mel685 wrote:

I don't read manuals.

More seriously, read the website. Start on page 14 (the first page, I think).
He'll tell you to
a) learn  10,000 sentences,
b) listen to 10,000 hours of Japanese
and c) read 1,000,000 words.

a) is not enough
b) is too much IMO, 3,000 hours is enough for 95% comprehension
c) ... 1,000,000 words is NOTHING.

Just jumping on what you said, but I'm aiming it no one in particular.

I've nothing against Khatzumoto or AJATT, but I've stopped getting updates from him long ago. Now, on to your points, I'll go even further.

a) Khatzumoto now advocates massive context cloze deletion, which is basically deleting one word out of a paragraph that lets you guess what the word should be. The 10,000 sentence thing messed a lot of us up years ago as we were all about finding sample sentences and looked for resources of those wherever we could (Rosetta Stone, GTBJG, 2k1, iKnow, etc.). We were about understanding everything in the sentence completely ruining the i+1 benefit.

In time, worrying about getting everything right in the sentence moved to finding just one thing and soon it became using sample sentences for the purpose they were created. I think most have moved on to using sample sentences to help learn vocabulary and grammar, while in subs2srs it would be about understanding the entire sentence.

b) Listen to anything that's Japanese and after 10,000 hours you're magically fluent. Er, no. If anime fans have shown us anything, it's that listening to hundreds of hours of Japanese doesn't make you understand Japanese (yeah, the English subtitles work against them). Turns out listening to things you don't understand doesn't help at all as your brain is good at filtering out noise.

Now, my personal experience was creating comprehensible audio that's enjoyable was doable via subs2srs. It wasn't the Harry Potter audiobook with one voice actress, nor the various Japanese audio from college books or even the sample sentences from iKnow (though they had their purpose and benefit). I believe that building up a few hours of comprehensible audio and listening to that multiple times will improve audible fluency.

c) Never heard of this, but I think what happens with audio should apply with reading. You need to read something that's enjoyable and comprehensible. I found reading Dramanote scripts after I did the show in subs2srs worked great as a go to reading source. I also read through manga and Harry Potter, news sites, 2ch, etc.

I've sad it before, AJATT explained and defined things so poorly, that you'd have AJATT advocates always saying in response to what you did as "You're not doing AJATT, do this". If anything, this forum and the people looking for workable methods did more to produce various methods that work in various conditions that Khatzumoto never came close to accomplishing. He offered great advice at altering your environment, but giving a precise learning blueprint he did not.

Zlarp wrote:

Norman wrote:

We are assuming this 'broken grammar' is crafted purposely for such an effect. I'm not making such an assumption. Someone with the responsibility of assisting learners in a foreign language while displaying an inability to correctly communicate in their own native language makes me a bit skeptical and reluctant to follow the crowd on this one.

You are, however, making the assumption that English is his native language, which pretty much speaks volumes on its own.

...and here you are "making the assumption" that I did not know his native-language which "speaks volumes on its own."  It's listed in the "About" section, one of the few pages that I read before making my own conclusion about it.

@Nukemarine
A lot of useful advice.

Ajatt doesn't provide a precise blueprint, but there is a blueprint . You'd have to take notes and write it out yourself, though. Lol.

I think people make a little to much of this i+1 business.

Just study Japanese stuff (native materials, textbooks or whatever), figure out what it means and in time the recurring things will be remembered. Sometimes a sentence will be i+1, sometimes it'll be i+6, sometimes i+0. Who cares? i+6 is harder maybe but you can learn more, i+0 is easier so just consider it practice.

Last edited by nadiatims (2013 February 16, 12:05 am)

Nukemarine wrote:

mel685 wrote:

I don't read manuals.

More seriously, read the website. Start on page 14 (the first page, I think).
He'll tell you to
a) learn  10,000 sentences,
b) listen to 10,000 hours of Japanese
and c) read 1,000,000 words.

a) is not enough
b) is too much IMO, 3,000 hours is enough for 95% comprehension
c) ... 1,000,000 words is NOTHING.

Just jumping on what you said, but I'm aiming it no one in particular.

