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YouTube’s TkyoSam very kindly did an ad-hoc interview with me…unfortunately it’s in English. Fear not, I have finally acquired a camera [inherited from TkyoSam, actually], so Japanese stuff shall be forthcoming.
Um…this really was ad hoc. TkyoSam walked into my fortress of solitude while I was watching Dragon Ball Z in Cantonese, and turned his camera on. My posture, hair and make-up would make any mother weep. (To Mum: deal). Notice how the Cantonese ball kept rolling even while we used this non-Cantonese thing.
It’s funny because we’d tried making semi-scripted versions of this before, with digital effects and light sabers and Gollum, so I figured this was just us doing our umpteenth “screen test”. But the rawness of this is cool. Thank ye, Sam of Tkyo!
ほーらアップしたじゃん？！もう「ホンマに日本語できるのかコノヤロー」とか抜かすなよ！こう見えてもオマエ作るにゃ超時間掛かったぞ。撮影だの変換だのWMMの故障だの。まあ、これからも兀々（こつこつ）投稿しながら向上して参りたい所存ですので、4649お願いしまーす！ Look...ok?...It was late; we were talking; the camera's on; I have strange quirks and…
Cool to finally see you. It was weird, as I watched it dawned on me that our work areas are so similar. It would be interesting for everyone doing AJATT to send in a picture of where they spend most of their time doing the language (SRS, video, internet) and compare them. I also laughed when I saw the headphones hanging down the front of your t-shirt. If you look at any picture taken of me in the last year, I’ll either have the headphones in or they’ll be hanging down the front of my shirt just like that. Sometimes I wonder what my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will think when they flip through the old family album….
In the first video, the cameraman (TkyoSam? First I’ve heard of him) tries to make a point about language school, and I thought you would have refuted it outright, but you missed it – It’s not that going to the language school makes them better, but what they’re doing outside of the language school that’s pushing them up. If going to a language school meant you’d be a better speaker, then based on that theory every student in the class should be at the same level, but that’s just not the case.
I don’t think language schools are necessarily bad because they act as external motivation (“If I fail the test they’re all going to laugh at me!”), but it’s the work you put in outside of the class that helps you develop, and that’s why most Japanese who attend 英会話 either don’t improve at all or make very little progress even over a huge span of time.
Post script: The “interviewer” was pretty unfortunate. He cusses way too much, and it’s distracting; he’s not a very eloquent speaker. What was with his “farewell remark”?
And Khatz – Is your apartment actually the Nebuchadnezzar ship in the Matrix? How many screens do you have there?!
It was neat to finally be able to put face with the real man behind the scenes of this operation.
I agree with the above poster though… the interviewer was a bit too “duuuuude, like what the f*&” his remarks kind of detract from your great ideas. Anyway, thanks for the vid.
Damn, this Sam guy has no tact. “Stay black?” So awkward!
One thing I can’t seem to put my finger on, though, is why I keep getting that “ahhhh!” feeling every time I read one of your posts (or in this case, watch that video). That feeling of understanding. I’ve been visiting this site for quite some time now, and I’m very familiar with all of the concepts you mentioned… Yet it all seemed new to me.
vgambit,
that’s his “vision” that filters through. Something that goes beyond the sum of the concepts of the method. Everyone has one, of course. Khatz is good at getting it across when he writes.
Thanks for the video. Just seeing how you had cantonese playing in the background really motivated me to start getting more stuff to listen to, all the time. Now I have 西游记 (the kids version) playing in the background.
How is your cantonese coming along? Any chance of an update post on it soon?
I have a pretty big suspicion that Khatz didn’t turn it down because he’s been less diligent in studying Cantonese than Japanese, and breaking the rhythm for any reason is a really quick way to make the problem worse.
The interviewer needs to seriously quit yelling, though… I don’t know if it was because of the TV volume or what but it made him come across awkward as hell.
Oh, haha, I made that comment when I was about twenty minutes through the videos, and he just basically said, “Yeah, I don’t wanna stop it, this is pretty symbolic.” I suppose he’s trying to teach by example.
Ha, i love the interviewer. excellent job on both parts.
