Woah, I apologise, I didn't mean to spark a debate. I was just unsure of how to interpret the situation. It all just seemed a bit odd to me but I am thankful for Khatzu's offer.

Hey, I've got a quick question.

I've been working on RTK (up until around 100 now, just 3-4 days in), but I'm wondering when exactly should I begin on picking up sentences.

Anyone can clear me up?

I started the AJATT method 3 months ago.  It was the best choice I ever made.  The super fun part starts as soon as I am done with the starter source he reccommends for grammar (all about particles).  gunna finish mining that then just read/watch/listen to japanese all day while mining sentences i am curious about. 

anyone on this forum been doing AJATT for longer than a year?  results?

edit:  meant longer than the 1.5 years and has achieved fluency, thus back to going to english websites lol

Last edited by jacf29 (2009 September 29, 5:57 am)

Well, first, it's not so much a complete method as a guide which you have to adapt to your own preferences, strengths, and weaknesses.  I definitely recommend reading it, but it's not really a sacred text: change as much as you feel like.  I've only been on AJATT about three months, but I hope my answers help.

Listening: Yes, it helps.  Start early, do a lot. The first effect, and it happens pretty early (within the first hundred hours), is that Japanese changes from noise to a series of sounds.  The second, vocabulary words start to emerge from this series of sounds.  That's the point I'm at now with most of my listening.  I've found that going from that to understanding requires reading a transcript or lyric sheet (currently, I'm using a bilingual dictionary). 

I listen for three reasons:
1) It reinforces what I know.
2) It trains my brain to process Japanese sounds.
3) Most importantly, it's in Japanese and it's fun.

J -> J (monodicts):  Unknown-word -> incomprehensible-definition doesn't help you.  So, what Khatz recommends is studying definitions for words you know.  Basically, you use the monolingual dictionary backwards (to find more things to learn based on what you know) until you get good enough at understanding definitions to use it the "right" way. 

Kanji:  Learn to write the characters before you study anything else.  It gets a lot easier to deal with Japanese text when you at least recognize (nearly) every character.  I once tried to do English / Japanese word pairs, learning characters in the context of words.  Bad idea. 

Old way: encounter a two character word in context.  For example, 盗難.  If I didn't know either character, I basically had to memorize the writing of both together.  盗難has 29 strokes all together.  Way to many to remember without either a) a lot of frustrating memorization, or b) breaking it into parts.

New way: I know the parts.  In this case, both 盗 and 難 are characters in RTK1, so it's just a matter of putting together "steal" and "difficult" to remember 盗難.  As easy as falling off a log.

On a side note: if you are confused about the AJATT method, consider buying the QRG.

It's a nice, well written guide that offers a bit more structure and 'step by step' lists of the method.
I think the guy deserved a donation anyways, so its a nice way to show him some support while getting something useful back for it

jacf29 wrote:

Where does he reccommend studying words you already know in the monolingual dict? 

I heard from someone else to look at a word, if you don't know it, look at definition for that word and so on.  If that fails then as last resort bilingual dictionary.

Here: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … ctionaries

No problem! I think the monolingual dictionary idea is one of the best parts of the so-called AJATT method. Truly. It's very brilliant and I wish I'd incorporated it when I was learning French. I think I would've reached a decent level of proficiency much more quickly.

If you want to know the sentences from the definitions you look up. If you don't, they don't get added.

If you are doing 20 sentences a day, 20 come from wherever you feel like taking them from.

~J

yeah that was my question.  so i read the manga and encounter その動物は金魚だよ.  i don't know 金魚 and 動物 so i add definitions on the back side of card from the monolingual dictionary.  the definitions for 金魚 and 動物 have kanji in it i dont understand.  so at that point i resort to the bilingual dictionary?

i am all about altering a method if it makes sense to do so for me.  i think its a bit silly all these people using sources like spreadsheets after they finish mining their first 500-1000 sentences.  sort of defeats the purpose. 

i don't have trouble keeping up with the 'if it isnt fun, dont do it'.  all the media (manga, music, video etc) i do i find all immensely entertaining.  if i get something i dont like i dont use it.

wow that is super hardcore.  so Khatz would look up a sentence he found interesting, and if for the life of him he couldn't understand a word through the monolingual dictionary, he would just toss the whole sentence and move onto another?  wow thats freaking crazy hardcore stuff.

They both have pros and cons. Sure, you wouldn't understand the true "feel" of a lot of Japanese words using a Japanese-English dictionary, so I agree you should force yourself to use monolingual dictionaries as soon as your ability permits.

At the same time, more sophisticated words, like 気管支炎 (bronchitis) and 議会 (parliament) 甲殻類 (Crustacean) etc., are far easier to understand with a bilingual dictionary.

I personally use a monolingual dictionary first and if I'm not very sure about the description, I use bilingual one.

jacf29 wrote:

wow that is super hardcore.  so Khatz would look up a sentence he found interesting, and if for the life of him he couldn't understand a word through the monolingual dictionary, he would just toss the whole sentence and move onto another?  wow thats freaking crazy hardcore stuff.

It's hardcore to not learn a difficult sentence? Why waste 10 minutes figuring out 1 sentence when you could learn 5 easier sentences (each with something new) in the same time? Sounds like an efficient way to study.

I appologize by coming across as facetious, but people have been making the correct observation: AJATT is not hardcore. Hardcore is spending 25,000 dollars for a language school and going for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for a year.

AJATT is, well, having Japanese as an everpresent entity in your life using simple (and usually cheap) means: iPod, Manga, Videos, Websites. It tacks on a simple study method: SRS, Japanese sentences, Dictionary.

By studying, the environment you got going on around you starts to make sense. That it turn encourages you to study more to get more from the environment. If the environment were not there, you don't notice you're making gains. You would have to go "OUT OF YOUR WAY" in order to experience Japanese, which by human nature means you're less likely to do it.

For example: Someone writes a thread mentioning how playing RPG's helped his reading speed. For me to try that very simple process, I had to waste TIME, VALUABLE TIME to just "acquire" some video games (low bandwidth where I'm at) to experience. However, now they're there along with 80 hours of Japanese shows and movies, dozens of manga, hundreds of songs and the entire internet for me to dip into on a whim. If it takes more than a whim, I'm less likely to do it.

So yeah, it's not hard core just like not studying a difficult sentence.