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The AJATT Method
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Nukemarine wrote:
Trust me, I live in Japan and I have to GO OUT OF MY WAY just to get in a Japanese environment. I hear all the excuses in the world about what people will be doing later. And later comes, they still haven't done it. I'm the weirdo cause I am doing it (well, and for the way I exercise in the gym).
That made me smile. Are you yelling out Japanese words while working out by any chance?
Nukemarine wrote:
And I think you misunderstand the 'screw grammar'. Grammar is VERY important in AJATT, it just becomes a natural byproduct is all. I'm not thinking, "hmm, to I desire to do something but am unable to, I must use a Negative base followed with a Volitional base and tai." What has happened is I've experienced enough sentences with the desire to do something but being unable to that it just seems right.
It is effectively saying "screw grammar" just like that, because reading sentences over and over isn't learning grammar, it's learning examples of how words are used and then mimicking it. Does it work? Yeah, probably. Is it better than actually learning grammar? No.
I'm not saying you have to know volitional base etc since personally I learned Japanese in Japan, we didn't learn any grammatic terms like that. However, we DID learn that the -mai structure should be built on a doushi in futsuukei. Just by reading one or two example sentences using the structure won't teach you that it's wrong to build it on a verb in -te form. Anyone who has read 10 basic sentences can use ~ ha ~ desu, but to learn the harder structures like the ones used in JLPT2 and JLPT1 (ni shitagatte, ni seyo etc) simply reading sentences won't be enough. And even if it would be, it would certainly take longer than simply learning the proper grammar. (That is, rules on what works and what doesn't, not grammatical terms like volitional form).
Tobberoth wrote:
Just by reading one or two example sentences using the structure won't teach you that it's wrong to build it on a verb in -te form.
Well then, how about a few hundred sentences? Or a few thousand? Surely, after working with that much material, you'd notice that not once has the structure been slapped on a -te form verb.
Honestly, I've never been able to make much use of grammars outside of confirming or denying a conclusion I've reached on my own through observation. That's the only time it's ever "clicked" for me. Trying to learn new material through grammar rules is just a painful process that ends with me piecing together painfully slow, often unnatural conversations, then forgetting everything within a week.
Mcjon01 wrote:
Tobberoth wrote:
Just by reading one or two example sentences using the structure won't teach you that it's wrong to build it on a verb in -te form.
Well then, how about a few hundred sentences? Or a few thousand? Surely, after working with that much material, you'd notice that not once has the structure been slapped on a -te form verb.
Honestly, I've never been able to make much use of grammars outside of confirming or denying a conclusion I've reached on my own through observation. That's the only time it's ever "clicked" for me. Trying to learn new material through grammar rules is just a painful process that ends with me piecing together painfully slow, often unnatural conversations, then forgetting everything within a week.
Yo, I'm with this guy. I consider myself smart enough to figure stuff out through observation.
You're really not supposed to go out and try and put together sentences. You're not going to read thousands and think "oh well I know the -te form, so if I slap it on like this..". You're still thinking the old way, the classroom constructing sentence way of thinking.
And once again, I'll refer to this:
http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/krashenbk.htm
Second language learning vs. second language acquisition. Two different things, really. You're a learner. This is an acquisition method. They achieve similar goals, but take different routes.
Either way, it's an interesting article.
The thing about grammar is that it's just a set of rules that try to explain how the language is working, seen from the perspective of an outside observer. I see no need for a person to learn the grammar of their own language, because the rules of the grammar have been learned automatically by exposure to the language over a long period of time. The AJATT method tries to mimic this exposure by making Japanese the new "main language" and as such, if you submerse yourself in a 100% Japanese environment, the grammar should theoretically be learned automatically. However, the total 100% submersion isn't really easy to do and it's hard to say how long it would take to become fluent, especially if you do not have other people you can interact with and learn from.
I feel that some grammar should be learned at the beginning of your studies, especially the basic sentence structure and particles etc. The rest can be looked up in a grammar dictionary when/if needed as you study sentences. The good textbooks are good at integrating grammar points into the text. Just studying grammar on it's own feels a bit unnecessary to me.