Seriously, i’ve read the whole site like 3 times all the way through, and numerous articles on their own…but somehow this video conveyed the concepts to me on a new level. More exposure, i guess. A lot of the points you made really hit home, because i’ve been thinking those exact things about my chinese process. When i’m sitting around reading some sci-fi book in mandarin, one of my friends views it like “holy s—, you’re reading in chinese”, but in my view much of the time it feels like “omfg, i suck at chinese, this is hard, why can’t i just be done yet?” So it was great just to hear someone say “Everybody sucks, just try to suck less each time” and “a lot of learning is incidental, just give it more chances”. It seems so f—ing obvious from all the stuff you’ve written, but i guess when it gets explained verbally in a video with all the body language saying “come on, it’s obvious” and the interviewer saying “f—ing rights” or something, then it just hits home.
“Post script: The “interviewer” was pretty unfortunate. He cusses way too much, and it’s distracting; he’s not a very eloquent speaker. What was with his “farewell remark”?” — yeah I was thinking the same thing the entire time. It was still a cool video and all, and it was awesome to see and hear Khatz, but whoever that guy was…he was kind of annoying.
P.S. – Khatz, when you add videos of you speaking Japanese, could you please demonstrate how you explain your way around words you don’t know? (I’m having a real hard time with it…*sob*)
TkyoSam posts alot of videos up on YouTube about his Janpanese adventures, you can find them under ‘Big in Japan’ i think…something like that anyway. Some of them are pretty funny.
Judging by Kahtz’s room i’m clearly short on monitors and TV screens in my study room – I suppose more screens = more input 🙂
After watching another of Sam’s videos, I realize that the way he carried himself during this one is mostly due to its off-the-cuff nature. When he has time to prepare, edit, etc., he’s a lot better.
師匠!!! I can see you!
This really drove the message home. For some reason it’s a lot more convincing when people say it to you than when you read it…
And recently (like yesterday) I came up with a kind of good way to interact with Japanese people. Twitter! There are A LOT of Japanese people using this, and it’s a good way to hear talk about everyday things. You can even send them messages and sometimes they will answer back!! It’s a useful way to interact with real life people~
Good video, hehe. You actually sound nicer when you speak than when you write ;-). Also, I thought you had some random American accent, but I hear some British influences, that’s always a plus for me!
Thank for for making these videos. I’ve read your site many times but for some reason these videos really hit home. I like how you describe the stages and I can see myself in those stages. You seem to really hit home the point that it takes patience and practice and you need to just keep working at it. Even though I’m new to your site and this method of learning I hope to post here a lot often and I will continue to read your posts. ^_^
It almost upstages the good content provided by the interviewee. Seriously. Distracting. Seriously. Offensive.
I guess it just serves to make Khatz’s words sound so much more intelligent.
I only take issue with the part where you equate part of language acquisition with copying or mimicking. (Aside from mimicking sounds, accent, phrasing, etc. to work on pronunciation or create a new linguistic persona.) But then you go on to explain what you mean by this. You show how it’s actually not mimicry but in fact the acquisition of grammar and the ability to then use that grammatical competence in new situations with different vocabulary. It’s been very clearly shown through so much research, quantitative and qualitative, empirical and anecdotal, that language is so much more complicated than simple mimicry. I just bring this up because mention of copying or mimicking in relation to language learning makes me think of the repetition, the essence of copying, drilled into students in the Japanese English curriculum.
@Jadpan, I think you might have missed the point that Khatz was making which I totally agree with. You have to understand that this was ad hoc, ad lib- so not scripted to be perfectly politically correct in usage and strict in meaning.
What Khatz means by copying and mimicry is the definition of language – a COMMON set of mutually understandable instructions. So it means that when I say spoon, you know I mean an actual spoon and not say, a rabbit. You “copy” the common meaning of spoon because there is NO advantage for you to try to independently move to a nash equilibrium where a spoon is a rabbit. If you could however get everyone to COPY you – that they ALL call a spoon and a rabbit, and a rabbit a spoon, then you have succeeded! And also done nothing, because as much as the nash equilibrium is now different, the rabbit remains a biological organism, and is not conceptually a metal/plastic eating tool, even though you are able to call it a spoon now and be mutually understood and mutully understand everyone else! Thats what Khatz also meant when he said, don’t be creative and make up stuff.
Recall the distinction he drew on “A building site” and “A building place” – both are accurate descriptions of the concept, but only one of them sounds “right” – and thats not coz one is inherently right, but just that everyone else uses that. Thats why a perfectly legitimate sentence made up by a foreigner can make sense but just not sound right even if they used just English words or whatever.
