Yes I agree, to work effectively you need to take what works for you and leave the rest. But AJATT, as a foundation for your language studies, is pretty solid.

aphasiac wrote:

He was adidng 100's of sentences a day and listening to Japanese audio 24/7, 7 days a week. I think if anyone put the same number of hours in, they could do the same thing he did.

Sure, and he was also using his brain-sucking beam to directly absorb Japanese knowledge.

Last edited by Codexus (2009 August 12, 8:26 am)

aphasiac wrote:

cjon256 wrote:

My take on AJATT is this:

"It probably isn't going to work for most second language learners."

Why do I think this?  Because Khatzumoto is not a second language learner.  Japanese was at least his fourth language, so he is probably pretty good at picking up new languages by the time he started studying it.  This probably gave him a great deal of comfort picking out the comprehensible parts of input in an otherwise unknown language.  Us previously monolingual types are going to find his method very tough going IMHO.

Meh, sounds like you're just making excuses. AJATT will work eventually; might take different amounts of time depending on the person, but it is a valid and efficient method of learning and it will lead to fluency.

As for Nukemarine's original post; I don't really get how someone can understand all the words and the grammar in a sentence, and still not be able to comprehend it. If this issue is that the audio is going to fast to hear or to "process", then do what Khatzmoto suggests. Listen to to the same audio repeatedly (you'll hear extra bits each time), and don't move on until you fully understand it.

About Khatz: He's stated he was pretty much monolingual by the time he got into college. Just because he had an original native language does not mean much when it stopped being used around him at a young age. Recent posts on here about native language switching on people hit upon this. For Chinese, he only took it in college classes and kept dropping it despite an interest in it.

@Aphasiac

One, didn't I write that if I understand all parts of the sentences in the Drama then I began to understand the drama when spoken at native pace? What I'm talking about is the benefit I was noticing with stuff I didn't fully understand in Japanese.

I'm talking about something like taking the movie Monsters, INC. that you liked in English so the understanding of the story is there (AJATT recommendation), and turning it into a sound file so you can hear it all the time (the AJATT recommendation again). Doing that did not help my listening ability to a noticeable degree. Same thing with a show I saw with English subtitles or Japanese subtitles or no subtitles. Listening to it ad naseum did not help my listening ability. By the way, it ain't AJATT to listen to not move on till full comprehension. He's pretty clear about moving on when it's not fun.

The irony of saying the above statement is that it boosts AJATT's other bit about sentence mining from native sources early on, with a minor addendum.

Consider: I'm a slow studier, about 1 to 2 hours per day. A basic course of RTK Lite, Tae Kim to essential grammar and 1000 words of iKnow Core 2000 in KO2k1 order will take up to 300 hours. That's 5 to 6 months. However, I'm able to listen to a lot of Japanese in a day. Now, do I spend more hours going to 2000 kanji (full RTK) and more words (full iKnow or KO2k1) or more grammar? My above experience suggests no as you'll have low improvement on listening.

If you have limited time for actual studying, get into sentence mining ASAP. Since listening to comprehensible material outweighs benefit of unknown material, sentence mine from Dorama or Anime (that's the addendum). With only 1 or 2 hours a day, it can take a couple of weeks to weed through a drama (adding new kanji and words to boot). However, that's one hour of audio that'll trump most any other hour in your iPod random play.

To be clear, that's one hour of comprehensible, ENTERTAINING material. This is not an hour of Pimsleur or iKnow sentences merged into a sound file. It's still AJATT.

So maybe that's reason I'm noticing all this. I study slow. My listening to studying ratio is high on the listening part. If I went 8 hours a day, I could have finished RTK in a month, UBJG in another month and KO2001 in two months after that. Then I could have been sentence mining with ease, thinking the benefit was just the listening coming to fruition, when it was the mining of dramas that played the key. Don't know as that's not my life.

To summarize: to get earliest boost to listening ability, start sentence mining dramas or anime early,  then use the audio from those shows when listening to Japanese throughout your day.

thecite wrote:

nest0r wrote:

I understood 90% of newspapers after doing my modified AJATT for just one month! So listen to me: Just watch reruns of Bleach! You can trust me, I'm a person on the internet making claims of rapid progress as proof that you should follow my tips.

Look, I don't really give a f**k whether you believe me.

That works out well, since subjective claims of rapid progress from people on the web have no bearing whatsoever on my critical analysis of their recommendations and arguments. Save it for people looking for gurus. But it is the advice of someone recommending AJATT, so it's expected they'll fall into the same rhetorical traps that Khatzumoto does.

Also, it was very interesting how you laid out this 'revised plan' based on all the wisdom and experience you gained from your less than two months of AJATT. Combined with your amazing change from 5% to 85% of the news and your unequivocal assertions, it's really compelling!

Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 12, 10:58 am)

Nukemarine wrote:

thecite wrote:

nest0r wrote:

I understood 90% of newspapers after doing my modified AJATT for just one month! So listen to me: Just watch reruns of Bleach! You can trust me, I'm a person on the internet making claims of rapid progress as proof that you should follow my tips.

Look, I don't really give a f**k whether you believe me.

Oooh, the thread has become a guessing game? Let me try:

Fork?
Funk?
Firetruck?

man, I've never been good at these.

Thecite, it is the internet, so you can easily post a video or audio to help support your claim. Just record yourself watching the news, then give a commentary on what's being said. People respond well to advice backed up with evidence of results.

That would be inspiring on its own, but it wouldn't be a substitute for a properly composed recommendation which someone can analyze and decide for themselves whether they should try. There'd be no proof, for example, that the person reached their level through the methods they espouse. Also, I'd expect from some people--not necessarily anyone here--the language-learning proficiency equivalent to Googling for information then acting as if one possessed that information on their own and playing themselves off as incredibly erudite. I've seen that happen before, and though it was baffling to see that kind of effort go into something so trivial, people do it, for their own egos, I suppose.

Anyway, I imagine you knew that and were just prodding them in the right direction. I need to take a forum break, getting feisty. ;p

Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 12, 11:14 am)

Surreal wrote:

I think it's important to realize multitasking is vital for "passive" listening. Khatz mentioned in a couple articles how he likes to watch the TV, read a magazine and read a book all at the same time/shifting between them. I think he didn't even realize that's useful for his passive listening because he was so used to doing it. I've started using it and I think it's helped my passive listening alot. Think, because I can't say for sure that it's not only because my japanese has improved. Still, it seems logical that if you learn to make your "passive" listening more active it will help.
This is not aimed at anyone, only something I think Khatz should have given more weight.

Yes, although it's best, I think, to do it in a structured, progressive way--similar to the extractive listening exercises here. The overall theme being that you want to use organizational strategies to expand the capacity of working memory so you can incorporate your successively increasing knowledge better while processing increasing amounts and types of information. (More on other techniques here and here). 'Chunking' being a common strategic factor here.

I don't think this is the same as trying to multitask willy nilly/en masse, so much as finding ways to bring it all together as appropriate to the individual (that's why I like to focus on the continuing dynamic process of studying information with multiple senses). Thus I prefer to design cards and the environment in such a way that they complement one another in conjunction with language goals that allow me to create a workflow conducive to fun and efficiency.

+ Of course I'll neurotically throw in there's also developing native-like intuition by increasing your 'mental corpus' through 'condensed reading' of user-created subs2srs corpora. (Per here and here (whoa, I didn't implement half the ideas I used to have. ;p).

Bonus: Wilga Rivers, a dated bit about listening/speaking that can be extrapolated in many ways.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 13, 12:00 pm)

i dont know about you...but AJATT works almost TOO good for me.  I live in japan and after a year of doing this ajatt i have noticed not only a ridiculous time to improvement gain in my japanese but also a slight change in my personality as well (very unwanted).  I you really think AJATT doesn't work...you aint doing it all the way or close enough to all the way



p.s. i havent even read the original post...after 1+ years of doing ajatt seriously i dont need to hear another half hearted japanese learner telling this site (or any other) that ajatt dont work...

for the record i have surpassed/caught up to studious(sp?) studiers of japanese for 3+ years in the matter of less than 2 years using this method.... you can argue about it depends on the person all you want but humans only differ so much man....

p.p.s.
I just skimed the first post and saw it was from nukemarine....i cant believe you actually would make a post like this...i actually based some of my study routine off of yours..and have read some posts from you on AJATT site itself...man....come back to japan brah!

Last edited by saizen (2009 August 13, 4:12 pm)

saizen wrote:

I live in japan and after a year of doing this ajatt i have noticed not only a ridiculous time to improvement gain in my japanese but also a slight change in my personality as well (very unwanted).

Saizen, I think the more narrow issue is whether listening to incomprehensible is really beneficial. AJATT is based on Krashen even though Krashen argues that anything not comprehensible is "noise". Mr AJATT claims that incomprehensible listening worked for him.  (Ever wonder how he was able to single it out as being effective? [echoing Surreal above])

Nukemarine's experience seems consistent with what the scholarly types are saying. It shouldn't surprise us that we will get more out of our listening if we have some knowledge and capacity to process it with. And (as Nestor's links describe), when our brains aren't maxed out by chaos, we are better able to use some reserve capacity to add new info to the knowledge pile.

Nukemarine describes his experience and offers concrete suggestions. I suspect the old saizen might have bowed deeply ... you remember him, that charming and responsible guy I saw on Japanese TV with his mom awhile back? 

