When Your Listening and Subs Don’t Match

By Ryan | Published: August 16, 2010

So I recently got a comment from an article by a man named Charles that merited a reply from me, but I think it deserves an article of its own.  I’ll paraphrase here:

What do you do when what’s said and what’s written on the same language subs are different?

Excellent question.  Particularly excellent because for most of us, it is impossible to know beforehand whether or not the subs will match up.  But I don’t think that this kind of learning material is necessarily worthless to the student.  Let’s take a look at particular benefits that this could bring:

  • You get to see/hear similar expressions with the same meaning at the same time.
  • Since these often have similar words or words with shared roots, you get some additional vocabulary practice that you might not have already had.

So it’s not all lost.  Of course, the work around can be kind of tricky.  If you have native speaker friends (a topic that will come up soon enough here), then it can help to have confirmation from a native speaker of what exactly was said when you get to a point that you don’t necessarily understand.  However, if this can not be done, I often then just go for the subtitles at that point.  Save the listening for a later time after you’ve put in hours and hours of time.

Posted in Language, Language Learning Techniques, SRS | 20 Comments

Ask Ryan: Going Monolingual and Trusting Yourself

By Ryan | Published: August 9, 2010

Today we have an e-mail from Alan, who has managed to get through what I think is the hardest part of learning Japanese: kanji.  Now Alan is kind of worried about where to go from here.  Here’s what he writes:

Ryan,

I’d be a liar if I claimed to be a long-term reader of your blog- I actually stumbled in here from AJATT.

. . . Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

. . . You read AJATT?  Sweet.  Welcome to the blog.

That being said, I have a question for you regarding progression of Japanese sentences into an SRS deck.

I’m a Heisig1+3 graduate, and have been steadily building a library of Japanese sentences into an SRS deck. Many, if not all of these sentences come from Japanese / English examples – most are from Jim Breen’s wwwjdic. I’m at around 500 sentences, and I can really feel my vocabulary beginning to build. It is important to note that while I may take the example sentences from the wwwjdic, there is absolutely no english in my SRS deck. I simply discard the english equivalent and write the necessary readings on my ‘answer’ side.

This is where my primary concern comes in:
Should I consider going monolingual for my sentences?
(more so, is it going to negatively impact me to continue like this?)

I ask, because while I may be learning vocabulary in my current trend, I find that I am ultimately relying on English as a crutch when first pulling the sentences out.

I realize that a black and white answer may not be possible, but I’d absolutely love to hear your experience with it. Even if you’re unable to respond, thanks for a great blog and congratulations with your successful studies. :-)

And now my reply:

First things first, I want to congratulate you on graduating from kanji!  Nice work!  It’s the hardest part in my opinion and it trips up the most people, that’s one of the reasons I’m a strong advocate of getting it out of the way as soon as possible. 

I went over and took a brief look at the Tatoeba Project, which I think is what you’re talking about with the sentences.  Am I right here?  I think it’s a neat idea, but I worry less about the English being an influencer on you, and I worry more about quality control when it comes to the sentences themselves.  There’s a few issues here:

  • No context with sentences.  You always would prefer more context over less.
  • Crowd sourcing can sometimes lead to quality issues because the massive load of content being created is accumulating at a rate too high for proper review.
  • The learning is too some extent being externalized by someone else, instead of you.

While what you’re actually doing sounds fine (and indeed, I started off the same way myself), I would instead recommend that you get a proper reference book (as long as you’re comfortable spending about twenty dollars per book, of course, depending on your location).  In general, I’ve found that Kodansha or its subsidiary Kodansha Children’s Classics tends to print some very handy reference books that you should take a look at.  I’ve used their idioms/four character-reference book as well as How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese, among others, and I highly recommend them until you get to the point that you don’t need English anymore (for me it was about 1,000 sentences in.  Of course your mileage may vary).
 
Also, context.  This is important.  In general, you’ll eventually be moving towards a point where you start approaching larger and larger sources of text (or listening sources) for you study.  This is important because you have more context, which is particularly helpful for learning certain function words such as connectors and mastering the intricacies of pronoun usage.  To do this, you’ll need to move beyond individual sentences.
 
