All 'methods' are 'gimmicky' to people who aren't using them.  It's no big surprise that people who didn't use the method think so.

what's wrong with gimmicky learning methods? i love'em, s'long as they're free. and work. or let me do stuff in japanese.

i guess someone annoyed him though, since he couldn't find more than a sentence to say about this place. Nothing about the wicked group collaborations, the top quality answers to the questions about the language, people trying to help each other, the fun grammar battles, etc...

oh well

Last edited by IceCream (2010 February 17, 1:54 pm)

What's a gimmicky learning method? Anyone care to elaborate?

Apparently self-studying is gimmicky, and we have an average amount of traffic though it seems there are more daily posts here than in the sites listed as high. I might use a different description of RevTK forums and RTK, but I am biased. Still, "dodgy" and "gimmicky" as terms sound so biased as to beg a response.

No problems with that list though. It states it's "just" the opinion of one guy, and the list of sites were put up less than a month ago. A good number of sites are listed so one can find good places to lurk. Plus, it is an FAQ so that limits the number of people that are going to read it and find these sites. Though as an FAQ for a newsgroup, one would assume there's an opinion of the the various sites by the posters. After all, aren't the FAQ's themselves derived from what people tend to ask a lot.

I loath unmoderated newsgroups so I'm not going to bother checking out or even asking about how he came to some of his conclusions. Been easier if he stuck around here longer than 25 posts though.

Last edited by Nukemarine (2010 February 17, 3:38 pm)

I'd say his review of this forum is pretty much spot on, though it could of course use a lot longer review (so could all of the forums on that list). Depends upon his definition of gimmick methods though.

Nukemarine wrote:

Though as an FAQ for a newsgroup, one would assume there's an opinion of the the various sites by the posters.

The newsgroup is pretty much dying on its feet for lack of traffic (apart from a recent deluge of spam via google groups :-( ). The odd new post does tend to raise responses from the regulars, but there just aren't enough people there to sustain conversations, really.

On the other hand I can imagine that one question those remaining are likely to have would be "where has everybody gone and where can I find some decent conversations about Japanese?". So it's a useful list to have made up.

(On the substance of our entry, yeah, I agree with yudantaiteki.)

Oh yeah, the writer definitely intends gimmicky to be perjorative, I have no doubt about that.  I don't disagree with his characterization but I disagree with the negative term he chose to describe it.

Shrug. It's just some dude's personal website editorializing. I could point out a dozen similar blog/personal site opinions of RTK/AJATT/etc. that are biased toward a narrow perspective. I only point this out because I don't think we have much to work with here, in terms of a premise for turning this thread into a 'pros and cons of the forum' thread. ^_^

Last edited by nest0r (2010 February 17, 4:49 pm)

hahah, it kind of does, doesn't it?

wellll, i kind of get the feeling that, although probably individual people dislike individual parts of the classroom learning methods, well, i guess there's always been people around here who have been fairly balanced about things, but, in general, it seems like people become more balanced through time & doing japanese. Of course, if all the language learning ideas you have come from ajatt, people won't be as balanced. But people tend to find the holes in their learning methods, & fix them as they go along, i think...

as an all-out position, i still favour the pick up a video + some subs and get on with it over the sit-in-a-classroom-and-work-through-a-textbook-for-a-year-before-you-should-even-think-about-watching-an-anime attitude. by a long way. all of the specific classroom techniques can be fit in somewhere, i think, just maybe not in the order or speed a classroom presents them in...

I'd agree with him if he said "unique" and "unconventional" instead of "dodgy" and "gimmicky" respectively. It's just his opinion, so it's ok. But personally I think he sounded as harsh as this:

Part of a website devoted to Random Author's dodgy grammar learning textbooks. This forum is concerned with the language, not Author's books. As might be expected, many of the users seem to love boring learning methods.

As for traditional learning methods, I think the majority of the members here also agree that systematic methods are very effective at least in some areas at certain stages of language learning. Also, only the most extreme learners would say every single teacher/course sucks. I don't think many people would think it's useless to get answers from a qualified teacher and make friends who share the same interests.

Similarly advocates of traditional learning methods would also agree that not everything can be learned through courses and textbooks. Only the extreme advocate would say that transitional methods are the only way to reach fluency. If anything, I guess many serious learners who reached high fluency would say they have learned more things from actual interaction with language than studying.

If those textbook advocates are "unbiased," I think many of the posters here should also be considered balanced. Just because your opinion is more prestigious/traditional/conventional/popular/whatever doesn't mean your view is balanced.

Anyway, I think it can be annoying when a person who likes a little less exiting stuff uses "gimmicky" to describe other people's favorites regardless of whether he is right or not. This is more so when he uses "dodgy" for good measure.

Last edited by magamo (2010 February 17, 7:34 pm)

Ben Bullock wrote:

http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

This does look like very good reading!  It is a whole "Ask Magamo" forum.

The great thing about this forum is someone here has tried every gimmicky angle possible and can report whether it worked or not for them.  I can say the methods presented here worked for me and in a very short amount of time compared to traditional university study.  I do not have to pay back a $40,000 college loan to boot!

The heart of this forum to me is found in here Essential resources.  Every other thread is just commentary on it.

Transparent_Aluminium wrote:

The forum looks like a large version of the "What's this word/phrase?" thread. People ask questions and seem to receive speedy answers. It appears pretty active but a few individuals seem to be using it as a personal tutor or as a live dictionary, judging by their number of posts. Look at Steven2 for example. He's so lazy: "What does めぐるmean?".

Steven2 is someone who's been behaving a little oddly over the past few days. Several of his questions have been closed by the moderators.