Kuma01 Wrote:

Tori-kun Wrote:I'm not sure how I should deal with reading Japanese.. I feel so discouraged at some point when I read "easy" stuff like キノの旅 and still encounter words or whole sentences I do not understand while reading (= decreasing fun, because I cannot understand everything). It feels like this demotivation I face when reading Japanese sometimes brings me into a 悪循環 in a way and my learning turns into something forceful and only something in a "box"/nutshell, which is Anki in my case (for ~40 minutes)...

I understand how you feel. But there is no quick and easy way to cram vocab besides memorizing it with anki. All I can say is that if you keep reading and SrSing words you run across eventually you will start running into unknown words less and less and it will get more enjoyable. There really is no going around that in the beginning, just cut yourself some slack instead of punishing yourself.

Exactly. And Tori, please stop to get discouraged all the time, and start looking at how far you have come already. Yes. I, too, know how you are feeling and this is normal. Look at your accomplishements, work on it keep at it, and stop worrying!

Even though this will mean little to you but it's got to be said. I am impressed how far you have come, and I would wonder if you can't overcome any obstacles, without giving up. Frustration is part of the game, yes I repeat myself, but it is so. And if you give up, because you are so frustrated - which I doubt you are even considering, thinking of all the time you put into learning, how will you ever accomplish anything outside your hobbie.

No doubt, you will master the language, but I am catching up to you so you better hurry. :p

@Tzadeck

4 years here.

I hear what you're saying but I think you're misunderstanding the phenomena that's really taking place. No offence intended.

Students tend to be reluctant to talk because they lack confidence that what they are saying will actually make any sense and the vocabulary they need doesn't pop up into their heads when they need it. They know that they won't understand much of what the other person is saying and may regard English conversation as an exercise in futility. Speaking using clear and simple language such that students can actually understand what you're saying while not butchering English is kind of an art form as I'm sure you're aware. Basically what I'm saying I guess is that conversation of this type is somewhat artificial and therefore not really teaching them 'real' English. Yes they may boost their ability to communicate prematurely with this kind of practice, but it will come from over reliance on learned patterns and will likely not teach them anything new. The actual benefit to conversation practice for students at that (JHS) level is that it's a form of natural listening practice depending on how naturally you're speaking with them. Trying to focus on improving their speaking ability by making corrections and so on, I think is pretty futile in the long run.

Speaking English (or any other language) shouldn't be particularly difficult. It only becomes difficult or frustrating if you are required for some reason or another to use it before you have acquired it.

first acquire, then use. This way using is easy. If you reverse that order, you just misallocate time and delay learning what is necessary and frustrate yourself.

Eh, this is why I downplayed personal experience. There's no reason to believe you are right or I'm right if our personal experience differs--you need an empirical study to determine which one of us is right. I can't pretend to be too familiar with studies done on language learning since about 2000, but if you look at a lot of the studies done when communicative language teaching first became a buzzword, they seem to agree with my side. However, I don't keep up, and studies about pedagogy have never been super great or conclusive anyway, so I could be wrong.

For millennia, humans have been learning each other’s languages by speaking. Our brains evolved to allow us to do that; we are hard-wired to learn language through speaking.

I feel like those who argue against the importance of speaking actually misunderstand what it means.

Speaking practice doesn’t imply going out to talk to strangers while you know very little of the language. It doesn’t imply embarrassing yourself or getting frustrated because you aren’t perfect. It implies seeking controlled situations where you can use whatever you’ve learned. Typically, such situations could be a language exchange with a native speaker, a tutoring session or even self-talk, any situation where you are allowed to start over, where you can take your time and where the listener is overtly willing to listen to you stumble, fall and get back up. In my experience -- and do chime in if your experience is different -- students who seek such situations and who make an attempt to use the language as much as possible DO NOT FAIL.

