Hello one and all,
As of last week, I am officially 23! Can you believe it? Not me. I got my cane and wheelchair ready. I think I've started to emit "old man smell." Naw, just kidding, 23 has been eerily like 22 so far...
Ha, so much for my plan of writing short, sweet little blog-notes to you. Well, I have good reasons, ok, and you can rest assured from now on you'll be getting your fix again. Lately, I have been to more goodbye parties, dinners, and tearful train leavings than I care to recall. Today we lost Natalie to the great maw of "non-recontracting."
Well, I just recently sent an email to a JET who is teaching about learning Japanese to all of the new JET arrivals. I think I wrote some interesting stuff, so I decided to write it and share it on this blog. So, without further ado, here is what I wrote (I would also like to give thanks to Weldon, because both his advice and his research were invaluable in helping me realize the many paths available to language fluency outside of textbook-only approaches).
So, here's the wisdom I have to share concerning Japanese learning, get ready, this might take awhile.
1) The traditional method. You know it, everyone knows it. Get some textbooks, memorize vocabulary, do exercises. Boring, and most importantly, NOT EFFICIENT. You can do it and get good results (Hey, I did it and made it to intermediate in a short time), but it either plateaus too easily, or it's just simply not as efficient as other methods. Which brings me to...
2) Non-Traditional methods. Ok, the hardest part about using a non-traditional method is the social stigma against them because people haven't been using them for the past 200 years. If you can overcome this, you'll be fine. Here's the, (in my opinion), best way to go about learning Japanese.
a) Learn Hiragana and Katana
b) Learn ALL 2000 Joyo kanji! The best way to learn them all (in my opinion, at least) is to use Heisig's method. Depending on how much effort you put in, you can learn all of them in 1 month, though I think 6 months might be the average. You MUST supplement his method with flashcards (outdated and maa maa at best) OR an SRS (spaced-repetition system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition ), which is the best possible thing you can use. More on SRS's later.
If you choose the Heisig route, the website http://kanji.koohii.com/ is a great SRS and community that is made specifically for Heisig.
Here is a snippet that Weldon wrote about Heisig that is great at describing it:
"The basic premise of Heisig is outlined in his introduction (which you should definitely read). Learning a kanji can be thought of as the following: differentiating it from other kanji upon site, knowing how to say it outloud, knowing it's meaning(use) in Japanese. As a bonus you can also know: how to write it by hand, it's meaning (individually) when paired with other kanji. There are two current academic trends for learning kanji. One is to not learn them because they are too hard; the second is to learn them by drilling them, similar to the Japanese style. Many people believe this is the "pure" method because it is the "same" method that Japanese use to learn their own writing system. This idea is 100% false. Japanese people already know Japanese before they learn the Kanji. As a result, they know how to pronounce a kanji singly and in compounds and only have to learn the writing and recognizing of the characters. Foreigners learning via drilling often drill five things at the same time: recognition, writing, on yomi, kun yomi, and meaning. With the Japanese learning 2 facts vs. our 5 and spreading it out over 10 years you can see why kanji learners struggle so much. Heisig proposes spliting up this drilling process. First, learn the writing (by attaching it to the meaning in English). Next, learn the true (Japanese) meaning and the onyomi and kunyomi. At first this appears to be more work, but thanks to mnemonics it ends up being much much less. He also skips recognition completely. The reason being, if you can correctly remember how to write a character, you will always have 100% recognition, period.
Heisig takes all the parts that kanji are made up of (260ish) and names them "primitives" and calls them an "alphabet". Now you just have to memorize the spelling of 2000 "words" (Jouyou kanji) spelled with 260ish "letters". Here's an example. 女 is the kanji for Woman, and the primitive meaning is woman. 子 is the kanji for child, and the primitive meaning is child. 好 is the kanji for "be fond of" and it's mnemonic is "a woman is fond of her child". Now you know the kanji for すき, and you've most likely never written it once. On top of that you'll probably never forget it. Tomorrow when you see a sign that says "りんごが好きですか？" you'll read it as "ringo ga suki desu ka?" and not "ringo ga fondki desu ka?" because your brain won't let you do something so silly. The keywords never get in the way of learning the Japanese, they only assist; and you now can produce that kanji from scratch. Heisig's first book covers all the 2042 base kanji and you can try the first 250 for free. The first day I went home and wrote 50 kanji from memory (always practice from the keyword to the kanji so that you practice production, not recognition) and was completely sold."
