brilliantyears wrote: (笑)
ここに自分の道を簡単に説明したほうがいいかな?
質問があれば遠慮なく聞いてください。
もちろん!!
Someone's opinion on people taking shortcuts in language learning, and learning languages in wacky ways, with a bit of martial arts thrown in. Heisig learned to speak Japanese by playing with children. Who would have known?
The Real Japanese Learners
http://japaneseruleof7.com/the-real-japanese-learners/Making the Jump from Intermediate to Advanced Japanese
"Recently, a reader posed an interesting question:
I’ve done the entire Pimsleur system, gone half way through Rosetta Stone, through RTK1, taken up an SRS, spent countless hours listening to Japanese audio, watching untranslated Japanese TV, trying to read sentences, and I feel I have very little to show for it.
I’ve read that people who are good at identifying patterns are also good at learning language. This is interesting because I suck at identifying patterns."
"So how do you go from intermediate to advanced Japanese? Let me illustrate that with a simple story about two guys named Phillip and, uh, Ben LeRoi. See, Ben bought a gym membership and worked out three times a week, using a program that included free weights, machines, and resistance bands. He drank protein shakes and creatine powder, logged his performance, and spent a lot of time looking in the mirror wondering why his lats weren’t more defined. At least, I think those were lats. Whatever. Phillip, by contrast, got busted for pot and went to prison for a year. And when he came out, Phillip was huge. A year before, they’d both been two skinny dudes, and now Phillip was a monster and Ben was just full of protein shakes.
“Jesus, Phil,” Ben said. “What the hell happened to, like, your body?
“Push-ups,” he said. “Nothing else to do. Jail’s boring.”
Why no one Helps you Learn Japanese
http://japaneseruleof7.com/help-learn-japanese/"What Japanese learners really need is a clear, step-by-step roadmap for how to learn the language, along with solid resources. So I figured, hey, that’d be a good book."
"Once I’d typed up the exciting Table of Contents, it dawned on me why nobody’s written this book. Because nobody in their right mind would buy the damn thing. And even if a hundred people in the whole world did, how many would complete the program?"
The Grammar-Translation Method : Really all that Bad?
http://japaneseruleof7.com/the-grammar-translation-method-really-all-that-bad/"If you do a quick search for “Grammar-translation Method,” you’ll probably notice something striking. Anyway, I did. A lot of descriptions of the method (whatever one conceives it to be) use roughly the same verbiage, which sounds like everyone’s just parroting everyone else. Also, there’s no shortage of hyperbole. Here’s one example:
The Grammar Translation Method is an old method which was originally used to teach dead languages.
Hmm. “Old method,” “originally used,” and “dead language” all add a little spin to help reinforce the writer’s point. Of course I love that, because it’s just the kind of thing that I’d do. So let me try:
The Grammar Translation Method is a well-established method which has long been used to teach some of the world’s great languages.
So that’s a fun game."
Why are Japanese so Bad at English?
http://japaneseruleof7.com/why-are-japanese-so-bad-at-english-5-reasons/A Friend of Mine Learned Japanese in 1 Year
http://japaneseruleof7.com/sumo-learn-japanese/"But instead of an objective, subjective, or really any measurement of ability before and after the supposed period of Japanese acquisition, instead there’s the story."
"I met Heisig at a writer’s workshop. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, and a fine teller of grandiose stories. After listening to his well-polished tale about singlehandedly inventing a way of learning Japanese characters that millions of Japanese folks had never thought of in their thousands of years of history, I finally got a chance to ask him, “How did you learn to speak it?”
“I played baseball with the kids,” was his reply. “Up in the mountains. In Nagano.
“You played baseball?” I asked. “With children?
“Yep.
“And that’s how you learned to speak Japanese?
“Sure. Children are the best teachers.”
Now, that sounds reasonable. Everybody nodded. But it isn’t reasonable. It sounds good, but it’s actually nuts. Children are the worst teachers. They make no damn sense.