Speaking doesn’t have to be frustrating; on the contrary, it can be a wonderfully rewarding experience. As humans, we share an innate desire and need to communicate. A language learning experience that includes speaking with natives on a regular basis is very different from one that doesn’t. It’s also – and again, do chime in if your experience has been otherwise – a much more efficient learning experience, because it involves so many parts of the brain at once. For most people, it’s also a lot more rewarding to have a conversation than to read a book chapter (although arguably, this may not be true for all personality types).

Nadiatims said that you need to acquire before you use. That’s obvious. Speaking as early as you can doesn’t mean using before you acquire, it means using whatever you’ve acquired. (It can also mean trying to use in order to acquire, but that’s another story.)

The shorter the delay between the acquisition and the time you use it the better! It’s waiting that’s a waste of time. This is just common sense in everything else we do in our lives, and it’s no different with language. In fact, using the language is a great and efficient way to learn more of the language. And as you use language, you also gain immediate insight into what you’re missing in order to express yourself and what you need to work on.

With that in mind, I fail to see why suggesting that learners try to speak from the get-go is bad advice. It makes perfect sense.

vgambit Wrote:What more is there consider? Pretty much every reason I have to keep my mouth shut has already been posted, not to mention users who have told stories of their own successes with not talking.

You've explained nothing. There's no evidence to support your theory that your pronunciation will be good or that you can "quickly" learn native-like accent when you so desire. Regardless of other posters' experiences with different language sets, you can't claim a thing without actually achieving what they have. I don't recall any of them saying they deliberately avoided speaking for 6 (7, 8, 10?) years either.

You made this thread to give people advice but you're really ducking on some key points of your strategy that so far has no empirical backing. I wouldn't have any particular objection to your ideas if you weren't so arrogantly confident about achieving things to perfection that are much more difficult than you portray, while doing less than others here and lacking the experience to make accurate judgements about them in the first place!

Nagareboshi Wrote:Exactly. And Tori, please stop to get discouraged all the time, and start looking at how far you have come already. Yes. I, too, know how you are feeling and this is normal. Look at your accomplishements, work on it keep at it, and stop worrying!
No doubt, you will master the language, but I am catching up to you so you better hurry. :p

I suppose there is no way around it :P （しょうがない） Lately I namely have lost the recent aim I had, why I learnt Japanese and learning aimless is just for the sake of killing time and not playing computer games (having no intellectual value for me, whereas learning languages and training my memorisation skills does, I find). I just need people like you motivating me and that's all about I can say right now. I'm getting drowned in a hell of a lot of work right now and it's like a 強迫神経症　(don't know the English term, ugh) doing my daily Anki work at least, hm. Thanks for writing the kind words; I hope you're healthy and learn a lot, too :D

AlexandreC Wrote:The shorter the delay between the acquisition and the time you use it the better! It’s waiting that’s a waste of time. This is just common sense in everything else we do in our lives, and it’s no different with language. In fact, using the language is a great and efficient way to learn more of the language. And as you use language, you also gain immediate insight into what you’re missing in order to express yourself and what you need to work on.

Sure, when you encounter Japanese people speak Japanese. Then it performs a useful function. And of course conversation is a form of language exposure, so obviously you can learn from it just like any other input. Is it a more efficient way of learning than watching TV or reading a book? I don't really see any reason to think so. You'll almost certainly be getting less input because you'll be speaking some of the time, and if your level is still low, your partner will almost certainly be dumbing down their level somewhat. That's why I think study time should be spent on studying, listening/reading, and speaking/writing should be done when the situation calls for it, when you're with japanese people, or writing emails or whatever. Of course it can be fun to practice a language on sharedtalk or some such but I wouldn't really call it efficient study.

AlexandreC Wrote:With that in mind, I fail to see why suggesting that learners try to speak from the get-go is bad advice. It makes perfect sense.