But seriously, let’s look big picture now.  You’re doing pretty fine.  You’re clearly on the right track and I think you’ve got at least 90% of this down.  At least.  You’re probably starting to get to a point where you are internalizing the attitudes of being an independent study, and some of this feels wrong.  That’s ok, you’re getting to the point where you can probably start following your gut as you pursue incrementally difficult challenges.
  
Hope you’re doing well, by all means send me a mail with any other concerns you have!

Anybody else out there who’s made it past kanji and has some advice for Alan?  If so, go on ahead down to the comments and give the man some words!

Take care everyone.  Talk to you later.

Ryan

Posted in Ask Ryan!, Getting Literate (Kanji), Japanese, Language Learning Techniques, Motivation | 56 Comments

Moving On Up

By Ryan | Published: July 29, 2010

Alright.  Last time we talked, I was looking at this picture.  These books were going to be the backbone of my study material over the course of my summer vacation while the students are off doing their thing.

For those of you who can read here, you can gather that I’m probably taking a bit of a fancy to learning programming.  I’m also trying to get Ubuntu on one of my computers (which I’ve tried man times now, and have failed pretty epically at each time.  I’m trying to run it and Windows on one computer).

Of course, in addition to all the fun creating computer programs parts, I’m also interested in getting a basic understanding of how Japanese law works.  This is going to be important because . . . well, I live here.  It’s important.  I have a fairly good grasp of some individual laws, but Japanese civics itself is still generally lost to me.  Knowing what is theoretically possible as well as the general current state of the law, in addition to the Japanese legal tradition, is kind of important to me.

The Newsweek magazine is supposed to be something that would satisfy the following conditions:

  • Serial
  • Relatively easy, but filling, good content (No fast food info, which I secretly loathe)
  • Something with local and international stories (where local refers to Japan/America for me)
  • News without the social commentary that makes me consider the health of human society (news organizations, I’m looking at you, just because social media is possible doesn’t mean we should do it).

The end goal, of course, is to get an even deeper knowledge, in both Japanese and English, of:

  • The general workings of the world.
  • The inner workings of Japanese civics in particular.
  • A new skill set for fun and profit.

How long will it take me?  I’m hoping I can see some progress in a year.  I’d love to be able to learn a programming language or two by that point, and I wouldn’t mind developing simple programs that could help me do things like textual analysis in texts for potential research purposes in the future.  In the meantime, I’d love to learn more about Japanese law, civics, and particularly business law, since I have some interest in how that all works as well.

Now that I have basic fluency and can carry myself well enough, I think it’s time to take it to the next level.  I’m not sure how this will balance with German, but since my reading speed in Japanese is fairly fast now, it should be almost comparable to my English reading speed. 

Finding uncharted territory is hard, and even now it’s pretty scary.  But the growth is there in the difference, and I’ve got nothing else to do instead. 

. . . But first things first.  I’ve got finals to grade.

Posted in Language for Professional Purposes | 18 Comments

Moving On Up (Teaser)

By Ryan | Published: July 29, 2010

Hello everyone.

I am swamped in finals.  Not very pleasant for me, and not very pleasant for you, either.  But today I’m writing in real quick to talk a little bit about my plans in the near future for Japanese.  I’d like to figure out how to take it to the next level. 

The picture on the side here is my little hint on how I’m going to be making that happen.  I’m sorry I can’t give you more right now.  The bill paying job rightfully has my attention at the moment.  We’ll get back on track soon.

It's a good thing I have a month to try and get started on these.

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

I Told You . . .

By Ryan | Published: July 27, 2010

. . . That one day you’d need to know the kanji for crocodile.

「鰐に注意」

New post tomorrow.

Posted in Fun Stuff | 16 Comments

Not Welcoming Our Robot Masters

By Ryan | Published: July 25, 2010

So I was wandering around on The Metropolitician’s web site (which is a highly recommended read for social commentary on the Koreas, in my opinion), and I was introduced to this little gem here.

I’ve actually foreseen this coming.  I’ve told a couple of people about it, and now it’s actually coming true.  I also expected it to come out of either Japan or Korea.  Looks like Korea got there first.

And don’t get me wrong.  Whoever can make some robots and can actually program them to teach students a foreign language has clearly achieved a pretty legendary feat in terms of the technology.  But there’s a clear lack of purpose in the use of the technology.  Yes, we can.  But should we?  Even linguists haven’t codified all of the rules of grammar, so at the very best robots will still only be second in place to a trained teacher with native materials. 