Ok, that's the deal about Heisig and kanji. The most important part about learning kanji first is that you can immediately go to reading books, manga, etc. etc. These are the best way to learn words, and get a feel for grammatical structure. Using textbooks along with them is most important for supplementing your grammar, so you understand the why of what you are reading. As you read these things, you make sure they have furigana, that way you learn the readings of the kanji as you go along. In essence, you are killing two birds with one stone.
c) MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF INPUT. Output too early is, frankly, dangerous. For example, I always used the word すごい, whenever I saw something that was cool, or something good happened- basically when I should have been using よし、よかった、かっこい。 No one corrected me (come on, the Japanese are just happy if you can say "おはよ"), so after saying that over and over again, it got stuck in my head, and here I am still struggling to switch it with the right word. It's akin to a dancer practicing the wrong steps for a few months, and then realizing too late he/she made a mistake, and has to go back and put forth a lot more effort to fix it. It's terribly inefficient.
Honestly, do whatever makes you happy. If you like manga, read manga. If Harry Potter is your thing (for some reason EVERYONE reads harry potter when they are studying Japanese, I don't really know why...), read HP. Eventually you can get to listening and watching TV. Throw that in the mix too (but NO subtitles, it's too easy to just read those and ignore the nihongo).
There is a website called AJATT (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about ) about a guy who just did all japanese all the time. His method worked for him, and it has many good facets. Just keep in mind that it isn't all psychologically sound. For example, listening to Japanese while you are sleeping does nothing for your learning. However, his method seems to be about acclimating (なれる-ing) the same way a child does, which is great if you have the willpower to do it! Since we don't have caring Japanese mothers and fathers to correct us every time we make a mistake for the first 10 years of our life, this is the closest we can get to なれる-ing. In fact, I'm going to use his method of putting sentences into an SRS and see how it works for me. Oh, speaking of SRS's, I suppose it's time we had that chat.
SRS's are NECESSARY. If you want to learn the most amount of information, and keep it in Long-term memory, in the most efficient manner, you will use one. Psychologists first figured out the memory curve in the 30's and 40's, but sadly, it never caught on. Basically, they found the rate at which memory decayed and when the optimal times were to test and remind information for the best retention rates. As is common in psychology, no one outside actually uses what they discover (maybe I'll be doomed to a life of obscurity...should I really stick with psych?!). Luckily, some people created programs that take advantage of the learning research. I use anki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki ), it's free and easy to download, though using it is hard at first. It's a very flexible program. For instance, you can insert clips of Japanese dramas and test yourself on what they are saying.
What else is necessary? Getting rid of your silly-foreigner accent. You need to imitate what you hear. It's like when you are trying to teach your students the TH sound. They might do it until the end of the activity if you can force them, but they don't do it nearly long enough to retain it for every time they see a TH word. You need to be better than them. Practice, speak, repeat. Here is a website of people in Poland who did something similar to the AJATT guy (in fact, they came before him, it's where he got many of his ideas): http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc.htm . That's their article on pronunciation.
Lastly, MAKE IT FUN. If those Minna no Nihongo books are dragging you down, you can learn grammar from something like Japanese in Mangaland, by Tae Kim. If you can't stand to read another newspaper article, pick up a dragonball manga. The stories you make for your kanji boring you to death, take a break and think of something crazy fun (shredder attending a lecture on abuse, taught by Mr. T, for the kanji for abuse).
A few last notes. Classes and tests are good for a variety of reasons, but taking them alone will NOT get you fluent in Japanese. Some people use classes for motivation, others for clearing up hard to figure out grammar, others to provide competition for themselves if they can't handle just solo study. Tests are the same way. They are great tools, but you will need a lot more than just a once weekly class.
If you are unsatisfied with the above, but aren't resigned to traditional learning methods, here is (another) method for you to use. Find famous polyglots, and research their method for how they learned multiple languages. Many times, you can find a common thread, which is what you want to take and use for yourself.
Some useful websites:
Journal writing, language exchange:
lang-8.com
A website that teaches vocab with audio, pretty good, even if the SRS isn't optimal. You can learn kanji, be tested on just audio, text, learn lots of vocab (they have lists of the most used words, the kanji for JLPT level x, etc. etc.).
smart.fm/
Ok, that's about it. If you like learning languages, take this and use it as you will.
See you soon, when I write about my CONQUERING MOUNT FUJI.