I'm really talking about the idea that it's necessary/desirable to have a language tutor (the controlled situations you mentioned), or to shadow, or that one needs to write journal entries or do skype chats or go to bars, receive corrections etc in order to learn. By all means do these things for fun, but they are not necessary for language acquisition nor gaining speaking ability. If you spend too much of whatever limited time you have available for study on such activities, you'll likely learn less and find yourself less able to speak when you're out with friends or whatever situation in which it is necessary.

The way I see it, is speaking/writing ability can be thought of as one circle, and comprehension ability can be thought of as another. The speaking/writing circle exists within and is constrained by the comprehension circle. If you try to grow the speaking/writing circle without growing the outer comprehension circle it's very slow and your output abilities will be wholly unnatural and riddled with peculiarities. If you focus on growing the outer comprehension circle, then the inner circle is unconstrained and can grow rapidly and quite effortlessly when placed in output situations, and you will retain a much higher degree of naturalness.

I'm not saying don't speak when the situation calls for it, or to avoid having fun. I'm just saying if you're trying to acquire the language efficiently focus your study time on boosting your comprehension.

I agree that comprehension will always be easier than production; this is even true in our mother tongue. In other words, the 2 circles you speak of are a lot further apart than you seem to imply. Still, I never viewed language that way.

Have you ever used a cell phone where, as you type, the phone suggests words, and the more you type, the narrower the suggestions are? This is how I view comprehension. Whatever the language, we understand what is being said to us because we can narrow down the possibilities. That’s how native speakers can understand mumbling or half-intelligible speech: because there are only so many plausible alternatives and they are capable to fill in the gaps by eliminating implausible scenarios. That’s also why I think speaking is so important. As you make conscious decisions about how to express yourself, you discover what you can’t say. You narrow down the possibilities. That’s why I’ve always said that the more you speak, the more you understand. In principle, you’ll understand everything you could say yourself, and as you learn what you can’t say, you also learn what you’re unlikely to hear.

Is speaking a more efficient learning tool than watching TV? Yes, it is! Passive listening will never be as efficient a learning tool as conscious, active production, especially when it’s constantly fed by content that is tailored to your needs (speakers adjust to you) and directly affects your immediate life (involvement in the material). This interaction gives you great insight into what is possible in the language and gives you great motivation to express yourself. The fact that speakers adjust to you is not a bad thing. Their level is always higher than your comprehension level anyway.

Of course, input is important too. But if your only source of input were the people you speak with, you'd still be able to learn the language.

Tori-kun Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:Exactly. And Tori, please stop to get discouraged all the time, and start looking at how far you have come already. Yes. I, too, know how you are feeling and this is normal. Look at your accomplishements, work on it keep at it, and stop worrying!
No doubt, you will master the language, but I am catching up to you so you better hurry. :p

I suppose there is no way around it （しょうがない） Lately I namely have lost the recent aim I had, why I learnt Japanese and learning aimless is just for the sake of killing time and not playing computer games (having no intellectual value for me, whereas learning languages and training my memorisation skills does, I find). I just need people like you motivating me and that's all about I can say right now. I'm getting drowned in a hell of a lot of work right now and it's like a 強迫神経症　(don't know the English term, ugh) doing my daily Anki work at least, hm. Thanks for writing the kind words; I hope you're healthy and learn a lot, too

I think obsession is the word you were looking for. I too really like doing my Anki reviews, actually there can't be enough cards due.

Yes, I learn a lot, lately. 1313 sentence cards, 1781 vocab cards plus a good couple more in Japanese definitions on my cards and in sentences in the last 1.6 months with Kanji Odyssey. I am close to the end of Level 1 of it, 5 or 6 days and I am done. Everyday I have around 300 reviews, spread through out the day, 1 to 1.20 hours max. The rest of the day I spend with reading, watching Anime or listening to music, and adding new cards. KO really did it for me, my reading is improving, and yet there is still so much more I have to learn. Once I am done with Level 2 i will break into output, and learn for N2, next year.