Another thing about grammar, as soon as you leave the world of written or politely spoken Japanese, you might as well throw the grammar out because most of it is ignored/dropped/changed etc.
Although Khatzumoto's story of 18 months to fluency etc is very inspirational, I think we all have to look at what he did as nothing short of amazing, because I think there are very few people in the world who can claim to learn a language as fast as he did, and as such we should not expect the same results, even if I do hope to see some similar successes. The main problem I see with the AJATT method is the 100% submersion, which just isn't possible for many people.
With AJATT it's not like you just input any sentence and review that sentence many times. You input sentences with things you want to learn, including new grammar. This includes studying and fully understanding the grammar and it's rules. It's not a process of osmosis.
The difference is you are reviewing the grammer in the context of a sentence or sentences rather than just studying the grammar itself. This method is superior I think. Take for example differences betweed 行ったら、行けば which are not so apparant if you read the grammar rules. However if you input many sentences exposing the differences then you will understand the grammar rules AND the right one will usually come out when you speak. This is the most amazing thing about AJATT. Words, phrases and grammar that you have learnt recently will pop into your head when you speak.
The great thing about AJATT is that grammar rules and nuances are constantly drilled into you. You may add a sentence to learn a new word, but in the process you are reviewing all the grammar in that sentence so you can quickly get a really solid feel for the language.
Also, I don't think anyone is saying that you should only do AJATT. It's important to get different types of language practice. Of course the more Japanese you input or use the better. However, in terms of "hitting the books" studying AJATT is an extermely effective form.
Last edited by thermal (2008 August 25, 7:59 pm)
AJATT also mirrors natural-language-learning the best, I think. I learned to become a very good writer in english because I had my nose in a book from grade 1 to grade 12, sometimes to the detriment of my in-class participation and learning. If I do the same thing in Japanese. I know that I will be able to do very well.
This is very much a difference between learning linguistics, grammar rules, and learning language. I didn't learn English by learning which verb form goes with which grammar point. I learned it because I read it. As long as the variance and amount of information is sufficient, you'll learn any language just fine this way.
I was very skeptical of AJATT, at first. However, using it, I can study a lot more stuff than I could before, and I know that I have a better command of it. Reading a whole bunch of natural Japanese sentences, fully understanding them, teaches me what is natural to say in Japanese. Then speaking just becomes a simple cut and paste process in my head. As long as the input information is varied and numerous enough, you can bend any of the sentences you know to say anything you would ever want to say.
Grammar is phostumous, i.e. it gives you hability to reflect on the language you already know. To reflect on something, you need to have it acquired first.
We all seem to agree that acquisition is the way to go.
But grammar boosts acquisition. So, studing gramar to a certain point is very helpful.
What is working for me is: Learn some sentences, then pick on Tae Kim's guide to check what he says about them. And then repeat.
mentat_kgs wrote:
Grammar is phostumous, i.e. it gives you hability to reflect on the language you already know. To reflect on something, you need to have it acquired first.
We all seem to agree that acquisition is the way to go.
But grammar boosts acquisition. So, studing gramar to a certain point is very helpful.
What is working for me is: Learn some sentences, then pick on Tae Kim's guide to check what he says about them. And then repeat.
Problem being that Tae Kim's guide is just for basic to early intermediate grammar.
As for the person earlier who said that after reading thousands and tens of thousands of meanings using -mai, you will understand it: True, but it takes you 10 minutes to just read and learn the grammatic rule, how long does it take you to read and remember 10 000 sentances?
Reading a thousand sentences for everything you want to learn is just the same thing as reading the grammar for it, it just takes way longer. Which is why I study grammar then use sentences to remember it, not to learn how to use it since it would simply take too long. I surely wouldn't have been able to pass JLPT2 in one year if I spent my time just reading sentences over and over.
erlog wrote:
Reading a whole bunch of natural Japanese sentences, fully understanding them,
The question being, how, without knowledge of grammar, do you fully understand them? Translations by other people? Reading a bunch of other sentences? As someone who has translated japanese quite a bit, let me tell you that one japanese sentence can have a LOT of different translations, all of them very different. Relating one sentence to one translation won't make you fully understand it, you will just understand the overall semantic meaning.