One of the things that has facinated me about this as well is the reality that the English teaching market has been shrinking consistently in Japan for quite some time now.  It’s long been true that there is less and less money in English, which I always thought was amazing because, as Galapagos Syndrome and the recent move by Rakuten to enforce an English-language policy demonstrate, the necessity for English language has been insane.

But the issue is, and will continue to be, an issue of quality versus quantity.  The article points out that many of the 30,000 native speaker English teachers in Korea will be out of a job (a little too nonchalantly, perhaps).  If we take this as likely (which I highly doubt, the reasons for which will become clear later), then the robots will simply be subbing for these teachers in the Korean school system.

And since I did point out already that since robots can never exceed the scientific knowledge at our disposal, they are at best on par with trained teachers, and can’t supass them.  Perhaps you see where I’m going with this.  Were Korea to adopt a program instituting robots instead of foreign teachers, they would indeed achieve a cheaper language program, but the results would recreate the average skill level, which would be subpar compared to the old results. 

The reality for countries that want to compete by using the global language of English is that those countries will not need every single one of their citizens to speak the language.  Unilateral, mandatory language programs are likely to in fact just turn students off of language learning altogether, guaranteeing that language ability will further deteriorate instead of increase upon graduation. 

The other issue, of course, is that robots make a poor speaking partner.  I assume you’ve all heard voice automation software.  We can all agree that it makes a poor substitute for a real human being.  Imagine that, and then point out that the voice recognition software would be required to also:

  • Identify speech errors among the non-native Korean students, and then correct them.
  • Interactively deal with students’ responses and questions to provide effective instruction according to individual students’ needs.
  • Prepare original and authentic materials for students to use and learn from.

It’s a tall order.  And I don’t want to slight the robot makers of the world, but I feel it’s a little too tall of an order for us now.  Plus, it defeats the entire purpose of hiring native speaking teachers in the first place, which was to help students acquire an interactive skill that required interplay between the students and between others who communicate in that language. 

There are many really, really great technologies out there for learning languages.  I’ve showcased some of the ones that work for me on this blog.  But robots seem like taking out a sledgehammer when you just need a knife.  They’re simply an effective and gaudy solution that is expensive enough that it looks ike something great is happening, when in fact it’s really just wasted money. 

Plus, the thing that baffles me is that nobody has thought about the environment these robots will be working in at all.  These students will still be going to school, we assume.  Are we just going to start rolling in robots into school classrooms, complete with chalkboard and eraser?  In Japanese, 時代遅れ (“behind the times”) just doesn’t cut it to describe the mind-numbingly stupidity of the idea.

The issue is the classroom.  The issue is that we still rate people based upon seat-time in a classroom, when we currently live in an age where some of the best instruction in the world is actually carried out online.  That schools are still interested in keeping up appearances to enforce draconian notions of silent students day in and out poring over books while a teacher watches over them when they have a much better way of assessing learning that is respectful of people’s time demonstrates that there is still some money in the status quo (or worse, that schools are too lazy to realize that the status quo is shifting under their seat). 

And yes, I could argue about the robot situation from the position of a disadvantaged teacher, but I don’t feel very disadvantaged at all yet.  The unfortunate reality is that if a situation like this were to be implemented, some of the less talented teachers will be losing their jobs.  The more talented would simply wise up and move on to something related but different by acquiring new skills.  But soon after, it’d be happening to the administrators as well.  Colleges have been capitalizing on their relative ubiquitousness for too long now.  It’s only a matter of time that students will realize that the costs have swelled but the relative benefit has only stayed the same.  Implementing robots instead of teachers and not changing the associated costs would be a big sign that students time isn’t exactly valued.

Really, we’re almost at a point where all it takes is one university with a set of dedicated servers and teacher/content creators to create a learning institution that could compete.  But the idea of physical robots?  Please, I’m far, far more interested in taking a look at the remote studying power of the Facebook of higher ed.  That’s when I’ll know that higher ed has stepped up its game.