前向きに動き続けましょう。 *笑顔*

Nagareboshi Wrote:KO really did it for me, my reading is improving, and yet there is still so much more I have to learn. Once I am done with Level 2 i will break into output, and learn for N2, next year.

I see:) For me core6k did it so far.. I hope not to give in with the last card, as the sorting by frequency is really a good thing. I'm planning to change the deck structure a bit after I went through it completely to enhance my listening skills.
Be advised, N2 grammar is really though and I'm not sure how I shall remember all the syntax. (f.e. ～がし → with masu-form or with what form can this expression be used?!? I just cannot remember that.. on top of that, there are lots of stylistic and formal differences between forms.. Don't want to think even about N1 lol) Good luck:D

Javizy Wrote:You made this thread to give people advice but you're really ducking on some key points of your strategy that so far has no empirical backing. I wouldn't have any particular objection to your ideas if you weren't so arrogantly confident about achieving things to perfection that are much more difficult than you portray, while doing less than others here and lacking the experience to make accurate judgements about them in the first place!

You're right; I made this thread to give people advice. If you read the first two posts, you would understand what that advice is. I'll boil it down to its core:

"Do what works for you. It's impossible to learn the wrong way (unless your information source is bad), so whatever method you choose, as long as you're actually doing it, you will eventually become fluent. This is the method I came up with after attempting several different combinations of methods, tools, and books over the last 5 years."

That's it. ***** empirical evidence. I'm "arrogantly confident" because I know that as long as I keep at it, I'll succeed, eventually. The "don't speak until your ready" thing... As I said, the evidence is already in the thread. I'm not gonna re-link Antimoon, or Steve Kaufmann, or Stephen Krashen. If those guys aren't evidence enough for you, then I don't know what to tell you.

This is education. Not only that, it's for fun. It's a hobby. There is absolutely nothing at stake here. The world isn't gonna end if people use methods that haven't been vetted through a dozen scientific, double-blind studies, or are based on otherwise non-empirical evidence. Gimme a break.

I think learning to speak a language is much similar to learning an instrument. You can't just study music theory and then all of a sudden your a master at the instrument. You have to practice your instrument, even though you will suck at first but you keep at it. It takes years to get to a certain point where you feel comfortable with your instrument and picking up a new one becomes easier.

Learning/speaking Japanese is the same, you need to speak in order to know where some of your weak points are. I think a person can really learn from having to fumble with words when they are trying to express a point in Japanese, it gets frustrating, but also motivates you to look up those words you needed.

vgambit Wrote:

Javizy Wrote:You made this thread to give people advice but you're really ducking on some key points of your strategy that so far has no empirical backing. I wouldn't have any particular objection to your ideas if you weren't so arrogantly confident about achieving things to perfection that are much more difficult than you portray, while doing less than others here and lacking the experience to make accurate judgements about them in the first place!

You're right; I made this thread to give people advice. If you read the first two posts, you would understand what that advice is. I'll boil it down to its core:

"Do what works for you. It's impossible to learn the wrong way (unless your information source is bad), so whatever method you choose, as long as you're actually doing it, you will eventually become fluent. This is the method I came up with after attempting several different combinations of methods, tools, and books over the last 5 years."

That's it. ***** empirical evidence. I'm "arrogantly confident" because I know that as long as I keep at it, I'll succeed, eventually. The "don't speak until your ready" thing... As I said, the evidence is already in the thread. I'm not gonna re-link Antimoon, or Steve Kaufmann, or Stephen Krashen. If those guys aren't evidence enough for you, then I don't know what to tell you.

This is education. Not only that, it's for fun. It's a hobby. There is absolutely nothing at stake here. The world isn't gonna end if people use methods that haven't been vetted through a dozen scientific, double-blind studies, or are based on otherwise non-empirical evidence. Gimme a break.

I'm happy for you to do what you want. I don't doubt you'll succeed in attaining fluency, since I think motivation and consistency is worth more than any gimmicky method or tool. I do doubt you'll have quite the easy ride you're anticipating when you start interacting in real situations with real people, but the reason I mentioned empiricism was mainly in regard to accent. Krashen is a bit meh though.