Oh, and doodz- seriously, I think the point has been made. You don’t like the swearing etc- so lets lay off. Khatz is not obligated to pour blessings on anyone nor is the interviewer- they made the video, but YOU watched it- so give suggestions but realise that its not your place to keep complaining about the same thing. let’s get some constructive suggestions for the next one, instead of harpin about the past please.Srsly.
I’m wondering what people think of iknow.co.jp? I use it whenever the server is down at anki or when I just want to hear something but it feels a little too hypnotic to lead to real language learning but I want people’s feedback about their experiences.
@Aitsuno, I think you missed my point. Yes, it was an ad hoc video. Yes, his answers were off the cuff. But I figured the fact that he stuck with the copying/mimicking connection long enough to leave an impression on me was enough for me to post as I did. If you take a better look, you’ll see that I too agreed with his general point and I simply took issue with calling it copying/mimicking. Language is much more complicated than that.
I thought maybe I should have rewatched the video before posting, but I gave listening to Japanese priority to watching another 30 minutes of an English interview. I also figured it would be unfair to rewatch to nitpick it given that it was unrehearsed, unplanned, and unedited. Given your comments I decided to rewatch it to see if I was off base, and I actually found I disagree in whole with Khatz’s relating language acquisition with copying in the way he did. Language is not copying. It is actually highly creative.
I went on to explain this and give my thoughts on the rest of your comment, but it ended up being 2 full pages in a word document. I figured that was too long for a comment here and I don’t want to impose on Khatz, so I’ll post it on my blog.
But I’ll say this here again. I feel strongly about words of hate. I think those are what you are referring by “etc”. Ignorance and hate need to always be fought. The more people who do it the better.
Mmm. Language is copying. You learn what’s ‘correct’ and what’s not by imitating what other people have decided is correct and what’s not. It’s all completely arbitrary, but it’s mutually agreed upon, and so we continue to mimic each other for continued mutual understanding.
Of course it’s also a creative process, but it’s still primarily mimicry. You sound like the people you associate with because you’ve copied them, in accent, in word choice, in expressions, in every little thing about your use of the language. You copy. You put your own spin on things, and it’s a creative process, but it’s still a process of mimicry.
Acting is the same way (and language is acting, but I’m focusing specifically on the profession for a moment). It’d be really hard to try and claim that acting is not mimicry – that’s actually it’s definition. The whole idea is to copy what you’ve seen other people do in real situations so as to portray a particular emotion convincingly. But acting is still a highly creative process, it’s an artform. Creative mimicry isn’t an oxymoron like you seem to believe.
Again, language. The whole idea is to copy constructions you’ve seen other people use in real situations so as to transmit a particular idea accurately. Even writing, which is again a highly creative process, relies extensively on the writers ability to effectively mimic written convention so as to evoke the correct reaction from their readers. They can’t develop something from nothing – they must rely specifically on things that are known to elicit a specific reaction from the reader and copy them. The reader, too, only knows to take a specific reaction from something because of their mimicry and our big, mutual agreement.
This is why one of the greatest things you can do to further your writing is to read broadly. With more examples, there’s more to imitate. This is true both when you’re speaking of people writing great literature as well as those simply learning to write to fluency.
I’ve been using Iknow now for about 10 days and so far I think it is great. I wouldn’t recommend it as a primary learning tool, but works well as a supplement to regular reading. The Japanese to English translations are the only really bad thing, but you can click off or ignore the English in most parts. Plus I like the pictures they associate the words to. I came across one last night that really surprised me. For the word 目立つ, they used a picture of a woman with half her nipple hanging out!
I use Anki too for my regular SRSing but I found that since I really enjoy the Iknow that I tend to gravite toward that first. Hopefully they will get more real Japanese content soon with the audio and sentences already cut out that you can pick and save ones you want.
I dunno if this is an ok guess to maybe sort out the whole mimicry thing – but language acquisition is through copying and mimicking, whereas creativity and spontaneity are the result of actual language useage after acquisition. Don’t want to sound like I’m trying to antagonise anyone here- just that I thought that its a bit harsh to pounce on an ad lib video if you get the point even when it might have been put across better in places.
Umm, Rob, that’s not her nipple. That’s her elbow. She doesn’t look old enough for her breast to be hanging down that low. (oddly enough, the photo came up for review today).
