Everyone has an own learning style. It is informed by personal preferences, past experience and specific needs.

What is your learning style? I suggest it can be captured by seeing where you stand on the following axes:

1) the extension/intension axis (on a scale from 0 to 10):

Are you primarily interested in extension ("fluent in Japanese in X years", X ε {0,1,2,3}) or intension (overlearning important patterns first, cram them with restricted vocabulary, postpone extensive vocabulary learning once you master the structure of the language: the approach followed in schools).

It is not hard to find people posting in language fora that are closer to the "extension" pole: they are disappointed with school education, which they find too slow or boring, and they feel that it is more important to have a "quick and dirty" knowledge as soon as possible, and fill in the grammar details only later on. These people may already be in the foreign country, and so language demands are quite pressing and daily exposure is possible.

Other people, which tend to be in their home country, prefer language patterns (grammar) over language extension (lots of vocabulary). These people tend to stick to textbooks or language classes. Traditional texts (JSL*, for one) generally apply Bloomfield's principle of "overlearning" ("Language learning is overlearning; anything less is of no use" - Bloomfield, Leonard, "Outline Guide for Practical Study of Foreign Languages". Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America, 1942): "Overlearning" means in this context that basic patterns must be drilled until they become second nature.

2) the production/recognition axis (on a scale from 0 to 10):

In the context of language learning, "production" means being able to produce an utterance in the foreign language when given a prompt in a known language. "Recognition" is just the opposite, namely being able to read/understand material in the foreign language.

A common strategy is to start with recognition and then go on with production after a time lag. So your position on the axis may vary according to the maturity of your vocabulary. This is the idea behind the "second wave", popularized for instance in the "Assimil" set of language books: one conditions oneself first to understand foreign sentences, from the simpler to the more complicated and 50 days later, the simple sentences from the beginning are revisited in production mode. As far as I know, SRS such as Anki do not have plugins to do that automatically - that would be awesome.

Some other people are not concerned with production - they count on repeated/intensive exposure to the foreign language, which will, given time, lead to productive capability naturally.

3) the attention paid to learning idioms (on a scale from 0 to 10):

Some people are content to learn vocabulary in general, and they believe that they will come to understand idioms through lots of exposure. Some others want to study them explicitly and drill them in production mode.

4) the attention paid to learning pronunciation not noted explicitly in the native script (on a scale from 0 to 10):

Some languages (I am told that Spanish/Hungarian are like this - but I do not know these myself) write all the information you need to pronounce words in their script. Most others (Chinese, Japanese, French, English...) have some degree of variance between script and pronunciation: not all information needed to pronounce words is explicitly noted in the script.

A popular strategy for Japanese is to ignore pitch and hope for it to seep in naturally. Others insist on studying pitch through a special notation since the beginning.

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Ideally, the goal of the language learning is to master all of the above. It is only the strategy of how to get there that differs among learning styles.

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Personally, I am a 10/0/10/10. Why? MY reasons are:

Intensive, because Japanese is a language rich in surprising grammatical structures which must be thoroughly drilled prior to amassing vocabulary. Plus, I am in no hurry - in fact, there is no practical reason for me to learn Japanese - and I don't mind taking 10 years to learn it. And because I know that if I learn something too fast, I will forget it equally fast. σπεῦδε βραδέως. If you forget your deck after 2 weeks not attending it, it is a clear symptom that you are going too fast.

Production, because what I can produce, I can understand. What I understand without being able to produce will be promptly forgotten. Language-learning is overlearning and production-learning, to paraphrase Bloomfield.

Idiom-intensive because my native culture is very foreign to all things Japanese and idioms are just surprising/instructive/amusing to learn.

Pronunciation-oriented for me is a sine qua non, stemming from a bad experience learning a phonetically quirky language - English - without paying much attention to its proper pronunciation when I was a teen, which left me speak it with a thick and unseemly French accent, some 40 odd years later.

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What is YOUR learning style?

*JSL: "Japanese, the Spoken Language", a text in 3 parts by Harz-Jorden and Noda, Yale University Press, 1987.

People here tend to give different advice when a newcomer asks a question along “What do I do to learn Japanese?” lines. I'm not sure how often those answers are really useful or just confusing because when people offer them they usually don't say why their advice is a good one. If, however, alongside the advice, they provide a kind of metrics that allows to identify a background for it, then the advice itself should be more valuable. So, next time you see me saying “do that, don't do that” keep in mind the following metrics of mine:

Code:

extension +-----o---+ intension
   production +---o-----+ recognition
       idioms +--------o+
pronunciation +------o--+

Note: I used to be more like:

Code:

extension +---------o intension

but after a few months of struggle with Japanese sentence structure, I released a bit on emphasis on grammar.

.

extension +o--------+ intension
production +--------o+ recognition

idioms +--------o+
pronunciation +--------o+

I believe by focusing on extension you are able to reach a higher level of comprehension quickly, which is very satisfying and enjoyable and makes the language of practical use (because you can understand authentic speech/text) much sooner. When the time comes that you need to produce the language, you'll generally be able to because the vocabulary is there and you have a sense for how people tend to say things. You may make a lot of grammatical errors at first but you'll be able to communicate across a wider range of topics and express yourself more clearly through better word choice and intuition. The intension approach (trying to nail down grammar through intensive drilling and so on) seems very impatient, shortsighted and ultimately inefficient in the long run. You might be able to speak grammatically 'correct' japanese sooner (at least you may think you can) on certain topics but you'll spend much more time being reliant on sympathetic speakers and unable to enjoy authentic media.

wrt idioms, I pay attention to them, but I don't drill them in production mode (or any other mode for that matter).

wrt to pronunciation, I pay attention to it but don't use any special notation for it or attempt to drill it. I don't note down pitch accent in japanese or drill it but I am aware of the concept. In Mandarin, I don't note down tones or attempt to drill it, but I am aware of the concept.

