you down? Is your goal to read fast or to learn from it?

AlexandreC Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:When I read books, in languages that I know, I tend to move my lips and voice the words in my head. I don't do this with Japanese, at least not yet. I know that it will happen, and I am looking forward to it.

That's called subvocalization, and all it does is slow down the reading process.

[...]

As far as dialect, that's irrelevant. If it becomes an issue, I'll deal with it. Until then, I don't care if I sound like I'm from Kansai, Tokyo, or Osaka. As long as I sound like I'm from Japan.

I think Nagareboshi was saying that subvocalization is an indication that your speaking ability is not far behind your reading ability. It may very well slow down reading, but reading without subvocalizing has an extremely limited effect on your spoken skills.

Yes, this is what I was trying to say.

AlexandreC Wrote:I personally do try to read outloud, or else very softly, but the experience with Japanese remains frustrating because even if I know every word, I'm still unable to determine the pitch for most words.

Same here. As long as I know the pronunciation, I say it out loud, or whisper it. Where whispering or softly speaking, feels more correct, maybe it is just a figment of my imagination.

vgambit Wrote:There is a difference between "speed reading" and "reading speed." Your reading speed is limited by how fast you can speak if you choose to say the words you read out loud or "hear" them in your head. There is no limit if you decide not to do that.

Thus, subvocalization (or whatever you want to call it) slows you down.

When you are not used to it, everything can slow you down, and in Japanese what slows me down the most is loanwords. They are killer with or without reading aloud, hearing the words in my head, or simply moving lips while reading.

ロックグループが解散した。リーダーが記者会見で解散の理由を説明した。

Examples like this one simply kill my reading speed. I have to stop to think, what the heck does リーダ mean ... and this is only one example. Also ボランティアグループ which only affects my reading speed. And I was reading this "borandia" and not "worandia," in the beginning. And it was hard to get from "borandia" to "Volunteer" as meaning. But this is just me and is not more generally valid. Speaking of generalisation, it would be nice to say that it slows down you, instead of saying it slows everyone down.

I think that actually pronouncing the stuff in your head can be good when you're learning also, because it helps you read Japanese as Japanese. The whole ideographic myth convinces some people that when you read Japanese you're supposed to constantly encounter stuff you don't know how to pronounce but know the meaning of, but that's not really how it should work. No matter what the actual truth is about how we read, it's never a good thing when you don't know how to read a kanji compound, even if you know the meaning. I personally found that as my oral comprehension increased, so did my reading speed.

This is one place where I think it's different for native speakers -- when a native speaker encounters a kanji they don't know how to pronounce, they're either able to fill it in from the context or at least they're able to substitute another *Japanese* word that means close to the same thing. For non-native speakers who aren't at a high level of fluency, encountering a word they can't pronounce but know the meaning of usually means they're switching to English (or whatever their native language is) in their head, and the constant switching between English and Japanese slows down your reading.

If you subvocalise word-for-word, you'll only be able to read at around 150wpm, similar to your speaking speed. You can't stop subvocalising, but you can change the way you do it. Most people read above 200wpm and good readers can top 400wpm.

150wpm is way too slow to read an entire book when your language ability is above the level where you have to "decode" each structure. I like to do occasional deliberate subvocalisation or even read aloud while reading, since it clearly does benefit your ability to produce Japanese. vgambit's idea that his brain will train itself through nothing but passive exposure isn't really winning me over. Usually people with this sort of idea talk some wank about how we learned our mother tongue as if it's relevant to second language acquisition, but maybe it's not convenient here since toddlers love practising their speaking at every opportunity.

Javizy Wrote:vgambit's idea that his brain will train itself through nothing but passive exposure isn't really winning me over. Usually people with this sort of idea talk some wank about how we learned our mother tongue as if it's relevant to second language acquisition, but maybe it's not convenient here since toddlers love practising their speaking at every opportunity.

Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

vgambit Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:vgambit's idea that his brain will train itself through nothing but passive exposure isn't really winning me over. Usually people with this sort of idea talk some wank about how we learned our mother tongue as if it's relevant to second language acquisition, but maybe it's not convenient here since toddlers love practising their speaking at every opportunity.

Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

Don't let it get to you, arguments happen here and there. I'm still here and I have gotten heavily criticized before (those progress report threads that I did).

vgambit Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:vgambit's idea that his brain will train itself through nothing but passive exposure isn't really winning me over. Usually people with this sort of idea talk some wank about how we learned our mother tongue as if it's relevant to second language acquisition, but maybe it's not convenient here since toddlers love practising their speaking at every opportunity.

Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

The charitable response to being misinterpreted is to assume a lack of perfect clarity in how you expressed yourself, and then clarifying what you actually intended to say (and how you think that differs from how the other person restated what you said).

Communicating clearly online is hard, so being misunderstood is common. Assuming that this is due to trolling is itself akin to trolling. As is not giving the object of ones criticism the benefit of the doubt if they seem to be taking an unreasonable position (e.g. Jarvizy).

