Comments on: Does Input REALLY work?

By: アメド

アメド — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:01:33 +0000

this is sooooo true. Right only at 1500 sentences and i can feel like naturally able to understand things easier. My readings are better like i can read alot of random comments on youtube,from the web,etc,etc. Input is greater/easier to learn then just random output in the beginning. animes i can understand 70-80% now and dramas as well but not all dramas just yet. I guess this will all come in due time. I managed to go monlingual which is abit diffcult but it’s good b/c i can already understand a good majority of the sentences due to exposure,etc,etc.

By: Charles A.

Charles A. — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 08:01:00 +0000

“quendidil said,
November 14, 2007 @ 11:23 pm

@Charles A.
“Getting all 3 for $15 makes it even better.”
Where did you get the Japanese verison of those movies for that price?
We can get drama series here in Singapore for about 10% of the Japanese release (legit) but I’ve never seen anyone selling Japanese dubs. Amazon doesn’t sell them that cheap either.

********

I live in Japan, so they’re just normal DVD’s that are at bargain bin prices. Sorry to get your hopes up. Still, if you have friends in Japan (via language exchange sites), perhaps they can get cheap DVD’s to send to you. Or, if they’re game, just rip the videos (with subtitles) and host it somewhere.

By the way, the Subtitles are WWAAAYYY off the dialogue. Granted, that goes with Khatzu’s article about Subtitled TV Shows. I think it’s more like they dub to try to match the mouth, but the subtitles are more precise translations. Distracting but not a show stopper.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:03:57 +0000

Hey Mark

You’re right. As, Charles A. suggested earlier, it looks as though the process goes beyond pure input and includes a lot of “mediated output” or “highly controlled output”, or “output with instant and constant error-checking and error-correction”.

Theory arguments are kind of stupid, anyway. Just shut up and go play, you know? “Human beings can’t run a mile in under 4 minutes”. Whatever, zip it and go running. You’ll learn a lot more and be a lot happier quietly running an experiment than getting into arguments [been there, done that]. In learning a language at least, shoot first, ask questions later.

It is also entirely possible that a single mountain can be climbed in more than one way. And it’s also possible that apparent diffs of opinion are really just misunderstandings.

無論如何…keep on climbing! One foot in front of the other in the direction of up. That’s all that matters.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:50:02 +0000

“[1] Input actually allows you to learn MORE, and more correctly, than just output. There is simply a limit to how long of a sentence (and how many sentences) you can actively recall in a single day, but with input you can learn to read sentences of a much higher number and greater length.”

Hmmm…I read an interesting article on the Supermemo website the other day ( http://www.supermemo.com/help/faq/memory.htm#Reading ), which states that:

“Active recall is needed to guarantee the high retention as defined by the forgetting index (even 99%). Depending on volume, structure, delay, etc. passive review may leave as little as less than a percent of recall. However, reading books for the sake of learning English is not just passive review. Each time you encounter a problematic word, the need for comprehension will automatically trigger an active recognition test in which the stimulus is the word in question and the response is its semantic association. This is active recall”

I have personally been under the impression that AJATT/Antimoon relied on ‘passive’ recall, which is supposedly not as effective as the ‘active’ methods of learning promoted by Supermemo. And I have seen this ‘fact’ used elsewhere as a way of discrediting AJATT/Antimoon. But the above seems to suggest that AJATT/Antimoon is NOT actually passive at all! So, perhaps it was just me, but it now seems that AJATT/Antimoon and Supermemo are in fact in accord – all is well with the world.

Actually, I have just been using the AJATT method on the basis that ‘it works’ irrespective of the apparent contradiction with any ‘accepted’ methods of learning, but it is interesting to see that those doubters elsewhere will now have to come up with another justification when disparaging AJATT/Antimoon Still, maybe I won’t bother finding out how they will adapt and continue to disparage AJATT/Antimoon – maybe I’ll just get on with becoming fluent…

Mark

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:35:54 +0000

Lots of reading and listening to real Japanese — Japanese by and for native speakers. It’s not like, obscure slang. I’ve never seen a dictionary entry about っていうか, but if you read and listen to enough Japanese, you’ll figure out exactly how to use it and any of its variants. How do you know if you’re right? You’ll know. Just like you figure out the meaning and usage of a new word in English — “but that’s English”, you say — same Jimmy, same brain. You’ll figure it out, it may take longer, but you’ll still work it out.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:21:13 +0000

Hey, Khatz, I don’t know if this is the right place to post this question, but I noticed that you use lots of slang and colloquialisms when you give examples of Japanese. How did you learn stuff like that given that it’s hard to find in dictionarires?

By: JDog

JDog — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:33:51 +0000

Linda, I just started learning Korean by Khatz’ method, too, and found a List of Korean Pop artists on Wikipedia! I don’t know if I even like that much pop music, but if it’s for a different language I tend to be able to enjoy it more. I am less picky than with English. Hope you find it helpful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_pop_artists

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 14:24:57 +0000

@Muzie
The answer fields are a combination of one, some or all of the following:
[a] verbatim dictionary defs of words in the sentences
[b] readings of the kanji in the sentences
[c] verbatim dictionary defs of [a]
[d] rarely, some other information (e.g. notes on what the key (grammar) point of the sentence is, here is one actual example, not contained in the original article:

question:
害虫が隠れていそうな場所すべてに殺虫剤を撒きまくるのと、家の中央に仲間全部を集められるロボット・スパイを数匹送り込むのと、どちらが健康にいいだろうか？
answer:
〔終止形動詞〕＋のと)

By: Muzie

Muzie — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 07:12:36 +0000

Hello Khatz! I’m still not quite clear on how the transition to J-J happens. What’s in the answer field in at that point (my japanese is not good enough for me to understand the examples you gave hehe). Is it definitions for each word in the sentence copy pasted from a japanese dictionary verbatim? Could give an example of a J-J Q/A with the equivalent english translation so we could understand the structure?

