Weird language learning advice

Japanese Language
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In the Last few weeks I watched some Videos on YouTube and encountered some people who say Things Like:

  • Grammar is unneccessary. Don’t do it. All textbooks are Bad.
  • You must read (or listen) from day one. Don’t do anything else. Bear the ambiguity. Even If you don’t understand anything.
  • Don’t write.
  • Don’t speak.
  • You must use Anki.
  • My learning Methode is the only one that will make you fluent in Japanese (or any other language)

(These are Not literal quotes)

What do you think about that? Do you let these people interfere with your learning Methode?

Feel free to add some more of these “learning advices”.

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I think the Japanese learning community in particular is plagued with learners that spend countless hours researching the “best” way to learn instead of doing literally any studying. Don’t take any advice as gospel, just pick some resources and use them. If you don’t like them or feel like you aren’t progressing try something else. The least efficient study method by far is the one where you spend all your time searching for the most efficient method.

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Don’t worry. I already found the learning Methode that is perfekt for me (at the Moment) and am spending a Lot of time learning. So These people doesn’t make me question it.

I Just wanted to know what other people think about it.

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Any time someone says something like “you have to do this” or “don’t ever do that” or “this is the only right way, everyone else is wrong” I immediately click away. The process of learning a language is personal, and there are 100 different ways to do it. Some ways might take longer, but in this day and age it’s hard to learn a language the “wrong” way. Everyone’s path is going to look different. Some people can learn grammar organically without ever having to open a textbook. Some use a textbook as the backbone of their study. Neither one is wrong, as long as they made progress that day, they’re on the right track. That can be applied to every other aspect of learning as well: some people find writing useful to reinforce their vocab knowledge, for others it will be a waste of time. If someone doesn’t have the mental capacity to realize that not everyone learns the exact same way as them, then they’re not qualified to teach at all, and I’m not going to waste time humoring whatever they’re probably trying to sell.

In general I find the WK community to be very open minded, we have lots of different clubs for different skills, and while most people pick a few skills to focus on they still enjoy discussing the other skills, and won’t infer that they’re a waste of time. Now r*ddit on the other hand, dear god don’t tell them that you’re using WK, or practice handwriting, or don’t prioritize speaking, etc…

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In my experience, those people are usually trying to sell you something.

All textbooks are bad (buy my videos).
You have to read (here’s some ebooks I made)
Don’t read/write/speak (my watch time will suffer)
My method is the only one that works (buy it now!)

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This is absolutely true, but I think also it’s human nature to want to defend the particular path you ended up taking. After all, it worked for you (and it would feel bad to believe you picked a horribly inefficient route…) We can’t go back and do comparative studies of how we would have done if we’d done something different, alas, so the best we can do is reports of personal experience.

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Maybe change the thread title? I was expecting a very general thread about how to go about learning but it seems like the goal is more to bash certain influencers and their take on the question.

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I’m sorry that it was misleading. I will Change the title.

It was not my Intention to bash someone. I honestly wanted to know other peoples opinions on These learning advices.

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Is the new title better?

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I take these with a grain of salt, but I do believe that you should start listening from the beginning even if you don’t understand. I waited way too long to listen to native content because it scared me. If I could go back I’d listen to everything I could find, in addition to the basic dialogues etc that I could fully understand.

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I think there’s two things going on here:

First of all, as others have mentioned, there’s many routes to learning a language and a lot of people want to defend/promote the particular path they think helped them.

The second is people will quite often have an increase in progress after shifting methods, regardless of the relative effectiveness of those methods, especially if the new method fills in gaps that the old method left. People will then attribute their final result to the new method, even if it only worked so well for them because it built on the foundations of what they had learned by their previous method.

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All good, maybe just some nuanced language barrier things if you’re not a native?

Do you let these people interfere with your learning Methode?
Feel free to add some more of these “learning advices”.

“let someone interfere” implies they are trying to do something undesirable and the quotes around “learning advice” made me think you were implying that their takes weren’t real advice.

I think there is a lot of poor advice out there so I don’t necessarily have any problem with criticizing them though, just to be clear.

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I’ve tried several different things, used some, dumped others. I think it just comes down to what works for you.

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I think a lot of people take good logical things that make sense in specific contexts and then over simplify them to the point they become bad advice.

Let me elaborate on a few

“Don’t study grammar”. This one is rooted in comparison of traditional school learning, which tends to heavily emphasize grammar to the point that you end up with people who can barely talk about anything beyond the weather or introducing themselves, but can do so with perfect grammar. In contrast, someone who jumped straight into speaking will likely grow a high vocabulary, and have poor grammar, and yet be able to hold more interesting conversations. Some people see that and over-correct and think “grammar is useless”.

But reality is of course more nuanced. The more truthful advice would be to not over study grammar to the point that you’re neglecting everything else. However how much will vary based on where you are in your learning journey. For me, on a perfect day, I study grammar for about 15 mins a day. I study kanji on WK probably for about 15-20 mins a day. I listen to videos for about 30 minutes, and I read my novels for about an hour. Someone else will have different numbers and that’s probably ok. But if someone is spending 5 hours a day studying grammar and less than 10 minutes putting it into practice, that’s probably not good.

So if I were to give the advice it would be “Finish your textbook (or equivalent grammar course) a little bit at a time every day, and do other stuff too”

“You must use Anki”
I don’t (at least not for the purpose most people use it for). I do use SRS in WK and NativShark, but overall that’s about 30 mins of my day. At one point I used Anki or iKnow to randomly learn stuff and at first it led to great gains, but then I started to forget more because I wasn’t giving myself time to go learn them in the wild.

