Do you have any plans to start Advanced lessons?

[Yolan]

The issue with input only is that when you are watching movies, dramas etc there is rarely a case where they say the things that you need to be able to say. For example when do you ever hear in a drama someone say something like "the guy in front of me`s ticket didn`t go through and for some reason it looks like my suica won`t either. Could you check it out for me?" I watch a lot of Japanese myself but nothing you watch will ever prepare you for this kind of situation.. One that I was actually in the other day. The fact of the matter is that you need to be around and listening to ordinary people in ordinary situations to enable you to effectively communicate. The input available just will not teach you this. Even if you listen 28 hours a day.

I think you are missing the point though. The idea is to become _fluent_ in the language, i.e. to make it part of you, just as much as English. Did you ever have to explicitly learn in English how to say x, w, z? A living language is more than just a collection of specific phrases. Sure, if you are going to Japan next week, and anticipate certain requirements, things you need to be able to say, then AJATT is not for you. If your goal is total fluency (a long term project), then what you need is massive, constant exposure to the language. Forget learning 'this is what you say when you need X'. You need to hear Japanese for breakfast lunch and tea so that you couldn't possibly not know how to ask for what you need.

[Javizy]

I think you are missing the point though. The idea is to become _fluent_ in the language, i.e. to make it part of you, just as much as English. Did you ever have to explicitly learn in English how to say x, w, z? A living language is more than just a collection of specific phrases. Sure, if you are going to Japan next week, and anticipate certain requirements, things you need to be able to say, then AJATT is not for you. If your goal is total fluency (a long term project), then what you need is massive, constant exposure to the language. Forget learning 'this is what you say when you need X'. You need to hear Japanese for breakfast lunch and tea so that you couldn't possibly not know how to ask for what you need.

That all sounds nice, but how realistic is it? If you're using Anki, then you are learning how explicitly to say x, y and z. You've been speaking for a long time already, and you say you continue trying to do so, so there's no way for you to judge if exposure itself will lead to fluency. If anything, you're showing that a mixture of exposure and production reaps rewards.

There was a guy on the koohii forum who could read science papers without a dictionary, but was moaning how lame his conversational skills were because he'd never practised. He must have been way past N1 level to stand a chance of reading to that level, so how much more exposure would he need before becoming fluent?

Then what about all the people who have lived in, say England, for 20 years, with constant exposure who still speak like crap? I was speaking to an Italian woman who read the newspaper every day and watch TV a lot, but still only had an intermediate level of speaking. These sort of people are generally the kind to rely solely on exposure, rather than studying and practising production. Has it worked for them?

The 'exposure only' theory seems to be based on Krashen, whose study involved students in a classroom setting, but it seems to be widely misunderstood.

Nobody's doubting the value of exposure, but there's no reason not to practice production as well. You yourself do and have for a long time, so there's no reasonable way you could argue otherwise.

[Yolan]

That all sounds nice, but how realistic is it? If you're using Anki, then you are learning how explicitly to say x, y and z. You've been speaking for a long time already, and you say you continue trying to do so, so there's no way for you to judge if exposure itself will lead to fluency. If anything, you're showing that a mixture of exposure and production reaps rewards.

What am I saying that is not realistic? That in order to become fluent you need thousands and thousands of hours of exposure? What was unrealistic was me thinking for years that I could get anywhere with an hour of study every day or so. Note that I'm not arguing for 'exposure _only_', and I don't think Katsumoto is. He is saying that if you want to become fluent, you must have that bulk exposure. This means listening to and reading Japanese an awful lot. And yes, the power of Anki is exactly that you are able to store and recall all kinds of great sentences and review them.

I was responding to the criticism of watching TV isn't very useful because 'it doesn't teach you X'. There are so many people with vocabularies that are already big enough to say everything you need to in a pinch, but they can't string those words together. In order to get that flow, you need bulk exposure.

Anyway, I gotta get back to my Anki reviews!

[Yolan]

On second thoughts, another point. Something has really bugged me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I think I have it now:

It reminds me of when I sent a link to AJATT to a friend of mine, whose response was pretty much : "This guy is full of S**t, you can't learn by osmosis."

