All Japanese All The Time

[richvh]

"Any subject requires many, many exercises to be done in order to internalize it."

A lot of people think that.
The SRS method of studying, that I use now, is anti- to that philosophy.

How can anything with Repetition in its name be antithetical to drilling? SRS doesn't eliminate drilling, it just tries to optimize the timing of it, and if you have a deck of thousands of cards, you're still doing a heck of a lot of exercises (just, maybe, not the same one very often.)

[Denus]

As an aside, that website feels like a very large applied exegesis of the Tao. :s

[Yudan Taiteki]

"Any subject requires many, many exercises to be done in order to internalize it."

A lot of people think that.

Note that this does not mean doing the exact same thing over and over again. It means doing 10 different exercises designed to build your skill in (say) conjugating verbs to the past tense, rather than just reading an English explanation or looking at a table and assuming you've mastered it.

Of course if you've done something once, and it is still fresh in your mind, there will be relatively little benefit to doing exactly the same thing again. I don't think anyone is suggesting that.

[Dustin]

"Any subject requires many, many exercises to be done in order to internalize it."

A lot of people think that.
The SRS method of studying, that I use now, is anti- to that philosophy. You are supposed to look at a question, think of the answer, check your answer, and if you remembered, rate your performance (how well did you remember?). Studying the same thing twice in a row is useless (claims SRS enthusiasts) - it's more useful for your memory to wait a little, when your memory is weaker, before reviewing again.

This is the Wikipedia article on the "spacing effect" I have crudely described:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect

That's certainly an interesting theory on how sites such as AJATT and Antimoon developed. It seems plausible to me.

It's also important to note that this is meant for, and works best AFTER doing enough to fully understand whatever you are quizzing, whether it is a new piece of vocab, kanji, or a grammar point. SRS systems are not meant to LEARN anything, they are meant for retaining information you HAVE LEARNT and transferring it from short term memory to long term memory by keeping you from seeing it at longer and longer intervals.

Understanding the grammar is necessary before just throwing it into an SRS and being done with it, and then the SRS can in fact be used to internalize it assuming there are enough examples using the point.

[jcdietz03]

Yes, I understand. The general procedure is learn, enter into SRS, review.

The argument that people who take Japanese classes are not good at Japanese is flawed. The reason is you're being selective in choosing your facts. If you look at people who ever tried to learn Japanese versus those who are good at it, I'm sure you'd see that the numbers are equally dismal.

I was looking at this page
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/worldlanguages.htm
which suggests that there are only 1M second language speakers of Japanese? I don't know which assumptions they used to consider people "speakers" but you would hope it's the same across all languages they considered.

[nukemarine]

Learning the items to put in an SRS is studying. Reviewing the items in an SRS is studying. Depending on how you do initial studies and follow on reviews can give a good framework on how much time you're investing.

In my case, I average 7 minutes a kanji (2400 kanji atm), 10 minutes a vocabulary/grammar example sentence (2000, yeah, I'm slacking). That's 280 hours on kanji and about 350 hours on example sentences. Put in College Credit hours of the 3 to 1 rule or 50 hours per credit hour, I'm at about 12 credit hours of Japanese. I can't quantify the non-study portions. I've listened to hundreds of hours and watched dozens of hours of Japanese (yep, I'm slacking here too).

What does this mean? Not a clue. But it was putting things into perspective that made me realize those that take College Classes have the same hours as me, and probably are at similar levels. It just started becoming apparent that language is about putting in the hours. If you want to learn it fast, you just put in more hours a day. That's why Khatz's accomplishment may not seem so amazing. In 18 months he studied 1000 hours (about 2 hours a day average), and watched 2000 hours of Japanese shows (4 hours a day) and listened to 8000 hours of Japanese (16 hours a day).

What makes it an accomplishment was he had 3 part time jobs, and a full class load for a computer science major.

PS: Is that 1 to 3 rule for college classes ever true?

[Yudan Taiteki]

It's not *just* about putting in the hours, although that is obviously an extremely important part of language learning. You do have to have access to the right sources and have some organization also. But equally as obviously, you can have the best sources and organization in the world but if you don't put in the time, you won't make progress.

(In a post a while back I posited the theory that the 5 important things about language learning, in order of priority, were motivation, input, organization, practice, and guidance. But that's obviously just theoretical rambling.)

[flagofsurrender]

I stumbled upon AJATT about a month ago and decided to give it a shot (well, sort of). Considering that I am a full-time working married man, the all-the-time method is practically a dream that I'm not going to ever be able to accomplish. However, I did realize what almost everyone here has been saying, it's all about putting the time in. With anything you want to become more than just an amateur at, you have to dedicate your time to it. I'm not going to discredit what AJATT is about, but it does seem like an unfeasible thing for me to do. However, I'm finding that I'm retaining more by getting involved in the forums here, if not reading, then by posting in the Japanese Practice ones. Yeah, I've been listing to Yomiuri Shimbun on my iPod every morning and I do get excited when I recognize a word or two. I'm beginning to catch the particles in the sentences finally. But to reiterate what everyone has said before, time and practice are the keys. Walking away from English asap is helping, but I still don't have a large enough vocabulary bank in my brain to completely wrap myself in Japanese without some form of translation.

[astaroth]

The switching between thinking entirely in one language takes a lot of time, and full, real immersion. I believe one has to leave in the country where the language is spoken. My experience with English was exactly that: one day I switch. If you haven't experienced it, it's hard to explain. It's one you stop to think in one language and start to think in another unconsciously -- the most "dramatic" experience I had was my first dream in English.
Anyway speaking of studying. I think in part AJATT makes sense, but I wouldn't consider it an entirely different way of studying a language from traditional textbooks and courses. No teachers will ever tell you that watching movie in the language you're studying and trying to practice whenever you can will do some harm, I think. After all that is practice too.
As of Japanese, after one year of study I occasionally say「大丈夫？」instead of "are you ok?", or「どうしたの？」instead of "what's wrong?". (Or better I'm trying not to say it )
I think all of it is kinda normal whenever one's studying a language ...