How helpful has AJATT been for you?

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Teango
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby Teango » Sat Jun 30, 2018 10:20 pm

Serafín wrote:
Ani wrote:Katz said tons of different things over time. He even had a theory one time that you needed 2 minutes of immersion per hour or something like that.

That's still an open blog entry on his website.

It's been an age since I last haphazardly surfed through posts on AJATT, but I'm glad Serafín reminded me of this little gem (written back in the good ol' days of 2010). In this post, Khatz recommends striving for frequency over quantity in terms of daily contact with a target language (in his case, Japanese), and proposes the following tentative time schedules:
Here are my serving suggestions for frequencies. These are all just guesstimates. My favorite one, the one I am using, is #2, the highlighted one:

1. 1~2 minutes per half hour
2. 2 minutes per hour [edit: highlight added]
3. 4~5 minutes per 90 minutes
4. 10~15 minutes per 2 hours
5. 15~30 minutes per 3 hours
6. 30~60 minutes per 4 hours
7. 60~90 minutes per 6 hours
8. 90~180 minutes per 12 hours

I rather like the idea of studying for a couple of minutes every hour (it seems very doable and could well lead to bonus "run-on"), but given an already hectic daily schedule (work, PhD, daddy daycare, etc.), I'd be likewise happy to find 10-15 minutes every 2-3 hours during the bulk of my waking day and maintain weekly progress across multiple languages. I feel it's something I could probably more realistically manage over the long-term.

By the way (and please forgive the slight digression here), I wonder if anyone knows or can remember when Khatz actually started to output (i.e., speak and/or write more extensively) in Japanese?
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby Ani » Sat Jun 30, 2018 11:52 pm

Teango wrote:By the way (and please forgive the slight digression here), I wonder if anyone knows or can remember when Khatz actually started to output (i.e., speak and/or write more extensively) in Japanese?

I don't think he defined a true silent period. He was one who said he'd talk to his dog. He had Japanese friends and I imagine he talked to them too when he could. I believe he said he was "fluent" in Japanese within 18 months so it couldn't have been that long of a silent period.
Maybe someone remembers more specifically though.
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Jul 01, 2018 2:57 am

Sarafina wrote:

Even if I'm enjoying watching the TV series in French, but the back of my brain whispers that you do know that it is so dumb forcing ourselves to watch this French when it's so so easily available in English and besides 30 minutes of watching an episode in English wouldn't hurt your French in the long-run and so the cycle continues.

I think my biggest problem is discipline and self-sabotage because I have a lot of good enjoyable French stuff that I can use for immersing. I am getting frustrated with my progress with French. It's my summer holidays and I've already wasted a month not doing that much. I have nothing to lose. I know that I only feel slight discomfort because I've never really established a proper habit with immersing in French for a long period of time and I keep coddling myself.



When I watch shows dubbed in French, I think “Hey it’s so cool I can watch this in French! I get to watch fun TV and learn something at the same time! Awesome!”

I also just don’t let myself watch anything in English.

(This kind of discipline is facilitated by having very little free time.)
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby kulaputra » Sun Jul 01, 2018 3:33 am

Something that's helped me, which is only applicable if you've learned another language to a high level, is to do AJATT in L3 but with L2 subtitles for movies.

Also, you could stick to songs or audiobooks of books you already know very well (e.g. books you love and/or have read multiple times ideally translated from your L1 into your TL).
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby gsbod » Sun Jul 01, 2018 2:22 pm

In all honesty, I think I would have made better, more satisfying progress had I never encountered AJATT at the time that I did. This was around 2008-2010 and I'm sure a lot of content has been added/changed on his site since then. Also everything is down to interpretation and maybe I just took the wrong lessons from what I was reading at the time. Japanese was the first language I ever attempted to learn, from scratch, as an adult, so I spent a lot of time looking for solutions and a few dead ends are going to be inevitable when you don't know what you are doing yet. In any case, I can summarise some of my issues as follows:

I became distrustful of and impatient with my coursebooks - because of the message that coursebooks are a waste of time, they don't teach you what you need to know, and nobody speaks Japanese like they do in the coursebooks. I now know that there is nothing I like better than starting a language with a decent, well-structured coursebook, because I need to build a decent foundation early on and, when it comes to grammar, I don't like learning inductively (this is why Assimil doesn't really do it for me either). Also, as a professional adult, I have found that the kind of Japanese used in the better coursebooks is perfectly suited to how people like me speak.