His impression was that the idea of AJATT was that if you just passively listen, you somehow magically become able to speak Japanese. Of course, if this was what Katsumoto was saying, I would call it what it was: pure BS.

The thing is, Katsu isn't talking about the magic transfer of the 'meaning' of words by 'osmosis'. He explicitly states that of course you must use a dictionary (albiet, go to Japanese-Japanese as early as possible). When listening to Japanese/reading Japanese, and you hear/read something that catches your attention, look it up, and put the sentence in your SRS. When doing SRS reps, write the sentences out, say them out aloud, record your voice even, and listen to it. In this way, you are doing something very active. By exposing yourself to the language he is not saying 'listen and you will learn meaning', but 'listen and you will learn pace, flow, etc'.

In other words, rather than getting good at Japanese, you get used to it.

This has really been my experience over the last six weeks. My Japanese is better than it has ever been. I haven't learned a huge number of new words relative to earlier stages, but I am now so used to hearing the language that _it makes sense without having to explicitly think about it._

The thing is, its very hard to get to that level of being _used to_ the language as it is actually spoken through lessons.

So, going back to my original post in this thread, as a response to people asking for more advanced lessons. I think what you need now is to realise that you need to focus on _getting use to_ the language. The more and more you listen to and read, the more you will 'get it'. You will know how and when to use certain words.

tldr; its not about 'osmosis' of meaning, there is no magic short cut to fluency. To get good, you gotta get used to it, and lessons like found on this site are a poor substitute for the real thing in that regards

OK. that's me done.

[mieth]

Yolan, I don't think you quite got the jist of what I was trying to say. Now first of I want to say that I also listen to tons and tons of hours of Japanese media. I should be reading much more but I personally don't like kanji very much. I don't think anyone is arguing with you on the point that you need a bajillion hours of listening. What I am trying to say is that there is a huge portion of the language that you have to know to communicate effectively that is not going to show up in the said media that is readily available. And I am going to give you one quick example.

do you know of a child older than 6 years old that doesn't know the word stem? you know as in that little thing that connects an apple to a tree. Every child know that right. That type of word is not going to come up in media in a frequency that is going to make it easy to learn. That passive vocabulary is very difficult to build and what I am trying to say is that the situations that come up in normal media are not nearly sufficient to prepare you for what you need in the real world.

[Taurus]

The issue with input only is that when you are watching movies, dramas etc there is rarely a case where they say the things that you need to be able to say. For example when do you ever hear in a drama someone say something like "the guy in front of me`s ticket didn`t go through and for some reason it looks like my suica won`t either. Could you check it out for me?"

I think the point of the input method is that your brain would have absorbed the grammar and vocab required to say such a thing and you would be able to produce that sentence instinctively, without having to mentally 'calculate' the sentence (by which I mean that process where you have to recall each word separately and then work out which verb forms and particles you need etc.).

An additional point might be that the true input method wouldn't restrict you to just drama - children, for example, have access to the real world, and they don't artificially restrict their output in the way that the AJATT/antimoon guys *seem* to be indicating. For example, the other day we got off a sightseeing bus by Kawaguchiko and the bus driver came running after everyone who had just got off asking if someone had left behind a hat. The other tourists didn't understand so I asked them if anyone had dropped a hat, and one of the others said that it was on the bus when it got on. So then I tried to translate to the best of my ability by saying something like 'hoka no hito ni yoru to, mae ni arimashita.' And when the bus driver realised what I was trying to say he said, 'motto motto arimashita? Wakarimashita.' So then I knew that a better way of saying what I wanted to say was 'motto motto' rather than 'mae ni'.

Which, like I say, seems to indicate to me that the best solution is a mix of recognition/input and production/output. But, hey, whatever works.

