I want to state clearly that I don’t have anything against Laoshu. I think his methods are in line with his goals, and his goals are perfectly fine. I literally just used him in the thumbnail for clickbait and entertainment sake.
No problem man, it's the content that matters.. and what you shared here is awesome, as usual. (Btw, I'm planning to become one of your patrons in the next few weeks)
I wish I could help but can't at the moment. :/ However, I think audio quallity is more important than video quallity, and your audio quallity is good to me.
Silent period is what I'm doing, and the FEW times I do speak to friends, it seems to be working so far. My friends have been commenting on how much more natural I sound recently.
From personal experience I can confirm this is absolutely on the money. Developing an awareness for what is right and assuming everything else is wrong is the key to ultimately speaking with almost no mistakes.
I’d always gotten the AJATT elitist vibe from Matt, which I never enjoyed. But he was really humble here and I appreciated the honesty about himself and the community. Plus the AKIRA poster I can’t argue with. I related to him a lot here (especially with cementing bad habits way back in the beginning which provided little other than frustration thereafter). I will recommend this video when I suggest embracing the silent period to others. Good stuff, man. I’m becoming less resentful of your age and ability lol. After starting MIA you seem like a way cooler dude. I think you will gather greater support as a result and I can say you’re deserving of it. Keep it up.
A funny thing that happens is that some phrases start to really stick and you'll end up spitting them out kind of unconsciously. For example I've been listening to a podcast called 日本の歴史 and since they say the title at the beginning of every episode, I've noticed I randomly whisper those words when working or something. I guess it's my brain processing the language subconsciously so I don't mind.
Seeing the difference in your video style / personality from the beginning to now is amazing - thanks to you I have started meditation (before I thought it was just a silly spiritual thing) and found about about anki and the merits of immersion - Great stuff!
I can relate to this I am came in Germany six years ago and started learning german in my second year and was forced to output since I was in high school. I can speak alright but I always have a lot of simple gramatical mistakes which make me sound very bad. Same thing with writing, I can write but I always write with incorrect spelling, other gramatical mistakes just for the fact that I never tried to read or watch content in german and thought that my langauge course in school will make it better somehow. I am not a native english speaker and accidentially ajatted for years from the age of 6 until today 18 in english. I watched english movies, read books, articles, comments and etc. At that time I never spoke english until 12 when I migrated to germany since that was the only langauge I was able to use to communicate with germans. Ever since I started speaking I noticed that I have a mixture of british, american accent in my english and there is no sign of my original accent in my english, when I write I always think of what sounds more natural and not what's correct in a gramatical sense. I am gonna start japanese which is my fourth langauge with the immersion method and hope for the best.
I think outputting too early is what frustrated me and made me ultimately quit Japanese for EIGHT years. I'm 25 now and restarting and I wish I had your method back then, I would have been super fluent by now...😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢
Same. I’m 26 now. I couldn’t find the motivation. I started studying when I was 13. That was over 10 years ago. With quarantine in effect I started using Duolingo because I had nothing to do. I’ve gotten a 60 day streak plus 26,000 xp and have learned enough to get motivated to learn more. Now I’m just finishing Japanese From Zero 1 and moving on to 2. Slowly but surely, bits and pieces of natural native Japanese conversation are becoming less fuzzy to me. I can hear what’s being said (even if I don’t understand it) and start recognizing grammar/words that I learned in the book/Duolingo. The more progress I make the more motivation I feel. More importantly, the actual meaning of what is said is starting to be understood in real time without the delay of figuring out what was said and translating to English. Just the other day I was watching a slice of life anime (so no crazy/unrealistic words) and realized that I hadn’t looked at the subtitles for a solid 5 minutes. I was so shocked. Now I didn’t understand 100% of what was said, but I did understand enough to where I couldn’t be bothered to look down at the subtitles. My short term goal is to get to N3 in the next year, which I think is pretty realistic after finishing all 5 JFZ textbooks. Everyday is still a challenge to pick up the textbook, but so long as I do something related to Japanese I still feel motivated.
@@acelakid94 wow man, that's amazing. I'm currently acquiring Russian, and I'm jealous of all my fellow Japanese learners, bc you guys have sooooo much more content to watch and read and listen to haha.
Building intuition is super important, but my favorite reason for focusing on listening and reading is definitely building a repertoire of words and phrases that you know are correct because you've seen/heard them used repeatedly and in context. Developing poor pronunciation or sentence structure by trying to hard to rush into speaking or writing can develop habits that are going to be harder to break in the future, very true!
I feel like synthesizing sentences is so important to learning though. . . . like if we think of mass immersion as mimicking how we learn our L1s as kids, even kids don't have the set-phrases we have yet so they say things funny but they learn eventually. I think my favourite story was about a kid who didn't know how to express the idea of death so he said described it as "his ghost fell out". I'm okay with sounding like a 2-year old for a bit =3 I just ask my language partners ahead of time to pls rephrase things for me if I say them wrong/awkwardly.
The context of a 2 years old is generally very different from the one of a language learner. People around the 2 years old (generally his parents) will always correct him, and it will feel normal to eveybody. That could somewhat~ work if you have a native speaker next to you all the time, but even then he probably wouldn'y even tell every unnatural detail either. You don't learn L2 exactly how you learn L1, one major difference is context (100% forced immersion and people forcing you to be right)
This was how I started learning Japanese way back in 2002. My first few years was mainly input. I watched movies and anime, I studied from a textbook, and I took university classes. I didn't speak more than a few words per day, and that was mainly to myself in private (to hear myself say the words). I didn't feel comfortable with output yet. I kept up with my studies, classes, and authentic resources. Though nothing had really changed in my routine for almost two years, by 2004 I was suddenly ready to start having lag free (no delay in reaction time) short conversations about a variety of simple topics.
This makes a lot of sense. I am bad at my fiancé’s language so we almost always communicate in English which forces her to output a ton and create poor habits. Even things I’ve corrected many times she will still mess up more than not. I feel bad for making her carry all the language burden while I get to carefully practice and develop my language ability. Thanks dear!
highly specific in unpredictable ways = a given set phrase in a context build good habits in the first place -- only say things that you know are correct early output = have to be creative - make sth up --> assume you are probably wrong--> look up the correct way to say + pretty safe from making habit out of sth you're not sure on be aware that phrase is unnatural * silent period
I would say - there is an alternative, but, it's not something which you can definitely get. I speak Thai, fluently, to the level that I often fool people into thinking that I'm a native Thai speaker. How did I get there? I picked up a pretty basic textbook, it went over how to say what, where, when, how, why, how many etc. And I started outputting immediately. Now, Thai is a tonal language, so of course, at first I was pretty bad at it (ugh... The amount of people who think their Thai is good - but their tones are WAY off...) Anyway, I got a girlfriend (who became my ex wife) who corrected me on every small mistake I made. People always say "that must have been super annoying" but, given that I wanted to master the language, it never bothered me, not even once. Through all of her corrections, grammar and pronunciation, plus all of the time I spent immersed where no one spoke English... Fuck me this comment has gotten long... Maybe I should delete this and simply say "find someone who you spend almost all of your time with, who will correct every mistake you make - and you'll reach near native level. All of the nuances of grammar was purely through acquisition and being corrected.
Thanks for another great video. I'm in the second year of immersion learning and living in Japan so your advice on this subject is always very helpful and logical.
7 months ago I decided to meet up with a native speaker for language exchange. I had a base of hiragana, katakana and basic vocab and sentence structure. Luckily, she was nice enough to fix my mistakes in my speaking and messages. I learned so much from that. Although I've probably picked up some bad habits as well. So, there's positives and negatives to it I suppose.
What I do with a language exchange partner is to give each other 3 random words every day. Then we have to make simple sentences using those words. The deal is to correct each other's sentences aiming for natural language. After corrections, we have T1 sentences that we can add into the SRS.
