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[becki_kanou]

The more I think about it the more I want to bet that my Japanese is better than the Japanese of your students _despite_ the fact that I've never studied Japanese. I'd be willing to make a bet- I come to your Uni and pick one of your students. We all fly to Japan. If your boy speaks better I pay for the whole thing.. if the guy I pick can't order ramen... I have the 10 G's on hand, and I'll take this bet any time as long as I get to pick your agent. If your boy is less capable than I am... you pay.

大変失礼ですが、ご自分の日本語の実力にそんなに自信があるのならば一度日本語でご投稿されればいかがでしょうか？

edit:　変換ミス　自身/自信 I guess it doesn't pay to be snarky.

[pippa]

The more I think about it the more I want to bet that my Japanese is better than the Japanese of your students _despite_ the fact that I've never studied Japanese. I'd be willing to make a bet- I come to your Uni and pick one of your students. We all fly to Japan. If your boy speaks better I pay for the whole thing.. if the guy I pick can't order ramen... I have the 10 G's on hand, and I'll take this bet any time as long as I get to pick your agent. If your boy is less capable than I am... you pay.

Ordering a bowl of ramen...wow, a real test of intellect and language ability.

大変失礼ですが、ご自分の日本語の実力にそんなに自身があるのならば一度日本語でご投稿されればいかがでしょうか？

*cough cough*

I second Becki's proposition.

[hyperconjugated]

lol @ the wager. Reminds me of this clip :-D

[Yudan Taiteki]

tYudan: "he fact that native speakers do not need explicit instruction in the grammar of their own language doesn't mean that foreign learners should go without it."

OK, but... to what degree is that true?

Well, that's a question for debate. Language learning should be a mix of explicit grammar instruction and lots of practice using and seeing the forms. Personally I don't think there's any such thing as grammar instruction that is too detailed -- even after 2 years of living in Japan I still learned a lot from having to go through the grammar explanations in JSL to teach them. I found out that a lot of what I had "figured out" about the language was wrong, but some of the explanations confirmed my hunches and experience and explained why they were true, and other patterns were completely new to me.

The more I think about it the more I want to bet that my Japanese is better than the Japanese of your students _despite_ the fact that I've never studied Japanese. I'd be willing to make a bet- I come to your Uni and pick one of your students. We all fly to Japan. If your boy speaks better I pay for the whole thing.. if the guy I pick can't order ramen... I have the 10 G's on hand, and I'll take this bet any time as long as I get to pick your agent. If your boy is less capable than I am... you pay.

今年は二年生を教えてるけど、学生たちはラーメンを注文する表現はもう覚えてますよ。でも、日本語の勉強は競争じゃないんです。

[Sairana]

The more I think about it the more I want to bet that my Japanese is better than the Japanese of your students _despite_ the fact that I've never studied Japanese. I'd be willing to make a bet- I come to your Uni and pick one of your students. We all fly to Japan. If your boy speaks better I pay for the whole thing.. if the guy I pick can't order ramen... I have the 10 G's on hand, and I'll take this bet any time as long as I get to pick your agent. If your boy is less capable than I am... you pay.

Wow. All Chris said was that you can't use your extraordinary results to give advice to other people based on them. The average student will not pick up grammar and such from dramas. No need to go into hyper-macho-penis-waving-contest mode.

[two_heads_talking]

No need to go into hyper-macho-penis-waving-contest mode.

Not to derail this anymore, but what happens if arbalest71 has nothing to wave? Perhaps the need to include such behaviorial words shows the same type of elitist status you are trying to shut down? Color me confused, but it doesn't impress me much.

[nukemarine]

For the, umm, wager - Why do you need to FLY to Japan just to see how well two people can order Ramen. Get on skype and just record a conversation with selected Japanese person concerning selected topics. Not sure what it actually proves.

Anyway, as it started out about Tae Kim's site. There's many resources available on the web now that circumvent any need for a textbook or a teacher for that matter. Tae Kim in conjunction with iKnow in conjuction with Rikaichan in conjunction with kids.yahoo.co.jp in conjunction with dozens of others resources excel whatever benefit you can gleem from a 40 dollar textbook and a 200 dollar Japanese class.

Now, a professional tutor is a great resource, but it's a nice to have and not a need to have. What helps is having guiding advice, preferably from someone who has walked the path to the destination (ie, not me and a majority on this board). Yudan and Cash offer great advice as they know Japanese (one teaches it professionally). However, they're from one school of thought (prior to the proliferation of material on the internet if I'm guessing right). Guys from LingQ and AJATT also know Japanese but are from another school of thought (get lots and lots of native level input).