Tobberoth wrote:
erlog wrote:
Reading a whole bunch of natural Japanese sentences, fully understanding them,
The question being, how, without knowledge of grammar, do you fully understand them? Translations by other people? Reading a bunch of other sentences? As someone who has translated japanese quite a bit, let me tell you that one japanese sentence can have a LOT of different translations, all of them very different. Relating one sentence to one translation won't make you fully understand it, you will just understand the overall semantic meaning.
As someone who has studied Japanese for 5 years, is living in Japan, and studies Japanese for 5-6 hours per day...let me tell you how this works. (Translation: See, I can also experience-drop as a meaningless attempt to validate my opinions. I'm not trying to be snotty or a jerk, but you should maybe reevaluate the way in which you question other people. Whether you meant it or not, your post sounded kind of condescending. That is why I responded as such.)
Most grammar points really aren't that complicated. You get a grammar dictionary that provides minimal explanation in English, further explanation in Japanese, and bunches of example sentences. You never use translations. You trust the context, your instincts, and what your grammar dictionary tells you. Sometimes you misunderstand. Thems the breaks. If you're thorough enough you'll never be led very far astray.
Translation isn't 1:1 understanding. There's boatloads of stuff I understand in Japanese that I haven't the foggiest idea of how to translate naturally into English. I don't care. Translation is a completely different skill, and it's completely inapplicable in terms of how people actually interact with language.
Thinking is not an inherently linguistic process. Translating in my head as I went would be a painful slow process for the amount of Japanese material I interact with everyday. It would also make my responses to Japanese people really unnatural and slow.
For true language acquisition we're going Japanese <-> thought, and avoiding English as much as possible. I have 307 cards in my sentences deck, and zero of them have a translation or any sort of backside at all. Either I can read them or I can't. I can understand them or I can't. I don't have time for translation, and neither should anybody who actually cares about learning a language.
Don't get me wrong, translation can be a fun hobby and a great career, but it's a complete seperate art unto itself.
Last edited by erlog (2008 August 26, 9:56 am)
Just want to quickly agree with erlog here... Translating does not equal understanding. My current Japanese ability is a demonstration of this. Opposite to erlog, I can in fact translate plenty of sentences (because I wasted time learning grammar rules for 2 years) but simply cannot understand them ON THE FLY, in an actual conversation. My brain tries to translate what I hear into english, then work out a response, then translate back into Jap... Because I have been learning a bunch of grammar rules. Sure it might help with something like the JPLT tests (as mentioned), but I think most of us agree they aren't a good indication of actual functional proficiency anyway...
erlog wrote:
Tobberoth wrote:
erlog wrote:
Reading a whole bunch of natural Japanese sentences, fully understanding them,
The question being, how, without knowledge of grammar, do you fully understand them? Translations by other people? Reading a bunch of other sentences? As someone who has translated japanese quite a bit, let me tell you that one japanese sentence can have a LOT of different translations, all of them very different. Relating one sentence to one translation won't make you fully understand it, you will just understand the overall semantic meaning.
As someone who has studied Japanese for 5 years, is living in Japan, and studies Japanese for 5-6 hours per day...let me tell you how this works. (Translation: See, I can also experience-drop as a meaningless attempt to validate my opinions. I'm not trying to be snotty or a jerk, but you should maybe reevaluate the way in which you question other people. Whether you meant it or not, your post sounded kind of condescending. That is why I responded as such.)
Most grammar points really aren't that complicated. You get a grammar dictionary that provides minimal explanation in English, further explanation in Japanese, and bunches of example sentences. You never use translations. You trust the context, your instincts, and what your grammar dictionary tells you. Sometimes you misunderstand. Thems the breaks. If you're thorough enough you'll never be led very far astray.