I cracked tf up when I saw the thumbnail lol. I love laoshu's Chinese videos because he seems to be good at speaking it, but not so much the other languages
0:00 so imma say this: If you take a formal class, you **will** be doing output asap or you will fail I think early output is good for confidence. In high school, I was much more confident in speaking Japanese than I am now. I had far more output in HS too
The longer the silent period the better the speaking, which includes pronunciation, intonation, naturalness of expressions, correct grammar etc. People who become fluent fast (start speaking L2 at normal speed) often get praised as good speakers ... however in the long run, the learners who put off speaking practice until they are truly ready (taken in enough input) end up better speakers than the ones who output early. The ones who output later gain "fluency" (automatic speaking) just like the early outputters, but the important thing is that the overall quality of their speaking is much better than the early outputters. Early outputters have many more bad habits, and since language = habits, their speaking will never be as good as the later outputters, even if they want to improve their speaking later on and try and fix their bad habits. For the same effort, late outputters have better results. It's a case of the tortoise winning the race. It's worth delaying output until you're really ready because you have a lifetime of outputting as much as you want ahead of you. For learners who find it hard to speak naturally and at good speed, do not feel inferior if there are early outputters in your environment getting praised while you do not receive any. Do not feel intimidated by these other learners who output freely and easily and do so early on. The long run is what matters. Not speaking for an extra 6 months is worth it to speak as well as you possibly can. You will surpass the (too) early outputter eventually. Early output means you have to do some translation in your head (grammar translation method). The language you produce will be unnatural. But if you practice this imperfect language enough, you will become "fluent" (speak automatically at normal speed). But you will be fluent in YOUR version of L2. It won't be authentic L2. And once you become fluent in some language, it means that language is more or less fixed in your head. This is why some people never improve their skills no matter how many times they are told they make mistakes in pronunciation, grammar etc. They CANNOT improve. To get better they have to forget everything they practiced and start all over again, and that is really too difficult to achieve. So, do not practice faulty language. Do not feel pressure to speak early by seeing others speak early and "fluently". If you investigate the ones who have spoken L2 for many years and have bad grammar, pronunciation etc, you will find they outputted early. If their L2 is your L1, and you are their teacher or language exchange partner, it will be a pain to teach them. They never seem to improve and keep repeating their mistakes even after lots of corrections of the same mistakes. Their language habits have been set and in a bad way. They may feel confident because they output at normal speed, but their output is of low quality in general. What's more, these people have the fixed notion that early outputting is good, and speaking ability is all about practicing output, such as in front of the mirror, and they will push you, as your language exchange partner, to do the same as them and practice output before you are ready. For these reasons, I advise to not do language exchange.
thank god hahaha, I'm in japan for a month and only saw your videos one week in, already went from unable to speak at all to having broken conversations at bars with strangers though. Thank you so much man!!!
At the moment, I'm studying N3/N2 Japanese material, but I'm also working as an ALT in Japan, so I have to work with all these homeroom teachers who can't speak English well and can't understand me when I speak English, which is forcing me to do more output than I would like to. I know I'm saying so many things to them unnaturally. On top of that, the teachers don't really give me corrections either. I've been addicted to using HiNative to help me formulate the correct things to say, but even so, I'm getting carried away with outputting on that app sometimes.
Its similar to fighting, as an MMA coach, ironically in Japan, you can see the habits each style of fighter brings with them shows, boxers turn their lead legs and dip, wrestlers dip and drop their hands, jujitsu guys sit on their backs, judo guys give their backs etc etc...no matter how hard I try to correct them, its ingrained from their years of practicing that one sport...while it is possible, you have to take their bad habits out little by little...which i what I am doing with my Japanese since I worked as host when I learned Japanese where talking is kinda important haha
Would you count singing as output? With singing you are actually shadowing to learn how to sing, paying a lot of attentions to the vowels and all that stuff. Just for curiosity, because I think it's a pretty nice tool, I know two Japanese people who can speak Portuguese at a native level and both used singing as a language learning tool.
So, since writing and speaking are output, when going through RTK, am I not suppose to write the kanji, or say the kanji outloud (I'm not actually sure if RTK gives any readings at all, it's still not here yet ;-;)? Writing stuff down helps me remember, but even if it's harder, I'd rather not mess myself up later... Also, why do you think learning Vocab is frowned up? Going from Kanji to sentences seems like a hard jump. And learning sentences without translating them (especially with no vocab knowledge) seems like a daunting task. Because you don't learn vocab, does this mean you wont understand any of the input you listen to until you get to the sentence phase? Thank you for your time.
The gist of it is that you may not know that you are pronouncing something wrong until you have aquired a certain level of listening comprehension. You should therefore keep it simple and don't practice things you will have to relearn properly later.
@@Tech2Rush That's not how children acquired their first language. They try to output very early on, and they constantly make mistakes whenever they talk. Even they pronounce things wrong but see after some years of trying they can talk fluently. So, you're wrong. Weebs don't have children, so they don't know the process of acquiring a language well.
@@abdhulahadh6684 I mean, children get a ton of listening comprehension before they even have the ability to say the words they want to, though. Some may argue adults are not children and don't learn the same way. There really isn't a widely agreed upon 'right' way to learn languages, this is just another method that a lot of people like. Plenty of people with kids have failed to teach them their own native language, they're not really the key to understanding learning (in my opinion etcetc). leave them weebs alone, they're learnin stuff
@@punkandkittens13 They start trying to output after just 4 to 6 months. Which won't be a "ton of listening comprehension". Listening comprehension? They won't understand most of what's being said at that age. Thing is, they try to output before even they have enough input. They make mistakes 90% of the time they try to talk, even at the age of 1 and 2 they still make a lot of grammar mistakes. Matt is saying if you try to output before you get enough input, in other words, if you output when you make mistakes all over then you shouldn't is what he said. No? Both are wrong, humans are an evidence to that. We all acquire a language the same as we acquired our first language. This is by getting comprehensible input while trying to output as you get input, till we get fluent. Unless of course, you delay the output till you get enough input, which will slow down the process, as it's apparent from his ability. He's still not natural, not to be harsh but his speaking is like a chainsaw, the sounds of turning it on and then off, which is something Japanese people don't have when speaking. And, that he got after about 5 to 10 years or so he says. A 5-year-old Japanese kid can talk much better than that.
@@abdhulahadh6684 You have a very good point, but remember that babies brain is different from the adult's brain. I´m not a neurologist or something like that, but I know that when you are a baby you can perceive all the sounds of all the languages, and when you developing your brain, you consolidate the understanding of the sounds of your native, but you lose that ability. In my view, you need to practice deliberately listening to perceive those sounds. If you try recording yourself you might improve your pronunciation at least in a superficial way, but you won´t be able to understand those sounds and, therefore, you will keep pronouncing phrases incorrectly thinking that you are doing it perfectly. But at the end of the day, it depends on your goal with the language, if you want to be fluent in the less time possible, I guess, you should start outputting from the beginning, nonetheless, if you want to speak naturally, I find more logical to at first exposure yourself with tons of input and then start speaking only when you are ready for it. Sorry for my grammar mistakes. I´m not a native English speaker.
Man, there's GOT to be phrase and sentence frequency lists to go with just word frequency lists. Seems like it shouldn't be difficult to create an algorithm that mines for groups of words that are always seen together in a particular language. And as with words, probably best to mine from scores of film subtitles.
Hey Matt, I'm kinda new to the MIA thing and I really love all of this. I have started the journey (Doing kanjis right now) but I was wondering, should I go reading the AJATT website or should I wait to read the stage 1 and 2 on your MIA website. I mean I kinda know what to do after the kanjis about my input immersion but I guess there are other things... Thanks anyway for all the amazing work you did to enlight us all :D
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 Thanks, yep this is somehow what I am doing right now, but I don't really want to do things that Matt already took 3 years to question hahaha But I guess the big picture is quite the same
@@MrHyonD haha yeah, but I think some AJATT entries are really useful. I think Matt himself describes MIA as a more systematic AJATT, so the two methods don't differ that much in content, but more in execution.
