***EDIT: AJATT works, what I'm writing about is what I did differently to make AJATT work to supercharge my listening skills. I'm saying this cause a couple of posts criticized this post without them actually reading it***
Ok, I’m throwing this out there even though I’ve not done it for long. This will be the longest post I’ve made on RTK, so I apologize. However, I think it’s important.
**Why I say AJATT doesn’t work (for my listening skills)**
I’ve ripped audio from Dubbed Movies, Blogs, Newscasts, and J-Dramas, put them on my iPod and have played them fairly consistently for about two years. Aside from very basic benefits, I have not seen it increase my listening comprehension. Didn’t matter if I liked the show or songs. I’d remember the scene, but could not follow the actual dialogue. Something is wrong in the AJATT.
Thinking on it, it’s akin to wall papering with a bunch of Japanese magazines, books and newspapers that you like. If you don’t know the kanji, the words and a bit of the grammar, it’s a mess. For those that have studied, you begin to get patterns from the chaos. RTK brought out the kanji, Genki/Tae Kim/UBJG brought meaning the various particles and modifiers, KO2001/iKnow/KiC brought meaning to various words. But with that, the pages of text on my walls still contain garble mixed with bits of clarity.
Now, imagine if instead of random magazines and books that you like, you papered your walls with print outs of Kanji from RTK, and various sentences and words from your Vocabulary deck? Would everywhere you look be something familiar that you knew? I’d argue your mind will stop your gaze at the familiar here. The big problem is all that crap on your walls is soulless sentences with no connection to each other.
Ok, take that one step farther: You mined a manga or a short novel and figured out each and every sentence. You SRS to ensure retention of that knowledge. Now paste the pages of that manga or short story (in big print) on your walls instead. If you happen to scan the wall, you’re seeing stuff that makes sense and follows a narrative. Your brain remembers not only the sentences due to the SRS, now it’s getting training in following a larger story.
Now imagine consistently adding more and more pages as figure them out via your SRS. Not only that, but you paper not just your walls, but every wall you walk by through out your day. I think you’ll find that reading skills will improve via passive AJATT part. Problem is it’s completely impossible outside of your own walls (and iPod touch mangas).
**How to make AJATT work (for my listening skills)**
One simple program – subs2srs.
Yeah, people are using it to get sentences to mine for vocabulary. People are having it automatically trim out sentences that are all kana, aren’t long enough, contain known words, etc. People throw it in the SRS and delete sentences that look too easy (when read), don’t have new words, don’t seem fun, etc. I am not doing that. What I started doing 80 days ago has changed my thinking, or maybe more along the lines of refined my thinking on the matter.
**EDIT: I made edits to these steps to reflect changes since I posted. There replies in this thread that might mention things I changed after the fact**
Step 1: Get an episode I like and convert it via subs2srs but I don’t use English subtitles (might be useful if starting out though). I think the best type starting out is a Drama with a dramanote script or a anime that follows a manga fairly close for later reading benefits.
Step 2: Import into Anki. I set up so the fields are: Japanese Expression, Japanese Furigana, Definitions, Audio, Image and Notes for drama/card number.
Step 3: Display cards as Question: Japanese Expression (without furigana), Image and Audio (*1). Display card as Answer: Japanese Expression (with furigana), Audio again, Definitions, notes..
Step 4: Line by line, card by card, go through Anki and figure out the drama. I’m using EBwin and the Kenkyusha dictionary J-J and J-E myself. It’s not just knowing what the words mean. It’s about knowing why that sentence is being said. That means figuring out the phrases. I put this information on the definition field. If I were starting out, it’s likely all J-E definitions, but no big deal. (*2)
Here’s the kicker: I don’t just delete a card because it READS easy. If I can’t really understand what the actor is saying, it’s probably better to keep the card. I do delete um’s, yeah, and other small inconsequential stuff that I can use yourself with no problem. I am wary though, and ask myself “if I heard this randomly, would I understand it”.