[Javizy]

Yolan, if you're not denying the value of some form of production, then I agree with you. Sometimes there are words I can understand practically without thinking thanks to Anki and repeated exposure, but during conversation I'll struggle to recall them. Struggle could mean a bit of umm-ing and aaah-ing for a few seconds, or having to describe it to the person I'm talking to. Either way, it's far from what you can call fluent use of the language. When it comes to recalling it again, though, it's more firmly rooted in my active memory, and it goes a lot more smoothly. This is why I think production is just as important as recognition. You might already know what to say, but you won't necessarily be able to say it fluently first time.

Fluency and accuracy aside, I really think there's an art in speaking that makes it warrant practice itself. Even though I can pronounce the sounds of the language correctly, I still sound nothing like a native. Perfecting a smooth natural speaking flow is something that goes beyond constructing sentences and basic pronunciation. You also have to develop your own style. Mass exposure means you'll have heard a plethora of speaking/writing styles, but you aren't necessarily going to want to use the same pronouns, gobi, contractions, word choice, etc as Takashi Okamura, Natsuko-san, the governor of Tokyo or whoever else you may have heard. It's going to slip in to some extent though, and I think that only the addition of regular practice will lead to fluent and natural speaking skills.

I managed to add audio to 4000 of my flashcards and get them all on to AnkiMini, so hopefully my pitch accent will start to improve

[Yolan]

... the situations that come up in normal media are not nearly sufficient to prepare you for what you need in the real world.

*facepalm*

I don't even know where you are coming from anymore. What on earth...

OK, look.

It is _exactly_ the 'real (Japanese) world' that you need to start getting into. Who said anything about only exposing yourself to 'media'? Go to youtube. Buy books. Use wikipedia. Listen to radio. Make friends. Skype. etc. etc. etc. Hunt, swim, live in Japanese. Create for yourself an _actual_ Japanese environment, instead of trying to live inside an artificially created one (i.e. lessons). You will never take enough lessons to learn all those words that Japanese people know. Well you might. But it would take decades, and be extremely boring/expensive. To say nothing of the fact that nobody has, or ever will produce so many lessons. At a certain point you gotta go on the hunt yourself. You need to take control and start having fun.

By the way, its now been two months since I ditched lessons, and I have been improving so fast it scares me. There is a long way for me to go to native level fluency, but I'm getting there, and I'm having fun.

Have a read of this if you can read Japanese. http://lunar.littlestar.jp/stardust/eng ... study.html

Otherwise I recommend: http://www.l2mastery.com

Check out the myths section.

[Yolan]

I managed to add audio to 4000 of my flashcards and get them all on to AnkiMini, so hopefully my pitch accent will start to improve

BTW, did you know about that ANKI plugin for downloading lists+audio from Smart.fm?

I have a problem with smart.fm's system. It's rather rigid and you have to rely on their server being up. But once you grab their lists+audio you can regain some power over your revision (i.e. using 和和 explanations).

[Javizy]

Japanese dramas contain some of the most artificial dialogues known to man.

[Yolan]

Japanese dramas contain some of the most artificial dialogues known to man.

a) I don't understand how that is a response to what I was just saying.

b) How many J. Dramas have you actually watched? TV shows in any country are mostly shit. But in Japan, as most any other country with a large entertainment industry, there are some absolutely brilliant ones. Go and watch Ikebukuro West Gate Park or Tiger and Dragon. I know what natural dialogue is like because I hear it every day either spoken on the radio (pod casts) or amongst my Japanese friends, and those shows have got it in spades. Regardless, the dialogue in the crappiest of J. Drama's is a hell of a lot less artifcial than what you will find in a language lesson.

[mieth]

well, I live in Japan. So I guess I do have the environment.. I think. I did a year and a half at a language school and 1 year at a Japanese university with all my classes being in 100% Japanese. I currently work at a Japanese real estate company. With all due respect Yolan but I don't need any environment creating advice from you. Thanks. Since you are improving so ridiculously fast why don't you just make a video of yourself (or audio only)speaking and upload it to youtube for all of us to see or hear.

