Khatz, when are you going to put that camera of yours to work?! We need more of your gloriousness ASAP.

Also I love the person who was shocked at you being black, haha, I actually did the same thing when I read gaijinsmash.

Please make that into a sticker!

You’ll be happy to know that it’s quite easy to apply the input hypothesis in a classroom setting. I think in some ways it can actually outperform AJATT and in others it is less effective. But then again, people using AJATT are a self-selected group and the students in public school language classrooms are not.

You say you want to figure out a way to use input in your classroom. Go for it! If you want to avoid some of the trouble, some methods have already been developed that are quite effective. But then again knowing about them could stifle your creativity as a teacher. I know it stifled my creativity as a self-learner, and finding AJATT saved me from giving up on L3.

One method is called PACE. I only read about it but it sounds all right. The one I prefer to use in the classroom is TPRS – Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (not to be confused with TPR – Total Physical Response, from which TPRS grew but now is quite distinct). Sound familiar yet? The teacher is the “storyteller” and the class does lots of reading. Input, input, input. Comprehension is key and grammar is acquired through meaning. You can find more information with some quick searches.

@ Dior – Thank you.

These unfortunate comments are in a different category than swearing or style.
I’m sure the interviewer used them out of habit and not with any intent to harm. But we’re not in elementary school anymore and should know better. It’d be great to see a bit of post-production video editing here. Respect.

wow, that was embarrassing, lol…

I guess I’m just interested in this because I’ve wanted to teach english in Japan for some time, and that is what I plan to do after college. I’m using the input method personally myself to learn Japanese (obviously, otherwise I suppose I would not be on this site, lol…). I’ve also been interested in teaching foreign language in the US. The only problem I’ve had with my discovery of the input method is that I am having trouble figuring how I could possibly incorporate it into the classroom. As a teacher (who has used the input method himself) I wouldn’t want to go back to the “output” method and do the students a disservice. The other trouble is that, from my experiences, there really isn’t a lot of room for change in the Japanese classroom. That is, the curriculum for most everything is already set, and it would be difficult (especially as a foreigner) to try to change the way things are done. Oh well, just my thoughts, lol…

Regarding Stephen Krashen, from what I recall of my linguistics courses and my language pedagogy courses, we studied his theories fairly thoroughly. While a specific endorsement wasn’t made outright, it seemed pretty clear that many to most professionals embrace his input theory as accurate for first language acquisition. The trouble comes with second/foreign language acquisition in two ways. The first is the ability of teacher’s to compartmentalize theory from application. (Rather than trying to interpret the theory for application, they simply taught the way they taught which is usually from a textbook with grammar rules. Either that or they misinterpret the theory.) The second is people look at brain research and the way the brain develops through adolescence and puberty and assert that the adult brain can’t acquire languages the same way a baby’s can.

The reason there may be soooo many anti-Krashen articles may also be due to the situation in California. I’ve never taught in the bilingual education system there, so I can only speak from knowledge I’ve gained from articles. It seems that he has made quite a living on selling bilingual education to California schools. He produces the research that supports bilingual education. He then sells his time as a consultant to California schools at a very high price. The bilingual program has had very questionable results apparently. So his very blatant conflict of interest has been highly criticized. This may be one cause of so many anti-Krashen papers.

But truthfully, language acquisition, first and second, is intangible. We can only analyze it by examining the brain, which is where language is acquired and stored, and by examining utterances, which are what is produced when language is being/has been acquired (is one ever done acquiring a language, even their first?). And then we can make guesses about how acquisition works. Conflicting opinions are inevitable.

I guess I should have been more specific with my post.

The consulting thing really has nothing to do with the purpose of the site. Your post makes it sound like Khatz is making people pay money to get the information here. I imagine Khatz probably gets hit with tons of questions/emails every day. The consulting thing was probably a way for him to answer questions for those who really need it, but also get paid for his time which is totally fair.

If he cared so much about the consulting thing, don’t you think he’d plaster it at the top of the site or something? It isn’t even included in the table of contents page.

No not really. I think Khatz is a really intelligent respectable person. The mixed content of the video was a let down for me. I was referencing his consulting packages.

You post here so much I figured you’d know about them.

Anyway, great video Khatz. It really was great being able to see you talk about your theories (as you put them into practice during the interview!). Even though I’m still in the “sucking quite a bit” stage, I’m looking forward to more videos in English and Japanese.

One interesting thing, I thought, was when you were talking about the input hypothesis. I realize that’s kind of not surprising since this site (not place, lol) is founded upon that, but it was cool to hear you talk about it. Actually, I’m planning on doing a research paper in school on the input hypothesis. As I was doing research and looking at Steve Krashen’s stuff, I was really shocked by how much retaliation there has been against him. Like seriously, three-quarters of the articles and stuff out there are all about how the input hypothesis sucks and Steve Krashen’s a wacko and can’t be trusted, and blah, blah, blah… I was soooooooo discouraged. But then I realized that shouldn’t have surprised me. The process/field of language learning and acquisition has long been a slave to the output hypothesis. It shouldn’t have surprised me that everybody freaked out when someone came along and questioned the way everybody’s been doing things.

Well, anyways, I’d like to say thanks for everything on this site because much of it has helped me in finding other resources for projects in school. I figure, hey, since I have to do projects and stuff in school that’s not in Japanese, might as well do it on stuff that’s related to -Japanese and language study (what’s really ironic is that I’m going for an English major…kinda sucks tho cuz, like, I’m gonna have to do stuff in English and not japanese sooner or later, ain’t I–It’s gonna be difficult maintaining my environment, lol…). So far I’ve done a speech on Spaced-repetition. I was planning another one on the benefits of foreign language study, but that kinda fell apart.

Also, as a final note, I just have a few questions that I’ve been wanting to ask. So, you probably keep up with SRSing in Japanese, right? How many sentences do you have? Oh yeah, and how many kanji do you know? (you must be a beast by now, lol…) Oh yeah, and I was wondering also how much progress in Japanese you’ve made from when you first moved to Japan (and you were already “fluent”) and now? Okay…don’t get the feeling that I’m like trying to build every little detail of how I’m living/learning around like answers to these questions. I’m not, lol. These really are just out of pure curiosity. I feel like “that kid” for asking all these stupid “stalker-esque” questions. BTW, just read a comment string from like a year ago about how you and other people feel stalker-ish for stalking Japanese/Asian people. ROFL. That and one of your other posts about the JLPT are flipping hilarious. Wow, I’m done now. Time to go watch Death Note again for the thousandth time, lol….