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Patreon Q&A - December 4th, 2021 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-04 17:15:57
Imported:
2022-01

Content

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro

0:20 - I have many bad habits due to being forced to prematurely output for many years in school. How should I go about fixing these bad habits?

7:23 - Is it more efficient to stick to one genre/domain instead of jumping around?

11:50 - I'm thinking about going to a language school in Japan just to get a visa. Will the benefits of being in Japan override the negatives of being in classroom environment?

14:54 - How should I make cards for Japanese words that don't have any kanji?

17:11 - Is consciously studying grammar potentially harmful? Could learning grammar entirely through immersion lead to better results?

32:29 - Has Matt experienced any unexpected downsides from learning Japanese other than the opportunity cost?

36:07 - Recently I don't feel like words are jumping out at me like they used to. What can I do to fix this?

39:12 - Although I'm at a very high level of fluency, I still greatly struggle with one specific sound in my target language. How can I fix this?

43:43 - I can't stop myself from looking up every word I don't know while immersing and it's driving me crazy. How can I stop doing this?

47:32 - Is the SRS more useful in the beginning stages or advanced stages of learning a language?

54:14 - Is it a good idea to do language exchanges with native speakers where you speak you both speak your native language to each other?

54:57 - Is it best to make the monolingual transition as soon as possible?

Files

Patreon Q&A - December 4th, 2021

0:00 - Intro 0:20 - I have many bad habits due to being forced to prematurely output for many years in school. How should I go about fixing these bad habits? 7:23 - Is it more efficient to stick to one genre/domain instead of jumping around? 11:50 - I'm thinking about going to a language school in Japan just to get a visa. Will the benefits of being in Japan override the negatives of being in classroom environment? 14:54 - How should I make cards for Japanese words that don't have any kanji? 17:11 - Is consciously studying grammar potentially harmful? Could learning grammar entirely through immersion lead to better results? 32:29 - Has Matt experienced any unexpected downsides from learning Japanese other than the opportunity cost? 36:07 - Recently I don't feel like words are jumping out at me like they used to. What can I do to fix this? 39:12 - Although I'm at a very high level of fluency, I still greatly struggle with one specific sound in my target language. How can I fix this? 43:43 - I can't stop myself from looking up every word I don't know while immersing and it's driving me crazy. How can I stop doing this? 47:32 - Is the SRS more useful in the beginning stages or advanced stages of learning a language? 54:14 - Is it a good idea to do language exchanges with native speakers where you speak you both speak your native language to each other? 54:57 - Is it best to make the monolingual transition as soon as possible?

Comments

Anonymous

How would you change your approach if you lived in Japan?

昭和Guy51

How do you currently feel about Heisig's, Remembering The kanji (RTK) ? I think at one time both Matt vs Japan, and Refold recommend the RTK book. However, I do not recall seeing any video announcing the move away from RTK nor any explanation for that matter. Having said that I do really like Refold's 1k audio sentence decks as I think they are a move in the right direction! But, I also wanted to send out thanks specifically to Matt vs Japan for the videos that introduced me to RTK, mnemonics, and Anki. I have a poor visual memory (for complex kanji) and I found RTK's component by component story method to be very helpful in memorizing how to write Kanji that have a lot of strokes as well as Kanji that look almost identical to other kanji.

Anonymous

If you were learning based on listening before reading, how would you learn your initial vocabulary? How would you handle a vocab deck in a language with lots of homophones like Chinese? How would you change your approach to sentence mining?

Anonymous

Starting March, I will be studying abroad in a native Japanese High School for a year. How can I make the most out of this opportunity while minimalizing bad habits? Also thank you for your hard work, we all appreciate it!

Anonymous

Hey Matt, finishing up my first week with the JP1K deck. What would be your recommend source(s) for studying Japanese grammar? Also, when would you suggest someone starts studying grammar?

Anonymous

It -sounds- like "somewhat likely" is a better translation for "かもしれない" than "maybe", it isn't that maybe is wrong, but it's not precise enough. It seems like with translation you often get 'close enough' translations where some of the precision of the meaning is crushed down for the convenience of 1:1 words, when often words exist in languages to carry a meaning that requires a phrase in some other language.

Anonymous

Should you always study target languages through your native (or fluent second) language? I've been studying Spanish and reached a comfortable level, but I'm still a big step away of (near native level)-fluency. I want to start studying French next and have been hesitant to give it a go, because I haven't achieved my target level in Spanish yet. I have the idea to start studying French through Spanish, do you think this could benefit my Spanish or rather jeopordize my efforts in both languages?

Anonymous

HI, that was good advice about the /th/ going from isolation to conversation, recording yourself, but also incorporating listening discrimination to make sure you can here the difference. I teach the General American Accent and a speech-language pathologist btw ^_^.

Anonymous

What level of refold comprehension should you start watching more instead of reading? I know you talked about reading then catching up your listening, but at what level is that point reached?

Anonymous

When making cards in Anki, would you recommend using something like DeepL to translate target language definitions if you cannot yet understand them? In your November Q+A you talked about how your ideal version of a Japanese grammar guide would use native Japanese explanations that were translated into English. This made a lot of sense to me because, like many Japanese learners, Japanese grammar was first explained to me in terms of English grammar concepts. Later on I re-learned those grammar concepts from a native Japanese perspective, and everything became much easier to understand. Japanese often simply doesn't work on an English grammatical framework. So this got me thinking: When I make Anki cards, I use Japanese definitions where possible, but sometimes those definitions are too complex for me to understand, and so I use English definitions instead. In these cases, would a DeepL translation of a Japanese definition be more useful or valuable than a Japanese-to-English dictionary definition?

