Sarius24 wrote:

Hasn't it been like 2 yrs since his site has been up? Anyone reach fluency with his method?
I wonder if anyone could do what he did.

If you read through the comments on his site, I think there are many people who have tried his method and are fluent or are becoming so.

nest0r wrote:

Just use what you think makes sense, and what works for you.

Exactly. I started RTK because I thought Khatz's method made the most sense to me. Others' mileage may vary. I don't tell anyone the method I'm using to learn Japanese because the people I've told think it's strange and backwards.

playadom wrote:

Should I start putting sentences in Anki before I finish RTK1?

I'll probably do J-J, and maybe only focus on kanji that I know.

Assuming you're starting your list from a beginner's source, you'll still want to wait. With RTK, you're going to get kanji that's in beginner texts WAY at the end of RTK (such as "station").  Concentrate on RTK1 AT LEAST until you have the initial reviews done on all of RTK.

Be wary doing J-J if you have little foundation to go on. If you have the grammar and a baseline vocabulary, you could go that route. If you're starting, keep it J-E for speed sake.

I would like to just say something about the 24/7 listening to Japanese. If you are wearing headphones 24/7 or more than 5 hours with very high music you'll be damaging your ears so I recommend you burn your Japanese music to some cds and play em on a stereo. Headphones can be dangerous so keep your hearing healthy turn down your music if you plan to listen to lots of Japanese.
Arigatou gozaimasu.

Sarius24 wrote:

stshores24 wrote:

If you read through the comments on his site, I think there are many people who have tried his method and are fluent or are becoming so.

I asked on a thread if anyone gained fluency with his method, no one really said yes...

Well, I started AJATT methods around September. I'm NO WHERE near fluent. Then again, trying AJATT when you're stationed aboard a US vessel (yes, even one stationed in Japan of all things) is kind of difficult. I cannot walk around with headphones, cannot have Japanese playing on the computer's speakers, cannot do quite a few things. Still, can't let little things like that stop me.

700 Facts so far in Anki (Part 1 and 2 UBJG, Kanji upto 80 in KO2001). I'm planning on doing both DLAB and JLPT 2 this year. Passing those I think I'll consider myself technically fluent (hey, I'll get paid more at least). So, umm, update in 8 months.

you seem like you are making good progress nukemarine... keep it up ^_^ i just finished a 6 hour RtK marathon today..ughhhh.... i think i went through 130 kanji >_< if we all keep at it well end up fluent in no time ^_^ i'm using parts of the AJATT Method myself combined with other things i have studied in the past... AJATT looks good to me...

nac_est wrote:

Sarius24,
I have to say that this "is anybody fluent yet?" concern seems quite pointless to me. What can you gain from knowing that.

You would gain a valuable piece of knowledge, that is: the answer on the question of whether the AJATT method really works or not. Hence I do understand Sarius24 his question.

nac_est wrote:

You can judge by yourself if the method seems sound to you or if it's just stupid. Even better, you can pick those parts you like the most and throw away the ones that you think are too "suspicious".

Great advice!

Last edited by roderik (2008 May 27, 6:28 am)

Like most things in life, whatever method you choose to learn Japanese you will get out of it what you put in. I've heard of other native English speakers passing JLPT 1 within a couple of years using a variety of different methods, but the one common link among them has always been an almost obsessive amount of studying and input. 

Perhaps it's because Japanese has always been considered so impossible for Westerners that people doubt the methods employed by Khatz, but they appear to be pedagogically sound for the most part. The problem isn't with the method, it's that most people do not exhibit that same level of commitment. AJATT sounds so easy on paper, just like finishing RTK1 sounds easy too. And of course we all know how hard finishing RTK1 is.

Last edited by sheetz (2008 May 27, 10:34 am)

Heh. Actually, a lot of the discussions on this message board are about various books to be used as sentence sources, but to simplify-- get them wherever you want to. Just make sure they make sense to native speakers, and will serve your purposes.

A lot of people mine textbooks... but the sentences from textbooks are often... weird. They're intentionally artificial-sounding to emphasize a point. And a lot of times, they just cover weird subjects. JFE is a good book, but out of print. You can find it used pretty easily, though. One member here has already mined JFE into a spreadsheet. (See the JFE thead-- get the book, then download the spreadsheet with the sentences if you want to use that book.)

There's a group of us mining Kanji Odyssey together. That's what I'm using post-RTK to get readings down. The sentences can be a little weird, but they're pretty dang useful, and I think it's a better approach than RTK2 *for me*. (YMMV, naturally.) It's 2 volumes of books, each of which covers 555 kanji, and has lots of example sentences to cover a variety of readings for each kanji. There's a thread on that here, too.

A few of us also like Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar (UBJG). It's a nice basic grammar book that emphasizes lots of sentence examples. There's also a group organizing to mine that one as well. It covers a lot of the same material as JFE, but uses a lot simpler vocab. It uses less vocab to make sure you can understand the grammar points better.

Then there are a hojillion Kodansha books that cover all kinds of topics. You name it, there's probably a Kodansha book about it.

As for dictionaries, I like the チャレンジ dictionary by Benesse. It's a J->J children's dictionary. There are also some decent paper dictionaries by Kodansha that go J->E/E->J. But the best dictionaries are probably electronic ones. They're faster and more complete.

Of course, the best sentences to put in are ones you're interested in. Don't just stick to textbooks-- look for real books, newspapers, TV, websites, games, etc.

As for dictionaries, I recommend you the ones used by Yahoo Japan

辞書の種類     設定可能な辞書
国語辞書     大辞泉      大辞林
類語辞書     類語実用辞典
英和辞書     プログレッシブ英和中辞典      新グローバル英和辞典
和英辞書     プログレッシブ和英中辞典      ニューセンチュリー和英辞典

Type             Dictionary
of dictionary

Kokugo (J-J)    Daijisen and Daijirin
Synonyms    Practical use synonyms dictionary
E-J        Progressive medium-sized E-J dictionary   and   New global E-J dictionary
J-E        Progressive medium-sized J-E dictionary   and   New century J-E dictionary

Those are very good and reliable dictionaries and include very useful example sentences.

Another option is using J-J cards, and using Wakan with the capturing the clipboard option. So, you put your SRS at the top of the screen and Wakan at the bottom. If you want to check the english meaning of a word from your cards, just highlight that word and press ctrl-c, then it will get copied into the clipboard and will be automatically displayed by Wakan.

This way you can use J-J cards and check the English meanings only when you need to. If you use a web based SRS, you can use Rikaichan and get almost the same result.

playadom wrote:

Should I start putting sentences in Anki before I finish RTK1?

I'll probably do J-J, and maybe only focus on kanji that I know.

That way lies madness. I was tempted to get a jump start on AJATT before I finished RTK1, but things started getting, well, complicated, so I just focused my energy on finishing RTK1.

However, I don't see a problem with interlacing advanced kanji study (RTK3) with sentence study, which I'm currently doing.

did you see that this guy's making a movie? wtf?!

I did, and found it interesting. However, I also did note that Khatsumoto has been posting more and more rather 'useless' content on his blog in the past few months. This is of-course, in comparison with the content he posted previously, which explained his general method and gave us such solid advice. A bit of a pity really, his website deteriorating such as it is now. It lessens the overall grandeur and majesty of the AJATT method standing high above all other methods .