Comments on: Preparation Over Pride

By: kai

kai — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:40:13 +0000

Pride has been holding my back in a way since I started. I thought being fluent would be cool and I could stay in my little immersion chrysalis until that happened and come out and everyone would be like “wow!”. I thought anything less was unacceptable. Trying to talk to people at 4 months in I thought was unacceptable. However that really started to kill my motivation. I realize the only times I feel inspired to learn the language are when I know I can use it. And if I keep my headphones on or stay in my room listening, I’m not using it and its like I am going against what I really want to get out of the language making the process ASM instead of fun. Now I’m starting to realize that fluency is just an abstract concept, like perfection or infinity. Its not a goal worth aiming for and my brain knows it so it says either do whats fun or give up. The aim in my opinion should be to reach that point where the language feels like its yours. Its feels native to you. That is the beauty of language learning IMO. Its like you grow a second soul when you have a second language that feels natural to you. Also its like growing a second citizenship. Second soul more so tho. I reached that point at around 8 or 9 months and I had maybe a 2000 word vocab but gained through immersion and audio srs cards so it was in there like swim wear not just memorized by rote where I could forget it if I shook my head too hard lol. Also though, having fun with it, talking to people as soon as you can, is probably the best way to become fluent because why would you quit when you have built relationships with real people and comic book characters maybe. I was also kinda scared I would reach a point where I would be content with how much I knew of the language. I think that situation might be reserved for people who only wanted to know enough to get by and not have fun in the process, like people going overseas to work but were never interested in the culture in the first place. We arn’t in that situation. we like other cultures, japanese, chinese or whatever, and if we have that, and fun, we can’t lose. We can only win.

By: hancock

hancock — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 20:24:40 +0000

This post reminds me of Sun Tzus “The art of war”. You should make a book filled with these little nuggets of language learning knowledge.

By: ebutler

ebutler — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:18:29 +0000

This too, though I have a feeling this has been posted on here before:

jimflege.com/files/Flege_in_Piske_2009.pdf

By: ebutler

ebutler — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 17:48:46 +0000

I remember reading that for people with developmental disorders, such as autism, high quality input is very important. Though the following article is for children, I have a feeling that it would also be true for adults:

docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:F5ymj1qclE8J:www.hms.harvard.edu/cidp/pub/pdfs/SevereDevDisordersBilingualism.pdf+&hl=ja&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgNkxyLQB1R2Tnw5VrFXpyoXU8uu0HrARGNWoWI9toX3CIBUzjTljmFXThhIAaoUjFSa40TeedpgjZaSMD4j_s6-X-pcE5Qw15TIGhFhdMBpSoK0cmsOYBx7gDH6Wu5xfHYvYvm&sig=AHIEtbQ7g9o9bCUAzdGAwNHRtktcd5IKFQ

Now, when I speak I can usually give the impression of being normal, but once you get to know me the autism will shine through more. What would suck though is that for both of us when we speak Japanese we may still come across as funny, which would likely be blamed on having foreign accents or just being foreign, when autism may be more to blame.

By: Travis

Travis — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 06:21:09 +0000

I think you missed the part of the quote that said, “…if you learned something, you’d actually have something to be proud of.” Being proud of your accomplishments isn’t a bad thing. Settling, fossilization, and plateauing are.

By: oops

oops — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 17:21:02 +0000

I’m autistic. I don’t have auditory processing issues, mostly visual processing issues, so learning Kanji was difficult but I got through it. I process information at a very slow pace, so it’s taken me longer to get where I am than the average person. I don’t expect to be able to speak Japanese fluently (speaking English is troublesome enough), I’m more interested in comprehension.

By: ebutler

ebutler — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:53:13 +0000

Here too:

“H4 predicts that L2 performance depends on amount of L2 input, which varies as
a function of both years of L2 use and frequency of daily use.”

docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:J4KlLnfZW4IJ:jimflege.com/files/Flege_MacKay_NewSounds_2011.pdf+&hl=ja&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjb0olNUX3fffB9aNDsn9EmzkvkvnBrIiiRxvxNg1HFuw00cc908nmedkW5-0xzEFzHa9OlvhHgZAMwIqMjIj_6IONHTZOMT3LOygbdYZGl4qFb3A0m8hopzebxogi1CEvOjyfG&sig=AHIEtbTYXqYZfLBK5GmzkSav6WNfFZHczw

By: ebutler

ebutler — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:04:20 +0000

This seems to confirm the warnings of Antimoon and AJATT regarding early, forced output:

“One possible way to account for pronunciation errors in both the L1 and the L2, but
especially so in the L2, is by using Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and possibly positing that 119
bilinguals are reutilizing their own incorrect pronunciations as input and perceiving this input to
be correct, thereby eliminating any opportunity for correction. Krashen (1985) argues that simply
speaking in the target language does not result in complete acquisition. He contends the
commonly held belief that language learning of acquisition is contingent upon speaking abilities.
Instead, he proposes that comprehensible output is the outcome of language acquisition. Thus, if
mispronunciations are rarely corrected early in the acquisition process in the home, the family
could speak a language that is different from the target language, and the individual has a
diminished opportunity to produce comprehensible output. This could be a possible future
direction in which my research could lead, potentially yielding more interesting findings.”

repository.wellesley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=thesiscollection

By: ebutler

ebutler — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 15:54:58 +0000

Is anyone else on here on the autism spectrum? I’d like to find out the experiences of others on the autism spectrum when it comes to language learning.

By: Narcoleptic

Narcoleptic — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:08:28 +0000

I find it a bit ironic that a link to that page is in the comments of an article stressing practice and preparation over pride… That’s a pretty long winded list of “I’m awesome, look what I can do.”

By: johnchuck

johnchuck — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:03:25 +0000

Sweet link!! That guys a boss of language learning!
It seems that everything thinks ajatt is all about immersion and just doing sentences, but after going through your link i bet shadowing is one of the techniques that boosts your japanese considerably. I bet along with that extensive reading and copying out texts (scriptorium) are part of SS. I’ve read all of this blog and I remember these being hinted at. Still an awesome site! Just my 2p on AJATT.

By: Travis

Travis — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:13:12 +0000

Shadowing is where you talk over (shadow) naturally spoken language, checking your pronunciation and getting your mouth and brain use to producing the language. Check this guy out (www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/about.html – Alexandar Arguelles), one of the greatest polyglots of our time and the guy who practically invented modern shadowing. He knows roughly 34-35 languages.

By: johnchuck

johnchuck — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 21:46:34 +0000

What’s shadowing??

By: 李便神

李便神 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 03:51:02 +0000

やっぱり、プライドは悪だ（笑）