Classes Suck
Listening to girls called Stacy squeaking out “ah ree gar toe go zai moss oo” is not to your advantage. Especially if you are the girl called Stacy. That chick needs help.
Classes suck. Not only do they cost money, but they’re boring and they don’t work. You only need look as far as the number of people taking Japanese classes, versus the number of people who are actually good at Japanese. The people in charge of the classes will tell you that it’s because “Japanese is hard”; “Japanese is different”; “it’s the kanji”; “those East Asians are so inscrutable; they just don’t think like we do”. Bollocks! Absolute bollocks! There is nothing fundamentally difficult or different about Japanese. Very normal human beings speak, read and write it on a daily basis. The problem might be with the way we are learning it, but it would be unprofessional, dishonest, and an act of the most severe bollocks, to blame the object of our learning.
I’m not saying you can’t get anything valuable from a class. And I’m absolutely not saying that teachers are bad people. On the contrary, there are wonderful, dedicated teachers out there. They’re victims, too. They know it doesn’t work. They know that success in their classes is only tangentially related to success in actual Japanese. Many of them even admit that “you need to do Japanese outside the classroom”, but too often, that takes the form of goofy busywork assignments. Filling in the blanks. Woo! I’m going to be the best Japanese-blank-filler ever!…Please.
What helps in the real world of Japanese is something almost all classes punish: the ability to wing it. Of course I believe in preparation, but real life situations rarely follow the plan in all but the most general sense. The plan gets twisted and even broken, you forget a word and have to explain your way around it. Stuff happens, and you need to be able to think on your feet. In class it’s called BSing. In the real world, it’s called common freaking sense.
Perhaps classes and textbooks for Japanese made sense when they had a monopoly on information. Back in the day, outside of a class, there probably were no Japanese materials readily available to a person outside of Japan. And certainly for a rarer language, like Dzongkha, you might want to seek a class because materials are so scarce (but that’s a big “might”).
In any case, with the end of their monopoly on information, the typical Japanese language class as it exists is long past its expiry date. You have the information in your hands now, and you can use it far more efficiently than a class can. And yes, a lot of it’s unedited information, but the real world never did come neatly shrink-wrapped in mind-numbingly boring vocabulary lists with chapter headings. Plus, a lot of the stuff out there actually is edited. For example, Japanese dictionary companies have both an economic incentive and a Japanese cultural bias to do things well. So there. Class 0, You 1.
I’m 23 years old and very arrogant, but I still believe in asking people who know better for help. In this on-demand, consultative form (like Dr. Mary Noguchi’s Kanji Clinic), a class would have use. But if you’re signing up for a typical “watashi wa sumisu desu” textbook-centered Japanese class hoping for a teacher, through the magical power of the textbook written by the experts at the Takagawa-Jones Institute for Samurai Studies and e Good Japanese, to inject the special invisible Japanese sauce (that they keep in the closet at the back of the room) into your brain in 45-minute increments every weekday…then don’t hold your breath. Instead, save yourself the time and heartache, take your precious money and go buy some anime, or whatever, just something in real Japanese. Take a shopping trip to Amazon.jp. Trust me, it’s better this way…
Read on:
All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to Learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency » No Fun, No Good: You Must Enjoy Learning Japanese said,
April 24, 2007 @ 8:48 pm
[...] This all sounds like a game, and it is, but at its core, it’s also about responsibility. There neither time nor room here to blame classes for sucking, teachers for boring lessons or classmates for being stupid and dragging you down. Even though all that may be true, you are responsible for making sure you enjoy yourself while learning Japanese. No one else is. [...]
Brian said,
July 13, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
Haha….wow, brilliant. So, I was doing self-study for 3 months, then I was like “ahhhhh…too friggin hard!!!,” so then I signed up for a class and was bored out of my mind for 4 hours every night. Luckily I found this site, by the way it’s like a bible for myself as a Japanese learner. And now, I dropped that god-awful class. Hell, I learned more in one night with my nice SRS than i did with 2 weeks of that boring class. I think they are still stuck on hiragana in that class…pathetic waste of time that was.
Ok, enough of my rant, but seriously, this guy knows what he’s talking about. The fact that I actually felt comfortable with Japanese in one day of this method shows that it works.
