nest0r wrote:

hehe, I often see sarcasm that 'defends' Khatz from legitimate criticism, in other words, sarcasm that seeks to counter an absurd rendition of that criticism as a straw man. So I will counterbalance the tone of these forms of sarcasm with my own:

Don't worry, he's a big boy now. He can probably defend himself.

AJATT is one of many places I've trawled for tips, ideas, and resources, and browsing there gave me the impetus to finally try RTK, which I'd been resisting for years (because I didn't want to use someone else's mnemonics). It was also the first place I read about SRS, and it directly or indirectly - don't remember which - led me to this site.

That said, I was surprised to learn that so many people take Khatz so seriously, given the low signal:noise ratio of his writing, his doctrinaire attitude, and the difficulty of implementing full immersion outside of Japan. I do understand that the possibility of fluency in 18 months through comic books and cartoons would have a certain allure, but still...

I, too, have wondered what Khatz was doing for that 18 months besides (presumably) acquiring fluency. Managing his trust fund? Working in a host club? Living with his parents?

BJohnsen wrote:

I, too, have wondered what Khatz was doing for that 18 months besides (presumably) acquiring fluency. Managing his trust fund? Working in a host club? Living with his parents?

Is this a joke? He tells us multiple times on the AJATT site. He was studying a Computer Science degree in America whilst also working several part time jobs.

All things considered, you guys should present alternates or new twists on AJATT instead of writing so much about it.

Everyone would benefit.

I think the only legitimately useful thing I got out of AJATT was knowledge of SRS. I tried the whole "total immersion" thing in between jobs, and I realized, looking back it it now, that I didn't gain much. The reason is simply because, while I was constantly exposed to Japanese, the material was not suitable for studying.

For example, despite my reasonably decent vocabulary, I had absolutely dreadful listening skills, and even though I listened to Japanese TV or music around the clock, everything they said sounded like OADdfkaiejAKDjFJie to me. I followed the advice to "just keep listening and eventually everything will click," but it never did.

It wasn't until I no longer had time for immersion and instead imported the smart.fm Core sentences into Anki that my listening ability began to rapidly improve. I started from the absolute very beginning, even though reading and vocabulary-wise it was way below my level, and by the time I finished Core 2000 I could comfortably understand spoken Japanese. This was only from doing like 50 sentences a day, too. I think the fact that I could listen to something, and immediately reference the correct transcription, were why my ears were able to smoothly adjust to spoken Japanese. But, subtitles on Japanese TV is rare, so you don't get the same benefits.

I guess it differs from person to person, but personally I think just immersing yourself is flat out useless unless the materials you are using to immerse yourself are suitable for learning. It's like looking at a Japanese newspaper every day, but not knowing how to pronounce or read any of the letters. I may come to recognize the different kanji and alphabets, but I will still have absolutely no idea what's being said.

Evangelo wrote:

All things considered, you guys should present alternates or new twists on AJATT instead of writing so much about it.

Everyone would benefit.

For real, we should get together on some kind of forum and talk constantly about Japanese self-study from our continuous experiences/obsessions with learning the language, where AJATT plays only a small direct or indirect role, if any, in the overall idea department for most of those users.

Tangent: It is kind of cool that this forum has reached the 'random user writes a self-centered revisionist history post' stage.

Last edited by nest0r (2010 January 09, 12:29 pm)

mirina wrote:

I think the only legitimately useful thing I got out of AJATT was knowledge of SRS. I tried the whole "total immersion" thing in between jobs, and I realized, looking back it it now, that I didn't gain much. The reason is simply because, while I was constantly exposed to Japanese, the material was not suitable for studying.

I totally hear ya there. If anything, jumping straight into the deep end slowed my progression and added heaps to my frustration level, early on in the game. And for the love of 神々 I don't recommend switching your OS language unless you have a heck of a lot more patience than I do or can actually understand that you're about to delete C:\WINDOWS

Rather, for me, immersion is something I've been steadily introducing more and more as my Japanese skill improves. Whereas a year ago I'd find myself overwhelmed and frustrated by all the immersion material I was forcing on myself, it all feels so much more natural and (get this) enjoyable now. The majority of my music is now in Japanese, I now play far more games in Japanese than in English, ditto with movies, TV shows, and so forth. I'm honestly not sure if I would have reached this level had I stuck with immersion-overload, rather than introduce it in layers over a period of time while taking advantage of things such as Smart.fm and 2001KO to bolster my vocabulary, etc.