Fun to watch, I’d like to see some more interviews or whatever, but seriously the dumbass interviewer needs to go and the anime blasting in the background was hella annoying. Well not exactly blasting, but loud and hella irritating to compete with.
haha, people are crying over some curse words/ slang in a youtube video? …well gee, language doesn’t pour straight form the bible or a textbook, and people talk like that all day everyday, even if you don’t. And don’t tell me you all don’t gobble up every peice of Japanese slang you come across in manga or anime hoping you can sound baddass when you use it in the streets of Shinjuku. Mind you, if you are so sensitive to a few colourful pieces of language, you probably stay locked in your room and not venture furthe rthan the local conbini, and you sure wont hold your own in a bar with a drunken J-dude hitting on your girl and dissing you ( You know you want a cutting comeback). Anyway, I havn’t even seen the vid yet because Im at work, but now Im curious as to what got all these school-ma’am’s knickers in a twist. I say open up a nice cool can of harden the &%$# up.
DaNn0, sounds like you need to grow up. The complaints about the swearing are there because this video is the first time we get to see Khaz talking about his method. The swearing is completely unnecessary and detracts from the rest of the video. Despite what you choose to believe, no, not everyone speaks like an uneducated teen who has found some of the “cool”, “bad” words.
Really? Maybe I was seeing what I really wanted to see. You have to admit it looked weird though. At first I remember thinking, “nahh, that can’t be what I think it is….” But actually I think they should have more pictures like that in there because it makes it stick more. I doubt I will ever have trouble with 目立つ again.
I don’t want to take up too much space here. That’s why I posted the majority of my previous comment on my blog (which is linked through my name here). I think I respond to most of what you said pretty well there. To be clear here, language acquisition only can occur through input. Period. Even the behaviorists (they believe it’s copying) and the cognitivists (they believe it’s not copying) agree on this.
I found these with a quick search on google. I’ve not read the works in full myself. But they appear to be produced by experts in their respective fields and representative.
I believe even some behaviorists would agree that some or all of the imitation they describe is done on a somewhat subconscious level. And that’s my only point really. That you don’t need to be conscious of the acquisition process. You should trust the input. All 10,000+ hours of it. And not your conscious efforts to copy from it what you hear and read.
kalu, I am very grown up, and I choose not to worry or be offended by a few little words. Just be thankful there is a video, and stop whining all you babies.
Wow, this kinda turned into a debate about the language used by the interviewer (which I feel I should say I do agree he showed his ignorance a bit) in this one video that we do actually have; shame! You people should be immersing yourselves in Japanese!…Crap, now I’ve just fallen into the same trap, lol…
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….
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.
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.
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’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…
There isn’t much you could do about it except to encourage an immersion approach in general. Both by outright saying so, and possibly by doing things like keeping English books and videos and things that people can borrow. Whatever they’ll LET you do. I’m not sure how much that is, having not done it 😉 I think that would be one of the best things, though. Creating some sort of private library of fun English materials that students could borrow on request. Even if it didn’t have as much direct use as one might please, it’s availability would help to get across the idea that a textbook isn’t the only thing to use.
Yeah, I suppose that is a good idea. Hmm…well, I’m still determined to find some way to do it, anyways :). I’m thinking that the classroom time which is usually spent learning grammar rules and vocabulary and doing output practice could still be spent doing more productive things. I think you’re right that a teacher might use this time to “get across the idea that a textbook isn’t the only thing to use.”
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.
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.
I was always really put off by TkyoSam’s way of speaking, but it wasn’t till I watched this for a second time that I was actually just cringing at his voice. Is “that’s gay” honestly still being used by people?
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.
Great to see you in your first video Khatzumoto! Looking forward to seeing more.
Cool to finally see you. It was weird, as I watched it dawned on me that our work areas are so similar. It would be interesting for everyone doing AJATT to send in a picture of where they spend most of their time doing the language (SRS, video, internet) and compare them. I also laughed when I saw the headphones hanging down the front of your t-shirt. If you look at any picture taken of me in the last year, I’ll either have the headphones in or they’ll be hanging down the front of my shirt just like that. Sometimes I wonder what my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will think when they flip through the old family album….
Great job Khatz.
In the first video, the cameraman (TkyoSam? First I’ve heard of him) tries to make a point about language school, and I thought you would have refuted it outright, but you missed it – It’s not that going to the language school makes them better, but what they’re doing outside of the language school that’s pushing them up. If going to a language school meant you’d be a better speaker, then based on that theory every student in the class should be at the same level, but that’s just not the case.
