Learning Japanese

[voltekka]

"Immersion... if that is his name"

Wait now, I don't think we're on the same page?

Immersion is a concept, not a person. Immersion = 'to be completely surrounded by or inside of'. You know, immersion, immersive, immersed.

The concept of immersion as related to learning a language is that you'll naturally just pick up the language if you're around it and need it all the time, which usually doesn't work at all unless you live in a place where it's the primary language. All I was saying earlier was that it's best to supplement that with studies as well. Is this whole tirade due to the misunderstanding of the term? Nobody was bagging on anyone...

[iindigo]

Well Khatzu doesn't say to just be immersed and do nothing else... that obviously doesn't work. With AJATT, you do kanji repetitions in  SRS software like Anki, and once you have that done you put Japanese sentences from what you read, watch and listen to into the SRS software. THOSE are the studies that supplement the immersion.

[jamienumber9]

I still think Katzu comes across cocky and is too quick to dismiss formal classes. The way he rips on beginners' stumbling and poor pronunciation etc. makes him seem like a few people I've met in classes this year, who seem to feel they're too good to be there, and regards anyone not on their level with a certain amount of contempt.

Also, solely using flash cards to learn kanji won't teach you how to write them. You NEED to write them if you want to have any chance of reproducing them in handwriting. Personally, that's a level of literacy I want to obtain.

[psyren]

Also, solely using flash cards to learn kanji won't teach you how to write them. You NEED to write them if you want to have any chance of reproducing them in handwriting. Personally, that's a level of literacy I want to obtain.

Correct.
You cannot recognise the exact character until you know how to write it.
If you want to argue with that, then how about I ask you to pick out the character for 'feel' out of other similarly shaped kanji?

[iindigo]

I still think Katzu comes across cocky and is too quick to dismiss formal classes. The way he rips on beginners' stumbling and poor pronunciation etc. makes him seem like a few people I've met in classes this year, who seem to feel they're too good to be there, and regards anyone not on their level with a certain amount of contempt.

Read all of his stuff. If you had, you would have seen that he doesn't condemn stumbling and even acknowledges failing as a very large part of the learning process when it comes to --anything--. "You have to suck before you can be awesome."

Also, solely using flash cards to learn kanji won't teach you how to write them. You NEED to write them if you want to have any chance of reproducing them in handwriting. Personally, that's a level of literacy I want to obtain.

Once again, somebody didn't read. Writing is at the core of the kanji repetitions he's advocating. It goes like:

1. Story for kanji comes up in the SRS. For example. "Tophatted animal picks up six" (Kanji's definition is underlined)
2. User takes out his notepad and writes down the kanji to his best of memory.
3. User grades his own performance and presses the corresponding button in the SRS (Do it Again, Hard, Good, or Easy).
4. User is given another story. Rinse, wash, repeat.

[jamienumber9]

Yeah I admit I didn't read the whole site because I saw a few things that put me off.

Like where he says to learn the meaning of kanji, but not to bother with writing it or the readings.

And in another article he rips on beginners in his classes.

And the articles I read were all written in a cocky manner.


In any case, we're both trying to reach the same goal, so good luck to you.

[Aneroph]

I saw an interesting site that katsu posted a link to where people were also discussing his methods. Basically they all came to the conclusion that his method was "do whatever the hell makes you happy and do it a lot. This site is only here to provide a timeline if you feel unmotivated and to provide a few tips on commom sense studying methods." I can root around for the site if you want, it was actually pretty interesting to hear what some of them had to say.

[Tatsujin]

I still think Katzu comes across cocky and is too quick to dismiss formal classes. The way he rips on beginners' stumbling and poor pronunciation etc. makes him seem like a few people I've met in classes this year, who seem to feel they're too good to be there, and regards anyone not on their level with a certain amount of contempt.

Read all of his stuff. If you had, you would have seen that he doesn't condemn stumbling and even acknowledges failing as a very large part of the learning process when it comes to --anything--. "You have to suck before you can be awesome."

Also, solely using flash cards to learn kanji won't teach you how to write them. You NEED to write them if you want to have any chance of reproducing them in handwriting. Personally, that's a level of literacy I want to obtain.

Once again, somebody didn't read. Writing is at the core of the kanji repetitions he's advocating. It goes like:

1. Story for kanji comes up in the SRS. For example. "Tophatted animal picks up six" (Kanji's definition is underlined)
2. User takes out his notepad and writes down the kanji to his best of memory.
3. User grades his own performance and presses the corresponding button in the SRS (Do it Again, Hard, Good, or Easy).
4. User is given another story. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Some of those Kanji don't have the Hiragana characters which is odd, not that I can't pull it up. I just find it odd to why not have added the hiragana letters that make up that Kanji?

[iindigo]

...but not to bother with writing it...

That's not on the site anywhere. He says not to learning the readings yet, but writing is supposed to happen with the SRS repetitions. The writing that he criticized as bad was writing each character over and over thousands of times in a mindless school style with no story tied to it. His point is that muscle memory alone is much harder to train to remember characters than your mind is.

Reading comprehension FTW.

[jamienumber9]

And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.

[iindigo]

And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.

Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.

Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.

[Aneroph]

And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.

Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.

Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.

But you realize that a lot of Japanese things come with Furigana now to help foreigners and children to read. Seems like learning the Hiragana/Katakana is pretty improtant. I only know about 150 kanji, but I know a butt load of vocab and grammatical rules. I buy manga magazines with Furigana in them and can read most of it just fine having not learned most of the kanji. It also seems a little weird that he makes you learn so many kanji when there are only lik 1980 or so Jouyo kanji.