So, what if I repeat phrases from f.e. Duolingo out loud? Like that, I start to learn how to shape the mouth to make f.e. the "r" sound in Japanese. What do you think? - Is this bad or time waste?
what about output when you're learning with anki (audio cards)?? I'm beginning Japanese and making my cards from japanese shows, news and animes, then, I take the audio and put into my card. When I'm studying these cards I try to speak the sentences after listening to it. Does this count like output or were you only referring to output in a real world situation when you dont know if you're correct?
@@maxim_ml I agree. Shadowing is good, but I think it also makes sense to at first focus more on getting a feel of the language's phonemes, intonation, etc, and less on shadowing, then when you do have a good feel, shadow away. :D As long as you're very attentive and always making an intense effort to get it as correct and natural as possible, you shouldn't make bad habits but overtime get closer and closer to a natural, native-like sound.
Anki is input. You will not be able to speak Japanese without memorizing sentences. Because Japanese is not like English. Japanese is different between men and women, young people and old people. It's difficult making sentences by yourself. Non Japanese tend to speak like women.
This explains my issues with losing my Spanish speaking skills. Omg I entered a silent period with Spanish and I really regret it because I LOST my near native fluency. Now I have to build those skills back up with reading, tv, and watching the news 😭
While all of this is good. The most important thing you mentioned is having that awareness that most of what you're saying is likely wrong unless you're confident you've heard it multiple times in context. This seems obvious to me and hence why output early isn't a problem if all you're doing is throwing some basic things out there to help build that motivation, (That's highly enjoyable). Early output should only ever be for fun moments or scenarios where you have no choice. Never be used as the tool to solidify actual speech. Why the hell this isn't obvious to anyone is beyond me.
Technically output isn't bad if you have native speakers around you..because they will correct you. Which helps. I don't advise avoiding output totally...you should at least try to mimic actors in dramas and movies it helps....and it is sort of an output. But, in the beginning input is key.
I very much agree with you, Matt, and I think you explained it very well. How could one go about a silent period when they're living in the country of their target language? I can't just stop speaking at school or neglect my friendships. I was thinking of writing down all the bad habits I notice like a list and then listing the correct versions, perhaps putting the correct versions around my room so I read them often and then making a conscious effort to use them in daily life.
@Unknown Username Haven't made much progress except for the little bit of progress I made due to my circumstances changing and a bit of conscious effort put in! I still make most of the same mistakes, but this last year I've been interning as a secretary. I get to read the e-mails my colleague writes and I get to write e-mails of my own fairly often. At first I would keep searching up the gender of words, now I have this app where I can quickly look them up. Continuously having to output has forced me to have more input (even if the context is just checking a word on an app - I still do see it). I'm finally remembering the genders of the more frequently used words in out e-mails. 😅 Another change is that I completely resonate with your comment. I'm about to start my linguistics major and am very much looking forward to more input and even more without a strong dialect (which often smudges the article which shows the grammatical gender) and with a wider variety of phrases to express things. I hope my time in uni improves my German a lot!
@Unknown Username Haha! I actually am in a comical situation that I Germafy my English as though I'm a native German speaker (mostly word order I think) but am actually painfully obviously not a German native speaker so somehow I got the worst of both worlds. :D I've been living in Tyrol for 8 years now and I kid you not after three some people thought I was native when first speaking to me. (I had learned German in school before comming here so I could start speaking right away basically, limited obviously but I was communicating from the beginning). I wasn't perfect though, I think I just subconsciously used the smudging the Tirolean accent does to my advantage. And ofc causal conversations aren't at the level of essays! However, I got sick three years after comming and my German became worse. Instead of "Oh I wouldn't have know you aren't native if you didn't tell me" (which I was told three times and will forever cherish) I was met with "well your German is very good!" 🙃 Interestingly a friend of mine from France had the same experience and it was three yesrs for her too. But for her it wasn't sickness but a job change which caused her to speak little German and a lot of French. Now it's difficult to get back at the same level in terms of accent (if it ever was that good, it's a bit hard for me to believe) but at the same time I am in some aspects better than I was then which is really weird. Noone tells me I sound native now even though technically my German should have improved during the last year. (I was a lot healthier and had a job.) This experience is overall... certainly weird lol! I certainly need a lot of input but it's difficult to get it. I want to have input especially to solidify which phrases are correct and natural. People just speak very differently from one another here in Innsbruck. There's lots of Germans here, lots of people from all over Austria and all over Tyrol - so many different dialects are heard. I think my brain has learned to deduct the meaning without paying much attention to the specific phrases. So when I have to write something... I suddenly feel so uncertain and incapable! There is some spellcheck but it doesn't always work. It can detect I think errors with the case but more like if you're inconsistent in a string of words, it doesn't actually know which the correct case is or which the grammatical gender of a word is. And I have to say - I like German. :D In Bulgaria we generally only study one foreign language and the second one is kinda meh. I'm not sure all schools even have a second foreign language. You can choose your first foreign language unlike in Austria where it has to be English. Most do chose English and English is offered at most of the schools, but for example I chose German. Never regreted chosing it - I didn't know what I was getting into but I liked it all throughout! :)
hey i am a beginner in japanese. i’ve read about the AJATT method. is it really worth it? i want your input on how i can start and sustain a constant japanese learning style. i just started learning japanese a day or two ago and only know some stuff. ive heard you say in one of your videos that JapanesePod101 isn’t a good source to learn, but that’s what i’ve been using? is there anything that you recommend for beginners to learn? any apps, ebooks, podcasts, anything? i’ve been learning hanagana and katakana but i have a hard time understanding kanji. i’m learning radicals but it’s through JP101. should i switch to something better?
I like that Sakamoto Ryouma poster in the back. I recently finished Ryu Ga Go-to ku Ishin on PS4. He was the main character. Check it out when time permits.
Every time I ask a native a question in HelloTalk i speak a bit of Japanese. It’s so motivating. I get corrected on the spot regardless. And it’s an awesome feeling to communicate in Japanese. I’ll be going to japan for 3 weeks in August. And I’ll be speaking a lot. Even though I do MIA. It’s called an Approach for a reason.
Hi Matt, not sure whether you still watch comments on this video. But what about speaking lessons with Italki teacher that you tell to correct you every sentence? To still get in speaking practice (pronounciation) but also to not get bad grammar/vocab habbits.
As a beginner, you're going to be making far too many mistakes for a teacher to correct them all. In reality, a teacher is only going to fix the most egregious mistakes, plus, you won't be able to integrate those corrections because you won't be able to actually understand WHY what you said was wrong.
This video saved me a ton of anxiety because I was thinking “oh, I used to text a little Japanese whenever it would just come out even though I know it’s probably wrong, and sometimes I would speak a little too.” At least I know that it was a good thing that I took all my attempts with a grain of salt. Now I’m in the phase where I’m just silent and not sure if anything I say is correct both in how natural the sentence is and in pronunciation/pitch.
Everybody has their own methods. But, the way I learned English is more or less matt's method expect I didn't call it that at the age of 7..lol It really works...and I am using it to improving my Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
@@k.5425 It's going alright Keep telling myself I can't be expected to know everything I hear/read bc it's been only a few months Managing expectations is harrdd
If I'm honest, I feel about everything I say in Chinese is unnatural, but I'm in an immersion program and speak all day every day. Meanwhile, they're teaching us formal language when I don't even know how to converse naturally in everyday language. Weird situation, but I pay extra attention to how the teachers say things.
There is a perk to being "forced" to learn the formal language. It then seems natural to you and whenever you need it it's not hard for you to switch over. As for the local dialect and specific for the region informal expressions - you'll adapt to those without any problems by just conversing with people. That's how the slang develops and changes anyway. I notice it's easier for me to switch over to "high German" than some of my peers who are native speakers. They have a hard time filtering out all of their dialect. It's just "German" to them. Imho it's easier to first learn the formal language and then soak in the everyday informal language then to first learn the daily informal language and then, without nearly the same opportunities for immersion and without constantly being challenged to speak it swiftly (as you are with the everyday informal language) to learn the formal language. Does that make any sense? Hehe
@@essennagerry That's really interested, thanks for the perspective! Truth is, I'm having a great time learning Chinese; the focus on grades and certain other aspects just make it a little stressful
Matt, does it count as outputting if I'm just reading the new word/sentence rule out loud to get a feel for it a little bit? I feel like i do it too much in the middle of a lesson
I am studying mandarin but also another language ( a completely new language) and I. want to go on a silent period because my mandarin is already at a really high level. I want to get rid of the bad ha it’s bc I always make sentences that sound unnatural. Will studying this second language interfere with my silent period ?
