I have to admit I do the whole immersion thing as much as possible, not because I'm into "AJATT", but cos I just like Japanese!

I gotta say that if done right, it works a lot faster than the classroom method and I find it to be much more comprehensive.

I immerse as much as possible too but I doubt it works better than classes hour for hour.

The reason I think people progress quickly with immersion is because they are doing a much larger amount of study than most people who do classes.

Also many of the people doing immersion are focussing only on listening and reading. Not speaking or writing. Classes aim to raise all skills equally, so while people doing immersion are going to get way ahead in listening and reading, they're going to have to catch up in production sometime.

All but 1 person I have met in Japan who could *speak* Japanese well, have done classes at some point.

classes + immersion is the way to go imo.

Regarding AJATT, he clearly doesn't take himself very seriously so I don't see why anyone else does.

Last edited by caivano (2010 September 21, 12:07 am)

caivano wrote:

I immerse as much as possible too but I doubt it works better than classes hour for hour.

The reason I think people progress quickly with immersion is because they are doing a much larger amount of study than most people who do classes.

Also many of the people doing immersion are focussing only on listening and reading. Not speaking or writing. Classes aim to raise all skills equally, so while people doing immersion are going to get way ahead in listening and reading, they're going to have to catch up in production sometime.

All but 1 person I have met in Japan who could *speak* Japanese well, have done classes at some point.

classes + immersion is the way to go imo.

Regarding AJATT, he clearly doesn't take himself very seriously so I don't see why anyone else does.

Caviano,

One thing Khatz didn't elaborate on (amoung many) is the amount of hours he spent "studying" on a daily or weekly average. This did some harm to some of his readers as they literally thought all they would have to do is read manga and watch TV. They forgot the little footnote (ok, it's pretty big footnote and a number of posts) that they have to look up stuff they don't get or find cool then put it in an SRS to review later. Yeah, that's called studying folks, even though it's for fun stuff you like.

I'm more of the "Studying" + "Immersion", whether studying takes place at the computer, in a class, or one-on-one tutor, or whatever. Good call on self-studiers being prone to lacking in speaking and writing. However, one can still practice production on one's on, as Lang-8 and Skype more than demonstrates. Ok, I'm assuming this as I don't do Lang-8 or Skype so my production ability is abyssmal (unlike the superstars around here).

Again, not a knock against classes (hell, I'm teaching kana and kanji classes now), but just didn't want self-studying being downplayed unfairly.

Nukemarine wrote:

I'm more of the "Studying" + "Immersion", whether studying takes place at the computer, in a class, or one-on-one tutor, or whatever. Good call on self-studiers being prone to lacking in speaking and writing. However, one can still practice production on one's on, as Lang-8 and Skype more than demonstrates. Ok, I'm assuming this as I don't do Lang-8 or Skype so my production ability is abyssmal (unlike the superstars around here).

Again, not a knock against classes (hell, I'm teaching kana and kanji classes now), but just didn't want self-studying being downplayed unfairly.

Ah, sorry I didn't mean to knock self study, I mean I self study. I was more defending classes and explaining why I think AJATTers progress quickly in the beginning - a large amount of hours spent on a reduced set of skills (NOTE: I am not knocking this either, I don't know if it sounds like I am .

mezbup wrote:

It's at this particular point where AJATT/self-study shines by enabling your abilities to grow beyond the limited scope covered in the classroom. Real world materials just cover the full depth of the language...

Any decent teacher should be using real world materials in the classroom and any decent student should be using real world materials in their own time so I don't think this is an AJATT / self study advantage really... in fact a good teacher will inspire their students to read good novels and watch good movies for the language they're learning.

captal wrote:

caivano wrote:

Any decent teacher should be using real world materials in the classroom and any decent student should be using real world materials in their own time so I don't think this is an AJATT / self study advantage really... in fact a good teacher will inspire their students to read good novels and watch good movies for the language they're learning.

I'd wager the vast majority of teachers and students aren't using that much real world material, especially at beginner levels, where real world material isn't really feasible.

I'd put money on that too.

I'm commenting from English learning / teaching rather than Japanese but if you look in a decent textbook, for example New Headway, from elementary level it uses a range of condensed native style material. eg. biographies, newspaper articles, songs, quizzes, conversations, weather reports etc

Students don't need to understand every word to get the gist and the important details. It's good to teach students how to find the important information in real life materials as this is what they're gonna have to do (irl).

Another thing you have to consider is that you don't just give students a piece of material and ask 'do you get it?' You build up to the material by brainstorming the topic, pre-teaching vocab, reviewing useful structures, etc.

With Japanese I'm sure up to N4 is pretty dry but past that I would hope teachers are using native materials. I'm in between N3 and N2 and can deal with a decent amount of native materials just fine, and that's without having the material carefully chosen, being pre-taught vocab etc

Last edited by caivano (2010 September 22, 8:27 am)

My third semester Japanese teacher (who also taught me first and second semester Japanese) showed us a couple of native materials.  No native materials were used in the first or second semester though.
First ten minutes or so of Tonari no Totoro (no subtitle) - I didn't understand much
Kasa Jizou san - A folktale (I think?) about a man who gave his hat to a guardian statue
Manju kowai (I'm afraid of manju) - Which is a "Manzai style" play, I think
Weather forecast (for Japan) on youtube - Also didn't understand much of this.  I think I got tripped up by the place names.

My fourth semester Japanese teacher, different from my third semester one, did not use native materials at all.

@ta12121 how long were you in it?

Asriel wrote:

@ta12121 how long were you in it?

not long, so I can't really say much. Only 1 full year of study in classes.

aphasiac wrote:

ta12121 wrote:

Asriel wrote:

@ta12121 how long were you in it?

not long, so I can't really say much. Only 1 full year of study in classes.

What - you studyed Japanese for a year in a formal classroom setting? Lol, all those times you've posted your stats about exact time spend studying the language, and you never though to mention that before..??!

lol no, it was before I started studying on my own. I took it in college when I was in my second year. [When I started, the only experience I had with japanese was watching subtitle anime episodes]
I ended up treating it like any other course, plain work
It taught me that taking this type of class wouldn't really get me fluent. So that's when I actively started searching ways of learning myself. Eventually after finding it, I started learning on my own and here I am(1 year+1 month of study so far).

Last edited by ta12121 (2010 September 22, 5:41 pm)

2 years + 1 month surely?

EDIT: Asriel beat me to it..

Last edited by aphasiac (2010 September 22, 5:44 pm)

Watching anime isn't active study; taking a Japanese course is! But anyway, honestly doesn't really matter..I was just suprised, that's all.

So if that was your second year of college, I guess you're now finishing up; what's your Major in? I'm confused, for some reason I thought you were a freshman or even a highschool student..oops..

Last edited by aphasiac (2010 September 22, 5:55 pm)