I wasted a lot of time listening to stuff I didn't understand - now I think the one useful take away from AJATT is that if you want to be able to listen to and read authentic materials, then at some point you will need to start listening to and reading authentic materials (and maybe AJATT was more inspiring for those who had already completed one of those aforementioned "boring" coursebooks, for that reason). However, you still need to be able to understand enough of what you are listening to/reading to start to fill in the gaps, at which point you will progress in leaps and bounds. Otherwise time is better spent going back to "boring" coursebooks (or in my case, the library of JapanesePod101 dialogues).

I wasted a lot of time trying and failing with Heisig's Remembering the Kanji - not least because it was presented, at the time, as the only alternative to having to mindlessly write out characters hundreds of times. What worked for me was a conbination of Basic Kanji Book (which I actually found recommended on HTLAL) and Anki, particularly when I started sticking to it rather than distracting myself trying to "learn ALL the kanji!" with Heisig. It turned out, that once I had done enough work with Basic Kanji Book etc, it was easy enough for me to learn to recognise new vocabulary together with new kanji, especially with regular review in Anki. My handwriting still sucked, but it's neither a skill I particularly needed or was particularly essential in learning Japanese as a whole.

I wasted a lot of time on sentence cards - goodness knows how many hours I spent lovingly crafting the things. A good chunk of my study time was more like data entry time. Not to mention the time reviewing, with the expectation I'd have to review the things in perpetuity. There was a whole lot of Anki abuse in my life at the time. Which would have been fine had the impact justified the effort. It simply didn't. Flashcards work best for me when I focus on words and phrases, and I run them both L2 > L1 and L1 > L2, with L1 > L2 being most important (going against the no translation ethos on AJATT). I also find that it is better to think about the life of an Anki deck in terms of a few months rather than years (or even a lifetime). If a word hasn't stuck after being in your SRS for 6 months (or maybe even less) then you simply don't need it (yet). I know since then AJATT has taken up this idea of using cloze deletion cards instead, but I'd rather buy a book full of drills and save time on the data entry.

I developed unrealistic expectations - because the guy from AJATT became "native-like" in 18 months, when this didn't happen to me it was very demotivating. Nowadays I think 4-5 years to reach C levels is perfectly respectable, with the added bonus that a language can become useful long before you hit the C levels anyway. And who cares if I can "pass for native"? Take one look at me, I'm obviously not Japanese, and in any case my Englishness is an integral part of my identity. As long as it doesn't impede communication, it is not a problem.

There is some good advice on the AJATT site, but it's surrounded by so much bad advice, that when you don't know what you are doing it is hard to sort out the treasure from the rubbish. In a way there's a similar risk for language forums like this, but on the whole I found a lot more of use on HTLAL and the forums on the JapanesePod101 site than I did on AJATT - because there is no one true way when it comes to learning languages, and on a forum you get to see a wider range of approaches and experiences.
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby NoManches » Mon Jul 02, 2018 3:25 pm

gsbod wrote:...... In any case, I can summarise some of my issues as follows:


I wasted a lot of time listening to stuff I didn't understand - now I think the one useful take away from AJATT is that if you want to be able to listen to and read authentic materials, then at some point you will need to start listening to and reading authentic materials (and maybe AJATT was more inspiring for those who had already completed one of those aforementioned "boring" coursebooks, for that reason). However, you still need to be able to understand enough of what you are listening to/reading to start to fill in the gaps, at which point you will progress in leaps and bounds. Otherwise time is better spent going back to "boring" coursebooks (or in my case, the library of JapanesePod101 dialogues).





I have to agree with you here. I don't know if I can fully blame AJATT for this, but I do recall reading a lot of posts on that site and getting motivated to just listen, listen, listen.