Also for this method, when you get input from all your sources, do u ever practice like speaking the sentences you write down?? Or you really just don’t speak at all
I agree more input than output does help the language process alot but I also disagree with the inherent motive- avoiding as mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable and its this mentality that inhibited me from speaking and still makes me nervous and stumble time to time around natives despite being fairly fluent (B2 speaking- C1 comprehension) in my second language. Truth is we will continue making mistakes and I find boldly making those mistakes out in the open makes it quicker for them to be corrected rather than avoiding output until I am certain. I dont believe you fossilize mistakes- kids say the wrong thing for years and eventually through both exposure and direct correction they improve. True input is key to acquisition, but I think early output has its place in active learning.
I don't fully agree with you on this one. I am a French native speaker and became fluent in English within a year of daily practice with people online (maybe 6 to 8h a day). Indeed, my grammar was flawed and I made a lot of bad habits. However, I do believe it is possible to get rid of these bad habits, as long as you ask people to correct you whenever you say something that may sound off. I have spent 12 years of my life studying Dutch at school with no progress but once I started talking to people online, my level skyrocket. I have spent so many hours watching animes, yet I am still unable to watch animes without subtitles. Now I have been studying Korean for a few months and the only way for me to learn grammar patterns is by trials and errors. I think people who like output just have to be open-minded to the idea that they may sound strange and accept to be corrected when needed.
i got curious about MIA a few days ago, by the idea i heard of how babies have a pre-existing pattern-matching parts of their brain that learn language through lots of input. but babies also do a whole lot of early output, too ... so what makes lots of early input good but early output bad? is the idea "it's good to learn languages the way babies learn languages" flawed?
Babies/children do make bad habits which they correct over the course of years. There's tons of videos of toddlers saying ridiculous/comically wrong things. Separately, even with a target language fairly different from your native language you will be able to make 90% of the sounds sound 80% correct. A baby cannot do that so it has to practice, and it has to be very wrong before it can approach being almost right.
Just wondering, could reading native materials out loud improve on speaking intuition faster? Or should I just read in my head and stay silent? Also is it ok for me to practice writing kanji?
For your first question I think it depends. I guess you should try to record yourself when trying to read and then compare it with a native speaker and pay attention to the differences until you get right the pronunciation. Otherwise I think it could do some harm if you constantly pronounce words the wrong way without even noticing it.
So... Anyone in the community. When I am studying Anki cards (J-Recognition sub2srs), should I try to read over the sentence out loud or should I continue to stay silent and simply make mental notes? I know it may sound silly but I've been constantly switching between the two styles and it bothers me a little. Thanks in advance!
Yo Matt, I've been using the Antimoon/AJATT/MIA method with Arabic and have for almost three months after using other methods and I must say, it's by far the superior approach for the serious learner in it for the long haul. However, I adjust the approach as needed to suit my strengths and motivation. My only hesitancy in using the approach was jeez, it seem to attract a bunch of Eminem - like Stan characters, who spend most of the time spewing hate against other approaches, and riding you hard (pun intended). To be clear, MIA is a serious, tedious, consistent commitment of the daily grind of putting in major work in expectation of a very delayed reward. Not everyone has the personality, temperament, or stamina to see it thru, to that end, it seems destined to be a underground type, fringe method. I mean yeah, even some of your most extreme fans, the geeky, extra introverted, weeaboos ones, immersing in their mom's basement, sliding Cheetos under their output gag order covering their mouth, spending more time with Anki, then a female, whacking off to anime in between anki reps, can't even see it thru at times and vicariously live through you. Geeky and Hardcore are not synonymous terms. Again Matt, I love the approach, your insights are amazing but due to the hardcore nature of the method, you won't be as popular as the instant gratification methods types, flooding the market compounded with your obsessive stalkers alienating, potentially interested people. I would recommend you think about and develop a two- tiered approach, which caters to the hardcore type but also a more moderate approach as well, for those with less testicular fortitude. I know this maybe difficult to develop without compromising the quality result. However, it will grow your channel and in turn your income. Do you think something like this is possible? God bless
Refreshing as so many language learners these days say that you must speak as early as possible and as much as possible to get fluent...I'm sure it works for some people but not me....doesn't make sense to me.
Hey. Obsessed with your work. But one question: When starting with the RTK? Am I supposed to do both 1 and 3 at the same time or am I supposed do RTK 1 first and then 3?
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 Und wie weit bist du schon? Wie genau gehst du vor? Merkst du dir die Kanji nur oder schreibst du sie auch? Würde mich echt interessieren. Gehe einmal davon aus, dass du Deutsch kannst ^^.
@@AECH_CH Hallo, I don't speak German but Google translate helped me, haha. I hope you understand English. So, I've been doing it for a month, 20 new kanji a day. It usually takes 1h a day. I've seen 51% of the kanji (but only 13% of them are mature). I always write the kanji I'm reviewing. It's been good and I'd recommend you doing something similar. Just tune the amount of new card a day so you don't get too many and end up burning yourself out :)
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 Ah sorry :D! I assumed you were German by your name... Anyways: Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately I had to skip some rep-days due to exams in school. Now I am fully motivated to continue with 20 a Day. For me it's actually a lot of more work since I need to look up the german keywords and meanings etc... I mean my English isn't bad but not good enougth to learn a foreign language with :). I also got 10% of the Kanji which are mature but I haven't rept one of them yet. I wonder how my retention rate will be. Is there any way to connect with you? It would benefit both of us since we are doing the same Thing :D.
I think it depends. I knew a girl who inputted from day 1 with natives, and passed n1 in 2 yrs, and can now also trick natives like matt. Ofc she was lucky enough to be dating a native who correct every. Single. Thing. She did wrong xD. Also never touched anki and only used textbooks. Any method can work but if your shy like moi and find it hard to find/talk to natives who will do that for ya, then doing what matt said is a.ok!
this is the exception not the rule, if it happens 1/10,000 times that doesn't mean you should follow that experience. try something that's guaranteed to work 10,000/10,000 times instead.
Isn't reading some kind of "internal outputting"? I mean, you couldn't get bad grammar habits from it, but what about pronunciation? Since you read it silently to yourself, is it possible to get used to a wrong pronunciation of some words even if you are just imagining how they should be pronounced?
I resonate with your point of view and what you say is very interesting and enlightening to me. However I guess, for people who are not doing the complete MIA approach, like me, and depending on your personality and your study schedule it is OK to output. Let me explain: It is true that the more you talk the more prompt is someone to create habits, and within those there are bad habits that come from bad output and not enough correction. But, I find motivating and encouraging doing a language exchange with native people and getting corrected from , even although I have not been learning Chinese for more than a year. Combining about 2 hours of speaking practice along 6 hours of studying per week is OK (you practice what you learn during the week and focus on pronunciation and new words to introduce to the grammar structures you use). Therefore there is no room for bad habits to be created, as you are putting boundaries to your speaking (current knowledge of the person) and getting constant correction from native people. (Unless you get creative and ignore the correction of your teacher). Example: A child keeps talking to the mother and the mother is constantly correcting his mistakes. Although I like my approach, it is true that I am introducing loads of Input during the week(Chinese podcast and interviews with both Hanzi and Pinyin), that adds about 4/5 hours of listening and active comprehension most of the time. This is where it comes my interpretation of MIA (Input is one of the major points of MIA). I guess it all sum up with: 1.Be aware that bad habits can develop (this should be enough to prevent someone to develop those habits and to become more active in the learning process) 2. Limit your speaking output by trying to talk only with people that will correct you (i.e: online teachers) 3. Immerse yourself with loads of weekly inputs. I am not against the MIA, but I am just adding a different opinion to the debate. Keep it up Matt, I think you are doing an awesome work.