Posted in Traditional vs. New Language Learning | 12 Comments

It will come – Developing Meaning Over Time

By Ryan | Published: July 20, 2010

For the longest time, I had no idea what 及んで meant.  I’d do tons and tons of extensive reading, and I would see it all the time (I was reading particularly formal documents at the time, it’s a hint for you), but I would be frustrated because even though I obstensively knew the kanji and the reading I still had no idea what the hell it meant.

So it basically means “to reach the extent of X,” (I’m ruining the surprise because people who don’t study Japanese read this blog too.  And when I finally learned, it clicked and I never had a problem with it ever again.  But I also have some moments where I know one particular usage of a word, like 出る, but I didn’t know all of the possible uses for it (Which isn’t true, I have a firm grasp of it, but it makes an excellent example).

I don’t think it’s worth fretting over this kind of stuff.  Letting your SRS take care of it and moving on seems to be a much more efficient way to deal with this kind of problem to me.  Plus, the SRS is not really well designed for this sort of thing unless you overkill the word and put in a card for every single use you can identify. 

Far more efficient is to let your SRS give you a vague idea of the word, and then rely on extensive reading to build up a firmer, more robust idea of what the word means and how it’s used (remember that both function and meaning are critical here). 

Remember that the SRS is a tool.  It keeps your sword sharp.  But extensive reading (or listening, or talking with your friends, or writing in your other language blog/letters to friends/ etc.) is your practice in the dojo, and that’s what gives you the raw skill to take advantage of your tool.

Posted in Extensive Reading, SRS | 26 Comments

Play the Rules, Break the Rules, Make the Rules

By Ryan | Published: July 16, 2010

Going the Distance

Apparently the last post was pretty popular.  I was blown away by the activity on the blog, so I’m resolving to write this article as well in response.

I wrote last time about AJATT, and what I think is the real secret of the 10,000 sentences/hours.  The purpose of the structure is that the structure lasts as long as it needs to.  Any good structure is one where you’re supposed to follow along for a little bit, but then something piques your curiosity, and you start to explore your own boundaries and intuitions in the process.

And we do need structure.  One of the big reasons that a lot of people get excited over programs is because it takes some of the mental stress of figuring it out all out yourself away from you.  But this is only good in so far as you are willing to eventually keep moving without the structure.

PLAY

I was pretty hardcore and intense when I first started studying Japanese on my own.  I holed up in my (then) girlfriend’s room for two to six hours a day and blitzed through kanji at a rate so painfully fast that I often had a difficult time getting caught up with the kanji that I had studied a few days before.  In the end, I finished all of those kanji with a few weeks left of my summer long trip to be with my girlfriend, and waited a couple of weeks as I coasted on reps before returning to the states armed with a Japanese Playstation 2, some games, and a buttload of manga to read on my off-time. 

Upon arriving back in the States, I got cracking on the sentences, starting off with the DVD version of Densha Otoko, which proved to be somewhat entertaining (despite rampant overacting in Japanese dramas.  I was amazingly cool with this at the time).  I didn’t always follow all of the rules.  For example, I sometimes (ok, every time) copied and pasted all of the definitions, instead of just the one that applied to the context.  I did that because I was confident in my brain’s ability to generalize to other contexts, and it turned out ok in the end. 

BREAK

Following the rules of any program is a good thing until you start finding ways to use the rules against yourself.  Maybe you start saying something like “Well, I can’t really do Japanese all the !@#$ing time today, so perhaps I’ll just take the day off.”

This is where you start breaking the rules, because you are trying to find a way out, and it isn’t working for you.  Of course, the trick is to only break enough rules, and to only break the rules that aren’t working for you.  For me, that included things like writing a sentence every single time it came up in my SRS (something I later found out was supposed to happen only if you got it wrong, but oh well, it turned out ok in the end). 

MAKE

And then of course, you start making your own rules.  This is oten in an effort to motivate yourself.  I started challenging myself to 1,000 sentences a month (which was intense and often attracted ire from the fiance, but thankfully that insanity is now past us, I tend to alternate between intense cycles and coast cycles in my routine).

The 1,000 sentences a month challenge was pretty entertaining, and it made short work of the remaining progress left in 10,000 sentences.  But it was then that I realized that the 10,000 sentences was really, honestly just a number.  It was a number that was powerful not because it actually signified anything special, but because it got you past the point where you were resisting your own progress.