I don’t think language schools are necessarily bad because they act as external motivation (“If I fail the test they’re all going to laugh at me!”), but it’s the work you put in outside of the class that helps you develop, and that’s why most Japanese who attend 英会話 either don’t improve at all or make very little progress even over a huge span of time.
Post script: The “interviewer” was pretty unfortunate. He cusses way too much, and it’s distracting; he’s not a very eloquent speaker. What was with his “farewell remark”?
And Khatz – Is your apartment actually the Nebuchadnezzar ship in the Matrix? How many screens do you have there?!
Thanks for the upload!
It was neat to finally be able to put face with the real man behind the scenes of this operation.
I agree with the above poster though… the interviewer was a bit too “duuuuude, like what the f*&” his remarks kind of detract from your great ideas. Anyway, thanks for the vid.
Why only english, why?
Nice interview as such, but, man, please, next time do us all a favor and turn that cartoon down a little. That’s *really* distracting! Thanks!
Quite an interesting video with lots of really good points.
Question of curiosity: Where are you from, exactly? You clearly have an accent even in English. 🙂
egg sandwich, he’s from Africa. I forgot exactly where, but I remember him saying in some post that his native language is Dholuo.
Damn, this Sam guy has no tact. “Stay black?” So awkward!
One thing I can’t seem to put my finger on, though, is why I keep getting that “ahhhh!” feeling every time I read one of your posts (or in this case, watch that video). That feeling of understanding. I’ve been visiting this site for quite some time now, and I’m very familiar with all of the concepts you mentioned… Yet it all seemed new to me.
vgambit,
that’s his “vision” that filters through. Something that goes beyond the sum of the concepts of the method. Everyone has one, of course. Khatz is good at getting it across when he writes.
Thanks for the video. Just seeing how you had cantonese playing in the background really motivated me to start getting more stuff to listen to, all the time. Now I have 西游记 (the kids version) playing in the background.
How is your cantonese coming along? Any chance of an update post on it soon?
@Egg Sandwhich
I think Khatzumoto was born in Kenya, moved to England as a child, then to America (Nevada?) as a college student, then finally to Japan.
I have a pretty big suspicion that Khatz didn’t turn it down because he’s been less diligent in studying Cantonese than Japanese, and breaking the rhythm for any reason is a really quick way to make the problem worse.
The interviewer needs to seriously quit yelling, though… I don’t know if it was because of the TV volume or what but it made him come across awkward as hell.
Oh, haha, I made that comment when I was about twenty minutes through the videos, and he just basically said, “Yeah, I don’t wanna stop it, this is pretty symbolic.” I suppose he’s trying to teach by example.
Khatz is black????
Ha, i love the interviewer. excellent job on both parts.
Seriously, i’ve read the whole site like 3 times all the way through, and numerous articles on their own…but somehow this video conveyed the concepts to me on a new level. More exposure, i guess. A lot of the points you made really hit home, because i’ve been thinking those exact things about my chinese process. When i’m sitting around reading some sci-fi book in mandarin, one of my friends views it like “holy s—, you’re reading in chinese”, but in my view much of the time it feels like “omfg, i suck at chinese, this is hard, why can’t i just be done yet?” So it was great just to hear someone say “Everybody sucks, just try to suck less each time” and “a lot of learning is incidental, just give it more chances”. It seems so f—ing obvious from all the stuff you’ve written, but i guess when it gets explained verbally in a video with all the body language saying “come on, it’s obvious” and the interviewer saying “f—ing rights” or something, then it just hits home.
no, he is purple….
“Post script: The “interviewer” was pretty unfortunate. He cusses way too much, and it’s distracting; he’s not a very eloquent speaker. What was with his “farewell remark”?” — yeah I was thinking the same thing the entire time. It was still a cool video and all, and it was awesome to see and hear Khatz, but whoever that guy was…he was kind of annoying.
P.S. – Khatz, when you add videos of you speaking Japanese, could you please demonstrate how you explain your way around words you don’t know? (I’m having a real hard time with it…*sob*)
TkyoSam posts alot of videos up on YouTube about his Janpanese adventures, you can find them under ‘Big in Japan’ i think…something like that anyway. Some of them are pretty funny.
Judging by Kahtz’s room i’m clearly short on monitors and TV screens in my study room – I suppose more screens = more input 🙂
Right, where was I…ah yes…kanji number 252…..
