anyone who has ever tried learning a
foreign language in the age of the
internet probably knows that there are a
ton of different methods out there
and a lot of them all tell you to do
different stuff you often hear the
phrase everyone learns differently but
this is a trap some methods are
effective and many are not no one has
ever gotten good using
japanesepod101.com
if you've set out to reach mastery in a
foreign language you don't want to waste
your time on ineffective methods and
unfortunately in my past experience
there is much more bad advice out there
than good so in this video i'm going to
show you how to spot all the good stuff
in the end it all comes down to deciding
what advice you can trust and the most
trustworthy advice is science through
scientific studies the field of applied
linguistics has uncovered a lot about
how humans acquire first and second
languages you can read about these
findings on wikipedia of these findings
the following stated by linguist stephen
krashen is particularly relevant to this
video we all acquire language
in exactly the same way
the reason this is an outrageous thing
to say is that these days in education
as many of you have undoubtedly noticed
we're living in an age of individual
variation we're very concerned with how
our students are different not how our
students are the same we're concerned
about individual variation in cognitive
style and learning style which side of
the brain people are using etc and
there's a lot of very good research on
individual variation
nevertheless there are some things we
all do the same and language is one of
them it's as fundamental as universal as
breathing as eating as walking we all do
it and we all acquire it the same way
going off this point by crashing if a
certain method helps someone achieve a
high level of mastery in the language
then you can trust that the method is
effective state it another way if the
person giving advice is not actually
proficient in the language then you have
no reason to trust their advice this is
actually the most important point of
this video no one would take dieting
advice from someone who's fat the
problem is although it's quite apparent
when someone is overweight a beginner in
a language can't tell how good someone
is i call this the fluency illusion to
witness this phenomenon firsthand look
at the comment section of this video of
someone speaking awful japanese there
are many comments saying things like wow
you are so fluent and how did you get so
good at japanese i'm sure she's a good
person and only giving advice with the
best of intentions but this doesn't
change the facts she sucks at japanese
because those commenters don't yet
understand japanese they can't tell how
unnatural and mistake-written her speech
is if you were to take her advice on how
to learn japanese you cannot hope to
surpass the low level she is currently
at this is very true for almost all
advice on internet blogs and forums you
have no way to know whether they're good
or not so you have no reason to trust
what they say same goes with native
speakers they don't remember what it was
like to learn japanese and they've never
actually followed their own advice
it might be helpful to know why there
are so many people giving advice on how
to learn a language they can't properly
speak there's two reasons first they
might be unaware of how much they suck
they might think they're pretty good at
japanese because they can have
conversations with japanese friends but
they don't realize that those japanese
friends are using similar language to
what they use while talking to a
three-year-old the second reason is that
although they are aware of their
relative suckage they believe it's
impossible to reach a truly high level
of proficiency i've seen many people who
suck at japanese say things like you can
never hope to read newspapers without
decades of study but i know firsthand
this is so now that you know
that there are a lot of sucky people
giving out with the best of intentions
shitty advice and you are aware that you
do not currently possess the ability to
tell the sucky people apart from the
proficient people you are left with only
one choice
to ask a native
find a native japanese speaker a friend
classmate someone you made on skype and
show them a video or sound clip of the
advice giver you are considering
trusting ask them
if 0 was nothing and 100 was native
level how good is this guy if their
answer satisfies you follow that
person's method if you can't find a
video of the advice giver speaking find
something that they wrote in the target
language if you can't find that either
then that alone is enough reason to
doubt their advice
remember i'm not saying that their
advice is necessarily bad all i'm saying
is that it's not necessarily good so
you're taking a gamble by trusting it
which you should never need to do
one of my favorite language learning
websites is anti-moon a site on how to
learn english written by a bunch of
polish guys they wrote the website in
english after using their own method so
as a native english speaker their
perfectly written website itself lets me
know i can trust their advice the first
time i read ajat i thought it was a scam
just like everyone else but when i
showed this video of katsumoto to my
japanese friend he said that if he
closed his eyes he would have guessed
that it was a native speaker that's when
i started following everything cats said
don't take my word for it i urge you to
use a native speaker to test cats
yourself test me before taking any of my
specific advice as well one last point
keep an open mind in the case of
language learning common sense will
often guide you in the wrong direction
advice that seems self-evident and
appears to make a lot of sense is often
some of the worst advice of all the
reverse is also true like i said even i
thought ajat was a scam but luckily i
believed it just enough to try testing
the guy behind it and thanks to that i
am where i am today