Please excuse me if I'm being horribly naive, but I thought the gist of the input theory isn't that you should avoid output entirely, but that you should, as much as possible, only say things that you know how to say.  Like, once you've been exposed to and understand some thing in some context, feel free to use it, but don't go applying it willy nilly where it doesn't apply.  And if you do, make extra special effort to focus on the new input you receive when somebody that actually speaks the language corrects your fool self.

Of course, that's just my impression of what I've read.

Mcjon01 wrote:

Please excuse me if I'm being horribly naive, but I thought the gist of the input theory isn't that you should avoid output entirely, but that you should, as much as possible, only say things that you know how to say.  Like, once you've been exposed to and understand some thing in some context, feel free to use it, but don't go applying it willy nilly where it doesn't apply.  And if you do, make extra special effort to focus on the new input you receive when somebody that actually speaks the language corrects your fool self.

Of course, that's just my impression of what I've read.

You've read wrong! How could you gain such a logical, sensible idea from such a straitforward and dogmatic approach?

Dare ye output, dare ye fail --

Anti-Moon 3:16

Nestor wrote:

My current thinking is that the best time to start controlled practice of output is at the intermediate stage.

More sensibility? Yee haft anger'did Anti-Moon-Weh.

Last edited by kazelee (2009 August 01, 12:42 pm)

Evil_Dragon wrote:

phauna wrote:

Listening to Japanese while you are mindfully doing something else is pointless, and definitely a distraction.

I humbly disagree. Having the television run all day did lots for my Japanese.

Me too. I think that--huh? what? Did someone... ? 日本語speakmasuka?

By mindful I mean, if you are listening to Japanese while doing some computer programming, or maths problems, or something difficult, like Khatzu seems to do then that won't help at all.  You can listen while you make your breakfast, though, or have a shower etc.

As for college classes, I don't live in America, this is the internet, if you can't find good education in your country then I don't see what that has to do with classes intrinsically being bad.  Don't assume I'm talking about America, this is the internet.

As for polyglots, no they don't seem to take classes, perhaps they are a special case.  However every single person that learned English and attained English fluency that I know has been to classes for a long time, and rates them as worthwhile.  I don't know any English learners who haven't been in classes.

Many specific language mistakes that people do are based on first language interference.  Koreans and Japanese are going to have a hard time with a/an, the and plurals no matter what, because there is really no equivalent in their languages.  Not all language learners are made equal or start from the same point.  Also laziness to correct mistakes does come into play once learners get to a certain level of communicative ability.

As for only outputting exact Japanese sentences that you saw in an SRS, I think that's impossible.  You might as well just buy a phrase book and memorise that.  Also, a key learning necessity is to actively use the language, ie make up your own sentences with effort.  I don't think anyone can do that without mistakes.  If you aren't striving to make those sentences that are a little above your level then your study time is not active.

my 2 cents

phauna wrote:

ghinzdra wrote:

Anyway I m always extremely interested in critics and very open minded . So I m all ears.

Well in that case, no amount of input will allow you to easily and faultlessly output.

In some senses this is true, you need to practice the action of speaking to become good at it, but without a word outputting engine that is built up using input you will never be able to speak like a native. We can see this principle by looking at the differences between good and bad native speakers. Everyone can speak perfectly in terms of intonation and pron, however, those that have read a lot tend to be able to speak much more eloquently.

phauna wrote:

Listening to Japanese while you sleep will not help you at all, it may even hinder your sleep and therefore your retention.

Like Nukemarine says, this is mostly the time during which you go to sleep and when you wake up. In particular I think the time when you wake up is effective, as you are not chopping the sentences with your brain and analysing them, just letting them flow in. Also, whilst it is certainly arguable whether Japanese audio while you sleep has no effect, it is hard to say this with certainty. You can be woken up by noise, in particular if someone calls your name, so it seems logical to assume that what you hear is being interpreted on some level. Maybe it's worthless, but maybe not.

phauna wrote:

Taking classes in Japanese is a very good thing to do, as long as they are good classes.

What are good classes? I went to an often praised, sometimes talked about as the best Japanese school in Japan (YAMASA). It was a crap (teacher talks 90% of the time, students talk one each). If a school like this isn't good, where are the good classes? Certainly the ones I took in Australia were much worse which is saying something.

Even English classes, which generally are much better than those of other languages in that they are fun and communicative, do not take into account the input hypothesis and are highly grammar focused. On a number of occasions I saw choices made at the school I taught at to make more money at the expense of the students progress.

