Original AJATT Products

Mental Tools

The Difference Between AJATT and School

December 31, 2011
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School teaches you how to be a commentator: “Charles Barkley, taking it down the center with a strong GODAN VERB in abrupt-plain form, switches it up to an imperative and he CONJUGAAAAAAAAAAATES!!!”. With AJATT, your body learns to play the sport.

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There Is Nothing To Believe In

December 30, 2011
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In the game of getting used to a language… Try not to have opinions. Opinions are for politicians and voters. Try not to have beliefs. Beliefs are for religions. You’re an engineer. You’re a tinkerer. Tink. Tink. Tink. You have tools. You use tools to construct inevitable fluency — engineered inevitability. There is nothing to believe in or opine...

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The Three Laws of Language Acquisition, version 4.0

December 28, 2011
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0. Zeroth Law: Compare yourself only to yourself. And to newborn babies. 1. The Prime Directive: Have fun. 2. The Promise: Show up. 3. The Triple Path: Don’t learn: get used to. Don’t improve: suck less. Don’t binge: nibble often.

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Don’t Have High Standards, Have Wide Standards

December 7, 2011
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Don’t Have High Standards, Have Wide Standards

Lo! And Chagami sayeth: It doesn’t matter how many kanji you do a day/how many sentences you’re learning/how much vocab you’re picking up, all that matters is that progress is being made. I know that sometimes it can feel like we’re lowering our standards by just striving to make progress, but then again, if you are like me, who had month...

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Language Is Murder

November 26, 2011
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Learning a language is like committing murder. Although all forms of murder basically amount to suffocation, immolation, stabbing (direct organ and tissue damage) or “overwhelming the immune response”, there are an infinite number of variations within that. So to say “only method X works!”, “method X is the correct way” is like saying “human beings can only be killed...

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Competition is for the Weak and Lazy

November 23, 2011
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“Average ones compete with others. Great ones compete with themselves.” Vadim Kotelnikov 「我々は、どちらかといえば、幸福になるためよりも、幸福だと人に思わせる為に四苦八苦しているのである。」 ラ・ロシュフコー “There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.” Hindu Proverb “people experience more anxiety and perform worse when they purse performance avoidance goals — when they try to avoid comparing poorly...

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