I think Tae Kim said that in the Guide to Japanese Grammar.
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I live in Norway, so they aren’t after making money, but the system feels lazy. It’s designed in a way so everyone can understand and follow at the same pace, but that makes it terribly inefficient. Schools should be divided based on the student’s skill, it needs to be more tailored for what kind of student someone is, and not use the slow accessible method. An example would be: Powerpoint presentations have never taught me anything, yet I’ve had to sit through countless of them for years and years and read up on the material afterwards. I don’t learn from a teacher soullessly spouting a bunch of facts with images on a screen behind them.
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In my experience, passive listening does one crucial thing that I haven’t found elsewhere: it acclimates you to the sounds and beats of a language. I’ve found that my accuracy on WK is much higher on days where I do some kind of passive listening.
In addition, I still struggle to distinguish words in Japanese. Not the meaning itself, but just where a word begins and ends. Mandarin, on the other hand, I find much easier even though I know significantly less words in Mandarin.
The difference is that I spent 6 weeks of forced immersion in mainland China during a business trip.
I’m not suggesting this is true in the general case, just that this is something that has worked for me.
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Whether any of this works or not, I’m just glad it gave me a good excuse to rewatch One Piece.
Since I wanted to watch with japanese subs, I put it on the japanese netflix and to my surprise they have it all the way to Wholecake Island. 
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Actually, can anyone confirm this? I’ve managed to bring up many search results for 携帯知りません, and they do seem to be used when a phone has been lost, but it doesn’t seem like the only natural way to phrase things. For that matter, on HiNative, almost everyone who asked how to translate ‘Have you seen my phone?’ got the answer ‘携帯見なかった?’ or something similar. Even when someone specified that it had been lost, this happened:
Have you seen my phone? I can’t seem to find it anywhere… (casual)
ねぇケータイ見なかった？どこにもないんだよね…
It could be a case of natives of one language being unable to full understand sentences in another, but it seems like it’s not true that 知りません・知らない is the only possible verb here.
That aside, I suspect 知りません here really means something like ‘do you know anything about my phone?’ That would just mean that Refold is pointing out how there are two idiomatic phrases used in the same context with different meanings, but which produce the same result. I can’t find any other information about this usage though, because it doesn’t appear under 知る in any dictionary I know. Anyone else have better luck? Anyone heard this used in a more tangible context before (e.g. at work, in a drama, with friends)?
Agreed. Pretty ironic. I personally don’t use flashcards. However, if it works for people, great. Similarly, I hope Refold works out for anyone who finds it interesting.
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I can partially confirm. When informally asking if someone as seen XYZ, you can say “XYZ, 知ってる？” (Do you know XYZ). Using “知らない?” instead would not surprise me, but it’s not something I say. (So I can’t 100% confirm)
Well, it’s an everyday occurrence for me, since it seems either me or my spouse are always looking for something 
Edit: thinking about it, I think it’s just a contraction of XYZ[ってどこにあるか]知ってる・知らない？
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After learning ahout the AJATT Method I increased my listening input to nearly all day and I’ve been reading more.
I’m not going to cut of speaking. It’s just so fun.
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To be honest I have no idea, what disturbed me in that quote I found on their website is how their formulation could lead beginners to fall in the “literal translation trap”. The actual example they use might be wrong too, that I don’t know.
I don’t understand what disturbs you. The text you quoted is all about warning people against literal translation in the first place ! As they say we can’t translate literally “Have you seen my phone ?” in Japanese and expect it to work, the two languages have different expression strategy. I don’t get what is controversial or misleading. 
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Welcome to Refold
If you want to be fluent in a language, then you’ve come to the right place. 99% of the methods on the internet won’t get you past basic conversation. Refold will.
Most methods are based on outdated ideas. They teach you to use grammar and vocabulary as building blocks to construct sentences. This works really well if you need to say a few simple things on your foreign vacation, but it doesn’t work for fluency. If you use traditional methods, your speaking will forever be clunky and unnatural.
Jesus Christ. How stuck-up can a website get? Especially that last sentence. I’m not going to subscribe to something which puts everything else down. Each person has different learning methods to achieve fluency. Reminds me of MattvsJapan himself when he criticised everything about WaniKani despite never having actually been immersed in it. For that reason alone I’m not going to bother to try the service.
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What was his argument about wanikani?
It’s almost the same as anki. It’s like using somone else’s deck.
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Basically that you’re learning words without context around them. But WK itself tells you to reinforce what you learn with real Japanese content.
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He claims that WaniKani is an out-of-context method to learn Kanji and RTK is a more in-context approach to learn Kanji.
He claims that WaniKani will result in memory interference because some Kanji are given the same meaning and that RTK is superior because each Kanji has its own individual ‘English’ Translation. However what he doesn’t talk about is how some of the meanings written by James Heisig, in an attempt to achieve individuality for each Kanji, are really far off from the actual meaning.
He claims that one of the major weaknesses of WaniKani is that it provides premade mnemonics, which is a bit hypocritical considering RTK does that for about the first 500 Kanji.
I really like his other videos and I can see why RTK works for many people, but Matts elitism when it comes to learning Japanese is something that needs to be worked on. This is the case for the website that OP just posted as well.
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to be fair he said that sentence mining + RTK is better than WK(IMO it’s better if RTK works for you).
I’ve seen a lot of people having trouble with the mnemonic on WK.
WK STILL DOESN"T have an integrated way of dealing with leeches.
context sentences??
the list of problem with wanikani goes on and he had a lot of points.
he defines most method as the stereotypical class, while he does exaggerate, never have i known anyone who just went to class and got good at the language and i know a good number of people who speak 3-5 languages.
My view of traditional methods isn’t just being in a classroom, it’s also self studying and interacting with natives to delve deeper into the language. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past ten months. That’s what the likes of Dogen did as well, and that’s probably what Matt did too.
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I got my start at a language school, and I’d probably do it again if I started over. I liked the structure of a classroom and the accountability, community. But whether I would qualify as good according to him is the question I guess. I suppose not, seeing as I’ve never passed for Japanese in a VR chat.
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I have so many complaints with Japanese classes.
They should teach casual conjugations alongside polite conjugations.
They also need a soft intro to keigo a lot sooner.
I’m taking classes now. There’s some good points too. I can listen to my teacher and learn some vocab words.
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Well he eventually took down the video after reflecting on it.
Compared to his stances from the very beginning, straight from the ultra-hardcore and ultra purist AJATT mold, I would say he mellowed a lot. Most of what written on Refold is not unreasonable now for some type of people.
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