I've nothing against Khatzumoto or AJATT, but I've stopped getting updates from him long ago. Now, on to your points, I'll go even further.

a) Khatzumoto now advocates massive context cloze deletion, which is basically deleting one word out of a paragraph that lets you guess what the word should be. The 10,000 sentence thing messed a lot of us up years ago as we were all about finding sample sentences and looked for resources of those wherever we could (Rosetta Stone, GTBJG, 2k1, iKnow, etc.). We were about understanding everything in the sentence completely ruining the i+1 benefit.

To be fair, it was not or ever will be the method that messed people or messes with people. It is the lack of critical application of the method and the willingness to follow the head lemming up the hillside without taking time to reflect upon the journey and reassess at given intervals on the way up.

Upon reading through the guide, or articles, or whatever someone calls the table of contents walk through Khatz has presented on his blog, a lot of the subject matter in his articles are about what I touched about above.   

Though that aside, how has the 「一万文の方法」 "messed" anyone up? Is being able to comprehend what the equations behind Anki conclude is average (80somthing%, isn't it?) in respect to the content of some 10,000 varying sentences from a range of native Japanese media, in 18 or so months, a negative measure? It may not be a finely tuned as Krashen's science, but Steve Kaufman doesn't follow the i+1 at all and would you suggest his language learning has been "messed up"?

Too be honest, to even claim that this other method which isn't as popular here on Koohii, as "messing up" people's study, is a little, well... it's missing the point of learning another language and what has shown overwhelming successful over the years: consistency, motivation and consistency. The comparatively "hardcore" immersion concepts, daily Anki revision, opting for listening to and reading mainly target language media, etc., focus of AJATT provides both, in large amounts.

In the long run, these efficient self study methods are a game of inches in comparison to their benefits, whereas continued acquisition and comprehension in whatever language depends largely on continued exposure, immersion, motivation and enjoyment of the language.

That is why have enjoyed this website and AJATT (and other similar self-study language learning websites), because they provide motivation, from being surrounded by similar minded individuals, present a range of different ideas, and aside niggling internal politics here and there, are focused primarily on the idea that learning another language should be an enjoyable process.

Inny Jan wrote:

uisukii wrote:

In the long run, these efficient self study methods are a game of inches in comparison to their benefits, whereas continued acquisition and comprehension in whatever language depends largely on continued exposure, immersion, motivation and enjoyment of the language.

Luckily for you, you haven't gotten to know nestor, when he was here... His never ending quest for the most efficient methods of studying caused someone to write "I wonder, how he finds time for actual studying of Japanese?"

I've been through his blog/s and read a decent amount of his material, and a few of the varying links on studies he/she has posted. Pretty interesting stuff. Although I'm going to go out on a limb and say that from what I've read, aside from the more heated stuff, his or her interest is on a different level, focusing on a more neurological aspect, compared to a few of the heavily promoted studying methods oft told to people asking for help, as a certain "way".

I've actually learned a few things from nestor's insights and promoted ideas (mainly on his/her blog, as it is more focused), and it has helped provide a different perspective on a few mindset issues. Similar to how Khatz and those types provided a bit of initial drive, only focused less on outright self-motivation content and more about cognitive behaviour adaption. Probably not much interest unless those psychological and neurological aspects are your thing. I can understand the obsession enough to not recommend it necessarily.

As for finding the time to for study, I guess it's one of those things. When I was working 50 hour weeks I still managed to find the daily time for about an hour of cooking/cleaning/washing, and some four hours of mindless internet browsing and an hour or so of watching anime on the computer + plus develop a strong emotional reliance on alcohol during the period. Depending on how aligned your obsessions are, you'd be surprised how much else can be sacrificed.

Is it healthy? Probably not, well at least I wouldn't recommend how I lived for a few years, lol, but you can sure as shit get a lot of progress in a very select range of interests by obsession and giving up other stuff.

The purpose of the sentence method is that the sentences should be cherry picked during extensive exposure to Japanese media. I can't imagine the method being any useful at all without a decent amount of exposure to the language. My Anki reviews are only a very minor part of my Japanese study; I found the sentence method being the best way of reviewing vocabulary without using translation or definition memorisation, and not as a way of learning new words..

