Comments on: Unclean! Why Would AJATT Do A Tie-in With Other People’s Stuff?

By: Kwanzaa Miracle Ends in A Matter of Hours | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:42:18 +0000

[…] probably wondering “what’s with all the impure non-AJATT stuff?”. I feel your confusion. Let me tell you a little about these […]

By: John Biesnecker

John Biesnecker — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:28:35 +0000

Fundamentalism is lame, no matter what you’re talking about. Results are what matter, and clearly Benny and Khatz both have provable results (though they’re rather in the details). Since I am neither Khatz nor Benny, the idea that what they do will 100% suit me is silly, so of course I mix and match. Anything less would be intellectually dishonest, and all I’d be doing is cheating myself.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:36:47 +0000

The funny thing about language learning is that we /already know/ the most efficient and effective path to doing it, and everyone agrees on it: Use flashcards every day, remove all your dependency on L1, and use every single moment of your life to absorb new words, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, etc, and talk with as many native speakers as possible in that time.

It’s really not about efficiency, but about finding which methodology fits most easily into your life style, the methodology that /you/ will be consistent to, and will motivate you to put more into it (the self sustaining process of learning). Very few people have diligence and drive to dedicate 100% of every moment to studying hard and efficiently. That’s why finding ways to make study more natural, fun, and less stressful is really the magic to language learning. And of course, since we all like different things and live different lives, the formula will change between people.

But the common underline in any methodology is getting you to creating a pattern of behavior that encourages use and exposure to the target language. I focus more on input simply because it fits more naturally in my lifestyle. Someday I will definitely need to focus more on output to catch up, but I’m not worried. I have to learn the input anyways, and by the time I’m solid on it, doing output will seem like child’s play. The same can be said from the other angle as well.

As long as I show up to the game every day, I will win.

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:46:40 +0000

Hear hear! 🙂
I should add that the hour that I interviewed Khatz was nothing but pure agreement. Kind of hard if you imagine us as being opposite sides of a war, isn’t it 😉 I don’t see our advice as that hugely conflicting because I look at the many things we say, rather than one aspect of our approaches that happens to differ. I retweet @ajatt all the time because of how much I agree with the AJATT philosophy!
As Khatz said, a combination of everything is the key. Even though I’m all about speaking from day one, you can bet I’ll be using a sprinkle of AJATT and focusing on kanji at first when I get to Japanese 😉