Life After 10,000 – Revisited

Getting good at anything to a really awesome degree takes hard work.  That will never go away.  But, like Michael Jordan, or Federer, or any real famous athlete will tell you, the journey itself is the best part. 

Are you into sports or working out?  I can give you an example of that.  I can’t stay away from the gym for a period longer than two weeks.  If I do so, I begin to get super irritated and testy with people, and just in general not a very fun person to be with.  Get back to the gym, and all of a sudden great stuff starts happening again.  The same is true in general with martial arts.  I’ve been out for a while, but recently I’ve been realizing that it’s something I’ll never really be able to be apart from.  My job currently keeps me from doing some of the stuff I really want to do, but I’m taking steps so that in the near future, I’ll be able to get back to martial arts, because they’re a critical part of who I am.

A focused, long-term commitment to anything will begin to have the same effect on you.  It’s an addictive pursuit of excellence, which we hopefully have for everything in our lives, but we often only find through the crafts that we’ve elected to do.  I can’t imagine really not knowing Japanese, to the point where I’ve now consciously made the decision to make Japanese an explicit element in whatever job I ever have.  My friend’s prophetic quote came true for me as well as his. 

The amusing thing is that mistakes in Japanese, or an awareness of deficiencies doesn’t knock me down quite so hard as it used to.  Thankfully I have someone nearby who can give me this criticism on a constant basis, so if I don’t pick up my own mistakes, someone else will.  Everything that comes along is just simply a new challenge to move to, and I’m currently at the crossroads once again with my Japanese.  I’ll be putting in some time on the German on the side, but I really do want to take my Japanese to the next level, which for me means the acquisition of new skills.

The ironic thing of course is that it may mean new professional skills too.  I’m considering domain knowledge in quite a few areas at this point.  Programming is a field I’ve interested in as of late.  Finance or law is interesting as well.  I already have a lot of education and meta-language down due to my career path.  Learning to conduct myself in areas like this in English and Japanese is something that is really interesting me now that my general knowledge is up to snuff. 

Of course this isn’t a path for everyone.  Most people will get by quite far by having the simple general knowledge to navigate their lives and their immediate career just by doing the basics.  But I’m far more interested in how far I can stretch it. 

The nice thing about getting this far is that you can coast and just add a little bit here and there, and be pretty fine as long as you’re engaged with the language and the culture.  But if you’re looking to take it a step further, specialized skills would be the place to go.

Posted in Language, Learning, Motivation | 14 Comments

Life After 10,000

By Ryan | Published: July 12, 2010

Life after 10,000 sentences and hours on the AJATT method. 

I’ve been wanting to write this one for a while.  Truth be told, I’ve been wanting to write it for over a year now, ever since I finished.  I’ve wanted to write it before I even started the blog.  There’s a couple of reasons why I think it’s important.  First, I wanted people to know that it is, in fact, possible to get through the AJATT method.  Second, I wanted to kind of look back in retrospect and add my thoughts on this one.

If you’re a long-time reader, you know that I’m rather ambivalent about designing a master method for learning languages to . . . “fluency.”  The first reason is that I’ve already found and tooled my own way through the 10,000 sentences/hours deal, threw away what didn’t work and added what did and found my own success to it, so I have no reason to really reinvent a new method when I already have a fairly successful one. 

But the second reason is because while I know structure can be uniquely motivating for people, I also know that some people bind themselves in structure as well, so I’d rather be the guy who did more micro-planning (learn the kana in one week, learn the kanji in one summer, etc.) to provide some people structure along the way then give them a master plan to follow (which might not even work). 

I’d rather tool and retool on the micro level and then say “Hey, try this out!” when I find something work.  There’s a couple of reasons for this.  I can try more than one thing at an often enough pace to let you guys know how it works, and plus, since I’m the guinea pig here, and I do have projects that are relatively not language-related, I do need to keep some time to do these things (by the way, a retooling of the site may be in the works in the near future, I’ll keep you guys posted) without sinking my time or wasting my efforts.

So here’s what you’ve actually been waiting for.  The beauty of 10,000 sentences.  I’ll give it to you in one sentence.  I’ll make it sound grand and elaborate, but then of course I’ll expand upon it so that I don’t sound like I’m putting on too much airs.  Now I’ve clearly explained too much, but I’ll follow through anyways.  Ready?  Ok, good.  Here we go.