カッツ ビデオ超面白いじゃん！
もっとやんな〜。（＾＾）／
After watching another of Sam’s videos, I realize that the way he carried himself during this one is mostly due to its off-the-cuff nature. When he has time to prepare, edit, etc., he’s a lot better.
Oh, and he sounds loud because he’s holding the camera (and is a lot closer to the mic than khatz)
師匠!!! I can see you!
This really drove the message home. For some reason it’s a lot more convincing when people say it to you than when you read it…
And recently (like yesterday) I came up with a kind of good way to interact with Japanese people. Twitter! There are A LOT of Japanese people using this, and it’s a good way to hear talk about everyday things. You can even send them messages and sometimes they will answer back!! It’s a useful way to interact with real life people~
Good video, hehe. You actually sound nicer when you speak than when you write ;-). Also, I thought you had some random American accent, but I hear some British influences, that’s always a plus for me!
Thank for for making these videos. I’ve read your site many times but for some reason these videos really hit home. I like how you describe the stages and I can see myself in those stages. You seem to really hit home the point that it takes patience and practice and you need to just keep working at it. Even though I’m new to your site and this method of learning I hope to post here a lot often and I will continue to read your posts. ^_^
Kay
Now let’s see you post up a video interview in Japanese. Please…
“what the f%$#?” “fag” “that’s gay” “stay black”
It almost upstages the good content provided by the interviewee. Seriously. Distracting. Seriously. Offensive.
I guess it just serves to make Khatz’s words sound so much more intelligent.
I only take issue with the part where you equate part of language acquisition with copying or mimicking. (Aside from mimicking sounds, accent, phrasing, etc. to work on pronunciation or create a new linguistic persona.) But then you go on to explain what you mean by this. You show how it’s actually not mimicry but in fact the acquisition of grammar and the ability to then use that grammatical competence in new situations with different vocabulary. It’s been very clearly shown through so much research, quantitative and qualitative, empirical and anecdotal, that language is so much more complicated than simple mimicry. I just bring this up because mention of copying or mimicking in relation to language learning makes me think of the repetition, the essence of copying, drilled into students in the Japanese English curriculum.
(Glad you have your own camera now.)
@Jadpan, I think you might have missed the point that Khatz was making which I totally agree with. You have to understand that this was ad hoc, ad lib- so not scripted to be perfectly politically correct in usage and strict in meaning.
What Khatz means by copying and mimicry is the definition of language – a COMMON set of mutually understandable instructions. So it means that when I say spoon, you know I mean an actual spoon and not say, a rabbit. You “copy” the common meaning of spoon because there is NO advantage for you to try to independently move to a nash equilibrium where a spoon is a rabbit. If you could however get everyone to COPY you – that they ALL call a spoon and a rabbit, and a rabbit a spoon, then you have succeeded! And also done nothing, because as much as the nash equilibrium is now different, the rabbit remains a biological organism, and is not conceptually a metal/plastic eating tool, even though you are able to call it a spoon now and be mutually understood and mutully understand everyone else! Thats what Khatz also meant when he said, don’t be creative and make up stuff.
Recall the distinction he drew on “A building site” and “A building place” – both are accurate descriptions of the concept, but only one of them sounds “right” – and thats not coz one is inherently right, but just that everyone else uses that. Thats why a perfectly legitimate sentence made up by a foreigner can make sense but just not sound right even if they used just English words or whatever.
Oh, and doodz- seriously, I think the point has been made. You don’t like the swearing etc- so lets lay off. Khatz is not obligated to pour blessings on anyone nor is the interviewer- they made the video, but YOU watched it- so give suggestions but realise that its not your place to keep complaining about the same thing. let’s get some constructive suggestions for the next one, instead of harpin about the past please.Srsly.
I’m wondering what people think of iknow.co.jp? I use it whenever the server is down at anki or when I just want to hear something but it feels a little too hypnotic to lead to real language learning but I want people’s feedback about their experiences.
@Aitsuno, I think you missed my point. Yes, it was an ad hoc video. Yes, his answers were off the cuff. But I figured the fact that he stuck with the copying/mimicking connection long enough to leave an impression on me was enough for me to post as I did. If you take a better look, you’ll see that I too agreed with his general point and I simply took issue with calling it copying/mimicking. Language is much more complicated than that.