So really it’s more “Use an SRS if you want, it can be very effective, but keep in mind that only relying on SRS is not a magic wand, you still have to practice”

”You must read from day one”
I’ll give you one higher. I’ve seen people say you must read ONLY native non-kid materials from day 1. Many of these people did not do so. They started out on a more traditional path, learned a little but as fast as they were hoping for, eventually got native materials and found that their skills skyrocketed. Then they think the only way to learn is to do that from day 1, ignoring that they still build a foundation with their initial methods, and ignoring that the act of reading is a form of testing and practicing what you’ve learned to help the brain glue that knowledge. However for most people starting out, this would be a frustrating experience from day 1.

On the other hand, some people get complacent and only read easy things (like N5 level graded readers) for years out of fear of ambiguity. Because of this they never get to challenge themselves.

Once again, the truth lies in the middle. You should aim for whatever is the highest level you are mostly (but not completely) comfortable reading. This level will vary per person. And that means for some people they can’t get to even a starting point until after a month or more of studying, and maybe they’re just reading premade exercises. And that can be ok as long as they don’t get stuck there.

Overall
So yeah, when I hear advice, I ask myself “what experience would have led that person to believe that” and instead of blindly following it, I try to figure out where its nuance lies. Are there specific contexts when it is somewhat valid and some where it isn’t?

And I’m not saying I’m completely right either! I hope someone is reading this and thinking about some factors I missed out on and building on their adaptation of that advice!

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Maybe “influence in a negative way” might have been a better choice of words than “interfere”.

What I meant is: you have your learning Methode and it works for you, but than Change it because someone Else says he became fluent with another Methode and that your Methode is bad. But you don’t Like the new Methode and learning isn’t fun anymore but force yourself to continue the new Methode anyway because so many people say that it works for them and has to work for everyone Else too.

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If it works for you, why would you let a stranger on the Internet mess with it?

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First of all, all this talk about “The secret six ways to become fluent in any language, guaranteed money back, You must follow me or else you will get stuck in an unending loop… etc.” is nothing but aggressive marketing. There’s no such thing as a secret method. Just like we have different fingerprints, we have different brains (not physically intended). Every brain is like a gate, and every gate has its own key that doesn’t necessarily work with the other gates. Take my brother and me as an example. The only way my brother learns a new language is by diving headfirst right from the start. No grammar rules, no textbooks, no language classes. Just throw him in somewhere where he would hear nothing but the new language, and his ears would pick up the words and sentences one by one until the new language is all “awake” in his head. For me, on the other hand, my brother was an alien. My head has only worked the “cognitive” way, which is textbooks, grammar rules, SRS repetitions, and so on.

However, even though every head of ours has its own key, there is still a final point where all language learners get to meet sooner or later, which is immersion. Our heads (physically speaking) are divided into parts. Two of these parts belong to the speaking and listening skills. No matter how much information and knowledge you have about the language, even if you have it all, if you leave any of these parts stagnant with no training, it won’t “evolve.” (I know it by personal experience). If you don’t train your ears on listening, no matter how simple the text you are hearing is, you won’t understand it. This needs immersion. If you don’t train your tongue on speaking it out, even though you have the sentence structure in your head, your tongue will remain paralyzed. And this needs immersion as well. Like I said, some people don’t need preparation before the first dive, and others do. It doesn’t matter how long the preparation time takes, but you will have to eventually step into the actual ring. You won’t win from the first round, though. It will take a bit until "the water takes the shape of the mold.

I hope you find my answer relieving enough. Whenever you need anything or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to throw it my way. It’s always my pleasure to help as a language learner enthusiast, who has gone through and experienced all this. Enjoy your learning journey! I wish you all the best! :wink::grin:

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I Like your metaphor with the key.

I also prefer learning Grammar with textbooks first and learn vocabulary through using and seeing them again and again in the textbooks. While WaniKani works great for me I unfortinately can’t say the Same thing about Anki.

I did some listening with JapanesePod101 until Level 2 but my tolerance for ambiguity seems to be very Low.

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It’s definitely not the “popular” take, but I do feel a lot of the “everyones brain works different” idea has become a bit counterproductive and is often used for explaining away rather nuanced individual differences from time to time. Theres a lot that can kinda get swept up in it.

What we do know from research on expertise and learning (unless I badly misinterpreted the stuff I’ve read) is that humans learn things in more or less the same ways, and even across different disciplines the general framework for becoming highly proficient are the same.

My view of what “works” for people has a lot to do with alterable personal factors like discipline, habits, how badly they want the skill, what they find interesting (yes, what you find interesting is alterable), free time, stress levels, etc etc. Most of those (except maybe free time/other commitments) can all be grouped under “our brain”. But what “everyones brain is different, find what works for you!” misses so badly is that what works for you isn’t some singular answer. It changes depending on how you manage your life. Person A who felt abc method was their limit might learn better stress management techniques such as meditation, become generally happier in life, and find that they can actually take on some more now or that activity dfg that felt too stressful before has become doable thanks to more 余裕. You have agency over this stuff and its not decided for you. If you’re going to choose method XYZ, be my guest, but I hope people actually stop and take a moment to reflect on why they are really choosing it.

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I agree but also disagree, in that I think personal preferences can also play a huge role. I find that I can only make myself do something I don’t enjoy for so long before I rebel. I have also discovered that I feel incredibly stressed if I don’t understand what people are saying, much more so than if I can’t think of the right words to say. These things have to influence how I study, although they probably don’t influence how my brain learns.

I’ve heard people say that speaking is necessary to advance your learning. I believe that’s true. But, apart from in Japanese, I never spoke in any of my other languages until my comprehension was close to B2. And then when I started speaking, I could immediately enjoy it, and found I jumped in at about a B1 level: much worse than what I could understand, but stress free, so I actually wanted to practice. Maybe my point is fun->motivation->improvement, or something.

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