I really can't stress enough how difficult it is to learn a perfect accent if you weren't lucky enough to just pick it up through exposure (like me). 90% of the shadowing and listening I did for the first 2-3 years was wasted in accent terms because I couldn't recognise or produce the different patterns. My English-speaking brain just wasn't registering it. It didn't take long to learn to do that, but then I had to learn the accent for all the words I knew. If I could do it from the start, I would've just absorbed accent naturally as I learnt them, like I tend to do now while listening.

You mentioned things working unless your information source is bad, and that's why I keep asking what you're basing the pitch claims on and what your strategy is to quickly brush up your accent. I don't know what else to do other than rely on exposure, shadowing and audio on my flashcards and hope I can do enough to balance it off. It's certainly not a quick-fix. Like I said, pronunciation can also take more than a simple listen-and-repeat approach. I was lucky enough to have a native linguist critique mine, and again it was a harsh lesson on taking things for granted. If one of your goals is perfect pron/accent then I really recommend giving these areas some special attention. Once you have the skills/awareness, your exposure becomes even more effective and you can spot your own mistakes.

Cheesemaster64 Wrote:I haven't checked on this site for over 6 months or so, and I was hoping for some interesting reads. While I did find some really good stuff, it is sad to see that this kind of useless bickering is still continuing.

Why is it that we English speakers learning Japanese are so critical of each other? From what I have seen in the language schools I attended, neither Chinese nor Korean students behave in this way.

Can't we all just hold hands and sing around the camp fire? We should be proud of the achievements we have made thus far. I may be speaking for myself here but we are a bunch of nerds that had a dream and we have made it into our realities. Take a step back and share your accomplishments with your fellowship. Though many of us have never met, we all have shared many of the same experiences.

Hmm, this is probably why I never write on forums and just lurk. Well I hope what I said has some effect and wasn't in vain.

Good night!

I just read what captal said, amen brother. I am glad there was someone to beat me to the punch.

Good post. At least one fellow lurker feels exactly the same way you do.

Hey guys, First post been using this site to help my not so great imagaination when it comes to the stories for Kanji. I had been taking another method at learning japanese about 2 weeks ago. Then last week someone edged me to drop that and since i already knew kana to pick up a copy of RtK1, Since he's the only other person i know who self taught himself i figured why not, Been going strong at it for about a week and 2 days now up to my 550 mark. Using programs like anki and what not. RtK can't help but make you feel good about yourself learning new characters was a lot more easy to enjoy than just grining out vocab with grammar lessons (human japanese). But now that i'm here with a whole community, why is it that RtK is recommended before basic grammar i hear from him all the time it makes learning new vocab "easier". Which i guess now that i'm going at it strong I can kind of see


TLDR

Friend told me to quit my old way of studying and pick up Rtk1, Week in so far got 550 kanji down, just curious as to why this method is reocmmended so much [kana and then kanji instead of kana-grammar-vocab-kanji]

This is the exact (general) order that AJATT tells you to learn except with less detail. This really doesn't deserve 6 pages.

Then again I think I'm being critical because of the thread title; something like "How I learned Japanese" would be more appropriate.

@labmember008:
Welcome!

The main reason why RtK is so highly recommended is that it helps decrease the amount of new information you learn at once. Eventually, you'll recognize the symbols, know the stroke orders, the meanings, compounds, on-yomi, kun-yomi, and grammar, but trying to learn it all at once will make your head spin. RtK teaches you to recognize, write, and most importantly, differentiate kanji. This means that when you learn grammar and vocab later, you don't have to learn as much; just add a meaning to a kanji that you already know.

I think you can learn grammar alongside RtK, but it'll be tough before you've learned all the kanji, because you won't really be able to recognize a lot of the words. It might not be too bad if you stick with learning material that's light on kanji, though.