How to get off Anki

Japanese
#41

Well… not really. I tried out Russian and Spanish there just to have a look. They clearly are centred around idea to make you believe you will learn without effort at all to make you coming back and watch adds.

EDIT:
I am sorry to bring it up but this video is full of straw-man arguments and simple fallacies. Duoling tries this methodology and fails drastically.

One very simple neurological fact: you use different part of the brain speaking mother tongue and foreign language. You need more just than input to learn in effective way - you need provided your brain with information about language to help the process. Thats why analysing what you read help a lot. In fact: that how you learn to read you native tongue as well. Good teachers help you to break down how sentence works to it make it easier to read it.

Do you know why in Ancient Roma reading was consider very high lvl skill? Spoiler: they tried to teach in that way exactly. They did even bother explaining how letter works and just were asking to “read” after the teach until your brain will understand it. I took ages.

I agree with general sentiment but is based on falsehood. Unless you are naturally gifted person you will not learn by immersion alone. Millions of foreigner living abroad and doing just that are prove to this claim. There is a lot of them that never master language of country they move to. I for sure didn’t since I didn’t put any effort to it.

Please don’t take it personally. It is just an opinion on what I know and hope to understand. It is likely to be wrong :hugs:

#42

Japanese children are already fluent in the language when they learn Kanji. They’re not learning Japanese, they’re learning to read/write.

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#43

And here we will disagree so I would not bother. I need to read for immersion. I love books. I will not learn by not reading books. No way in hell xD

And just to be clear: I am not japanese child :stuck_out_tongue:

#44

If you write a sentence in my native language that is grammatically wrong, I’ll be able to spot immediately that it is wrong, but in most cases I won’t be able to point to you exactly why it is wrong, which grammar rule was broken. I believe this is true for most native speakers of a language.

I also never studied English grammar (learned completely by immersion), so if my sentences are not complete garbage it is because by reading a lot (having a lot of input) I have an intuitive sense of how to structure sentences.

#45

What I think and has been true in my experience is that you can learn everything from immersion, but using SRS flashcards (Anki) and grammar study can help the process go faster, if you don’t overdo the “studying” part. Whether it’s a word on a flashcard or a grammar rule, I feel that I learn them much better if I’ve already seen them used in a “real language” context.

Anyway there’s a kinda new site devoted to immersion learning, if you guys want to take a look at ideas around this: Refold

#46

I am not sure if you want to use your English as a proof that this method is so amazing. If I would be you I would rather not. :hugs:

There is nothing really wrong with your English, no worries. It is just below level I hope to get my Japanese to :blush:

And that’s my point. I want to make it faster. So I have put some effort up front. I am not willing to wait more than 9 month to be able to read books in Japanese instead of in English.

Granted: after I will need massive support of dictionary but I am so used to this, that I don’t mind it much. Technology allows as to make text way above your level into possible to understand and I am not going to ignore that to be “immersion purist”. If it works, it works. And I know it does :crazy_face:

I would also add that most speaker of any language have rather poor language skills. And they do nothing but immersion their whole life. In fact there is quite a massive correlation between time spent in school on studying and somebodies ability to speak and write properly in their language. That’s why between natives we are able to have a say about somebodies education background after just a few words of conversation most of the time. We add structure even to our natives languages so this argument does not work even here.

And yes: you use anki or method of your choice to help yourself master vocab of your language. My wife spends a lot of time doing just that since she need to know vocab like: “Retroperitoneal” in and out. You were taking note in school, didn’t you?

So using the way how natives learn to prove this point is fallacy even here.

To close this: people make huge misjudgment saying kids learn language quicker than adults. It is clearly not the case. This guy should know this: he claims he could learn in 2 years. Let’s make it into 5. Show my 5 years old speaking fluently their mother language to the point of being able to communicate high level concepts in clear and precise manner. There is may be 100 such a kids at max, and they are probably under supervision of mental experts since that would be very worrying sign. Savant syndrome is a serious issue.

#47

Right, I never claimed that my English is perfect, and I’m quite aware of my limitations. But the method does work to get you past this (sometimes elusive) threshold of “fluency” where you can communicate freely. If I cared enough I could perfect my English to a near-native level. (By the way, you haven’t heard me talking, I have a pretty noticeable accent).

I have friends and acquaintances my age that have spent years (and a good deal of money) in formal coursework that can’t even do that. They can’t write, can’t take part in a conversation. They know a lot about English grammar though, a lot more than me :grinning:

But I feel you are getting defensive about this, so I will refrain from commenting further with my broken English :grinning:

#48

still better than mine. You are clearly gifted person. I will not claim that about myself. :hugs:

#49

I agree with you fully you can’t learn language without using it. But there is for sure more to it if you are not naturally gifted. All people I consider to have better English than natives are able to give very easy to follow explanation why this part grammar works that way not another. And it is sometimes at odds with truly proper explanations.

I think most important thing is ability to makes language make sense for you. You help yourself with grammar explanations but you don’t stop there. You make theories and try to test if they make sense. It is very science like process at a heart.

I would call it linguistic Popperism if I can give it a name myself xD

I will have to assume you know Karl Popper since I can’t find easy and short explanation. But in short: that’s the guy that created modern science by coining principle of falsifiability, and his wider ideas helped a lot in understanding how people learn and get to know each others. Generally in simple words: make theory and try to break it. Then repeat with better theory.

Don’t ask me why I felt a need to make it clear. No clue xD

Edit:
It is so against my nature that my brain did even bother to notice it 0_o

By no means I did mean that, and I am as far from being offended as you can get. I enjoy this debate.

If I did offend you then I am sorry. I even delete my first response altogether to make sure this will not happen. If you still find this offensive please rest assured that it was not an intend. I did my best to not take away any credibility from you. You opinions are just as valid as mine. I just happened to like mine better xD

As a prove for that look what happen before: I have make serious change to my method after your comments. Clearly I would not have do that if would have tendency to get overly personal about this kind of discussions :hugs:

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If you could give 'Just starting Japanese' you one piece of advice, what would it be