I feel like you might have missed a few aspects of speaking, you mostly talk about saying the right things but not anything about how you are speaking, as in what sounds you're producing. Wouldn't outputting early while being mindful that you probably say things wrong still ingrain bad pronunciation habits? Like saying words with the wrong pitch/intonation/stress? Or are these habits easier to fix in your opinion?
The idea of staying aware of whether what you are saying is natural or not isn't a replacement for avoiding early output. It's just a technique to minimize damage when you do early output. This is especially important for people stuck in a situation where they need to do early output on a daily basis, as I said in the video. Regular early output will lead to bad pronunciation habits that will be hard to break later, but I think that speaking less than once a week isn't going to make any meaningful negative impact in the long run.
Has anyone else finished AJATT and started chinese with laddering from japanese? I am starting but confused for Hanzi, that means key words and stories must be in japanese?
I'm a beginner in learning Japanese, but I talk in Japanese with my neighbors more or less every day. My neighbors are native japanese and willing to correct my output..... Is it still alright to continue conversing in Japanese with them daily?
@@evsian yeah, the environment definitely helps. I'm kinda lucky that where I live in Canada is close to a few Japanese cultural centers/library, as well as a Japanese bookstore among other things. Asides from my neighbor, there is a decent number of Japanese people and communities to talk to. Also a few Japanese run restaurants in my area that are frequented by Japanese people (I don't know why, but I enjoy just hearing people naturally speaking Japanese in the background).
Aren't the problems you see with early output easily solved through feedback? Isn't that the whole point of having a teacher who can provide quality feedback? i.e. to prevent the growing pains from cementing into bad habits?
Unfortunately not. Language is far to exact for that to actually work. Assuming you're a native English speaker, I'm sure you have met people who are at a near-native level of English, but still make minor pronunciation, usage and grammar errors quite often while speaking. For someone like that, you may be able to correct most of their mistakes in real-time. But as a beginner, you're probably making literally 10+ mistakes every single sentence. There is no way for a teacher to correct every single little way you mispronounce vowels and consonants, the way your intonation is unnatural, the way you use words in unnatural ways, etc. And even if they did try to correct every single mistake in that way, there would be no way for you to retain it. In reality, teachers only correct the more egregious mistakes that people make, and ignore the rest.
@@mattvsjapan Cheers. Dunno, I tend to think of language acquisition as consisting of layers. When you're beginning, mistakes from the higher layers aren't even available for you to make. In that sense, the amount of mistakes a learner is making doesn't necessarily decrease exponentially as he advances. Though of course it's not like there's a clear-cut boundary between layers. Hence the fact that teachers will focus on certain mistakes instead of others depending on the level of the student. In the end I guess I just don't share all that much your concern about bad habit formation. To me there seems to be a lot of wiggle room there. And besides, don't you have the same risk with input? Even if you're "just" listening, you're most likely making many comprehension mistakes when you're beginning, and you gradually clear those up but there's always a risk of making a mistake and forming a bad habit. Dunno. I just watched your vid comparing language acquisition to MMA (really good vid btw), and the guy said that he gets his students to spar from the very beginning. To me the equivalent of sparring in language would be to have an actual conversation with someone. Sure, you'll make plenty of mistakes, probably "lose", maybe not even realize some of the mistakes you're making and you risk forming bad habits, but I'm not sure there's any way around that. And, to me at least, that experiential aspect really boosts the learning process. When you make a mistake that has real-life consequences, well, let's just say you won't be needing any flashcards to remember that one ^^. Anyway, I'm just discovering this approach so I definitely haven't put as much thought into it as you have (and I appreciate the reply btw :-) ). Just thinking out loud. I agree with the basic premise. My old music teacher used to say: "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent." I guess I just see a difference between "practice" and "performance". Like, in music "practice" would be repeating the same thing over and over again, and damn right if you're doing it wrong in practice, repeating it over and over again will just make it worse. But when you perform, you have to let go of your practice. In some ways that's the hardest part about performing, and for me it was good to get used to that very early on. Honestly that problem doesn't go away the better you get, but when you start early on you learn certain strategies to cope with performing, learn strategies to let go and let the chips fall where they may. Dunno if that makes sense.
@@mattvsjapan "Language is far to exact for that to actually work" Do you have any empirical proof for this claim? Because I have personally known a number of highly fluent English speakers who have experienced the exact opposite of what you are saying. People of whom still achieved an extremely high level of fluency. I once worked with a student(21 years old) who couldn't speak a lick of English when she moved to London. After frequent conversational lessons on Skype with a teacher, she was communicating with native speakers very comfortably after a year. She had an accent, yes, but it wasn't an unnatural one(in that "it was hard to listen to her speak" sense. It was obviously foreign but very clear ). We had conversations frequently and there was never a time where we struggled to understand each other. Also you have the wrong idea about fluency. You can have an accent and still be very fluent. I have Indian and Somali friends who have accents but speak English very fluently. You can be fluent and still made mistakes from time to time. Another thing, doing what you suggested "the silent period" is very risky because you normally forget everything you learn when you are not 'frequently speaking". Speaking a language is like going to the gym. If you are not exercising those muscles frequently, you risk "reversibility". I am currently learning Arabic using Italki and my pronunciation has come a long way because of how frequently I speak. Accent matters a lot to me, so choose a teacher who is especially "picky" on accent. We do drills repeatedly until he is happy with what he hears
Moving to japan in a month, so I’ve got no choice. Got a few months of MIA listening in before that at least. I’ve decided it’s really silly to not output or try to reduce output out of some dream of perfect fluency in the future. Why the hell move to japan if not to speak and interact and connect as much as possible.
Well, if you are going to be in Japan for the long run, it's not hard to justify reducing output during the first year so that your experience speaking the language is better for every year after that.
Matt vs. Japan Unfortunately I’ll probably only be there 1-3 years, in a small town with no almost no English speakers and therefore a huge impetus to output for both work and a social life. I do plan to follow the assumptions you talk about in the video and hope that counteracts the bad habits. That’s really all I can do, right?
This is an interesting perspective on this. Hmm, I sometimes have written RUclips comments in Japanese to practice, but maybe I should give that a rest for a bit, or simply just remind myself "even if they understand, I'm still probably messing up." I do lot's of listening as well, I need to catch up on reading though.
You look like MIA Jesus with your pose in this video, and that beautiful beard. You're preaching to the masses haha Thanks for the video as always my dude
I just started the MIA like a month ago with Japanese and man... I am so happy every time I understand something in an anime :D. At first I hadn't much time to immerse so I just did "Lazy Kanji". Now I turned up my exposure to at least 2 hours a day. My question ist: How to start on getting reading input? As I usually don't read mangas or japanese books. What is a good source for beginner friendly reading content (which is also used by natives)? Keep this concept and the MIA website going Matt. I think you have potentially discovered a language concept that will be the standard in 50 years. I do also believe true native like level can be reached allmoast just through exposure (how else would babys do it?)
@@Asdayasman それは違うよ！Sorry, but one of the key philosophies of Khatzumoto was to do things in the language that you like so that you would be able to maintain this for an extended period of time. To the person who asked: What do you usually read in your native language? Video games? Blog posts? Articles? Try to find the Japanese equivalent and start out with that.
@@AJGress Philosophy is another word for opinion. The fact is that you're gonna learn with input, _comprehensible_ input, not _enjoyable_ input. I barely read _shit_ in my native language besides technical documentation. Reading that in Japanese ain't gonna help at all.
@@AJGress I actually read a lot about news and politics... The main problem is: How to read the Kanji when you don't know the readings yet? Should you read it out loud, what if you mess up the pronounciation, etc... :D. I still have a lot of questions about the MIA method so I hope Matt will keep updating the site and make it more beginner friendly.
