Anyone doing / did AJATT?

Japanese Language Resources
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That actually it’s not so clear to me. I think I could go Stephen Krashen on this, but my experience in english has been different. Mainly reading and watching provided a solid background when I’ve needed to produce. Not perfect, sure, but with time in a english speaking country my production goes really high in no time. I’m confident SRS wouldn’t be needed if I’m truly in a production required enviroment.

Anyway, just my thoerization about language learning, based on my english learning process… AKA … my 2 cents…

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I agree :stuck_out_tongue: And that’s the important idea to take into account here: most of us will most likely not get that.

Last time I was in an English speaking country was when I was 4 years old.

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Speaking as someone who did full AJATT (with RTK for Kanji) for at least a year, I did not find it to be effective. The sheer volume of content I listened to helped my pronunciation, sure, because I shadowed a lot of it.

But like…unless you don’t have a job or any commitments outside of learning Japanese, it’s really unsustainable. And because it involves a lot of input without taking the time to digest grammar, it isn’t as effective and purposeful as it could be. So I burnt out and then didn’t do much learning at all for a couple of years, leading to a backslide that meant just going slower (and more deliberately) with my studies would’ve led to better advancement overall. But maybe I’m not hardcore enough.

Also, I ended up coming to WaniKani and liking it much better, but that’s anecdotal. Just keep in mind when discussing AJATT that for a lot of WK users, this isn’t their first attempt at learning Kanji or Japanese, and it’s possible that they have either looked into or used AJATT themselves and found it less than ideal.

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I did AJATT and RTK for about 4 months. I found it quite effective as I would pick up words and started having dreams in japanese. However, it wasn’t sustainable at all. Lost sleep and couldn’t enjoy media in other languages, it felt isolating and mentally draining, eventually led to complete burnout. Didn’t pick up japanese learning for years after because it left me with bad associations. I have no doubt of its effectiveness, I just could not handle the pressure.

Besides, I don’t know why I was in such a hurry to learn the language to begin with. I find WaniKanis slower pace to be smooth and enjoyable :cherry_blossom:

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Mmm, I guess that hardcore rythm keeps burning out right around the corner all the time…

By the way, is there any part of your AJATT routine that you currently use now?

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Hm, I’d say that I still try to consume as much Japanese media (podcasts, blogs, games, movies, music, etc.) as possible, which AJATT definitely got me in the habit of doing. (Not saying that’s unique to AJATT, just that I sought out media exclusively in Japanese for a while because of my exposure to AJATT). I definitely don’t go for the full immersion method that AJATT encourages (no media in other languages if you can avoid it and whatnot) anymore, because I found it isolating and demotivating in the long run.

Anki was something I used heavily in my AJATT days to study sentence patterns, and I still haven’t quite gotten back to using it again because of negative associations I have with it now, lol. I’m planning to give Anki another shot once some personal life stuff clears up - @hinekidori, the Anki advocate extraordinaire, has definitely encouraged me to do so with their posts singing the praises of it.

I don’t use Heisig’s RTK to learn Kanji anymore, obviously. :wink: I can’t even really credit RTK or AJATT with introducing me to mnemonics, either, since a couple of my teachers in high school emphasized using them for material that’s tough to recall.

I’d say that AJATT has some decent ideas. A lot of Khatzumoto’s stuff harkens back to things motivational speakers say, at least to me; that’s not in itself a bad thing! For folks struggling with the confidence or motivation to take on something as intimidating as learning a language, I think that AJATT-type “you can do it” stuff can be helpful to hear.

It just…hmm. I think that as much as traditional learning methods have their faults, having someone/something actually explain complex grammar points is really, really helpful. I may have heard many sentences using より or の方 and gotten a feel for how they’re used through exposure to them, but actually knowing why they’re used that way and having misconceptions I may have developed about them corrected is really important.

(Also, side note: like @ehugin, I also started having dreams in Japanese while doing AJATT, haha. I had a soft-spoken podcast playing at night, usually, so that’s probably why.)

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You can mute it.

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Please do come back in a few months, it would be really interesting to read about your experience (I really mean it).

I don’t know if you watched Matt’s 3h video on his experience, but it is really fascinating. It was for me the perfect example on why not to do AJATT. The guy went 300% on japanese learning, to a point where, while in Japan, he avoided as hard as possible speaking to anybody and refused to do anything in the country, he just stayed locked in his room doing flash cards (this is for me the pinnacle of absurdity). And at the end of his journey, he was so sick of the language that he couldn’t consume anything in japanese, renounced his dream to live in Japan and realized that, as it was his life goal, he had no clue what to do with his life. And the cherry on top, he wasn’t even satisfied with the result, considering his Japanese nowhere near being good enough.