-Greg
And really, what would my blog be without RaNdOm JaPaN:
A few days ago I was walking from my car to the office as usual. Though it was cloudy, it wasn't raining, but I saw a man with an umbrella open in the corner of my eye. Because I was surprised, I turned to look, but the man quickly brought the umbrella down to cover his face. Ok, sorta weird, but, I have this weird feeling. I decided to wait in the lobby area to see who it was, standing slightly out of the way. Well, in comes the boss of my office! Why didn't you want me to see you, sir? Why not say hi, boss?
Oh also, Paul's girlfriend, Maki, says that gaijin (foreigners) smell like butter. Yum?
As of last week, I am officially 23! Can you believe it? Not me. I got my cane and wheelchair ready. I think I've started to emit "old man smell." Naw, just kidding, 23 has been eerily like 22 so far...
Ha, so much for my plan of writing short, sweet little blog-notes to you. Well, I have good reasons, ok, and you can rest assured from now on you'll be getting your fix again. Lately, I have been to more goodbye parties, dinners, and tearful train leavings than I care to recall. Today we lost Natalie to the great maw of "non-recontracting."
Well, I just recently sent an email to a JET who is teaching about learning Japanese to all of the new JET arrivals. I think I wrote some interesting stuff, so I decided to write it and share it on this blog. So, without further ado, here is what I wrote (I would also like to give thanks to Weldon, because both his advice and his research were invaluable in helping me realize the many paths available to language fluency outside of textbook-only approaches).
So, here's the wisdom I have to share concerning Japanese learning, get ready, this might take awhile.
1) The traditional method. You know it, everyone knows it. Get some textbooks, memorize vocabulary, do exercises. Boring, and most importantly, NOT EFFICIENT. You can do it and get good results (Hey, I did it and made it to intermediate in a short time), but it either plateaus too easily, or it's just simply not as efficient as other methods. Which brings me to...
2) Non-Traditional methods. Ok, the hardest part about using a non-traditional method is the social stigma against them because people haven't been using them for the past 200 years. If you can overcome this, you'll be fine. Here's the, (in my opinion), best way to go about learning Japanese.
a) Learn Hiragana and Katana
b) Learn ALL 2000 Joyo kanji! The best way to learn them all (in my opinion, at least) is to use Heisig's method. Depending on how much effort you put in, you can learn all of them in 1 month, though I think 6 months might be the average. You MUST supplement his method with flashcards (outdated and maa maa at best) OR an SRS (spaced-repetition system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
If you choose the Heisig route, the website http://kanji.koohii.com/ is a great SRS and community that is made specifically for Heisig.
Here is a snippet that Weldon wrote about Heisig that is great at describing it:
"The basic premise of Heisig is outlined in his introduction (which you should definitely read). Learning a kanji can be thought of as the following: differentiating it from other kanji upon site, knowing how to say it outloud, knowing it's meaning(use) in Japanese. As a bonus you can also know: how to write it by hand, it's meaning (individually) when paired with other kanji. There are two current academic trends for learning kanji. One is to not learn them because they are too hard; the second is to learn them by drilling them, similar to the Japanese style. Many people believe this is the "pure" method because it is the "same" method that Japanese use to learn their own writing system. This idea is 100% false. Japanese people already know Japanese before they learn the Kanji. As a result, they know how to pronounce a kanji singly and in compounds and only have to learn the writing and recognizing of the characters. Foreigners learning via drilling often drill five things at the same time: recognition, writing, on yomi, kun yomi, and meaning. With the Japanese learning 2 facts vs. our 5 and spreading it out over 10 years you can see why kanji learners struggle so much. Heisig proposes spliting up this drilling process. First, learn the writing (by attaching it to the meaning in English). Next, learn the true (Japanese) meaning and the onyomi and kunyomi. At first this appears to be more work, but thanks to mnemonics it ends up being much much less. He also skips recognition completely. The reason being, if you can correctly remember how to write a character, you will always have 100% recognition, period.
Heisig takes all the parts that kanji are made up of (260ish) and names them "primitives" and calls them an "alphabet". Now you just have to memorize the spelling of 2000 "words" (Jouyou kanji) spelled with 260ish "letters". Here's an example. 女 is the kanji for Woman, and the primitive meaning is woman. 子 is the kanji for child, and the primitive meaning is child. 好 is the kanji for "be fond of" and it's mnemonic is "a woman is fond of her child". Now you know the kanji for すき, and you've most likely never written it once. On top of that you'll probably never forget it. Tomorrow when you see a sign that says "りんごが好きですか？" you'll read it as "ringo ga suki desu ka?" and not "ringo ga fondki desu ka?" because your brain won't let you do something so silly. The keywords never get in the way of learning the Japanese, they only assist; and you now can produce that kanji from scratch. Heisig's first book covers all the 2042 base kanji and you can try the first 250 for free. The first day I went home and wrote 50 kanji from memory (always practice from the keyword to the kanji so that you practice production, not recognition) and was completely sold."