Largo said,
February 19, 2009 @ 6:50 am
I admit it. I’m taking classes every week and still somehow enjoy them. Yes, there are complainers, people who ask why that kanji is so friggin’ illogical and yes it’s expensive. In Fact 20 lessons are half of my monthly income. It’s maybe that Switzerland is expensive or because I’m an apprentice. Not sure about this one.
I totally agree to you in most parts of this articles. Lessons don’t work, they take you nowhere and you have to listen to people who aren’t used to Japanese pronunciation. I won’t quit them so soon though. Why? I think you’re missing the social part in your method. Those people can motivate me to stay on path. So I won’t abandon the learning completely before I can make the time to start your method in the later half of this year, after my final exams in french and english.
Do Classes Really Suck? AJATT Follow-up | yonasu.com said,
March 4, 2009 @ 6:13 am
[...] is a follow-up post on Classes Suck on All Japanese All The [...]
Cihan said,
March 29, 2009 @ 2:45 pm
I understand what everyone is saying! Khatz, I don’t even know you but I feel like do so it’s creepy. Anyway I think taking classes helps me score on Japanese. I mean even though they suck and stuff, I still don’t want to fail so it keeps me studying personally and it lets me study even more. I don’t know the more I surpass my classmates, the more I want to study. Your method is very addictive I must say and I’m grateful.
Japanese Language Classes DON’T Suck | Dumb Otaku said,
April 2, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
[...] at the All Japanese All the Time site Khatsumoto says: Classes suck. Not only do they cost money, but they’re boring and they don’t work. You only need look as far [...]
All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Aim to Fail said,
April 2, 2009 @ 10:08 pm
[...] or in preparation to go to school or travelling to and from school or doing homework for school; schools have plenty to answer for; they can’t bait with compulsory attendance and then switch to learner-parent responsibility [...]
Bobo said,
June 8, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Honestly, I loved my classes. My classmates were so supportive and fun, and I honestly didn’t find that in any other class at university. I tried learning on my own and was way too overwhelmed. Classes helped me focus a lot better. I now have to start learning on my own again as I’m finished university, but I can’t say I regret at all taking my classes.
One thing that I know I will miss is the camaraderie of trying to learn another language with others. It’s not the same as when you’re asking questions online.
Leonardo Boiko said,
July 15, 2009 @ 6:13 am
Classes are only as good as how much exposure to the language they provide. As the people in language acquisition theory says, you don’t learn (say) Japanese because the class teaches grammar, you learn Japanese despite the class teaching grammar. They could as well be teaching tea ceremony or enka singing or Dragon Quest strategy—the only real benefit is the exposure to Japanese.
Reader Question: What if You Studied in School But Failed? | Spanish Only said,
August 5, 2009 @ 7:38 pm
[...] should read this post (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/classes-suck) as well. Also read his website, it contains some really good stuff. I know it talks about Japanese [...]
shipshape said,
October 15, 2009 @ 8:25 am
Hello
I’m not learning Japanese, but what you write is relevant for all language learning in my opinion.
I’m also an English teacher in a foreign country.
Shock horror, I agree with your sentiments completely. This may be why I have self-esteem issues.
My lessons are pointless and only enable my students to complete a few gap filling exercises in an exercise book and read some graded and, somewhat ineffectual, texts that bear little relation to real English.
The only benfit that a class gives people is the opportunity to interact in English where otherwise they would have none. However, what with the internet and everything, face-to-face language exchanges offer people the opportunity to do this from the comfort of their own home with a native speaker.
Nick said,
December 1, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
lol i agree classes suck. Im moving to japan next year and taking a class but only so i can
get a visa to stay there. Your way of learning is way better then some crappy class. Classes are super boring times 5! Anyways thanks for all the awesome posts. Hope to meet ya in japan next year
stacy said,
December 18, 2009 @ 4:57 am
All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Potheads, Planners and Players said,
January 1, 2010 @ 5:23 pm
[...] is also why school sucks for learning, because it kills your maneuverability in order to get you to follow someone else’s plan [...]
Japanese Language Classes DON’T Suck said,
February 24, 2010 @ 1:02 pm
[...] at the All Japanese All the Time site Khatsumoto says: Classes suck. Not only do they cost money, but they’re boring and they don’t work. You only need look as far [...]