This site is Tofugu/TextFugu's biggest rival, yet it promotes an entirely different school of thought. AJATT is like the bible of input language learning, which is also promoted heavily by the creator of LingQ, Steve Kauffman. It's creator, Khatzumoto, discovered that language learning doesn't have to be a time-consuming task required hundreds of hours of homework (he hates classes), and that it's a process, not a science. I really admire this website and recommend it to everyone.
AJATT started out as a blog in which Khatzumoto chronicled the methods he used for learning Japanese while he was still a busy college student and not taking classes in the language. He realized that all one really has to do is to try and do as much as you can in the language. Instead of memorizing grammar rules, reading books, and "studying", you just grow familiar with the language naturally.
Here's what I mean by that. When you're busy working, cleaning, doing homework, or anything that allows you to listen to something, listen to Japanese in the background. If you're jogging or bicycling, have some Japanese music or podcasts playing on your iPod; install Rikaichan into your Firefox browser and try to conduct as many searches in Japanese as you can. Go through a textbook only to get a feel for the language and to use as a reference when things stump you. As AJATT tells its readers, you get used to the language, not learn it.
The number one motto is to be doing something fun in the language as often as you can. Watch movies, play games, read books - it doesn't matter what you're doing, so long as you're doing it in Japanese. This makes things a lot more interesting than going through a textbook and comitting it to memory, and it's much faster and cheaper than taking a class.
He also recommends a flash card program, such as Anki, so that you can collect interesting sentences and put them into your flash cards for study. For example, say I'm watching Galaxy Angel and Vanilla says, 『豚より牛大好き。』, or, "I like cows more than pigs." That sentence isn't 100% grammatically correct, but you learn that when you go to figure out how "yori" works in this sentence. Anyway, that's kind of an interesting sentence, so you put it Anki and reviewing at set intervals. You learn the words for "pig" and "cow", and you also get used to saying that you like one thing more than another. Make sure to insert grammar notes as well.
Khatzumoto also offers a number of products on his site, such as premade sentence packs for Anki and a new community of AJATT+, which I've never tried. There's also a reference guide available, as his site is really hard to navigate sometimes. The information is worthy of gold, yet it can be hard to find, so I definitely recommend the reference guide.
He's also started something called the Silver Spoon Project, in which he will personally work with you through email to learn Japanese, keeping you using the language, etc. Again, I've never tried this and just stick to his sentence packs and reference guide. He's got a lot of interesting stuff, and I'm sure his other products are really good, but when he tells you, "You don't need this," you really don't.
All in all, I guarantee that you'll become addicted to his website. Just take a look at it and apply the wisdom to your study habbits. Even if you're not a primarily input person, you'll benefit greatly from it. And since it's Japanese you're learning (his method works for any language), it's really not hard to find media to use as input.
His website speaks for itself, and no review can come close to covering it all, so please visit it.
AJATT started out as a blog in which Khatzumoto chronicled the methods he used for learning Japanese while he was still a busy college student and not taking classes in the language. He realized that all one really has to do is to try and do as much as you can in the language. Instead of memorizing grammar rules, reading books, and "studying", you just grow familiar with the language naturally.
Here's what I mean by that. When you're busy working, cleaning, doing homework, or anything that allows you to listen to something, listen to Japanese in the background. If you're jogging or bicycling, have some Japanese music or podcasts playing on your iPod; install Rikaichan into your Firefox browser and try to conduct as many searches in Japanese as you can. Go through a textbook only to get a feel for the language and to use as a reference when things stump you. As AJATT tells its readers, you get used to the language, not learn it.
The number one motto is to be doing something fun in the language as often as you can. Watch movies, play games, read books - it doesn't matter what you're doing, so long as you're doing it in Japanese. This makes things a lot more interesting than going through a textbook and comitting it to memory, and it's much faster and cheaper than taking a class.
He also recommends a flash card program, such as Anki, so that you can collect interesting sentences and put them into your flash cards for study. For example, say I'm watching Galaxy Angel and Vanilla says, 『豚より牛大好き。』, or, "I like cows more than pigs." That sentence isn't 100% grammatically correct, but you learn that when you go to figure out how "yori" works in this sentence. Anyway, that's kind of an interesting sentence, so you put it Anki and reviewing at set intervals. You learn the words for "pig" and "cow", and you also get used to saying that you like one thing more than another. Make sure to insert grammar notes as well.
Khatzumoto also offers a number of products on his site, such as premade sentence packs for Anki and a new community of AJATT+, which I've never tried. There's also a reference guide available, as his site is really hard to navigate sometimes. The information is worthy of gold, yet it can be hard to find, so I definitely recommend the reference guide.
He's also started something called the Silver Spoon Project, in which he will personally work with you through email to learn Japanese, keeping you using the language, etc. Again, I've never tried this and just stick to his sentence packs and reference guide. He's got a lot of interesting stuff, and I'm sure his other products are really good, but when he tells you, "You don't need this," you really don't.
All in all, I guarantee that you'll become addicted to his website. Just take a look at it and apply the wisdom to your study habbits. Even if you're not a primarily input person, you'll benefit greatly from it. And since it's Japanese you're learning (his method works for any language), it's really not hard to find media to use as input.
His website speaks for itself, and no review can come close to covering it all, so please visit it.
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