By: Potemayo

Potemayo — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:56:40 +0000

Oops, it seems that only the first part of the show has subtitles. Gomen ne, minna-san

By: Potemayo

Potemayo — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:53:21 +0000

Thanks for the great advice Khatzu-san!

Off-topic: I found the first episode of Negima!! Live Action on Veoh with Japanese subtitles – http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1471496TzhgEbek?searchId=8679997364296368293&rank=4

By: JT0104

JT0104 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:20:24 +0000

Also If your scared of putting only Japanese in the answer field, don’t be. It’s surprising how fast you get used to J-J translations. I remember the first time I used J-J I would understand 30% of the definition. so would take another 5 minutes looking up all the other words to be confronted by even more words to look up and so on. And It can be really easy to think OMFG this is gonna take forever. but I started to cap things off at about 3-5 links down the chain and then quickly peek at some english to make sure I understood the words. So I would end up understanding the whole sentence for my SRS then I would write the definition all in Japanese. A lot of the time it would take me longer to learn the meaning of the definition than the actual sentence. but everything fills itself in. as you know one part of the equation as it were. I just told myself I didn’t want to see any English characters In any fields from the start. and the definitions give me input as I’m reading them on top of the original sentences!
But what I’m trying to say is before you know it you won’t need to use English to look up any more, as you just get used to the language in the dictionary. and everything just becomes a lot more efficient.

By: Nivaldo

Nivaldo — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:12:35 +0000

Thanks for the answer, Khatz! I was in doubt only because sometimes I feel like “Yahoo! I got this and that in English perfectly but not the other thing”, especially common objects in everyday life. What I know in english is more technical and social like friends, games. But things like the different types of clothes, or common parts of the human body or objects that you use at home are still unknown in my internal vocabulary. So I thought I could expand on this but now I know, my dream was, is and will always be 日本語. Thanks once more!!

By: quendidil

quendidil — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:36:14 +0000

A bit OOT, but today I just bought a senior high textbook on 漢文　(Classical Chinese with added Japanese 送り仮名 and 返り点). I was surprised at how easy it was for me to read compared to 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 which is a teen “ライトノベル”. The only problem I have with the textbook is the occasional archaic Japanese translation of a Chinese sentence, but working from the Chinese I can still get the gist of it.

So Khatz, is non-fiction on the whole easier to read than fiction, or is it just for textbooks? Perhaps there are more idiomatic expressions in fiction than in non-fiction? I guess the sciences would be far more self-explanatory in Japanese than in English simply due to kanji compoundsね.

By: nacest

nacest — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:21:30 +0000

quendidil,
you probably (and understandably) took it for one of my typos instead of the manufacturer’s. I wouldn’t worry too much

khatz,
thanks for the suggestion!

“being non-Japanese and fluent in Japanese is still enough to get you on TV”
Does this mean you have been on TV? I’d certainly want to see that.

By: quendidil

quendidil — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:17:30 +0000

Oh lol, I didn’t even spot the い missing. Is that a bad thing? That my brain is sort of filling in the gaps in japanese? Like in English where you don’t notice typos?

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:36:58 +0000

@nivaldo
tough question. I vote for Japanese, just because (1) your English is already good and, (2) the socio-economic returns for being a fluent Japanese user tend to increase with fluency [being non-Japanese and fluent in Japanese is still enough to get you on TV, and also carries enough "shock value" ("OH-MY-GOSH-IT-SPEAKS-JAPANESE?") to be useful in social and business situations], whereas English fluency, while useful, is often taken for granted. Plus kanji are super cool.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:12:36 +0000

@nacest
I find a typo once in a while, too…it’s kind of fun in its own way.
Anyway, with sentences like that “if in doubt, throw it out”. Just skip it. There are many other “fish in the sea” if you will. Testing your editing skills would be a bit too risky, I think. So, yeah, just throw it out.

Good job picking out the errors, btw.

(That particular sentence is otherwise grammatical AFAIK, but as a general rule you shouldn’t bother stick around and find out. Just get rid of it.)

By: Nivaldo

Nivaldo — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:40:25 +0000

Hi, Khatz! Your post was great. I said I wouldn’t post any more comments but I couldn’t resist and besides, I have a small question. First, I would like to say that input is special at least for me, because when I’m inputting, I’m already trying to say something even though I don’t know how to say it, it’s just like magic, I don’t know but something compells me to dso it internally although I don’t actually output. It’s a great method and I regard you very highly for reminding me about it(for english!). Well, the question is: I’m pretty sure that if I stayed for one month just listening, reading, writing, and all that stuff for english I could become truly fluent in it, I mean fluent for good, but my goal is Japanese. I always dreamed of speaking Japanese, only didn’t have(or didn’t create) the opportunity for learning it. So, I’m a little confused. What do you think I should do now that I know almost 650 kanji? Thanks and please keep posting. I hope I keep my promise this time.

By: nacest

nacest — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:05:18 +0000

quendidl,
thanks for the reply.
I double-checked the sentence and I’m sure that’s how it’s written, so at least ボリ袋 is wrong. The 險 in 危險 is very similar to the simplified form, so I did recognize it. The doubts I had were with 「融れない」 and 「置いで」which I think should be 「融けれない（とけれない）」 and 「置いて（おいて）」. Also 「くださ」 without the い is something I’ve never seen before.

(for reference:注意！ボリ袋は、窒息の危險がありますので、お子様の手に融れない所へ置いでくださ」)

Anyway, apart from this specific sentence, what I wanted to express is my discomfort at not having the certainty that something is correct Japanese. Probably a language exchange friend would be able to solve this though.