Translation isn't 1:1 understanding. There's boatloads of stuff I understand in Japanese that I haven't the foggiest idea of how to translate naturally into English. I don't care. Translation is a completely different skill, and it's completely inapplicable in terms of how people actually interact with language.
Thinking is not an inherently linguistic process. Translating in my head as I went would be a painful slow process for the amount of Japanese material I interact with everyday. It would also make my responses to Japanese people really unnatural and slow.
For true language acquisition we're going Japanese <-> thought, and avoiding English as much as possible. I have 307 cards in my sentences deck, and zero of them have a translation or any sort of backside at all. Either I can read them or I can't. I can understand them or I can't. I don't have time for translation, and neither should anybody who actually cares about learning a language.
Don't get me wrong, translation can be a fun hobby and a great career, but it's a complete seperate art unto itself.
So your basically agreeing with me? My whole point was that reading a translation of a sentence isn't understanding, it's just connecting a Japanese sentence with an English representation of the same semantic meaning. So what are you saying? That the point is to repeat Japanese sentences, whether you understand them or not?
I didn't in any way try to make it seem like translation is an indicator of proficiency, so I don't understand why both you and SammyB writes long posts about why translation isn't an indicator. I'm well aware of that already.
EDIT: I'd also like to point out that I didn't mean to sound condescending, I just thought it would be good to let people know I'm not just making stuff up, I at least have some experience to back my claims up. So many people online just enter arguments without having any idea what they are talking about, I see nothing wrong in trying to let people know I'm not one of those. If someone was somehow offended though, I'm sorry.
Last edited by Tobberoth (2008 August 26, 10:35 am)
Tobberoth, you seem to ignore other peoples arguments on purpose. And more straw man wont help this discussion.
erlog, what you say doesnt make studing grammar useless. Even for natives it is useful. What is not useful is use grammar for translation. The correct usage is reflection over your understanding of the language.
So the point is, start with what you can understand. And make it better bit by bit. Adding more and more grammar points and vocabulary while keeping it pleasurable.
That is, until a certain point. It is not possible for a grammar to cover the whole language. Grammars are imperfect systems and language is a living thing. Someone's understanding of a language must be well above any grammar.
mentat_kgs wrote:
Tobberoth, you seem to ignore other peoples arguments on purpose. And more straw man wont help this discussion.
erlog, what you say doesnt make studing grammar useless. Even for natives it is useful. What is not useful is use grammar for translation. The correct usage is reflection over your understanding of the language.
So the point is, start with what you can understand. And make it better bit by bit. Adding more and more grammar points and vocabulary while keeping it pleasurable.
That is, until a certain point. It is not possible for a grammar to cover the whole language. Grammars are imperfect systems and language is a living thing. Someone's understanding of a language must be well above any grammar.
What part did I ignore? He didn't really oppose me in his post at all, I never said grammar points were complicated and then he said you never use translations, which while I only agree to a point, has nothing to do with what I wrote in my first post. I asked what the previous poster meant by full understanding, I never once said translation = full understanding.
mentat_kgs wrote:
erlog, what you say doesnt make studing grammar useless. Even for natives it is useful. What is not useful is use grammar for translation. The correct usage is reflection over your understanding of the language.
I never said I was against studying grammar. I was specifically talking about the very mathematical way studying grammar is encouraged by a lot of the textbooks. You should very much study grammar, but with a careful eye on its limitations. That's all I was trying to say. I apologize if I didn't put it quite correctly.
tobberoth wrote:
I'd also like to point out that I didn't mean to sound condescending, I just thought it would be good to let people know I'm not just making stuff up, I at least have some experience to back my claims up. So many people online just enter arguments without having any idea what they are talking about, I see nothing wrong in trying to let people know I'm not one of those. If someone was somehow offended though, I'm sorry.
It's not about being offended. It's that this is the internet and none of it can be proven so it doesn't matter. You're going to have to make your point on the strength of your argument alone. It came off like you were trying to pull a "I have more experience card." on a forum where the experience levels range from novice to expert, and nobody wears their level on their sleeve. For all you know, everyone you're talking to in this discussion has more experience than you, but has more tact than to try to baselessly pad their argument with it.