Due to such a proliferation of material and advice, it's important you know your path and stick to it within reason. Use Tae Kim to actively learn the grammer, put the sentences into an SRS for review purposes. After you're done with those 700 sentences, MOVE ON. The grammer does not need to be drilled. It needs to be re-inforced. You can do that with reading manga, books and newspapers; watching dramas, news, videos; and listening to music and talk. While you are building vocabulary (using iKnow or other sources), you'll also re-inforce the grammar and improve on your input. The grammar will become intuitive in time. Yeah, there's a bit more to it than that (dealing with kanji and writing and shadowing), but that's the gist of it.

[Yudan Taiteki]

The grammer does not need to be drilled.

Whenever I see someone say this, I always want to see their Japanese ability to see if they make as many mistakes in sentence production as I expect they do. The problem with the Internet is that people with no teaching or pedagogy experience can put up whatever they want, and they don't have to deal with any consequences of whether it actually works well or not.

Basically, you become good at what you practice, with some spillover into other areas. If you practice reading a lot, you will become good at reading, but your speaking won't improve all that much. If you practice speaking error-riddled Japanese, you will learn to speak error-riddled Japanese. The only way to learn to speak correct Japanese is to practice speaking correct Japanese, and the only way to do that is to have someone correcting you every time you make a mistake.

I speak from personal experience when I say that one of the biggest mistakes you can ever make in your Japanese learning is assuming that because you can understand a particular pattern in a sentence, that you can use that pattern in production. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Harisenbon]

edit:　変換ミス　自身/自信 I guess it doesn't pay to be snarky.

人の日本語をバカにしようとするとおれも必ず間違ってまう（汗
逆に、誰かに褒められたら急にうちの日本語が下手になってまう（汗×２

もしかして、俺はただ下手？自身がない;)

[richvh]

edit:　変換ミス　自身/自信 I guess it doesn't pay to be snarky.

人の日本語をバカにしようとするとおれも必ず間違ってまう（汗
逆に、誰かに褒められたら急にうちの日本語が下手になってまう（汗×２

もしかして、俺はただ下手？自身がない;)

「ちまう」か（てしまう）と、「自信」を書きたかったのでしょうか。

[becki_kanou]

人の日本語をバカにしようとするとおれも必ず間違ってまう（汗
逆に、誰かに褒められたら急にうちの日本語が下手になってまう（汗×２/

ほんま、その通りやな！

もしかして、俺はただ下手？自身がない;)

そんなことない、ない。心配せんでええで。地震を持ちなはれ！

[becki_kanou]

edit:　変換ミス　自身/自信 I guess it doesn't pay to be snarky.

人の日本語をバカにしようとするとおれも必ず間違ってまう（汗
逆に、誰かに褒められたら急にうちの日本語が下手になってまう（汗×２

もしかして、俺はただ下手？自身がない;)

「ちまう」か（てしまう）と、「自信」を書きたかったのでしょうか。

Ouch! 〜てまう is valid 関西弁 and 自身 was a joke about my earlier 変換ミス

....or was that an even meta-er joke that I didn't get???

[Harisenbon]

Ouch! 〜てまう is valid 関西弁 and 自身 was a joke about my earlier 変換ミス
....or was that an even meta-er joke that I didn't get???

Nope, not a meta joke.
てまう is used almost exclusively in the Gifu area. I don't think I've ever heard ちまう around here. (although that will probably change with the popularity of a certain owarai group な～にぃ！？やっちまったな！)

And yes, the 自身 was a dig at you. I was also considering 地震 or 磁針

[becki_kanou]

Ouch! 〜てまう is valid 関西弁 and 自身 was a joke about my earlier 変換ミス
....or was that an even meta-er joke that I didn't get???

Nope, not a meta joke.
てまう is used almost exclusively in the Gifu area. I don't think I've ever heard ちまう around here. (although that will probably change with the popularity of a certain owarai group な～にぃ！？やっちまったな！)

And yes, the 自身 was a dig at you. I was also considering 地震 or 磁針

I got the joke.

The post you quoted was me replying to richvh who had corrected your post. My reply to you is one up from that because I was naughty and double-posted.

[Yudan Taiteki]

人の日本語をバカにしようとするとおれも必ず間違ってまう（汗
逆に、誰かに褒められたら急にうちの日本語が下手になってまう（汗×２/

ほんま、その通りやな！

分かるわ。
（まあ、僕の場合は、人との日本語を批判するかしないかとは関係なくて、いつも間違っちゃうんだ。褒められたらすぐ照れっちゃうから日本語もぼこぼこになる。）

もしかして、俺はただ下手？自身がない;)

そんなことない、ない。心配せんでええで。地震を持ちなはれ！

地震を持つのは対辺難しいと思う。でも返還ミスはしやすすぎる...僕の磁針もなくなるさ。