Cheers

[Yolan]

well, I live in Japan. So I guess I do have the environment.. I think. I did a year and a half at a language school and 1 year at a Japanese university with all my classes being in 100% Japanese. I currently work at a Japanese real estate company. With all due respect Yolan but I don't need any environment creating advice from you. Thanks. Since you are improving so ridiculously fast why don't you just make a video of yourself (or audio only)speaking and upload it to youtube for all of us to see or hear.

Cheers

How about you get off your high horse and actually read what people are saying? If you had done that I wouldn't have responded with a *facepalm* before. You have a Japanese environment going on? That's great mate. Good on you. But what on earth is your beef then with what I am saying? I'm trying to get across a point. That is all. I'm not here to tell _you_ that you're doing something wrong and I'm doing something right. My 'you need to... x y z' was a generic 'you', not _you_. I don't know you, so there is no need to make this personal.

That point was that asking for more advanced lessons from JPOD101 is like asking for a larger bubble (training wheels, whatever). What people need to do is get exposure to the real language. As much as possible. That is all. You're doing that? Well great! But people are responding as though I said its enough to purely focus on sitting around watching dramas, which I didn't.

When you rely on lessons you are letting somebody filter the language for you, deciding what you should and shouldn't be learning. I think its much better to actually have consistent contact with the language, because then the environment actually regulates what it is you need to know. Take your example of 茎. I learned that one reading a novel. The more you read, listen, watch, the more things jump out at you that you can then look up, put into your SRS, etc. Much better than having somebody spoon feed you stuff that only half interests you.

*cheers*

[Javizy]

How about you get off your high horse and actually read what people are saying? If you had done that I wouldn't have responded with a *facepalm* before. You have a Japanese environment going on? That's great mate. Good on you. But what on earth is your beef then with what I am saying? I'm trying to get across a point. That is all. I'm not here to tell _you_ that you're doing something wrong and I'm doing something right. My 'you need to... x y z' was a generic 'you', not _you_. I don't know you, so there is no need to make this personal.

That point was that asking for more advanced lessons from JPOD101 is like asking for a larger bubble (training wheels, whatever). What people need to do is get exposure to the real language. As much as possible. That is all. You're doing that? Well great! But people are responding as though I said its enough to purely focus on sitting around watching dramas, which I didn't.

When you rely on lessons you are letting somebody filter the language for you, deciding what you should and shouldn't be learning. I think its much better to actually have consistent contact with the language, because then the environment actually regulates what it is you need to know. Take your example of 茎. I learned that one reading a novel. The more you read, listen, watch, the more things jump out at you that you can then look up, put into your SRS, etc. Much better than having somebody spoon feed you stuff that only half interests you.

*cheers*

Mieth's point, at least as I followed it, was that exposure to media (books, TV, movies, etc) isn't enough to prepare you for the real world (working, travelling, going out with friends, nanpa, etc). If you have an immediate need for certain language, relying on exposure can be like expecting the needle to appear in the haystack, and taking shortcuts with textbooks, workbooks, or even classes can be quite productive. If you haven't passed N1 and want to do so before the end of the year, you'll understand the idea of needle grammar and combat it was something like 完全マスター. See Taurus' more 'real world' example too.

As for classes, I don't think it's so easy to generalise. I have differing opinions on them, and personally I don't think I have any use for the ones available to me at least. If they are all complete trash, though, then try telling that to all the Germans and Swedes that are better at English than we'll likely ever be at Japanese...

By the way, the drama thing was just a joke because they tend to suck badly.

[mieth]

Yolan, I apologize for taking the post so far. Now that I think of it it was a pretty ass hole thing to and I wasn't trying to be personal. I am sure if this was a conversation face to face things wouldn't have come this far. As I am pretty much always happy to run into others who enjoy studying Japanese as I do. I don't know why it comes out differently on a message board.

cheers

PS the language schools were pretty much an excruciating experience. I hated pretty much every minute of it. The university I quit because I didn't understand enough of the classes although I was still able to get good enough grades. At that point I made a do or die decision to get a job where I would be exposed to more real life Japanese on an everyday basis. The best days of learning that I ever had were spending the day with my friends family and listening to them talk with each other and interacting with each other.