Re: Can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

John Reeves wrote:
On Feb 23, 1:25 am, "Paul Blay" <blay.p...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"John Reeves" <johny...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote ...

Worked for me anyway.
I think that's the main point. ;-)

Actually this method worked really well for me for a period of about
two years, after I had already been studying Japanese for about five
years. Maybe I might have benefited from trying this method earlier,
but I think that I needed a certain amount of vocab before it would
work (and easy texts).

I'm sure people learning a language welcome suggestions on ways to do things
and I encourage them to try them out to see if they do the trick.

And I think different techniques are better suited to different stages
of the learning process. Don't feel like you're getting anyway? Try a
different approach. A particular technique doesn't really work for
you? Try it again a year or two later.

On the other hand "one true way" disciples and those endless arguments
over which methods are better are best dealt with by that oriental^W
eastern^W Japanese wisdom expressed by the word スルー.

Too true :-)

A technique I'd really like to try is listening to audio books in
Japanese - assuming that such things exist. I've looked for them a
couple of times in the past, but with no success. Anyone?


There IS a book called _Breaking into Japanese LIterature_ that has online audio of each short story so you can read along.

A long time ago I used dub the audio from video tapes of Japanese
movies onto audio tape (obviously we're talking ancient history here)
and listen to the tape maybe 20 or 30 times. Each time I would
understand a little bit more, and when I eventually watched the video
again, I would be pleased to find that my comprehension had jumped
enormously... from maybe 1% to about 5%. Still, this was a good way
(for me at that stage of my learning) to get my ears used Japanese
spoken at natural speed.


I'm convinced that simple animations with written scripts are going to be the wave of the future for language instruction, even from the very start of the very first day of class:

「はじめまして」
「はじめまして」

complete with simple animations of cartoon figures of people greeting each other get the point across, I think. New animation software tools are being produced, as we speak, for non-professionals to be able to compose animations at that level with little more difficulty than an iMovie.
.

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