@@AECH_CH That's where i+1 sentence mining comes into play. Let's say you were reading a sentence with Kanji「ドイツの科学は世界一！」 And you didn't know 科学. Now what you'd do is look up the definition and pronunciation and make a sentence card for it. Now you know that those characters are pronounced 科学. Only do it from J-E or J-J though, never E-J. But Matt talks about this in other videos.
I want to state clearly that I don’t have anything against Laoshu. I think his methods are in line with his goals, and his goals are perfectly fine. I literally just used him in the thumbnail for clickbait and entertainment sake.
The implication here is great.
Laoshu is a master to handle multiple languages at the early stages. Every single person is different.
Why did I you say this a couple of months after the upload
Yeah, I just figured you were using the 2 most well known proponents of early output just to further illustrate the theme of the video.
*What abut SMR talking with my self :)) I find it very helpful, i would love to hear what you think abut that???*
Sorry my camera sucks... I'm going to buy a nice camera once we reach 750 patrons!
No problem man, it's the content that matters.. and what you shared here is awesome, as usual. (Btw, I'm planning to become one of your patrons in the next few weeks)
I wish I could help but can't at the moment. :/ However, I think audio quallity is more important than video quallity, and your audio quallity is good to me.
I just pretended you were speaking in Japanese and dubbed over it in English!
whered you get the shirt?
Silent period is what I'm doing, and the FEW times I do speak to friends, it seems to be working so far. My friends have been commenting on how much more natural I sound recently.
Nice!!
From personal experience I can confirm this is absolutely on the money. Developing an awareness for what is right and assuming everything else is wrong is the key to ultimately speaking with almost no mistakes.
I’d always gotten the AJATT elitist vibe from Matt, which I never enjoyed. But he was really humble here and I appreciated the honesty about himself and the community. Plus the AKIRA poster I can’t argue with. I related to him a lot here (especially with cementing bad habits way back in the beginning which provided little other than frustration thereafter). I will recommend this video when I suggest embracing the silent period to others. Good stuff, man. I’m becoming less resentful of your age and ability lol. After starting MIA you seem like a way cooler dude. I think you will gather greater support as a result and I can say you’re deserving of it. Keep it up.
Weeeeeb
Ronald McPaul lol
Most important don't condemn other people said from the man himself.
A funny thing that happens is that some phrases start to really stick and you'll end up spitting them out kind of unconsciously. For example I've been listening to a podcast called 日本の歴史 and since they say the title at the beginning of every episode, I've noticed I randomly whisper those words when working or something. I guess it's my brain processing the language subconsciously so I don't mind.
I do the same thing with swedish!
Literally me
Seeing the difference in your video style / personality from the beginning to now is amazing - thanks to you I have started meditation (before I thought it was just a silly spiritual thing) and found about about anki and the merits of immersion - Great stuff!
So it is a sin, but someone already died for it so you’re good.
Mvp
Khatz?
@@mueezadam8438 Yes, he died in a car accident years ago.
@@anonymousname2651 you're joking, right?
@@Elaxkun khatz is alive
I can relate to this I am came in Germany six years ago and started learning german in my second year and was forced to output since I was in high school.
I can speak alright but I always have a lot of simple gramatical mistakes which make me sound very bad. Same thing with writing, I can write but I always write with incorrect spelling, other gramatical mistakes just for the fact that I never tried to read or watch content in german and thought that my langauge course in school will make it better somehow.
I am not a native english speaker and accidentially ajatted for years from the age of 6 until today 18 in english. I watched english movies, read books, articles, comments and etc. At that time I never spoke english until 12 when I migrated to germany since that was the only langauge I was able to use to communicate with germans.
Ever since I started speaking I noticed that I have a mixture of british, american accent in my english and there is no sign of my original accent in my english, when I write I always think of what sounds more natural and not what's correct in a gramatical sense.
I am gonna start japanese which is my fourth langauge with the immersion method and hope for the best.
I think outputting too early is what frustrated me and made me ultimately quit Japanese for EIGHT years. I'm 25 now and restarting and I wish I had your method back then, I would have been super fluent by now...😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢
It’s never too late my friend 😅
Hows it going. Dont give up! You can do it
it's not the end of the world bro, chill
Same. I’m 26 now. I couldn’t find the motivation. I started studying when I was 13. That was over 10 years ago. With quarantine in effect I started using Duolingo because I had nothing to do. I’ve gotten a 60 day streak plus 26,000 xp and have learned enough to get motivated to learn more. Now I’m just finishing Japanese From Zero 1 and moving on to 2.
Slowly but surely, bits and pieces of natural native Japanese conversation are becoming less fuzzy to me. I can hear what’s being said (even if I don’t understand it) and start recognizing grammar/words that I learned in the book/Duolingo. The more progress I make the more motivation I feel. More importantly, the actual meaning of what is said is starting to be understood in real time without the delay of figuring out what was said and translating to English.
Just the other day I was watching a slice of life anime (so no crazy/unrealistic words) and realized that I hadn’t looked at the subtitles for a solid 5 minutes. I was so shocked. Now I didn’t understand 100% of what was said, but I did understand enough to where I couldn’t be bothered to look down at the subtitles.
My short term goal is to get to N3 in the next year, which I think is pretty realistic after finishing all 5 JFZ textbooks. Everyday is still a challenge to pick up the textbook, but so long as I do something related to Japanese I still feel motivated.
@@acelakid94 wow man, that's amazing. I'm currently acquiring Russian, and I'm jealous of all my fellow Japanese learners, bc you guys have sooooo much more content to watch and read and listen to haha.
Building intuition is super important, but my favorite reason for focusing on listening and reading is definitely building a repertoire of words and phrases that you know are correct because you've seen/heard them used repeatedly and in context. Developing poor pronunciation or sentence structure by trying to hard to rush into speaking or writing can develop habits that are going to be harder to break in the future, very true!
I feel like synthesizing sentences is so important to learning though. . . . like if we think of mass immersion as mimicking how we learn our L1s as kids, even kids don't have the set-phrases we have yet so they say things funny but they learn eventually. I think my favourite story was about a kid who didn't know how to express the idea of death so he said described it as "his ghost fell out". I'm okay with sounding like a 2-year old for a bit =3 I just ask my language partners ahead of time to pls rephrase things for me if I say them wrong/awkwardly.
The context of a 2 years old is generally very different from the one of a language learner. People around the 2 years old (generally his parents) will always correct him, and it will feel normal to eveybody.
That could somewhat~ work if you have a native speaker next to you all the time, but even then he probably wouldn'y even tell every unnatural detail either. You don't learn L2 exactly how you learn L1, one major difference is context (100% forced immersion and people forcing you to be right)
This was how I started learning Japanese way back in 2002. My first few years was mainly input. I watched movies and anime, I studied from a textbook, and I took university classes. I didn't speak more than a few words per day, and that was mainly to myself in private (to hear myself say the words). I didn't feel comfortable with output yet. I kept up with my studies, classes, and authentic resources. Though nothing had really changed in my routine for almost two years, by 2004 I was suddenly ready to start having lag free (no delay in reaction time) short conversations about a variety of simple topics.
I'm happy to see that with every new video your room gets a little bit cleaner :)
Honestly, I think a lot of people overthink all of this. People "do it wrong" in so many ways all the time and still do just fine.
This makes a lot of sense. I am bad at my fiancé’s language so we almost always communicate in English which forces her to output a ton and create poor habits. Even things I’ve corrected many times she will still mess up more than not. I feel bad for making her carry all the language burden while I get to carefully practice and develop my language ability. Thanks dear!
highly specific in unpredictable ways = a given set phrase in a context
build good habits in the first place -- only say things that you know are correct
early output = have to be creative - make sth up --> assume you are probably wrong--> look up the correct way to say + pretty safe from making habit out of sth you're not sure on
be aware that phrase is unnatural
* silent period
I would say - there is an alternative, but, it's not something which you can definitely get.
I speak Thai, fluently, to the level that I often fool people into thinking that I'm a native Thai speaker.
How did I get there?