You assume a great many things about the arguments people are making, and then construct counter-arguments based around those often-wrong assumptions. This is why you're not coming off well in this discussion. I'll illustrate this for you.
Tobberoth wrote:
The question being, how, without knowledge of grammar, do you fully understand them?
One, you're assuming that I'm eschewing knowledge of grammar. I'll let this one slide because it seems like I didn't explain myself well enough in that regard, and other people didn't understand me quite clearly either.
Tobberoth wrote:
Translations by other people?
Two, you're assuming there's any translation going on at all. There is a question mark here, but you base the entirety of your argument following it on this assumption.
Tobberoth wrote:
As someone who has translated japanese quite a bit, let me tell you that one japanese sentence can have a LOT of different translations, all of them very different.
The tone here is condescending. By saying that you are someone with experience you are insinuating and assuming that I have less experience than you do. This doesn't have any real place in a philosophical argument. This would then be your third assumption, that I have less experience than you do.
Tobberoth wrote:
Relating one sentence to one translation won't make you fully understand it, you will just understand the overall semantic meaning.
You continue your assumption that I'm using a translation to understand something. In conclusion, you make a lot of assumptions, say very little, and put it down with all manner of condescension. It's no mystery why nobody understood that I was agreeing with you.
About that agreement, I was responding to the fact that you were assuming I was not studying grammar and understanding things solely through translation. I was demonstrating why what you were assuming was a very bogus assumption.
Last edited by erlog (2008 August 26, 8:21 pm)
My post kind of got ignored, but I would like to reiterate.
AJATT is actually unrelated to what you learn. For example, maybe you have amazing grammar, so you just use AJATT for adding sentences with words you don't know. Or maybe you have an amazing vocab, so you just add sentences with grammar points that are new to you.
However you initially learn the material is not part of the AJATT method. Maybe you make a mnumonic, maybe you study it from a grammar book. AJATT is about going from this initial point and then getting that information squarely lodged in your brain in an easily accessibile way.
In the case of grammar, you must know the grammar rule! You can't understand 食べたい unless you know what たい means. It's not like you just flash sentences to your brain and you learn by osmosis. You decide if you successfully understood the sentence. If I forgot the grammar rule, or its nuances then I consider this a failure. I will check the answer which has the rule explained in Japanese, then try again next time.
You seem to be misunderstanding the technique. The whole point with AJATT, is that the grammar or vocab is being reviewed in a context and being done by a SRS.
Check out point 3.
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … nces-where
Tobberoth wrote:
Anyone serious about learning japanese knows that you can't simply study grammar and vocab lists, you eventually have to actually read real japanese texts and write your own japanese texts etc.
I am not being facetious when I say that I did not know this before looking at the AJATT page. As the first language I seriously studied, I thought that if I read enough Genki or took enough online lessons, eventually I would understand Japanese books and tv shows. I finally realized that the books and tv shows were not a measure of my language learning, but instead a method of learning in the first place. Basically, I realized I wasn't even attempting to read/watch real Japanese, instead I was focusing on artificial stuff (lessons), and later checking with real stuff to see if I could do it yet. (I couldn't)
In my mind, that bit of knowledge was the greatest benefit of AJATT.
AJATT works because it follows the rule that learning a language is a SKILL like swimming or dancing. You can't dance or swim by studying them in diagrams and at the blackboard or in a book. You have to do them to get better. The kids who mess around in the water become the best swimmers. The kid who's not afraid to make a fool of himself on the dance floor will eventually get better faster than the wallflower.
Getting the sentences from real sources is like watching the good dancer across the room and trying to duplicate his or her moves in front of the mirror. It helps a lot.
But it's different from going out onto the floor and dancing with a partner. But if you never go out there, you'll never learn to dance.
Ok enough philosophising...back to kanji review
The most amazing thing about using the sentence method is how you develop a feel for the language, beyond just a knowledge of the grammar/vocab. This only works, however, if you use sentences from natural sources. I gather most of mine from manga, movies, conversations, etc, and what I find is now if I look in a grammar book, or travel phrase book for example, the sentences feel very unnatural to me. They are correct Japanese sentences, but I find myself thinking: "I'd never say it that way..."