Anonymous

Having learned Spanish via traditional methods, coming into the program I have realized that my listening comprehension lags way behind the rest of my abilities and is now serving as a bottleneck. Are there any remedial activities you'd recommend I focus on in order to get over the hump of obtaining Level 5 comprehension on a random SOL series for graduating to Level 3?

refold
>>73413039

Hi Ian. Ethan here from Refold. I was in your exact position in November 2019 and I think many other learners from traditional backgrounds are going to experience this same problem so I decided to write an article about it. At some point it will go up on the website, but for now I've just posted it on Google drive. You can read it here: https://refold.link/listening_article

refold
>>73123465

Hi there, when we released JP1Kv1, Matt released a video explaining the theory behind the deck and how it compares to RTK. Here's a direct link to the section in the video: https://youtu.be/53qKsYxVhoM?t=250

Anonymous

Hi I'm not sure where to post questios for next month's Q&amp;A so I'm just gonna post it here. Matt mentioned in the Dec Q&amp;A that he read Japanese grammar guides in Japanese. Which of these guides would you recommend? I've been toying with the idea of putting myself through how a Japanese person would learn their own language in school by buying textbooks/workbooks off amazon.co.jp and working through them. What does Matt think of that?

Jeremy Gordon

Where can I find a list of where to find content for say, Slice of Life genre content in Japanese? VPNs never seem to work well on Netflix so I'm wondering if there's a better resource out there that people like to use, and if Matt has suggestions on like the top ten or twenty shows that would be good for beginner level content in Japanese.

refold
>>73555170

I'd recommend you ask this in the refold Japanese discord server. That's where we collect and organize resources. Here's the document we use: refold.link/Japanese

Anonymous

Whether or not you personally find music to be an efficient learning tool, have you considered it from the perspective of it being a natural holistic way of simultaneously sentence mining and exposing oneself to repetition, while also being able to practise shadowing?

Anonymous

Should I worry about subconsciously translating into English in the early stages of learning?

Anonymous

This is a more personal question, but have you ever watched 無職転生？　It's a Great Anime Right Now

Anonymous

Does Kanji fluency help you learn new Chinese characters faster / immediately after you see them within the context of learning Chinese rather than Japanese?

Anonymous

When I do immersion, I always try to find a sentence that I couldn’t listen to well and rewind and repeat the part until I can catch every single word. Do you think it expedites the process of improving my listening skill or is it just enough to enjoy content and keep watching without pausing?

Fabien
>>73279296

I feel like after many years of full time immersion I am able to hear the difference as well as anyone. At least I'd like to think so. And I should have maybe specified that in my question, but I *can* produce it. It's just that certain words and word combinations are tricky because each production requires conscious effort. It's not effortless or unconscious the way it is for native speakers. I sort of have to concentrate a bit when I know a /th/ is coming up in the sentence. Because if a German native doesn't concentrate on producing a good sounding /th/ it's going to come out as a /z/. You know, the way every German movie villain talks. I wish I could overcome that completely and just speak like a native. Do you have any other advice for me? I'm very keen on acquiring a good American accent.

Hayden

Hey Matt how’s it going? Do you think it’s possible to develop bad habits from doing a listening dominant approach? Like sometimes I listen to stuff and my mind thinks I’m hearing a certain word but it turns out to be a different word and as a result, I may have developed a bad habit of relating that misheard word to that sound. Did your friend, who learned entirely through listening, develop any bad habits as a result of mishearing or anything like that? Thanks as always.

Anonymous

Hey Matt! What do you think are the main differences in learning Japanese pitch accent between a person whose native language is tonal or already features a little bit pitch accent and someone whose native language doesn't. Say, a speaker of a Scandinavian language and an English speaker for example. Do you think these people are at a considerable advantage when it comes to pitch accent, and would they be able to pick up it up naturally without any conscious study? What do you think you would have done differently learning Japanese if you spoke one of these languages natively?

Fabien

Hi Matt, I have a question about subtitles. Non-target language subs are obviously frowned upon and the general rule is to either use no subs or at least target language subs. But I'm wondering if non-target language subs don't play a meaningful role in immersion learning after all. In your video “Why you still can’t understand your target language” you talked about resolving ambiguity with context and described the effect of hearing something and sometimes not immediately understanding the raw sounds (perhaps because you're in a noisy setting). Then a moment later your brain processes the information and before your opposite even has the chance to repeat themselves, you suddenly do understand it retroactively because your brain analyzed the sound it received using the context you're in. I feel like I have in the past experienced this “lag” phenomenon occasionally when watching target language content with native language subs. The raw sounds would be to fast for me to make out the words, but then I would read the subs, know the content of what was said and suddenly hear the target language sentence in my head retroactively. I figure this is my brain matching the sounds to the context that was provided by the subtitles and then predicting what likely must have been said using my knowledge of the target language. So non-native language subs can provide context. Would you agree with this assessment or am I misinterpreting this effect?

arec

Do you have any tips for making listening more engaging and less boring? I find that when I watch a show raw instead subbed(TL), I become a lot less engaged and zone out for most of the time. I can parse out the words when really try, but I feel like it takes so much more effort than when I have subs on. Would you recommend to just listen more lol?

Markus
>>74123551

I´ve experienced the same thing. Reading the english subs made me realize (hear) the target language words.