Comments have a way of getting lost here in the vastness of AJATTistan. So, for purposes of future referential convenience, here are some comprehensive music recommendations from recent comments by AJATTeers.
Jimmy L. is a member of that proudest, most handsome breed of human beings: AJATTeers. This proud, handsome man recently sent me an email wherein he shares a sitrep (situation report) on his progress with the lazy kanji card format we discussed a short time ago.
Jimmy isn’t just good-looking. He’s also blindingly insightful. He has put his finger on something I, in all my verbosity, had not been able to express. You see, Jimmy has managed to verbalize what it is that makes the Heisig method so great.
And it is this: order. It turns out that the true genius of Dr. James Heisig’s kanji-learning method — his greatest gift to us kanji-learners — is not actually the keyword system. It is the idea of learning kanji in a deliberate sequence based on incremental logic rather than straight usage (i.e. not car, book and house (車、本、家) but big, plump and hound (大、太、犬)). Having said that the keyword system is a pretty freaking sweet idea that has made the kanji world a better place: attempting to learn every nuance of a kanji from the word go does not scale well. Keywords only start to pinch when we spend more time building, maintaining and collating them than actually kanjiing it up.
Anyway, here’s Jimmy’s email [formatting and emphasis added by me]:
Hey Khatz,
A[n abridged] version if you’d prefer brevity:
- “Lazy Kanji” format = Good!
- Dictionary Meanings instead of Keywords = Good!
- Color instead of Stories = Good!…
I just entered my 600th kanji card using the “Lazy” format you talked about a short while back. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve found it to be far, far more effective than the straight Heisig method that I was using before.
The problem with the Heisig method is the very thing that makes it so great: the singular keyword. I’ve come to find that very often the keywords are somewhat off of what is actually implied, or it’d be exactly the right word and I was using it inappropriately because I had no context for its usage (God bless double meanings…).
With this new format, I have simply been taking the kanji (in the order that Heisig presents them – I believe that to be the true genius of his method), and taking the dictionary entry for that kanji and pasting it directly into the answer field. No longer is the keyword an issue, because now I actually have a sense of feel for the broader idea and meaning of the kanji.
But I also think that book you’ve been recommending, Brain Rules, has played a large part in this new formats success as well. In the chapter, I believe it’s in the chapter about attention spans, he mentions that memories tied to emotions stick the best.
I am a person who feels “in color”. That is, when I think back upon a sad memory, it has a certain hue. Happy has one, angry has one. So what I’ve been doing is using color with the cards that highlight the general mood of the kanji. Coupled with the fact that it makes the cards more fun - which also makes the meanings stick better – I’ve seen a dramatic improvement.
Well, just wanted to let you know how your suggestions have been helping your readers. Thanks a lot. I know I’m only 1/4 through and that I’ve a long way before I’m out of the kiddie pool, but I think it’s been a good re-start, and the enthusiasm is doing a great job of propelling me forward.
Thanks, Jimmy 
. As I said before, this is still very much an experimental thing, and neither of us have any long-term data — yet. But, the short-term data are very promising; I find that I”m:
That’s all from us — let us know any insight/experience you may have on the topic.
YouTube
~ in reply to neharungta # … thanks for the note in reply to lordsilent # http://bit.ly/deZpdh # . Momoko made it in reply to sevarg # in reply to danielpwright #
Hey Team.
Today’s is a guest post by Maya, whom you may know as one of AJATT’s most prolific contributors of sweet links of the “reliving childhood joy” variety. Recently, she’s also enjoyed great SRS success with extensive one-by-one deletion of crappy cards.
Anyway, the being known as Maya has now graduated from simply being a good-looking Japanese learner with great taste in blogs, to a good-looking Japanese learner with great taste in blogs who does bribery and extortion . I’m not saying she threatened my family and offered me money for this post. I’m just saying…I have a PayPal account. So, without further ado, here’s a guest post from Maya herself about a new, free and friendly reading contest!
Maya:
Hey, you! Yes, YOU!
Do you remember what it was like being a kid? Those good ol’ days, when decisions were made by going “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”? When money problems were settled by the banker in Monopoly, and “old” referred to anyone over 20? When having a lunch box plastered with Power Rangers stickers made you the coolest kid in school, and a trip to Toys ‘R Us seemed way cooler than going to the mall?
Back then, everything you did in school had some connection to something fun. Y’know, those good ol’ days when “learning physics” really meant “watching ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ videos”, and math class involved as many pictures and drawings as it did numbers. Back when fifteen whole minutes of reading guaranteed you getting a big, sparkly sticker, thereby making you the superstar of your class.