I completely agree with the last part of your post though.

Last edited by Stian (2013 February 16, 11:00 am)

Ten thousand sentences is an idea from antimoon in the '80s. At that time the only srs was supermemo and it was hard to get jmedia other than books. Therefore it made sense, and in a very primitive unenjoyable way, worked I'm sure.
  We have a much better situation now and techniques progress accordingly. Hell even Khatz doesn't recommend ten thousand sentences anymore. The whole thing is a bit of a straw man argument, like the 'don't ever study grammar' canard. 反AJATT strikes again.

If you like Steve Kaufmann's Japanese, you would probably like this guys videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/eigoegg
He speaks Japanese far better than Steve.

TwoMoreCharacters wrote:

Since a lot of people reading this are familiar with AJATT, does anyone remember a suggestion he's made on his site about a book in Japanese that talked about learning English this way? I'm pretty sure it's a South Korean work originally that's been translated into Japanese. I know there was an article about it on AJATT but it seems impossible to dig it out of that mess since I didn't see it in the table of contents.

The book is 英語は絶対、勉強するな！
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA … 476318170X

Last edited by Ash_S (2013 February 16, 6:19 pm)

Uisukii,

Understand that AJATT's blog has evolved just as this forum has evolved. I started learning Japanese and joined this forum in 2007 when AJATT started to make the scene with his 10,000 sentence theory (which he called fact). This forum was still in the 'learn kanji' phase with little developed as to what happens next. Well, here's this guy that's fluent and method that sounds reasonable. A number of us made an honest effort to duplicate his steps. So when I say messed us up, I meant that there was a number of us that looked to collecting sentences in an efficient manner. This didn't come from no where, as even Khatzumoto talked about sentence mining All About the Particles then later talked about Grammar sentences book we crowd sourced into sentence mining. Go back and look at entries on 2007 and you'll see a lot about sentence mining. Even now, with KO2001 and iKnow Core series you still hear people talking about the sentences ignoring that the sentences are there as an additional aid learning a word and not the objective itself.

The problem was that sentence mining and the idea of understanding everything in the sentence was applied too early in the learning cycle. Just as this forum was about getting Kanji into the head without worrying about learning words (though they can aid in the learning), so too should we have gone with the idea that we can learn vocabulary and grammar without worrying about the sentences that put them in context. AJATT talked against structured learning and grammar (and sometimes for grammar and sometimes about unicorns cause he does ramble). I think the sentence method and clozed deletion are both good methods, but there's a better place to introduce them than at the beginning of learning a foreign language. Put the easier to digest, applies in many cases words and grammar and kanji near the beginning then show the more complicated stuff that doesn't follow codified rules later.

I think this forum moved on to getting the best from all resources and not leaning on any one method. There are amazing resources both in computer programs and structured information that didn't exist six to seven years ago that can take a person from zero knowledge to upper intermediate and beyond. AJATT was part of that process and people took what worked for them and discarded the rest just like all those other resources that popped up over the years. That's why I don't hate on AJATT and Khatz like others do. I think he encouraged many people to start Japanese in an effort to be fluent. I just disagree with his approach as being good for the average beginner.

stratzvyda wrote:

Keep in mind 10000 sentences hasn't been used in AJATT+ since 2010, and ajatt public since early 2012.  Ajatt has evolved a lot over the years just like this forum largely because of the things nukemarine mentioned,  Personally I like MCD's as for me at least it helps my memory to associate words within the context of a sentence/passage rather than on their own.  Ajatt is one of many tools it has its benefits and disadvantages you'll only find out if it works for you if you give it a shot for a while, figure out if it works, and if it doesn't you'll know more about how you learn, change your learning pattern and progress on your own path.

How do you know every member of Ajatt+ has abandoned the method? That sounds a bit out there to me, and every follower of PORAB no longer uses it? How do you know this, can you show your sources? Otherwise I don't think you can truthfully claim that the method hasn't been used since 2010 on his super secret forum and 2012 in the public, I know many people still using normal single sentences including myself. I personally never linked MCDs because they took too long to make and review. Also I read so much that it didn't make sense to me.