Not to badmouth AJATT, though - Khatz himself wrote this article recently about the necessity of being flexible in your studies and methodology... which further proves my point that there is/was no "method" "AJATT", for me, stands for "As much Japanese At a Time as I can Take" (which is quite a bit these days!) or, alternatively, AMJAATAICT. Or, "How to learn a language with the attention span of a mosquito on methamphetamine."

nest0r wrote:

Thora wrote:

Alyks, you say this New Method (?!) worked. How did it work for you?  You were often keen to report your progress. You were also indignant and fiercely adamant that you would achieve native fluency by March (RTK +18 mos). (I normally wouldn't put someone on the spot like this, but you had a bit of a tantrum when well-meaning folks tried to manage your expectations back then.)  [edit-fixed garbled stuff]

This. ^_^

Another vote for this.

Alyks you've written a lot of good things, but I think it's fair for people to call you to the table and for you to answer. I remember you wrote something like (paraphrase): "I don't care what any of you say because I will be fluent because I believe I can and I'll work hard to achieve that dream."

If Japanese took a back seat to your other projects that's fair- life happens- but we want to know how it went, and not just to say "I told you so" or to congratulate you but to learn from the experience.

BJohnsen wrote:

AJATT is one of many places I've trawled for tips, ideas, and resources, and browsing there gave me the impetus to finally try RTK, which I'd been resisting for years (because I didn't want to use someone else's mnemonics). It was also the first place I read about SRS, and it directly or indirectly - don't remember which - led me to this site.

That said, I was surprised to learn that so many people take Khatz so seriously, given the low signal:noise ratio of his writing, his doctrinaire attitude, and the difficulty of implementing full immersion outside of Japan. I do understand that the possibility of fluency in 18 months through comic books and cartoons would have a certain allure, but still...

I, too, have wondered what Khatz was doing for that 18 months besides (presumably) acquiring fluency. Managing his trust fund? Working in a host club? Living with his parents?

he said he was attending college to get a a degree in software engineering, had a girlfriend, and a parttime job.

Not to totally hijack this thread (cuz I have read most of it and I find it quite interesting), but something said in the thread about manga reminded me that I should ask this question at some point. If I'm not into manga or watching TV dramas (I don't enjoy English TV either, nor did I ever enjoy comics) is there any other thing I can read at a beginner level aside from kid's books that would improve my Japanese comprehension?

Or, is there a really sensible or somehow enthralling manga series or whatever that an adult male who has no interest in what he assumes to be junior high school girl stuff or some weird sexual fantasy fluff found in those books?  Please don't flame me for saying that.  It's probable that I'm totally ignorant about what's really in those books.  But from what I've seen on the subways and such, it looks like silly cartoon-y stories that would not hold my interest (I prefer more life-like crap like Grisham, some early Stephen King, and Clancy).

nest0r wrote:

For the record, that was the bit from Thora's comment I was least emphatic about This-ing. ;p

My bad That's the part I'm curious about- I haven't heard anything for ages...

Thora wrote:

It's not unlike the myth of "18 months to native level fluency" persisting (even expanding) despite the AJATT blogger having qualified what he meant by "fluent" in the deep recesses of his blog. His own descriptions of his level of proficiency aren't enough to dispel this myth! So long as the site description and intro say "native level fluency" and folks in forums and blogs continue to spread "native level fluency", it doesn't matter that the AJATT blogger himself denies this. (And his own descriptions put him closer to functional at 18 months, imo)

Hmmm. The main 'about' page states that after 18 momths he was able to fill out job applications, go to interview(s) and land a job in Toyko:

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about

This article appears to detail the interview process, which makes him sound more than just "functional":

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … -and-money

I'm interested, where does he deny the native-level statement?

Last edited by aphasiac (2010 January 11, 5:16 am)

ah ha, thanks!

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … -18-months

I guess in that article he's claiming "near-native" rather than "native" - but meh, splitting hairs slightly..