This April, 2010, I (Maya) am inviting you to go back to those times – to get back into the “if it’s not fun, #’!#& it” mentality. I’m inviting you to join…
世界読書コンクール：L2 Reading Contest Ghetto Fun-Blasting Machine
That’s right – a reading contest. Here’s the scoop:
- The contest is web-based; everyone, regardless of location, is welcome and encouraged to join
- Contest starts April 1st, 2010 and ends April 30th, 2010 local time (whatever that is for you)
- Winner = whoever reads the largest number of pages
- One “page” = a page in a manga; a page in a book; a webpage; one newspaper article, etc
- Participants will be encouraged to give weekly updates of their progress (for extra drama), but only the end (monthly) results will be considered final
- Winners will be awarded sparkly e-stickers, along with the glory of looking cool on the Internet
- Non-winners will be awarded… not sparkly e-stickers
- All participants will get the chance to be inspired to do more reading in a month than they might have done otherwise
- Learners of languages other than Japanese are also welcome to join
That’s all. Participation is (of course) free, and dropping out halfway through is also allowed. If you’d like to join, please leave a comment either under this post or under the post in this link with your name (doesn’t have to be your real name) and the language(s) you will be reading in (for this contest, any reading done in your native language(s) will not count).
That’s about all. Let’s get the reading started!
That’s it. Let the fun begin. Feel free to send any questions/comments you have about the contest to Maya directly since…they’ll actually get answered that way .
Just by way of sharing concrete tactics (rather than, I guess, the abstract strategy I usually share (?)), I thought I’d write about how I learn songs using the SRS.
Keep in mind that this is just what I do right now. Yes, I am the Great Khatzumoto, but you know what? Really I’m just a 27-year-old boy who drinks peppermint tea and plays with his cats. I don’t know jack about jack. This is just what was most fun and least annoying for me. You’re bound to have a better idea and I’d love to hear about it if you’d like to share .
Put another way: a lot of AJATT strategic principles are universal, I think. But the tactical stuff is totally a matter of “what works for you”. I mean, we might not even be running the same OS, so…you know. Anyway, here we go!
FRONT
男兒當自強
[Youtube]
BACK
[media: naam yi dong ji keung- 007.mp3]
廣闊浩氣揚 既是男兒當自強 昂步挺胸
jìshì【既是】
…であるからには．…である以上．
gei si naam yi dong ji keung
Drewskie sent me this really cool email the autre jour. You may know him from comments , being as it is that he is incredibly good-looking and has wonderful taste in blogs. Here he is in his own words (links and emphasis added by me):
[勝]元先輩、[Khatzumoto-sempai]
Maybe it’s that I finally found some really chill Japanese music that fits my taste (I’ve been aching for something besides upbeat pop), or maybe I’m in new-blog-post afterglow, but I’m about to write some sappy thank-yous along with a short life story, both of which I’m sure you get a lot, but I have no idea if you like or dislike. Can’t help it, it’s coming.
I’ve finally figured out this AJATT thing — specifically the “how it teaches you Japanese” part. A little late, I know. I’m coming up on a year since I found your website, skeptically examined articles here and there, thinking how full of [%&#!] this guy was – probably because deep down I really didn’t want to have to do so much for Japanese. But I warmed up to the idea. I made sure my music listening was in “This is almost done” mode as I approached the end of RTK (I took that advice immediately and put off immersion, I couldn’t do it so fast). All of that motivational material just marinated in my brain. People around me noticed a difference.
But I’m an engineer, [Khatz]. I’ve been trained to “figure out” and “understand”. I thrive on that desire to understand and the energy it produces. So when I started sentences, I was constantly struggling to “get it”. I think I went through three separate weeks where I proclaimed I understood the basic particles. They just slid off of me, and I’d do it again, “That’s RIGHT, に is for contexts and を is for targets and blahblahblah”.
I understood the input hypothesis, but I didn’t understand the implications, specifically on our biology. I figured that was just “We learn better by seeing examples than by trying to use grammar to produce sentences” — but that’s only half way there. I’m realizing that we learn better by seeing examples and not attempting to understand them.
The vast amounts of language learning power in our brain get to take over uninhibited at that point, and by forcing myself to take the role of the observer while that happens, I’m experiencing some very interesting things. Everything has a feeling. It feels right or it feels wrong. You’ve said this before, I’ve read it all, it just never clicked. I never stopped thinking, and that was a really big problem.
But all of that energy was just GONE. I was really down about all of this. But I kept going forward (vector normalization is a wonderful motivator). I set a minimum “new sentences” goal of 5 per day, which I never even approached, because every time it was starting to get late or I was busy with other things, I thought “Just read until you have 5,” and by the time I actually stopped I had more like 15. It wasn’t like before though, there was just no excitement, no “I must figure this out,” nothing — but after about two weeks of that, I started to realize that I was enjoying myself again just on a more general level. It wasn’t directed, and that’s why I liked it.
Japanese is now one of the only things in my life that isn’t directed in some way by logic and higher brain functions. It’s now a self-sustaining reaction producing pure spiral energy, and I was suddenly hitting more 30-35 card days, and now I hit spring break and I’ve had four 60+ card days, and the reviews are getting just silly-large, but I just keep going, and I love it. I love it so much.
Thank you. Thank you so much for running the blog, for cracking a whip on Twitter, for not keeping your methodology hidden and safe so your skills stay super-valuable (if this ever hits mainstream, sorry [Khatz], your days of “wow, that guy’s good” are toast). This entire endeavor has had a profoundly positive influence on my life. Thank you.
A most sincerely thankful
Drewskie
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