Step 5: Review as they come up. It’s a matter of knowing what is being said/written. Yeah, I'm looking at the Kanji expression, and probably replaying the audio but that’s okay. What is passing here is comprehension of the sentence. If something doesn’t feel right, like there’s more to the sentence, research it more. Maybe there’s a phrase that if I did a “full search” it’ll come up and give deeper meaning to the sentence (another reason I should not be so quick to delete a card). I only mark wrong when I mess up the meaning of the sentence or don't know individual words. I mark it difficult if I don't get the pronunciation of words correct (this can happen often even with audio).
Step 6: When I made the subs2srs, I ripped the full audio of the show. With audacity (I can also use subs2srs), I like to rip the audio into 3min 30sec segments. I put it on my iPod on sequential or random. (*3)
What I noticed with the above:
1. I watch the show after doing this, and had close to 100% comprehension without subs.
2. I read the dramanote script with pleasure and speed.
3. It was fun listening to it on my iPod.
Now, back to my title. For months I’ve always had my iPod playing dozens of hours of drama rips either in my room or on the move. Usually, I just phased it out. Even at night, I’d go to sleep and wake up hearing Japanese. Yeah, I’d recall the scene, but understanding of dialogue was not there. AJATT was not working….
Except in the last 3 months. Audio from the dramas I did with subs2srs are now in the mix. When these come up my mind notices. My ears perk up and I’m following along. I can remember the next line about to come up. I can at times quote at length portions of the dialogue. Even better, dialogue from other audio is beginning to make sense. It wasn’t over night, but it becomes noticeable very fast.
AJATT does work, but it works best with stuff you understand at 80%+ comprehension. It’s was not about reading comprehension, as I think I read ok. I don’t think it was just SRS’ing the sentences. Hell, I’ve read dramanote scripts with good comprehension, yet audio from that same show on my iPod was still white noise at times. It wasn't about vocabulary, as I have about 3000 words well in memory. No, it feels that it’s having the writing and the audio on the subs2srs deck that allowed me to train the bits (sentences), which were put into a bigger whole on the iPod (the dialogues).
Case in point: Rookies. That dialogue was fast, full of slang, and kind of got tedious (I stopped at the hour mark on the first episode due to this). But oddly enough, a month goes by with me reviewing it on in the SRS and playing in my iPod and this show is getting results. I can recall lengths of dialogue. I can understand that annoying 川藤先生 and his odd fashioned hot-blooded way of talking.
By using subs2srs, you train comprehension ability. The listening is trained on the iPod, where the comprehension from the srs is getting reinforced. You get by-product training in reading, typing, pacing, accent during this though.
Listening is by far the most important skill in a language. To get the most from the immersion portion of AJATT, that immersion material is best that you almost fully understand. To prevent a plateau, you must consistent add from a variety of shows and anime. To get better benefit, let it be a show or anime with a written version (dramanote, scripts, manga, etc.). Hell, paste your walls with these pages and walk around with them at the ready. In addition, with trained listening, it’s easier to produce correct audio because you know it sounds right. You’re shadowing the drama perfectly at the pace of the drama (not just one sentence at a time in a SRS). Heck, try doing J-Drama Karaoke with the audio down and you reading the sub-titles out loud. If you can think at the pace, then it’s no stretch to be able to read and type at near that pace in the near future.
As the hours build up, you mind has a firm grasp on the basic to produce the unknown with equal ease.
Ok, this has been lengthy. It’s poorly written and probably missing useful notes to further explain it.
*1 – Use anki to display the kana field as Furigana to neaten up the question field.
*2 – I use separate decks for Kanji, Vocabulary, Grammar and this Sentence mining. If new words (and kanji) come up in sentence mining, I add them should they exist in RTK1 and 3, or in the Core 6k and Tanuki corpus. Yeah, not every new word is added but so far no problem. That sentence mining deck is there ONLY to get comprehension of the drama. **EDIT - Due to recent releases of sorted Core 2k/6k sentences, I stopped activating words from subs2srs in my vocabulary deck. I now just use the definition field if needed**
*3 – I’m hoping the iPod will have a random feature soon where songs with higher stars get played more often. This will allow me to play random audio of both drama’s I have not SRS’d and those that I have. **EDIT - I now just create a new playlist for shows I've subs2srs in addition to a show I haven't on a 1 to 1 basis.**
Last edited by Nukemarine (2010 March 09, 2:48 am)