CJ

vgambit Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:vgambit's idea that his brain will train itself through nothing but passive exposure isn't really winning me over. Usually people with this sort of idea talk some wank about how we learned our mother tongue as if it's relevant to second language acquisition, but maybe it's not convenient here since toddlers love practising their speaking at every opportunity.

Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

Sometimes, barking just shows how weak you are.

You can complain all you want about the quality of the responses you got, but your attitude probably kept away a lot of people who could otherwise have helped you.

vgambit Wrote:Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

You said you don't speak, value the idea of practising accent or even subvocalise, yet at the same time you hope to sound like you're "from Japan." Rather than telling everyone how wrong their interpretations are, how about elaborating a bit? I apologise for coming across as abrasive, but you don't exactly seem down-to-earth yourself, or willing to enter into a constructive discussion.

If what I said was off point, I'd be interested to know why. If you value exposure above any sort of production practice, there must be a reason. If it's not based on the typical "it's how we learnt as babies," what is it based on? How can you possibly hope to reach a level where you unconsciously speak with a perfect accent, flawless grammar and well chosen, expressive vocabulary: a point where you only need to think about what you want to say, and not how to say it? Few of the sort of connections you need to speak well are being made in your brain during exposure, so how can you justify not practising like the rest of us?

yudantaiteki Wrote:This is one place where I think it's different for native speakers -- when a native speaker encounters a kanji they don't know how to pronounce, they're either able to fill it in from the context or at least they're able to substitute another *Japanese* word that means close to the same thing. For non-native speakers who aren't at a high level of fluency, encountering a word they can't pronounce but know the meaning of usually means they're switching to English (or whatever their native language is) in their head, and the constant switching between English and Japanese slows down your reading.

When you say "kanji they don't know" in that first sentence, you seem to be referring to an unknown kanji compound composed of known kanji characters. Is that correct?
If so, your hypothesis seems strange. Shouldn't natives and relatively advanced learners usually be able to infer the meaning from the characters' intrinsic meanings, without relying on context or a separate replacement word?
For example, if I came across a word like "pulmonoscopy," I'd have a pretty good idea what it meant without any context and without using another word with the same meaning (if one even exists!), because I know what pulmono- and -oscopy mean, and that's enough.

Javizy Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

You said you don't speak, value the idea of practising accent or even subvocalise, yet at the same time you hope to sound like you're "from Japan." Rather than telling everyone how wrong their interpretations are, how about elaborating a bit? I apologise for coming across as abrasive, but you don't exactly seem down-to-earth yourself, or willing to enter into a constructive discussion.

If what I said was off point, I'd be interested to know why. If you value exposure above any sort of production practice, there must be a reason. If it's not based on the typical "it's how we learnt as babies," what is it based on? How can you possibly hope to reach a level where you unconsciously speak with a perfect accent, flawless grammar and well chosen, expressive vocabulary: a point where you only need to think about what you want to say, and not how to say it? Few of the sort of connections you need to speak well are being made in your brain during exposure, so how can you justify not practising like the rest of us?

I'm not the person you aimed these questions at but I do have some experience with acquiring fluency in foreign languages, probably more so than most of the native English speakers on this board. I agree with him that exposure is much more important than production, there is no way you can express yourself in a certain way if you can't understand the expression to begin with. I'm no giant AJATT fan myself, but one part I do agree with is that with advanced understanding of a foreign language also comes the ability to express yourself in that language. Now, I've never used English on a daily basis or even written much of anything in it, but I dare say I can talk about pretty much any subject with a native English speaker and I would never run out of words. I learned how to express myself in English simply by being exposed to it. I do agree that you can only learn to sound exactly like a native with practice, but I feel that that process should take place after you're already near fluent in the foreign language. It should be the icing on the cake, not part of the batter. If it is your goal to sound exactly like a native speaker then you ought to move to Japan, otherwise there is no real practical reason to even want to sound like a native. If you live there for an extended amount of time you will start to sound like a native quite naturally, but like I said it's something you should worry about when you're already semi fluent in the language and can express yourself well with maybe a touch of an accent.

Kuma01 Wrote:[...] one part I do agree with is that with advanced understanding of a foreign language also comes the ability to express yourself in that language.

[...]

If you live there for an extended amount of time you will start to sound like a native quite naturally [...].

With all due respect, learning English for a Dutch speaker is just about the easiest language combination one could think of; conversely, learning Japanese for an English speaker is just about the hardest one.

There is no doubt that as you increase exposure, you should expect your potential production to increase, but there is no direct correlation. A lot of people who grew up in bilingual families can still understand the language but not speak it, and the same applies to people who lived in foreign countries and who can still understand, yet can't speak. You are much more likely to be able to understand what you can say, then to say what you can understand. Production requires an active knowledge of the language that exposure alone simply doesn't give you.

Finally, living in a given place does not make you sound like a native. Very few people achieve that feat even after years of living in a place. It goes without saying that the more different the language, the less likely it is to happen.

AlexandreC Wrote:

Kuma01 Wrote:[...] one part I do agree with is that with advanced understanding of a foreign language also comes the ability to express yourself in that language.

[...]

