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jesselt (Offline)
弱肉強食
 
Posts: 313
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: 夢の泉
10-29-2009, 04:16 AM

In regards to your first couple of questions:

Heisig's method works for a lot of people. That being said, I think most serious learners and academic institutions regard it as crap. After you have finished learning all the meanings of the Kanji you have to relearn the readings, not to mention that the meaning of the kanji by itself may have little or nothing to do with any kanji compound that it appears in. Seems like a two steps forward one step back method to me personally. I don't hold AJATT in any higher regard either. At best, AJATT is extremely impractical for people who don't live in caves if you follow it the way the author intends. Throw away everything in my house that is in English and purchase all new Japanese items? No thanks. Further more, AJATT doesn't actually explain how to learn Japanese but opts instead to just repeatedly tell you to completely immerse yourself in a Japanese only environment + ??? = Magical Japanese knowledge. Some things he says are true and practical, but you should take everything with a grain of salt.

Secondly, if your goal is to actually learn Japanese, then there is nothing wrong with learning the formal text book language. A serious learner will want to fully understand the language and that begins with learning the basics. My teacher once told us of a girl who had lived in Japan for a couple of years but didn't learn any Japanese before going. When she came back she could speak and understand the casual Japanese that she spoke with her friends. She had no real knowledge of formal or even semi-formal language. Her goal was to get a real job in Japan. Welcome to starting all over again; you can't reply with うん when asked a question by your interviewer or boss.

Finally, if you don't have any Japanese people to speak with (like me) I would suggest just doing things like watching Youtube videos, movies, etc. in Japanese. Things like interviews or the news are great (more realistic than anime for example)

That was a lot longer than I had anticipated.
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