AJATT is not a learning method, it’s a mindset: your whole life for Japanese proficiency. No deal for me.

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I also agree that AJATT has some good ideas. I followed some JALUP advice and have some sentence decks but this isn’t my consistent method of study (maybe add like 8-10 sentences every two days and review them everyday?) As for the immersion thing, that is what burns me out so quickly. I once tried to listen to 22 hours of Japanese one day (plus sleep hours) like Khatz recommends (something like that), and I didn’t want to learn/listen to any Japanese after.

I really dislike Matt vs Japan because he’s actually an elitist: he thinks everyone who learns Japanese is either an AJATTer or some casual never-going-to-be-fluent peasant using a substandard method. JALUP is MUCH better in that regard.

From my experience, AJATT sentence decks seem pretty useful to pickup new vocab (except one thing: instead of completely abandoning a J-E dictionary, I use it first, and then look at the J-J definition and it helps so much more with comprehending that definition) Other than that, WK for the win! (and study grammar)

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Taking things out of context.
I tried opening your mind to new ideas / methods.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m out.

Just because someone doesn’t want to use your method doesn’t mean they are closeminded or not willing to try new methods. It just means they don’t like the method xD! But I am curiuous. If you are fluent after two years please write down what you did exactly and open a topic. I am curious :).

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I don’t see the point of getting to a “native” level even before coming to Japan (if that is even possible). There is not exactly a lack native Japanese speakers here, but with the right skills they will even pay for your language lessons.

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Cya in about 18-24 months (If I remember).
Anyway, I’m gonna turn off my notifications cause it’s distracting and I’m supposed to be AJATTing.

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I’m a relatively new WK user, so take this as you will.

I began my Japanese learning journey with AJATT after having already taught myself French to a very high level. Japanese is a language whose sound and mystique had always captivated me. I am a lifelong lover of languages and this one has always been on my ‘want to speak well’ bucket list.

I started with AJATT, but quickly burned out during the RTK phase. I did RTK for 2 months, learned a bunch of kanji, couldn’t do much with it and immediately got discouraged. That left a horrible taste in my mouth and I stepped away from Japanese for five years because I didn’t want to have to learn Kanji in that way. It bored me, it basically treated Kanji as a large alphabet, but one you didn’t really know how to pronounce or what to do with. Although I am new to WK, I can already tell that this method is one that i’ll be able to stick to and even probably accelerate with, but most importantly, it is fun, sustainable, and doesn’t make Japanese feel like an insurmountable mountain that can only be climbed one way.

As someone with a love for foreign languages, I don’t underestimate the value of a large amount of comprehensible input, and when I get to that point, some of AJATTs core tenants may be more applicable for my situation, but I don’t believe that grammar is evil. I don’t believe that studying grammar will somehow disable or handicap you in speaking Japanese.

I’ve been a member of various language learning communities over the last decade, from the old HTLAL forums to the language learning Reddit to various communities of language learning. I can say that there’s some sort of elitism in the Japanese circle from some parties that doesn’t exist to this extent in other communities.

I’m sure Matt’s Japanese is awesome, it certainly sounds so, but he makes wild claims that seem to indicate he believes AJATT to be the only way to learn Japanese. To the point where he’s hated on WK and JFZ. JFZ isn’t for me as its pace seems a bit too slow, but George is awesome as a person and I GREATLY enjoy his videos on Japanese. Matt’s comments toward George in support of AJATT over JFZ were sort of out line and made him come off sort of like an pompous elitist.

I don’t doubt that sticking with AJATT long enough will lead to phenomenal results, but it is not the only way to get to the end, in my opinion. If it works for you, then great, I wish you all the success. At this point, WKani and Genki and grammar/vocab study work for me.

Even if we could definitively state that RTK+AJATT were the most efficient way to reach fluency in Japanese, what would it matter if it’s too extreme for most people to follow? I consider myself an above average language learner and it almost destroyed Japanese for me. What good is a method in which many people are forced to either endure torture or give up? For those people, AJATT is not the best method, and that’s the point here There is no one size fits all approach.

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As someone who came to Japan with zero knowledge of Japanese and lived in a forced “All Japanese All The Time” environment, I can’t recommend it. There are too many important questions in the beginning that get swept under the rug if you can’t ask them. Also, going the full-immersion route requires a lot of patience from the people around you—they have to carry a lot of weight to coerce your intended meaning out of you.

