Nukemarine, you pot stirrer.

At least stir the pot with someone who "appears" to know they are talking about. This guy recommends 'remembering the kana' but not 'remembering the kanji' because of the same anecdotal BS that everyone brings up, when a simple google search will yield an entire forum of people who have been successful with this method.

?????

Shit, I should start a blog.

...oh wait...

*clicks "website" next to avatar*

I do have one. Just haven't updated it in forever.

Haha, good one. You actually made me click that disgusting link again.

Well, the guy is trying to learn Japanese so good on him. The thing is, there's legitimate complaints about RTK and AJATT, but that kid wasn't doing too well with countering either. Plus, I wouldn't want to know what RevTK would have been like, and all the methods that followed on the forums, had there not been critiques of existing methods at that time.

So learning Japanese - good, reasonable critiques - good, pissing off kazelee - bad.

In regards to AJATT+other methods. I think it's basically best to take the most effective/best parts and use it to your own study. Eventually the constituency of doing the methods+immersion and the will to keep learning is key to success.

kerosan41 wrote:

kazelee wrote:

Haha, good one. You actually made me click that disgusting link again.

Haha, no no. It really was 404ed earlier. The post was down but the rest of the site was up. I promise T_T ;

Apparently the 404 was from him deleting my comment (and maybe deleting the thread by accident or the  page was being updated or something).


Maybe I was too harsh ^^.

Ahahah

Edit:Now, I'm blocked. Interesting...

Lucky for him, I've outgrown my server crashing tendencies.

Someone's been naughty

This guy needs to make up his mind.

jcdietz03 wrote:

"If you listen and don't understand, you eventually will." -Nope, total BS.  Understanding something you don't understand involves understanding something you don't understand.  Disprove THAT.  Also, the contra-positive to this is that if you don't understand and do nothing but not understand, you will never understand.

Too bad that is NOT the AJATT mantra. Either YOU are the owner of that SITE or you've taken the message in that TWISTED fashion he has.

*Bold and Capitals added for emphasis because... people can't read my post without them.

Last edited by ropsta (2010 September 17, 10:55 pm)

Personally I've found, that the longer I study Japanese, the more I find myself in agreement with mr Khatz. The only point I disagree with him on is sentences. I think sentence cards take too long to make and grammar is best learned through repeated exposure to different sentences (from books and so on), and vocabulary is best learned through vocab cards. His general philosophy is nothing new and is probably just common sense in parts of the world where knowing more than one language is normal. He is pretty much aligned with Steve Kauffman's (speaks 10 languages) view on language learning.

   

jcdietz03 wrote:

"If you listen and don't understand, you eventually will." -Nope, total BS.  Understanding something you don't understand involves understanding something you don't understand.  Disprove THAT.  Also, the contra-positive to this is that if you don't understand and do nothing but not understand, you will never understand.

If you know absolutely nothing about a language radically different than any you know and then listen to the radio in that language, you'll learn nothing. But it will train your ear to the sounds of the language. Once you know a little of a language, passive listening is hugely beneficial even if you only understand every other word. What you know acts as context to guess new words. Even if you don't know the meaning of a word, hearing it over and over again cements it in your memory and makes it easier to learn later. Language noobs overestimate how well they have to know a language before engaging with real content. Pretty much every polyglot on the internet recommends diving in right from the start.

People don't agree with passive listening because they don't see obvious results.

However, I'm a big fan of passive listening. Be it music or podcasts or videos in the background.

I went to Japan on a homestay with minimal Japanese language ability. When I came back, I found that I improved in certain things, but especially my listening. I could distinguish words from each other even if I didn't understand them. Grammar that I learned previously suddenly clicked. Certain parts of speaking became natural for me (for instance, the little 'tonguing' you do when you say ら that's kind of between ra and la, suddenly became natural).

Of course, it's a little different being in a country for 6 weeks and listening on your ipod, but only by a factor of time.

jcdietz03 wrote:

So I guess what we all need/want is repacked BS.  This forum provides nice repackaged BS, the same as Khatz's site.  That's why people like both so much.

I like this site because of the users. I'm sure others would agree. You can have a health dose of all the BS you like.

I will now attempt to  make a post much in the same fashion as your post.

Language learning might be ANECDOTAL but that does not mean that ALL of it is BS~@! There are FACTS about language learning. When you reference anecdotes that people just MADE UP for argument's sake WITHOUT actually VERIFYING the TRUTH then you are spreading ANECDOTAL BS. It has been scientifically verified THAT WHAT I SAY IS ABSOLUTE BECAUSE I USED CAPS DAMMIT!

Now, I'll readily admit I'm not a fan of AJATT. I get annoyed by the plethora of overzealous users who use normal study habits while convincing themselves they are learning through osmosis. That being said, the creator of that blog used an extremely oversimplified explanation of AJATT to the point where he told a BOLD FACED LIE. If you're going to hate something (or simply critique it), do so for a valid reason (or with valid evidence).

nadiatims wrote:

If you know absolutely nothing about a language radically different than any you know and then listen to the radio in that language, you'll learn nothing. But it will train your ear to the sounds of the language. Once you know a little of a language, passive listening is hugely beneficial even if you only understand every other word. What you know acts as context to guess new words. Even if you don't know the meaning of a word, hearing it over and over again cements it in your memory and makes it easier to learn later.

I agree.

chochajin wrote:

Thanks for your comment.

Yeah, I'm aware of that.
Actually I don't mind long sentences at all as long as it's only 1 (or 2) new words in there.
Exactly that's my problem. I feel that it's too difficult (probably because there's too much stuff per fact), but I don't know how to fix that.

One thing you can do is just make it clear which new item the card is testing on(maybe with color or whatever).

I would suggest only testing one item per card, but if there are multiple bits of new information, you can just make several cards with the same sentence to test on all of them.

Last edited by hereticalrants (2010 September 18, 2:24 am)

Anecdotes are BS though.  You said it yourself - see post 1253 in this topic.  Just because kazelee said it doesn't make it true, but I believe this also.

In language learning, you can come up with all the hypotheses you want, but few are well tested.

"Taking tests improves memory" is NOT an anecdote.  It's accepted learning science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect
Just because it's in Wikipedia doesn't make it true.  However, the references found in the article do, unless you have evidence to the contrary.

"Mixed problems result in better learning" is NOT an anecdote.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nuh072m868p147hk/
Actually, that's the only good reference I can find, so I suppose it is an anecdote.  You typically want at least two studies that agree with each other for it to be a FACT.  A study is much better evidence than an anecdote (which is just one learner or one teacher).