Ok, that's the deal about Heisig and kanji. The most important part about learning kanji first is that you can immediately go to reading books, manga, etc. etc. These are the best way to learn words, and get a feel for grammatical structure. Using textbooks along with them is most important for supplementing your grammar, so you understand the why of what you are reading. As you read these things, you make sure they have furigana, that way you learn the readings of the kanji as you go along. In essence, you are killing two birds with one stone.
c) MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF INPUT. Output too early is, frankly, dangerous. For example, I always used the word すごい, whenever I saw something that was cool, or something good happened- basically when I should have been using よし、よかった、かっこい。 No one corrected me (come on, the Japanese are just happy if you can say "おはよ"), so after saying that over and over again, it got stuck in my head, and here I am still struggling to switch it with the right word. It's akin to a dancer practicing the wrong steps for a few months, and then realizing too late he/she made a mistake, and has to go back and put forth a lot more effort to fix it. It's terribly inefficient.
Honestly, do whatever makes you happy. If you like manga, read manga. If Harry Potter is your thing (for some reason EVERYONE reads harry potter when they are studying Japanese, I don't really know why...), read HP. Eventually you can get to listening and watching TV. Throw that in the mix too (but NO subtitles, it's too easy to just read those and ignore the nihongo).
There is a website called AJATT (http://www.
SRS's are NECESSARY. If you want to learn the most amount of information, and keep it in Long-term memory, in the most efficient manner, you will use one. Psychologists first figured out the memory curve in the 30's and 40's, but sadly, it never caught on. Basically, they found the rate at which memory decayed and when the optimal times were to test and remind information for the best retention rates. As is common in psychology, no one outside actually uses what they discover (maybe I'll be doomed to a life of obscurity...should I really stick with psych?!). Luckily, some people created programs that take advantage of the learning research. I use anki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
What else is necessary? Getting rid of your silly-foreigner accent. You need to imitate what you hear. It's like when you are trying to teach your students the TH sound. They might do it until the end of the activity if you can force them, but they don't do it nearly long enough to retain it for every time they see a TH word. You need to be better than them. Practice, speak, repeat. Here is a website of people in Poland who did something similar to the AJATT guy (in fact, they came before him, it's where he got many of his ideas): http://www.antimoon.com/how/
Lastly, MAKE IT FUN. If those Minna no Nihongo books are dragging you down, you can learn grammar from something like Japanese in Mangaland, by Tae Kim. If you can't stand to read another newspaper article, pick up a dragonball manga. The stories you make for your kanji boring you to death, take a break and think of something crazy fun (shredder attending a lecture on abuse, taught by Mr. T, for the kanji for abuse).
A few last notes. Classes and tests are good for a variety of reasons, but taking them alone will NOT get you fluent in Japanese. Some people use classes for motivation, others for clearing up hard to figure out grammar, others to provide competition for themselves if they can't handle just solo study. Tests are the same way. They are great tools, but you will need a lot more than just a once weekly class.
If you are unsatisfied with the above, but aren't resigned to traditional learning methods, here is (another) method for you to use. Find famous polyglots, and research their method for how they learned multiple languages. Many times, you can find a common thread, which is what you want to take and use for yourself.
Some useful websites:
Journal writing, language exchange:
lang-8.com
A website that teaches vocab with audio, pretty good, even if the SRS isn't optimal. You can learn kanji, be tested on just audio, text, learn lots of vocab (they have lists of the most used words, the kanji for JLPT level x, etc. etc.).
smart.fm/
Ok, that's about it. If you like learning languages, take this and use it as you will.
See you soon, when I write about my CONQUERING MOUNT FUJI.
-Greg
And really, what would my blog be without RaNdOm JaPaN:
A few days ago I was walking from my car to the office as usual. Though it was cloudy, it wasn't raining, but I saw a man with an umbrella open in the corner of my eye. Because I was surprised, I turned to look, but the man quickly brought the umbrella down to cover his face. Ok, sorta weird, but, I have this weird feeling. I decided to wait in the lobby area to see who it was, standing slightly out of the way. Well, in comes the boss of my office! Why didn't you want me to see you, sir? Why not say hi, boss?
Oh also, Paul's girlfriend, Maki, says that gaijin (foreigners) smell like butter. Yum?
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