I picked up a pretty basic textbook, it went over how to say what, where, when, how, why, how many etc. And I started outputting immediately.
Now, Thai is a tonal language, so of course, at first I was pretty bad at it (ugh... The amount of people who think their Thai is good - but their tones are WAY off...)
Anyway, I got a girlfriend (who became my ex wife) who corrected me on every small mistake I made. People always say "that must have been super annoying" but, given that I wanted to master the language, it never bothered me, not even once.
Through all of her corrections, grammar and pronunciation, plus all of the time I spent immersed where no one spoke English...
Fuck me this comment has gotten long...
Maybe I should delete this and simply say "find someone who you spend almost all of your time with, who will correct every mistake you make - and you'll reach near native level.
All of the nuances of grammar was purely through acquisition and being corrected.
Thanks for another great video. I'm in the second year of immersion learning and living in Japan so your advice on this subject is always very helpful and logical.
7 months ago I decided to meet up with a native speaker for language exchange. I had a base of hiragana, katakana and basic vocab and sentence structure. Luckily, she was nice enough to fix my mistakes in my speaking and messages. I learned so much from that. Although I've probably picked up some bad habits as well. So, there's positives and negatives to it I suppose.
What I do with a language exchange partner is to give each other 3 random words every day. Then we have to make simple sentences using those words. The deal is to correct each other's sentences aiming for natural language. After corrections, we have T1 sentences that we can add into the SRS.
I cracked tf up when I saw the thumbnail lol. I love laoshu's Chinese videos because he seems to be good at speaking it, but not so much the other languages
Though he's a beginner, him speaking Dutch (my native language) cracks me up...
To be fair he’s speaking like a million languages. He only knows introductions in most of them
Yes he’s good in mandarin in terms of speaking and communication but his tones are off, not everyone cares about accent though 蘿蔔青菜各有所愛
His Cantonese is pretty good
0:00 so imma say this:
If you take a formal class, you **will** be doing output asap or you will fail
I think early output is good for confidence. In high school, I was much more confident in speaking Japanese than I am now. I had far more output in HS too
The longer the silent period the better the speaking, which includes pronunciation, intonation, naturalness of expressions, correct grammar etc. People who become fluent fast (start speaking L2 at normal speed) often get praised as good speakers ... however in the long run, the learners who put off speaking practice until they are truly ready (taken in enough input) end up better speakers than the ones who output early. The ones who output later gain "fluency" (automatic speaking) just like the early outputters, but the important thing is that the overall quality of their speaking is much better than the early outputters. Early outputters have many more bad habits, and since language = habits, their speaking will never be as good as the later outputters, even if they want to improve their speaking later on and try and fix their bad habits. For the same effort, late outputters have better results. It's a case of the tortoise winning the race. It's worth delaying output until you're really ready because you have a lifetime of outputting as much as you want ahead of you. For learners who find it hard to speak naturally and at good speed, do not feel inferior if there are early outputters in your environment getting praised while you do not receive any. Do not feel intimidated by these other learners who output freely and easily and do so early on. The long run is what matters. Not speaking for an extra 6 months is worth it to speak as well as you possibly can. You will surpass the (too) early outputter eventually. Early output means you have to do some translation in your head (grammar translation method). The language you produce will be unnatural. But if you practice this imperfect language enough, you will become "fluent" (speak automatically at normal speed). But you will be fluent in YOUR version of L2. It won't be authentic L2. And once you become fluent in some language, it means that language is more or less fixed in your head. This is why some people never improve their skills no matter how many times they are told they make mistakes in pronunciation, grammar etc. They CANNOT improve. To get better they have to forget everything they practiced and start all over again, and that is really too difficult to achieve. So, do not practice faulty language. Do not feel pressure to speak early by seeing others speak early and "fluently". If you investigate the ones who have spoken L2 for many years and have bad grammar, pronunciation etc, you will find they outputted early. If their L2 is your L1, and you are their teacher or language exchange partner, it will be a pain to teach them. They never seem to improve and keep repeating their mistakes even after lots of corrections of the same mistakes. Their language habits have been set and in a bad way. They may feel confident because they output at normal speed, but their output is of low quality in general. What's more, these people have the fixed notion that early outputting is good, and speaking ability is all about practicing output, such as in front of the mirror, and they will push you, as your language exchange partner, to do the same as them and practice output before you are ready. For these reasons, I advise to not do language exchange.
thank god hahaha, I'm in japan for a month and only saw your videos one week in, already went from unable to speak at all to having broken conversations at bars with strangers though. Thank you so much man!!!
At the moment, I'm studying N3/N2 Japanese material, but I'm also working as an ALT in Japan, so I have to work with all these homeroom teachers who can't speak English well and can't understand me when I speak English, which is forcing me to do more output than I would like to. I know I'm saying so many things to them unnaturally. On top of that, the teachers don't really give me corrections either. I've been addicted to using HiNative to help me formulate the correct things to say, but even so, I'm getting carried away with outputting on that app sometimes.
Its similar to fighting, as an MMA coach, ironically in Japan, you can see the habits each style of fighter brings with them shows, boxers turn their lead legs and dip, wrestlers dip and drop their hands, jujitsu guys sit on their backs, judo guys give their backs etc etc...no matter how hard I try to correct them, its ingrained from their years of practicing that one sport...while it is possible, you have to take their bad habits out little by little...which i what I am doing with my Japanese since I worked as host when I learned Japanese where talking is kinda important haha
Would you count singing as output? With singing you are actually shadowing to learn how to sing, paying a lot of attentions to the vowels and all that stuff.
Just for curiosity, because I think it's a pretty nice tool, I know two Japanese people who can speak Portuguese at a native level and both used singing as a language learning tool.
yes but not what he’s talking about.
So, since writing and speaking are output, when going through RTK, am I not suppose to write the kanji, or say the kanji outloud (I'm not actually sure if RTK gives any readings at all, it's still not here yet ;-;)? Writing stuff down helps me remember, but even if it's harder, I'd rather not mess myself up later... Also, why do you think learning Vocab is frowned up? Going from Kanji to sentences seems like a hard jump. And learning sentences without translating them (especially with no vocab knowledge) seems like a daunting task. Because you don't learn vocab, does this mean you wont understand any of the input you listen to until you get to the sentence phase? Thank you for your time.
Why the ''silent period'' though? You can still say the phrases in your target language. For example, repeating phrases from songs, affirmations, etc.
The gist of it is that you may not know that you are pronouncing something wrong until you have aquired a certain level of listening comprehension. You should therefore keep it simple and don't practice things you will have to relearn properly later.
@@Tech2Rush That's not how children acquired their first language. They try to output very early on, and they constantly make mistakes whenever they talk. Even they pronounce things wrong but see after some years of trying they can talk fluently. So, you're wrong.
Weebs don't have children, so they don't know the process of acquiring a language well.
@@abdhulahadh6684 I mean, children get a ton of listening comprehension before they even have the ability to say the words they want to, though. Some may argue adults are not children and don't learn the same way. There really isn't a widely agreed upon 'right' way to learn languages, this is just another method that a lot of people like. Plenty of people with kids have failed to teach them their own native language, they're not really the key to understanding learning (in my opinion etcetc).
leave them weebs alone, they're learnin stuff
@@punkandkittens13 They start trying to output after just 4 to 6 months. Which won't be a "ton of listening comprehension".
Listening comprehension? They won't understand most of what's being said at that age.
Thing is, they try to output before even they have enough input. They make mistakes 90% of the time they try to talk, even at the age of 1 and 2 they still make a lot of grammar mistakes. Matt is saying if you try to output before you get enough input, in other words, if you output when you make mistakes all over then you shouldn't is what he said. No? Both are wrong, humans are an evidence to that.
We all acquire a language the same as we acquired our first language. This is by getting comprehensible input while trying to output as you get input, till we get fluent. Unless of course, you delay the output till you get enough input, which will slow down the process, as it's apparent from his ability. He's still not natural, not to be harsh but his speaking is like a chainsaw, the sounds of turning it on and then off, which is something Japanese people don't have when speaking. And, that he got after about 5 to 10 years or so he says. A 5-year-old Japanese kid can talk much better than that.