For me, full immersion was less productive in terms of comprehension and retention, but was helpful for giving me an ear for pronunciation. When I later was able to switch to a less extreme “partial” immersion, my learning leapt forward. At some point, it starts to feel like you’re learning in your sleep. When I started being able to really express myself, I was back in English-only-land, but I was learning faster than ever.

As usual, YMMV.

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The “Matt vs Japan” guy appeared on an ALT podcast that I listen to now and then (ALT Insider) and talked about AJATT for an hour.

I still don’t think I’ve been convinced of anything other than “anyone who puts in as much work as the AJATT proponents say you need to put in will get good at Japanese pretty much no matter how they do it”.

I’m still not convinced that avoiding speaking or reading grammar is somehow good for you. I still hate RTK from personal experience.

Some of the things advocated are just generally sensible ideas that aren’t specific to AJATT, but I don’t see why that justifies all the other restrictions that define the system.

Anyway, I gave him an hour of my time, so yeah, I think that I can avoid the accusations that I haven’t given him a chance to explain yet.

He’s “some guy” who happens to have a big following. He didn’t claim to have teaching credentials, or even Japanese credentials (as far as I can recall). He said he’s working toward a BA in Japanese, but that’s not necessarily that high of an ability level, presumably it’s lower than what he currently claims to have the ability to do.

PS: Maybe the most annoying part was when he was like “I saw some videos of people who did AJATT for 2 years and now they sound fluent, where are the videos of the people doing not-AJATT for 2 years and getting fluent?” The problem is that people who don’t do AJATT aren’t going to make a big deal about their method, because they’re just studying Japanese and aren’t going to put a label on it.

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Exactly what I feel.

Languages are like everything else… the more languages you learn, the more you figure out how stuff happens. I believe Matt’s native language is English and I also guess that Japanese is his 2nd language. In my experience, I wished I had started practicing my English speaking way earlier. I also like to insist on doing both JP => EN and EN => JP for vocab. I have several occasions where I get completely helpless in recalling an English word or that I’m able to recall the English word, but not the Portuguese one. Everything because most of my English learning was pure reading/listening. Last time I was in an English speaking country was when I was 4.

Emerging in a language is extremely important, but when you’re maintaining several languages, it’s important to be able to connect them too. Also, one can’t just skip parts of a language and call oneself fluent.

My 2c.

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Yeah, for sure.

One thing that I didn’t get though was when he talked about making flashcards for sentences you come across in anime/whatnot. He said that you should pick sentences that are i+1, so you know everything but one element of the sentence. That’s reasonable. (ignoring that it’s hard for beginners to even parse sentences at all, so knowing that you truly have isolated one new piece of info is hard)

But then what are you supposed to do with that +1 bit? People who are just starting aren’t going to be able to absorb a Japanese resource that explains said element. If you find a sentence where the part you don’t understand is a past tense conjugation, you’re supposed to read about the past tense in Japanese at that level? Reading about it in your native language is off limits, so I just don’t really see how it’s supposed to work.

Or are you just supposed to make the flashcard, and leave that +1 element there, and I guess some day you’ll just magically know it without ever having taken the time to study it? I know he talks about “learning the way babies learn” but our brains physically change. We lose the ability to learn language that way, and it’s a fact that you can’t get around by brute force.

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That’s also how I feel about AJATT. It seems like a brute force method where you just spend as much time as possible learning the language. While that may work to some extent, there are much more efficient ways to study.

I will also never understand how not reading grammar explanations in a language that you already understand isn’t beneficial, especially to newer learners. Sure, you could read dozens and dozens of sentences with a certain pattern in context (and hours compiling/understanding those examples) and probably pick up the meaning but you could also just read an explanation along with example sentences and get a better understanding of the grammar in just a few minutes.

It’s not like you’ll stop gaining a deeper understanding of something the more you see it just because you read an explanation of it in English when you were starting out.

I do agree that reading Japanese definitions of vocabulary once you’re able to understand them can be beneficial though since it can help to avoid misunderstanding a meaning and often provides a better definition than a single word translation.

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I can see where he’s coming from with regard to the fact that some people use those “grammar formulas” as a crutch. They have a 1:1 ratio of English ideas > Japanese ideas chain of thought that they use to produce language and it’s hard to break that.

But that’s a general approach problem, not an issue with individual grammar explanations.

You should be able to read about grammar and not just rely on overly simplistic things like ‘です always equals “is”’ or something.

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That.

And that.

AJATT is not a method, it’s a community of highly motivated hardcore people who have no choice but to brag about their result and method to justify the ridiculous amount of time and efforts they spend on it.

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