[iindigo]

And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.

Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.

Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.

But you realize that a lot of Japanese things come with Furigana now to help foreigners and children to read. Seems like learning the Hiragana/Katakana is pretty improtant. I only know about 150 kanji, but I know a butt load of vocab and grammatical rules. I buy manga magazines with Furigana in them and can read most of it just fine having not learned most of the kanji. It also seems a little weird that he makes you learn so many kanji when there are only lik 1980 or so Jouyo kanji.

Hirigana and Katakana are positioned after Kanji so the student realizes how trivial they are compared to Kanji.

And "so many kanji"? Where are you getting that? If you go with the Heisig method, you learn the 2000 kanji required to be considered literate. Any learned thereafter are picked up from SRSing sentences and aren't really part of what he prescribes since you are the one that picked out the sentences to use.

[Aneroph]

And I argue that if you don't know the reading of the kanji it's a waste of time, because you can't freaking read. Ok, so you learn a heap of kanji, then you have to go back through and learn the readings? It seems more difficult to me than learning the whole kanji the first time.

Not necessarily. At first, you won't be able to audibly read, but you can look at Japanese text and have a pretty good idea of what it's saying, even if you can't pronounce it (I've done this myself a number of times). It's a starting point.

Look at it this way: learning the strokes of kanji first and the reading afterwards allows you to more efficiently allocate effort to both tasks instead of fumbling around trying to do both at once and wasting energy. After you learn the kanji, just mentally hook up the kanji to their readings through sentence SRS reps. Doesn't sound that difficult to me.

But you realize that a lot of Japanese things come with Furigana now to help foreigners and children to read. Seems like learning the Hiragana/Katakana is pretty improtant. I only know about 150 kanji, but I know a butt load of vocab and grammatical rules. I buy manga magazines with Furigana in them and can read most of it just fine having not learned most of the kanji. It also seems a little weird that he makes you learn so many kanji when there are only lik 1980 or so Jouyo kanji.

Hirigana and Katakana are positioned after Kanji so the student realizes how trivial they are compared to Kanji.

And "so many kanji"? Where are you getting that? If you go with the Heisig method, you learn the 2000 kanji required to be considered literate. Any learned thereafter are picked up from SRSing sentences and aren't really part of what he prescribes since you are the one that picked out the sentences to use.

Whoops, I was looking at the chinese kanji learning on his chart. Still, learning 3000 is a bit much unless you plan on going to China and learning some Chinese. The 2000 is all they are "allowed" to use in any media, and if they use anything not in those 2000 kanji, they have to add the Furigana to it.

Here is the website that khatsumoto linked to http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=691&p=6 I thought it was a good read.

[Tatsujin]

...but not to bother with writing it...

That's not on the site anywhere. He says not to learning the readings yet, but writing is supposed to happen with the SRS repetitions. The writing that he criticized as bad was writing each character over and over thousands of times in a mindless school style with no story tied to it. His point is that muscle memory alone is much harder to train to remember characters than your mind is.

Reading comprehension FTW.

There are different types of people that learn differently. Everyone learns different. Some people are visual and can comprehend when you show them pictures and examples of pictures. Some people need to write, touch or feel it to learn it. Some people need details or extra information or guides and some people can learn from 1st or 2nd encounter (whom you call 'perfect' memory).

[iindigo]

...but not to bother with writing it...

That's not on the site anywhere. He says not to learning the readings yet, but writing is supposed to happen with the SRS repetitions. The writing that he criticized as bad was writing each character over and over thousands of times in a mindless school style with no story tied to it. His point is that muscle memory alone is much harder to train to remember characters than your mind is.

Reading comprehension FTW.

There are different types of people that learn differently. Everyone learns different. Some people are visual and can comprehend when you show them pictures and examples of pictures. Some people need to write, touch or feel it to learn it. Some people need details or extra information or guides and some people can learn from 1st or 2nd encounter (whom you call 'perfect' memory).

And that's fine. What's whacky is how schools and many formal language programs totally ignore this and try to force a one-size-fits all approach on students when that obviously won't always work or will be painfully suboptimal depending on the individual.

I still hold the opinion that the method of writing everything 10,000 times is not the best option for most people.

[Aneroph]

Flashcards and www.smart.fm were my saviors when learning kanji and vocab. Still, I have to write the kanji a decent number of times to be able to remember it without seeing it. Our Japanese teacher at my university doesn't care how you study. He assigns homework of watching at least 2 hours of Japanese media without subtitles every week and assigns grammar practice in a workbook, but other than that he just gives out tests and the studying method is all up to you. I had a friend that was getting C's on all of his tests until I started giving him the link to all the flash cards I was making online. Now he is gettin over 100. People absolutely learn differently, and teachers should never force students to learn in a certain way.

[LiquidZero]

i recently started going to japanese classes and such. been going for a month. learned proper vowels, pronunciation, sentence structure, and how to read and write some of it. dont know it well enough to speak it fluently but can pick out words here or there. or read certain things. it helps with flash cards, its what my teacher recommends.

[dankles]

get post-it-notes and stick them to every object in your house with the name of the object written in japanese. That's one trick

It helped me learn spanish

[Tatsujin]

When I try to type づ it was typed as "du" ... the vowel is "zu" and when you try to type "zu" it comes out as ず which is "su" ... what the fuck is going on? is it because ず is also pronounced as "zu"? ....