I spent SO MANY hours listening to stuff that was incomprehensible, or too advanced for me. Those hours would have been better spent listening to materials that were more appropriate for my level. Can I blame AJATT for this? Not really. Ultimately it was my decision and I should have done more research. Only if I came across some of Krashen's ideas earlier on. I think AJATT motivated the heck out of me. I wish he had emphasized crap tons of comprehensible input instead of recommendations to jump right into native materials. But then again, the method worked for him (and probably many others), so in the end it comes down to the individual learner to do research and find a method (or methods) that works for him or her.
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby kulaputra » Mon Jul 02, 2018 4:09 pm

Are you guys familiar with the concept of comparative advantage? "My time could have been spent better on comprehensible input" is only a convincing argument if you weren't listening for many hours a day and only took into account the time spent explicitly studying. Which in any case isn't AJATT, but a simulacrum of it.
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby NoManches » Mon Jul 02, 2018 10:13 pm

kulaputra wrote:Are you guys familiar with the concept of comparative advantage? "My time could have been spent better on comprehensible input" is only a convincing argument if you weren't listening for many hours a day and only took into account the time spent explicitly studying. Which in any case isn't AJATT, but a simulacrum of it.



I've never heard of this concept before. I think I know what you are trying to point out, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I just think that listening to somewhat comprehensible material is more beneficial than listening to material that is barely comprehensible. Wouldn't my time be better off using a method that is more beneficial? Also I don't think that my opinion on comprehensible material was only influenced by my history of using both comprehensible and not so comprehensible input. Some of my opinion was formed after years of studying a foreign language and many successful Learners telling me that comprehensible input is best.

Now that I write this response I am making better sense of what you are saying. If I am correct, you are saying that I can't make an argument after the fact, because I only used one method and have nothing to compare it to?

Isn't there some type of proof (or just anecdotal evidence) that "i+1" is better than "i+50" or some other number? If that is the case, the person who uses "input + 1" is being more efficient than the person using incomprehensible material. I do understand that the "i+1" hypothesis can't really be tested though....so maybe nothing I am saying makes any sense :P

Thanks for your input. I'd appreciate if you can clarify your point. I'm always open to new ideas but sometimes it takes me a little bit to make things click. Coffee usually helps with this process.
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby Xmmm » Mon Jul 02, 2018 10:49 pm

If I understand kulaputra correctly, he's saying this:

learner #1:

1. one hour of anki in French
2. four hours of English TV (native speaker of English)

learner #2:

1. one hour of anki in French
2. four hours of French TV where he only understand 10%

How can watching the TV in French with poor comprehension be a waste, unless you're putting some weird positive value on zoning out in front of native language TV?

Because listening in the foreign language can be done in lieu of entertaining yourself in your native language, it costs you nothing and literally cannot be a waste even if you (highly unlikely) got nothing out of it.

If you were replacing studying with incomprehensible input, then yes it's a waste. But who does that (other than me?).
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Re: How helpful has AJATT been for you?

Postby NoManches » Mon Jul 02, 2018 11:03 pm

Xmmm wrote:If I understand kulaputra correctly, he's saying this:

learner #1:

1. one hour of anki in French
2. four hours of English TV (native speaker of English)

learner #2:

1. one hour of anki in French
2. four hours of French TV where he only understand 10%

How can watching the TV in French with poor comprehension be a waste, unless you're putting some weird positive value on zoning out in front of native language TV?

Because listening in the foreign language can be done in lieu of entertaining yourself in your native language, it costs you nothing and literally cannot be a waste even if you (highly unlikely) got nothing out of it.

If you were replacing studying with incomprehensible input, then yes it's a waste. But who does that (other than me?).



Okay, this makes perfect sense. Let's see if kulaputra agrees with your example. If what you are saying is a good representation of the point trying to be made, I'd have to clarify that:

Listening to tons of incomprehensible input is not a waste of time. In my opinion... anything in L2 is good, no matter how comprehensible it is. Everytime I choose Spanish over English, it's a win for me . However, if I had to pick between spending 1 hour of listening to somewhat comprehensible material, or an hour of listening to barely comprehensible material....I'd pick the somewhat comprehensible material almost every time. My original point was that I think comprehensible input is better than incomprehensible input, and that I would have benefited more by listening to lots of comprehensible materials. (Not saying incomprehensible is bad, just saying comprehensible is better).


Now I remember why this topic sounds familiar, kulaputra disagreed (in a respectful manner) with something I said regarding input. Sorry for dropping out of that threat...I completely forgot about it! It's an interesting topic for sure.... When I'm home and have more coffee in me I'll try to review the points made and add some comments if I feel it adds to the discussion.


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