I thought maybe I should have rewatched the video before posting, but I gave listening to Japanese priority to watching another 30 minutes of an English interview. I also figured it would be unfair to rewatch to nitpick it given that it was unrehearsed, unplanned, and unedited. Given your comments I decided to rewatch it to see if I was off base, and I actually found I disagree in whole with Khatz’s relating language acquisition with copying in the way he did. Language is not copying. It is actually highly creative.
I went on to explain this and give my thoughts on the rest of your comment, but it ended up being 2 full pages in a word document. I figured that was too long for a comment here and I don’t want to impose on Khatz, so I’ll post it on my blog.
But I’ll say this here again. I feel strongly about words of hate. I think those are what you are referring by “etc”. Ignorance and hate need to always be fought. The more people who do it the better.
Mmm. Language is copying. You learn what’s ‘correct’ and what’s not by imitating what other people have decided is correct and what’s not. It’s all completely arbitrary, but it’s mutually agreed upon, and so we continue to mimic each other for continued mutual understanding.
Of course it’s also a creative process, but it’s still primarily mimicry. You sound like the people you associate with because you’ve copied them, in accent, in word choice, in expressions, in every little thing about your use of the language. You copy. You put your own spin on things, and it’s a creative process, but it’s still a process of mimicry.
Acting is the same way (and language is acting, but I’m focusing specifically on the profession for a moment). It’d be really hard to try and claim that acting is not mimicry – that’s actually it’s definition. The whole idea is to copy what you’ve seen other people do in real situations so as to portray a particular emotion convincingly. But acting is still a highly creative process, it’s an artform. Creative mimicry isn’t an oxymoron like you seem to believe.
Again, language. The whole idea is to copy constructions you’ve seen other people use in real situations so as to transmit a particular idea accurately. Even writing, which is again a highly creative process, relies extensively on the writers ability to effectively mimic written convention so as to evoke the correct reaction from their readers. They can’t develop something from nothing – they must rely specifically on things that are known to elicit a specific reaction from the reader and copy them. The reader, too, only knows to take a specific reaction from something because of their mimicry and our big, mutual agreement.
This is why one of the greatest things you can do to further your writing is to read broadly. With more examples, there’s more to imitate. This is true both when you’re speaking of people writing great literature as well as those simply learning to write to fluency.
@juan
I’ve been using Iknow now for about 10 days and so far I think it is great. I wouldn’t recommend it as a primary learning tool, but works well as a supplement to regular reading. The Japanese to English translations are the only really bad thing, but you can click off or ignore the English in most parts. Plus I like the pictures they associate the words to. I came across one last night that really surprised me. For the word 目立つ, they used a picture of a woman with half her nipple hanging out!
I use Anki too for my regular SRSing but I found that since I really enjoy the Iknow that I tend to gravite toward that first. Hopefully they will get more real Japanese content soon with the audio and sentences already cut out that you can pick and save ones you want.
I dunno if this is an ok guess to maybe sort out the whole mimicry thing – but language acquisition is through copying and mimicking, whereas creativity and spontaneity are the result of actual language useage after acquisition. Don’t want to sound like I’m trying to antagonise anyone here- just that I thought that its a bit harsh to pounce on an ad lib video if you get the point even when it might have been put across better in places.
wow you guys seem to hate Sam. He’s the man yo! Stay Black!
Umm, Rob, that’s not her nipple. That’s her elbow. She doesn’t look old enough for her breast to be hanging down that low. (oddly enough, the photo came up for review today).
Fun to watch, I’d like to see some more interviews or whatever, but seriously the dumbass interviewer needs to go and the anime blasting in the background was hella annoying. Well not exactly blasting, but loud and hella irritating to compete with.
haha, people are crying over some curse words/ slang in a youtube video? …well gee, language doesn’t pour straight form the bible or a textbook, and people talk like that all day everyday, even if you don’t. And don’t tell me you all don’t gobble up every peice of Japanese slang you come across in manga or anime hoping you can sound baddass when you use it in the streets of Shinjuku. Mind you, if you are so sensitive to a few colourful pieces of language, you probably stay locked in your room and not venture furthe rthan the local conbini, and you sure wont hold your own in a bar with a drunken J-dude hitting on your girl and dissing you ( You know you want a cutting comeback). Anyway, I havn’t even seen the vid yet because Im at work, but now Im curious as to what got all these school-ma’am’s knickers in a twist. I say open up a nice cool can of harden the &%$# up.