The beauty is that 10,000 sentences is not enough.

I’m sorry if I just let you down, but the upside is actually way, way better than the downside.  10,000 sentences is enough to get you hooked.  You won’t be able to stop afterwards.  I still put in sentences when I have some extra time and I still keep a massive stock of sentences to go on.

10,000 sentences and hours is enough to make it so that you can talk your way through pretty much almost anything that could possibly occur to you in your daily life.    It will even get you through quite a few professional situations, but most likely not all.  It’ll get you invited to fun social and professional events that will make it all worth the time ten times over.

After 10,000 sentences, you’ll still have a few weaknesses, but you’ll know exactly where they are, and you’ll then resolve to fix them, since you also have the tools to do that as well.

In short, the 10,000 sentences isn’t what makes you a god of language.  Even the linguistic skills you acquire aren’t what do that (although they indeed help).  Getting through the 10,000 method gives you the will, the tenacity, and the skills to consistently evaluate your progress, try new things, and push yourself because the method itself is built upon reviewing what you already know, and then adding more, which is all you’ll ever need to do. 

I don’t feel “perfect,” although I must admit that teaching Japanese students about rare kanji that they don’t even know is a pretty nice feeling.  But I also happen to live in a world where perfection is not my aim, but continuous improvement is.  I know that some of the difficulties that I have know will be eventually overcome, so I don’t stress about it. 

I’ll highlight the same lesson I got with an experience from my time studying abroad.  We had a good time, me and some friends who studied abroad here in Japan.  Lots of fun times were had by everyone and some great experiences were had.  It changed all of our lives for ever, and the cool thing was many of us were friends from home, so we had some history to share with each other and other people as well.  My friends and I were getting quite good for kids taking classes and studying abroad.  One of my friends said something I’ll always remember, that always stuck with me and pushed me forward.  He said:

“Well now I’m so far along in Japanese that there’s no way I could quit.” 

And that quote took me over 700 words to get to, but it’s the best summary of the 10,000 method I can think of.  You will reach a downhill, and there will be more to do but it will cease to be a chore and just start becoming something you do, simply because that’s who you are.

Posted in Language, Learning, Motivation | 20 Comments

Anki Tip: The Weekly Cycle

By Ryan | Published: July 11, 2010

A cool trick I learned in the past few weeks to manage time.  Here’s the backstory.

I’m a teacher, so naturally I do have to take a break from teaching myself languages and then go and teach languages to other people (namely English, although I do sometimes help other people learn Japanese).  In addition, my class load creates some rather irregular schedules.  For example, I could have a relatively easy day of three classes, and then as much as five or six the next day, which often makes it difficult to get any studying done depending on how productive I’m being at work.

Of course, as you know, sometimes I take the time in between classes to get some studying done, which I think is good, because it also models the proper daily habits to my students who should see what it takes to learn a language. 

But even then sometimes the time doesn’t come, particularly for German, which isn’t my #1 priority at the moment but is progressing somewhat smoothly.   By the way, I use Anki for German.  That is critical here.

Anki, unlike Surusu, stacks up missed cards for your daily reps.  So they can build up over time, after which point you kind of have to take out the whole stack of them.  This can be helpful for some people and very unhelpful for others.  Surusu just requires that you do at least 35/day (Currently, Khatsumoto could always change it since he’s the creator). 

But you can use this somewhat cruel feature of Anki to your advantage if you have a particularly brutal schedule by employing a weekly schedule to yourself instead of a daily one.  Here’s how I do it.

I employ a system where the goal is to get the cards for review down to zero by Friday.  Then I take it easy for the weekend, come back on Monday, and slowly chip away at it until Friday again.  Days where I have more time I take a bigger chunk.  Days where I have less time or are more hurried, I do just a little bit less. 

Of course, I will soon need to test this with adding new cards to the mix, which I haven’t attempted yet.  I assume that with the weekend break that is currently in the mix that that will be a bit of a hard sell for some (and maybe even for me, I’ll let you know), but it is worth a shot for people like myself who are workaholics that always take on too much.  Maybe it’ll work for you too.

Posted in SRS | 24 Comments

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