There may be some good Japanese classes somewhere in the world, but they are a needles in a barn of haystacks.

phauna wrote:

Listening to Japanese while you are mindfully doing something else is pointless, and definitely a distraction.

You are definitely analysing what you hear on some level, since if you hear your name you will notice. In particular I think the intonation will go in, much the way you can bop along to a song while doing something else. More importantly, there will be moments where your mind wanders and you pick up sentences here and there.

However, I think listening to Japanese while reading or writing English is not helpful. You can get your languages tangled up and in my case it gives me a headache.

phauna wrote:

Over-kanjifying your srs sentences will make your Japanese seem unnatural, even if it may help retention a little.

Does Katzu recommend this? I agree with you here. I think you should just use whatever the source you got it from had. You need to learn when to use kanji and when not and if you just kanjify everything then you lose this information.

phauna wrote:

Eighteen months is an unrealistic time frame for fluency, even for a European language.

Fluency is a vague concept, but I disagree. Just looking at how far I have come when I have had the time to do "AJATT" completely I think this is possible.

phauna wrote:

Making mistakes while outputting will not cause permanent damage to your Japanese.

It is hard to say definitely what will damage your L2, but it is undoubtable that some people who should be basically a native speaker are far from it. Why this is so is questionable.

For example I have read the emails of a 60 year old Japanese man who had been in America for 40 years and had forgotten Japanese. They were in English and there were a number of mistakes and unnatural sentences. It was immediately obvious that it wasn't native.

I personally think if you are using the input method, much like children do the shear weight of input you get will fix up any errors you are making. In this case mistakes are not a problem. However, if you try to learn a language using grammar and consistently make the same mistake over and over, even if you then get a whole lot of input you will keep making the same mistake without a lot of concerted effort.

Last edited by thermal (2009 August 02, 5:08 am)

thermal wrote:

phauna wrote:

Listening to Japanese while you sleep will not help you at all, it may even hinder your sleep and therefore your retention.

Like Nukemarine says, this is mostly the time during which you go to sleep and when you wake up. In particular I think the time when you wake up is effective, as you are not chopping the sentences with your brain and analysing them, just letting them flow in. Also, whilst it is certainly arguable whether Japanese audio while you sleep has no effect, it is hard to say this with certainty. You can be woken up by noise, in particular if someone calls your name, so it seems logical to assume that what you hear is being interpreted on some level. Maybe it's worthless, but maybe not.

Why not listen to audio while falling asleep, but not throughout the whole night? As long as the audio's not so interesting that you don't fall asleep til it's over(that's happened to me :p)

vosmiura wrote:

As for listening when going to bed, I have a hard enough time switching off and falling asleep without such a thing.

Not falling asleep works me, I just need my mind to shut up and listen. That way I get at least 20 minutes of active listening before passing out.

Indeed. Well, my response was 'I'll wait and see', though I felt doubtful about the claims about neural tissues and feel there's some truth to it in regards to our ability to train our ears to sounds in a 'reduced listening' fashion. Until recently my main recommendations for listening/immersion would have been mostly for the initial stages (that is, outside the audio incorporated into Anki that I used to adhere to zealously before moderating it, re: dictation and repetition), but now w/ Nukemarine's thoughts I feel inspired to try moving my previous momentum-based planned redundancy via frequency lists in the SRS to a place outside Anki via audio splices. But I ramble.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 August 02, 1:19 pm)

Nestor, could I ask you to record all your posts and send me an audio file? I'll then splice and dice them into my SRS and listen to them all day and all night. Exactly how many thousand hours do you think it will take before it becomes comprehensible input?

Thanks for the critical examination Thora.  Far too often people make causal statements without enough evidence to back it up, then people see that it references some study somewhere and instantly believe the causal statement without analyzing the study.  In truth it's always hard to make a causal statement from one study due to confounding variables.

Last edited by cracky (2009 August 02, 2:40 pm)

Audio at night keeps me awake. But I found that if I put on something fairly soothing for 20 minutes or so, I'll listen to it, and then go to sleep quite promptly when it's finished. This seems like an improvement, since I haven't usually been able to fall asleep in 25 minutes otherwise ;)

Maybe it would also be useful to play something more energetic in the morning, automatically from 20 minutes before I'm supposed to get up. I just need to figure out how to do that.

Feel free to believe whatever you want oregum, I'm just putting the information out there for people who are interested in the issue and may not have as much faith in their gut as you do.

Last edited by Hinode (2009 August 02, 7:13 pm)