The sentence method gives me a storehouse of natural Japanese sentences, as written and spoken BY native speakers, FOR native speakers, not for ESL students. Anyone who has seen unnatural english in ESL textbooks can appreciate this.
If I can generalize to make a point, I come into contact with two kinds of students in my language exchange school. The first kind studies english through grammar books, ESL tapes, classes, etc, in order to pass an exam or get a better job in Japan. These students know lots of words and grammar, but they can't use the language worth a damn. They see english fluency only as a goal to reach, and hence, they generally fail. The second group just loves the process of being in the language, and to hell with the goals. They don't read ESL books to be able to watch english movies, they just watch english movies. They don't read books about English, they just read english books. The language becomes a way for them to connect with new friends, neighbours, North American culture, etc, and these students excel like crazy. Their english improves faster and they develop a natural inflection to the language that most native speakers can't even explain - we just feel it.
I'm not suggesting that we never look up a point of grammar in a book. And in the early stages of study an ESL text/tape on the basics of Japanese can give you a good jump on the language. But those are just training wheels. At some point you have to let go and get into the flow of the language - and NOT the artificial language used in learning resources, but the real Japanese that Japanese people use to communicate with each other. If you can't feel the difference, you are spending too much time with textbooks.
erlog wrote:
It's not about being offended. It's that this is the internet and none of it can be proven so it doesn't matter. You're going to have to make your point on the strength of your argument alone. It came off like you were trying to pull a "I have more experience card." on a forum where the experience levels range from novice to expert, and nobody wears their level on their sleeve. For all you know, everyone you're talking to in this discussion has more experience than you, but has more tact than to try to baselessly pad their argument with it.
I see your point, but it truly wasn't what I was aiming for at all. On lots of other forums I hang out on, if you don't give some base for your argument in the first post, the first reply will definetly be "And how would you know?" etc.
erlog wrote:
Tobberoth wrote:
Translations by other people?
Two, you're assuming there's any translation going on at all. There is a question mark here, but you base the entirety of your argument following it on this assumption.
I didn't actually base my argument on it as such, it was more of like "if it's true that you use translations, this is a pointer worth keeping in mind. If not, disregard my post". I see how that might not have been clear if I came off as condescending.
Well, the best method of learning a language is be born in a country that speaks that language having parents that are native in that language.
AJATT might be only the 4th or 5th best method. Ehehe.
One thing, where you get relatively little feedback when doing the AJATT method is: You can't really know how good your pronounciation is. I made a test today and recorded myself speaking a little. I was more than just dissappointed.
So I thought of a way that might help with pronounciation: If there is a programm which records your voice and replays everything said with a delay of maybe 3-5 (or customized) you would always have instant feedback. I imagine this could be very effective when doing srs-reviews, especially with audio in the question/answer fields. (best probably with a good headset)
I once used a programm called "speedlingua" for improving my french, which does more or less what I am looking for in the wished-for-programm I described above. It really helped a lot. Unfortunatly, while I think it is available in Japanese, it can only be used in special language labs (at certain universities, .... )
So does anyone know of such a programm, (or any other method for improving pronounciation)?
EDIT: Found exactly what I was looking for: http://babbleback.sourceforge.net/wiki/
Last edited by HerrPetersen (2008 August 27, 1:15 pm)
What I did for english was to mark the pronuntiation "hellholes".
That is, small words with hard pronuntiation.
For me, those were the vowels in words like: beach, bitch, bit, bat, but, butt, bet and so on.
Once I was familiar with this words, I started to pick up much better the language by hearing. I noticed my pronuntiation problem in english was because I was paying to much attention in the consonants.
Now, against japanese, portuguese has a much wider fonetic range. So it was really easy to adapt.
Maybe you'll know this better than me: Because you are german, you need to pay attention in the consonants P and B, T and D, and the R. Vowels should be fine, not?