You know, over the years, I’ve asked many people how they learned Japanese, and their answers consistently fall into one of two categories. They either describe a systematic method pursued diligently over the course of several years, or they make up some convenient bullshit because they don’t really want to respond to the question. I looked at Heisig, and had my answer."
"So a man goes on a diet and loses 25 pounds. Hearing this, what’s the first question you gotta ask? No, not What did he eat? The first question is, How much did he weight beforehand? Because a 400-pound man losing that weight is mildly interesting; but 160-pound man doing the same is alarming.
I do this with every one of my English students. Put ‘em on a scale, the little fatties. No, I mean, at the start of each semester, I give a short writing and speaking test. Then at the end of the semester, same thing."
The best way to learn Japanese
http://japaneseruleof7.com/the-best-way-to-learn-japanese/"Let me level with you. Nobody’s going to sell you a program that promises to teach you Japanese over the course of twenty years, because you wouldn’t buy it. It’s way easier to sell something that claims you can learn Japanese by sleeping with a copy of I am a Cat under your pillow. But it’s probably going to take you a lot longer than you’ve been lead to believe."
The answer to the "Where's the beef?" question.
I am including some of "the beef" too as blogs do tend to disappear after a while:
Six Recommendations
"Although I no longer believe in the myth of a “best” method for learning Japanese, there are still some things that I believe are vitally important for success.
1. Ensure you receive a large volume of comprehensible input. What that input is isn’t as important as making sure you get a steady stream of it. Do whatever suits you—read books, watch movies, talk to people—but check that it satisfies two criteria: First, you have to be able to understand it on some level. Maybe not perfectly, but enough to follow what you’re seeing and hearing. Secondly, it should be valuable information. Repeating familiar, safe conversations about your hometown, family, and hobbies won’t do much to improve your Japanese. Nor will watching anime full of slang that nobody uses. Push yourself to learn things that are widely useful.
2. Learn kanji. This is absolutely essential for expanding your vocabulary. Because kanji are the building blocks of the language, learning them will increase your vocabulary exponentially. There’s a brilliantly written article by shameless self-promoter Ken Seeroi that explains this in greater detail.
3. Get an electronic dictionary, so that when you wake up at 4 a.m. wondering how to say “Oh God, why have I wasted my life learning Japanese?” you can look it up.
4. Read. Read easy stuff, but a lot of it. It’s a safe bet that much of what you’ve learned throughout your life has come from reading. It’s no different in Japanese. Reading with furigana (teenie tiny hiragana printed above the kanji, à la Hiragana Times) is a good stepping stone.
5. Take classes. In blogs and discussion boards, the mantra is that classes are old-fashioned and you can learn faster and more efficiently on your own. I seriously doubt that, particularly in the long-term. I’ve heard people complain, “But I took a full semester of Japanese and all I learned were 50 kanji,” like somehow it was the teacher’s fault they didn’t learn more. I hate to be the one to dish out the tough love, but if there’s something you want to learn, look it up and learn it. That part’s on you. What a class provides is a schedule, curriculum, and an opportunity to practice. Nobody’s stopping you from learning more.
6. Don’t quit. Learning Japanese can be fun, and even occasionally useful if you happen to live in Japan, but it’s not like someone’s going to lay the Hands of Knowledge on you and you’ll be like, Oh my God, I can see! I can see kanji!
Let me level with you. Nobody’s going to sell you a program that promises to teach you Japanese over the course of twenty years, because you wouldn’t buy it. It’s way easier to sell something that claims you can learn Japanese by sleeping with a copy of I am a Cat under your pillow. But it’s probably going to take you a lot longer than you’ve been lead to believe.
If I had to estimate the percentage of people who try and actually succeed at learning Japanese, I’d put it between one percent and Hell Freezing Over. But that isn’t because 99% of the people lack the right method. On the contrary, they don’t succeed because their expectations are skewed. "