Inny Jan Wrote:People here tend to give different advice (...) If, however, alongside the advice, they provide a kind of metrics that allows to identify a background for it, then the advice itself should be more valuable.

Exactly. Many disagreements stem from different learning styles and goals, hence the vastly diverging advice one can find in language fora.

1) extension +-o-------+ intension
2) production +--------o+ recognition

3) idioms +------o--+
4) pronunciation +------o--+

1) I read about how the language works generally first and refer to basic grammar occasionally to refresh my memory when needed but I never drill. I rely on exposure to cement my understanding of the grammar. I also do not study advanced grammar early on, unless I encounter an instance of it in my readings and cannot guess/infer its function.

2) My ability to express myself always lagged behind my ability to comprehend. Considering how rarely I need to express myself, and how frequently I need to understand something, focusing on recognition seems more useful. Also in my experience of learning English, I was not very talkative early in my studies, which were based on overlearning principle. I started speaking after I've read more, it simply started to overflow (so to speak) after a while.

3) Idioms are idioms, they need to be learned as units. I pay attention to them but I do not drill them.

4) Most of the languages I'm trying to learn are not that difficult to pronounce well for a Turkish native speaker. I learned how to pronounce English words by listening to English media. Apart from Latin, the languages I am interested in are spoken by sizable populations of native speakers. I plan to listen to the respective languages' media to pick up accent and pronunciation.
In short, I pay attention to it but do not drill.


PS: I, unfortunately, despite being university educated do not write much better in my native language either. I was being quite honest when I said I rarely need to express myself.

@nadiatims, how do I focus on extension?

By reading and listening to authentic material that you can enjoy, and making use of translations/dictionaries/context as dictated by necessity/mood to increase your comprehension/enjoyment and vocabulary. As you keep doing this, the amount of unknown vocabulary starts to drop, and your comprehension goes up. And as comprehension goes up, your pool of enjoyable resources goes up too. As the same words pop up again and again in different contexts you start getting a deeper sense for how they are used. Think of it like this. You want to increase the number of times you've comprehended words in different contexts, rather than the number of times you've performed the same drill. Keep doing this and over time your brain starts to change. I believe really learning something for the longterm involves a change in the brain's structure, and this takes time. You can't just install something into your brain in 5 minutes by doing the perfect drill any more than you can expect muscle to instantly grow after doing a certain exercise. Shortsighted methods tend to lead to extra work for diminishing returns.

edit: and before anyway bites at me, suffice it to say this is all just my opinion (which should be obvious by virtue of the fact that I'm the one who wrote it).

That's gold, thanks.

I was going to respond with my own stats, but I am basically the same as nadiatims and qwarten.

As far as the grammar vs. vocabulary debate goes, I think vocabulary is more important. In my experience, after you get past beginner/intermediate grammar, if you know all the words in a sentence but don't know what the grammar means, you will be able to infer the meaning of the sentence through context 95% of the time. On the other hand, if you don't know one or two words in the sentence, you may be completely lost even if you know all of the surrounding context.

I was also thinking today about which type of words are more important to study (i.e. 名詞, 動詞, 形容詞, 副詞, etc). I believe nouns and verbs are the most important to study. If you don't know a noun or a verb in a sentence, it is much harder to to figure out the general meaning in a sentence. If you don't know an adjective, you can still get the general meaning of a complex sentence. If you don't know an adverb, you've not really missing much.

(These are all just my opinions. I realize there are many counter examples to everything I wrote, but I feel it's this way in general.)

@nadiatims: I've been following your posts, and your ideas about exposure vs. SRS and I understand you are 100% on the side of exposure. I am trying to find the best way to learn the language, and I think you may be right about exposure, but on the other hand, Heisig's method (SRS) tend to work better than mere exposure to kanji as many have expressed in this forum (only considering kanji's shape recognition, not readings)
You also say that it is better to SRS words than sentences, and that it is not necessary to learn the exact meaning of a word when SRS'ing, as it will become clear when exposing a lot of times to that word in the real word.
I am trying to find the balance, to determine what's best to learn by SRS'ing when you learn a language. I am still confused about it.

usis35 Wrote:@nadiatims: I've been following your posts, and your ideas about exposure vs. SRS and I understand you are 100% on the side of exposure. I am trying to find the best way to learn the language, and I think you may be right about exposure, but on the other hand, Heisig's method (SRS) tend to work better than mere exposure to kanji as many have expressed in this forum (only considering kanji's shape recognition, not readings)

You get the best results when you pair the two together though.

usis35 Wrote:You also say that it is better to SRS words than sentences, and that it is not necessary to learn the exact meaning of a word when SRS'ing, as it will become clear when exposing a lot of times to that word in the real word.

Because whenever you're exposed to a word, you get a context to it. As you encounter a specific word in different contexts that you understand, you'll gain an understanding of the word. You'll become used to the word's more exact meaning by encountering it more and more. Think about it, it's impossible to study every single word you're going to have to know. The biggest part of your vocabulary will be words that you've acquired an understanding for. Most of those words might be passive knowledge (not active, the words you spontaneously use when you produce), but lots of passive knowledge converts to active knowledge as you get used to it through exposure. Studying a slightly loose meaning of some words is going to make it easier to understand them when you encounter them in contexts, which helps because that's when you acquire the words' more exact meanings while it's also easier to become used to them. That's my personal view.

I'm not Nadi, but I figured I'd slip in with something before he reads this.