If you live there for an extended amount of time you will start to sound like a native quite naturally [...].

With all due respect, learning English for a Dutch speaker is just about the easiest language combination one could think of; conversely, learning Japanese for an English speaker is just about the hardest one.

There is no doubt that as you increase exposure, you should expect your potential production to increase, but there is no direct correlation. A lot of people who grew up in bilingual families can still understand the language but not speak it, and the same applies to people who lived in foreign countries and who can still understand, yet can't speak. You are much more likely to be able to understand what you can say, then to say what you can understand. Production requires an active knowledge of the language that exposure alone simply doesn't give you.

Finally, living in a given place does not make you sound like a native. Very few people achieve that feat even after years of living in a place. It goes without saying that the more different the language, the less likely it is to happen.

Actually the easiest combination would be German, but that's besides the point. If what you say is true then I shouldn't be able to even have this discussion with you right now because I barely ever 'produce' much of anything in English. But of course you're going to chalk that up to be being Dutch, which while being related is not as similar as you might think. I guess what you're saying is that you always need to actively produce in a target language to learn it, except when they are somewhat related because only then does your brain automatically convert exposure to ability to produce? Anyway I suspected I would get this kind of response, most people refuse to believe that exposure can have that much of an impact, all I can say is that it has been my experience that you will eventually be able to say what you want without any conscious effort.

cjon256 Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:vgambit's idea that his brain will train itself through nothing but passive exposure isn't really winning me over. Usually people with this sort of idea talk some wank about how we learned our mother tongue as if it's relevant to second language acquisition, but maybe it's not convenient here since toddlers love practising their speaking at every opportunity.

Yet another poster putting words in my mouth. Let me be clear; anyone who tries to get me to respond to criticisms of things I didn't say had better not expect a response.

Now I see what everyone else means when they say this forum has gone to hell. I really do miss the old days. I guess it was inevitable that trolls would find this community.

The charitable response to being misinterpreted is to assume a lack of perfect clarity in how you expressed yourself, and then clarifying what you actually intended to say (and how you think that differs from how the other person restated what you said).

Communicating clearly online is hard, so being misunderstood is common. Assuming that this is due to trolling is itself akin to trolling. As is not giving the object of ones criticism the benefit of the doubt if they seem to be taking an unreasonable position (e.g. Jarvizy).

CJ

I understand what you're saying, but this guy took one interpretation of what I've been saying and ridiculously over-exaggerated it.

I went back and looked over what I said. Let me clarify.

By not speaking before the time is right, my pronunciation will be clear, and my sentences will be correct. Even if my speech sounds like an amalgam of several different dialects, as I said before, that can be corrected quickly and easily once I get to the point where that becomes an issue.

Do you need to practice speaking? Yes. Will doing so make you get better at it? No. Learning new words and grammar points does that. Will speech practice make you sound better, if you imitate native speakers? Yes.

AlexandreC Wrote:There is no doubt that as you increase exposure, you should expect your potential production to increase, but there is no direct correlation. A lot of people who grew up in bilingual families can still understand the language but not speak it, and the same applies to people who lived in foreign countries and who can still understand, yet can't speak. You are much more likely to be able to understand what you can say, then to say what you can understand. Production requires an active knowledge of the language that exposure alone simply doesn't give you.

Look, you just took your own theory, formed it as a statement, and tried to pass it as fact without any substantial groundings for why it would be.

Because it's not like the examples you gave couldn't be explained by any other means than the lack of output, and thus would prove you right. There's a far more plausible explanation for the fact that a lot of children who grew up among bilingual family members still can't properly speak more than one language: not enough exposure. They could have been taught a lot of words while they were young that could get them to the point where they could understand a whole damn lot, but the exposure could still not be frequent enough to have them become actually used to the language. Used enough so that they would acquire it.

And the thing about foreigners living in a country for ages without acquiring the ability to speak the language properly? Again, low exposure frequency is very common. Like here in Sweden there are a lot of foreigners from the middle east (a lot that even come here unwillingly because of disturbances in their home countries, which strengthens this problem indefinitely), who have their non-Swedish families, non-Swedish friend- and work circles, non-Swedish habits and interests, that just create environments that are dominated by their own languages or their undeveloped Swedish, and then they get stuck in it (or find themselves comfortable in it). Foreigners like these never get the exposure you claim to be insufficient, and then you blame the lack of output. I'm not saying this is the absolute case of ALL foreigners who have problems with other languages, but I think it's a far more likely explanation than an unsupported claim that they need to produce more.

AlexandreC Wrote:Production requires an active knowledge of the language that exposure alone simply doesn't give you.

That's either flat out wrong, or I'm some kind of linguistic genius, being able to write an English post like this despite never really actively using the language. I wouldn't normally use a statement like this as an argument, but it's enough here because this statement represents my experiences, and so far you've been providing nothing but your own experiences yourself.

So how many years of English classes have you taken in Sweden?

kitakitsune Wrote:So how many years of English classes have you taken in Sweden?

How many years of Spanish classes have you taken in high school? Are you fluent by now? Point made.