DaNn0, sounds like you need to grow up. The complaints about the swearing are there because this video is the first time we get to see Khaz talking about his method. The swearing is completely unnecessary and detracts from the rest of the video. Despite what you choose to believe, no, not everyone speaks like an uneducated teen who has found some of the “cool”, “bad” words.
@Nukemarine
Really? Maybe I was seeing what I really wanted to see. You have to admit it looked weird though. At first I remember thinking, “nahh, that can’t be what I think it is….” But actually I think they should have more pictures like that in there because it makes it stick more. I doubt I will ever have trouble with 目立つ again.
@ Jadpan:
What the %&#’ are you talking about?
@ QuackingShoe and Aitsuno
I don’t want to take up too much space here. That’s why I posted the majority of my previous comment on my blog (which is linked through my name here). I think I respond to most of what you said pretty well there. To be clear here, language acquisition only can occur through input. Period. Even the behaviorists (they believe it’s copying) and the cognitivists (they believe it’s not copying) agree on this.
The truth is some experts believe language acquisition is imitation. You can read an article summarizing their ideas and theories here. www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1322954
The majority of linguists believe there is an innate ability to acquire language that transcends imitation. You can read a cognitive perspective on language acquisition here.
users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/pinker.langacq.html
I found these with a quick search on google. I’ve not read the works in full myself. But they appear to be produced by experts in their respective fields and representative.
I believe even some behaviorists would agree that some or all of the imitation they describe is done on a somewhat subconscious level. And that’s my only point really. That you don’t need to be conscious of the acquisition process. You should trust the input. All 10,000+ hours of it. And not your conscious efforts to copy from it what you hear and read.
my two cents,
if you are trying to sell a service (like Khaz is), explaining your method with a racy interview isn’t going to make a lot of people drop cash on you.
@Ken
Are you just saying idiotic things to try and get people to respon…..oops.
I think he may be… oops.
Khatz is trying to sell us something? Is that why he has that donation button at the bottom of all his free blog posts?
Either he’s an exceedingly poor businessman, or I’m missing something here.
@Jonathan
/consulting
Did you even read the first paragraph to that link uberstuber?
まあ面白いんじゃん カッツ君が住んでいる部屋をよく見ると東京の現在住宅状態を分かるお思うよ。
次は齋藤さんとのロングインタビューをやってくればと思う
Your video motivated me to listen to japanese all the time. No matter how anoying it can be for me or for others.
kalu, I am very grown up, and I choose not to worry or be offended by a few little words. Just be thankful there is a video, and stop whining all you babies.
Wow, this kinda turned into a debate about the language used by the interviewer (which I feel I should say I do agree he showed his ignorance a bit) in this one video that we do actually have; shame! You people should be immersing yourselves in Japanese!…Crap, now I’ve just fallen into the same trap, lol…
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….
ps, i apologize. That was a ridiculously long and retarded post, lol. I’m sorry for cursing you with it…
@Rob
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.
Dude! Playing anime as background noise was such a good idea!
@Ken
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.
@Rob
I guess I should have been more specific with my post.
At least all of us can agree that in the end Jadpan sucks 🙂
@igor
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.
Ahh, that’s for the info.
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…
okay, so I meant *thanks* for the info at the beginning…
wow, that was embarrassing, lol…
There isn’t much you could do about it except to encourage an immersion approach in general. Both by outright saying so, and possibly by doing things like keeping English books and videos and things that people can borrow. Whatever they’ll LET you do. I’m not sure how much that is, having not done it 😉 I think that would be one of the best things, though. Creating some sort of private library of fun English materials that students could borrow on request. Even if it didn’t have as much direct use as one might please, it’s availability would help to get across the idea that a textbook isn’t the only thing to use.
Yeah, I suppose that is a good idea. Hmm…well, I’m still determined to find some way to do it, anyways :). I’m thinking that the classroom time which is usually spent learning grammar rules and vocabulary and doing output practice could still be spent doing more productive things. I think you’re right that a teacher might use this time to “get across the idea that a textbook isn’t the only thing to use.”
“Haha…Your TV is your friend…fag!”
“That’s gay”
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.
@Igor
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.
Sweet. Thanks.
Reduce the suckage!!!
Please make that into a sticker!
I was always really put off by TkyoSam’s way of speaking, but it wasn’t till I watched this for a second time that I was actually just cringing at his voice. Is “that’s gay” honestly still being used by people?
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.
Did he seriously just ask you if “a stitch in time saves nine” was Linkin Park? Where did you find that guy? 🙂