[fixed name]

Last edited by Thora (2009 August 13, 5:28 pm)

ryuudou wrote:

Someone's jealous.

hehe: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=67158#p67158 - Are you making an inside joke based on this comment, or performing unconscious self-parody? ^_^

Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 13, 7:03 pm)

saizen wrote:

p.s. i havent even read the original post...after 1+ years of doing ajatt seriously i dont need to hear another half hearted japanese learner telling this site (or any other) that ajatt dont work...

p.p.s.
I just skimed the first post and saw it was from nukemarine....i cant believe you actually would make a post like this...i actually based some of my study routine off of yours..and have read some posts from you on AJATT site itself...man....come back to japan brah!

Dude, I've been in Japan since Aug. 5th. Sadly I have to go back to Africa next Friday. Of course, that means I've been barely keeping up with due reviews. Still have not finished "comprehending" the rest of Last Friends ep 01.

Out of interest, since you've been doing AJATT for a year or more: How much of your AJATT per day would one call studying? I mean, the times you have to crack open a dictionary, make entries into an SRS or review the SRS. Also, do you have some gauge to describe your progress during this? It can be words known, sentences mined, tests passed, whatever.

Last edited by Nukemarine (2009 September 05, 4:37 am)

sup3rbon wrote:

This may sound a little bit convoluted, but I'm pretty sure the process of acquiring listening skills has to simply be learned on it's own.  In other words, you have to learn how to learn how to listen, or at least practice it, and I don't think simply working on a single set of listening skills is really enough to be able to put yourself in a position where you can easily improve your listening skills in one area.

After only studying actual japanese (read: not just doing heiseg) for 2 weeks and some change, I can already pick out phrases that i know, vocab I've studied, and even sometimes get a whole sentence if it's composed of only words/grammar I've SRS'd.  Also, I should mention that this is while I'm studying, not actively watching whatever japanese media I have playing at the time, so I'm not even really trying to comprehend it.

At the same time, since studying japanese my french listening comprehension has gone up considerably.  I can now watch french dubs of movies I've never seen and comprehend about 90% of what they're saying, whereas a month or so ago I'd maybe get only 50% the first time, and maybe 75% to 85% if I watched it again.

It would seem to me that the problem with french wasn't the vocab, it was being able to listen and actually hear the words being said, which I think I learned how to do from Japanese.  The key is to more passively listen.  You have to listen to it just like you'd listen to something in english, not straining to understand everything analytically.  It's almost like, when you listen to something analytically you're using a different part of your brain, rather than just letting the natural comprehension part of your brain do it's thing (note - I'm not a brain expert, if you know otherwise feel free to call me an idiot) just like you would do if you were either natively fluent, or didn't know the language at all.

I also think training your ear to help differentiate different sounds is crucial, which is why the link between musical ability and language learning is so strong (I think I read that somewhere, if not feel free to call me an idiot).  Since I've played trumpet from the age of 8, and guitar from the age of 10, I think the ear training I've done over the years does actually help with listening skills in languages.  Anyway, I'm done rambling

also tl;dr

I agree and disagree. Where you have 'passive' versus 'analytical', I think of it as 'reduced listening' versus 'semantic listening':

http://www.ears.dmu.ac.uk/spip.php?rubrique219 - On Reduced Listening, "the attitude which consists in listening to the sound for its own sake, as a sound object, by removing its real or supposed source and the meaning it may convey."

As opposed to Semantic Listening, "listening for the purpose of gaining information about what is communicated in the sound (usually language)." (With "Causal Listening" thrown in often alongside Semantic Listening, which would be the vocal equivalent to identifying the characteristics of someone's handwriting while reading and understanding what they wrote, according to Chion.)

For my personal goals/preferences, I think that while passive works in a slower way, they should all be active and progressive in structure, where the ultimate goal is effortless, seamless integration of parsing and comprehending. In that sense it goes back to how best to design one's audio ecology to move forward, leading back to my earlier 'rants' which I shan't repeat (tl dr).

Right now I'm trying to think of a simple model for what Nukemarine said (or my bastardization of it regarding those crystallizing 'ah ha' moments). Anki: i+X=Y, non-Anki: Y... ? I don't know, I have a feeling I need to think more about smart.fm and its API capabilities or similar mechanisms.

Edit: Been wondering why I think of 'reduced listening', in many ways, as 'passive' as perhaps you might, even though it's also 'active' in that, as the theorists suggest, it's a learned skill that goes against our natural listening desires. I think it's because that in being active in the reduced listening practice, you are making your impositions passive in relation to the sound object.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 16, 6:46 am)

Sorry, haven't read the thread.

Some suggestions.

You need to use Japanese without any English breaks. If you are always interspersing your study with English you won't build up a Japanese mode. This is what you need for good listening and speaking.

I think you were now, but put real audio from stuff you watch listen to in your SRS.

Listen to the same piece of audio over and over. Once you can't get anymore (might take 40 times or so) then look at a transcript and listen again following along. Do this a couple of times and you will learn to hear what you were missing.

If listening is your weakness, you might want to consider the methods laid out in these books: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … n-japanese

ahem IMHO