@@abdhulahadh6684 You have a very good point, but remember that babies brain is different from the adult's brain. I´m not a neurologist or something like that, but I know that when you are a baby you can perceive all the sounds of all the languages, and when you developing your brain, you consolidate the understanding of the sounds of your native, but you lose that ability. In my view, you need to practice deliberately listening to perceive those sounds. If you try recording yourself you might improve your pronunciation at least in a superficial way, but you won´t be able to understand those sounds and, therefore, you will keep pronouncing phrases incorrectly thinking that you are doing it perfectly. But at the end of the day, it depends on your goal with the language, if you want to be fluent in the less time possible, I guess, you should start outputting from the beginning, nonetheless, if you want to speak naturally, I find more logical to at first exposure yourself with tons of input and then start speaking only when you are ready for it. Sorry for my grammar mistakes. I´m not a native English speaker.
Man, there's GOT to be phrase and sentence frequency lists to go with just word frequency lists. Seems like it shouldn't be difficult to create an algorithm that mines for groups of words that are always seen together in a particular language. And as with words, probably best to mine from scores of film subtitles.
thanks for this video and for the style ispiration, I Bought that shirt from etsy i cant wait until i get it
Very good video. Love it!
Thanks Matt! I'll apply all advice. Good luck:)
@虚無主義 thanks for correction
Hey Matt, I'm kinda new to the MIA thing and I really love all of this. I have started the journey (Doing kanjis right now) but I was wondering, should I go reading the AJATT website or should I wait to read the stage 1 and 2 on your MIA website. I mean I kinda know what to do after the kanjis about my input immersion but I guess there are other things...
Thanks anyway for all the amazing work you did to enlight us all :D
I think Matt recommends going through the Table of Contents in the AJATT website. That's what I've been doing and it's great!
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 Thanks, yep this is somehow what I am doing right now, but I don't really want to do things that Matt already took 3 years to question hahaha But I guess the big picture is quite the same
@@MrHyonD haha yeah, but I think some AJATT entries are really useful. I think Matt himself describes MIA as a more systematic AJATT, so the two methods don't differ that much in content, but more in execution.
So, what if I repeat phrases from f.e. Duolingo out loud?
Like that, I start to learn how to shape the mouth to make f.e. the "r" sound in Japanese.
What do you think? - Is this bad or time waste?
what about output when you're learning with anki (audio cards)?? I'm beginning Japanese and making my cards from japanese shows, news and animes, then, I take the audio and put into my card. When I'm studying these cards I try to speak the sentences after listening to it. Does this count like output or were you only referring to output in a real world situation when you dont know if you're correct?
If u're listening to the recording attentively that'd be shadowing I guess
@@maxim_ml I agree. Shadowing is good, but I think it also makes sense to at first focus more on getting a feel of the language's phonemes, intonation, etc, and less on shadowing, then when you do have a good feel, shadow away. :D As long as you're very attentive and always making an intense effort to get it as correct and natural as possible, you shouldn't make bad habits but overtime get closer and closer to a natural, native-like sound.
doesnt count as output because you have correct information there and not making stuff up
Anki is input. You will not be able to speak Japanese without memorizing sentences. Because Japanese is not like English. Japanese is different between men and women, young people and old people. It's difficult making sentences by yourself. Non Japanese tend to speak like women.
This explains my issues with losing my Spanish speaking skills. Omg I entered a silent period with Spanish and I really regret it because I LOST my near native fluency. Now I have to build those skills back up with reading, tv, and watching the news 😭
While all of this is good. The most important thing you mentioned is having that awareness that most of what you're saying is likely wrong unless you're confident you've heard it multiple times in context. This seems obvious to me and hence why output early isn't a problem if all you're doing is throwing some basic things out there to help build that motivation, (That's highly enjoyable). Early output should only ever be for fun moments or scenarios where you have no choice. Never be used as the tool to solidify actual speech. Why the hell this isn't obvious to anyone is beyond me.
Thanks for this video, Matt, I just started MIA and even when I knew this, I started to see output as the worse thing I could do.
Technically output isn't bad if you have native speakers around you..because they will correct you. Which helps. I don't advise avoiding output totally...you should at least try to mimic actors in dramas and movies it helps....and it is sort of an output.
But, in the beginning input is key.
Thank you for this video.
Man you are truly the best 🙏 thank u for this content
I very much agree with you, Matt, and I think you explained it very well. How could one go about a silent period when they're living in the country of their target language? I can't just stop speaking at school or neglect my friendships. I was thinking of writing down all the bad habits I notice like a list and then listing the correct versions, perhaps putting the correct versions around my room so I read them often and then making a conscious effort to use them in daily life.
@Unknown Username Haven't made much progress except for the little bit of progress I made due to my circumstances changing and a bit of conscious effort put in! I still make most of the same mistakes, but this last year I've been interning as a secretary. I get to read the e-mails my colleague writes and I get to write e-mails of my own fairly often. At first I would keep searching up the gender of words, now I have this app where I can quickly look them up. Continuously having to output has forced me to have more input (even if the context is just checking a word on an app - I still do see it). I'm finally remembering the genders of the more frequently used words in out e-mails. 😅
Another change is that I completely resonate with your comment. I'm about to start my linguistics major and am very much looking forward to more input and even more without a strong dialect (which often smudges the article which shows the grammatical gender) and with a wider variety of phrases to express things. I hope my time in uni improves my German a lot!
@Unknown Username Oh, and thank you very much for taking the time to write this all out! I definitely resonate with it
@Unknown Username Haha! I actually am in a comical situation that I Germafy my English as though I'm a native German speaker (mostly word order I think) but am actually painfully obviously not a German native speaker so somehow I got the worst of both worlds. :D
I've been living in Tyrol for 8 years now and I kid you not after three some people thought I was native when first speaking to me. (I had learned German in school before comming here so I could start speaking right away basically, limited obviously but I was communicating from the beginning). I wasn't perfect though, I think I just subconsciously used the smudging the Tirolean accent does to my advantage. And ofc causal conversations aren't at the level of essays!
However, I got sick three years after comming and my German became worse. Instead of "Oh I wouldn't have know you aren't native if you didn't tell me" (which I was told three times and will forever cherish) I was met with "well your German is very good!" 🙃 Interestingly a friend of mine from France had the same experience and it was three yesrs for her too. But for her it wasn't sickness but a job change which caused her to speak little German and a lot of French.
Now it's difficult to get back at the same level in terms of accent (if it ever was that good, it's a bit hard for me to believe) but at the same time I am in some aspects better than I was then which is really weird. Noone tells me I sound native now even though technically my German should have improved during the last year. (I was a lot healthier and had a job.)
This experience is overall... certainly weird lol! I certainly need a lot of input but it's difficult to get it. I want to have input especially to solidify which phrases are correct and natural. People just speak very differently from one another here in Innsbruck. There's lots of Germans here, lots of people from all over Austria and all over Tyrol - so many different dialects are heard. I think my brain has learned to deduct the meaning without paying much attention to the specific phrases. So when I have to write something... I suddenly feel so uncertain and incapable!
There is some spellcheck but it doesn't always work. It can detect I think errors with the case but more like if you're inconsistent in a string of words, it doesn't actually know which the correct case is or which the grammatical gender of a word is.
And I have to say - I like German. :D In Bulgaria we generally only study one foreign language and the second one is kinda meh. I'm not sure all schools even have a second foreign language. You can choose your first foreign language unlike in Austria where it has to be English. Most do chose English and English is offered at most of the schools, but for example I chose German. Never regreted chosing it - I didn't know what I was getting into but I liked it all throughout! :)
hey i am a beginner in japanese. i’ve read about the AJATT method. is it really worth it? i want your input on how i can start and sustain a constant japanese learning style. i just started learning japanese a day or two ago and only know some stuff. ive heard you say in one of your videos that JapanesePod101 isn’t a good source to learn, but that’s what i’ve been using? is there anything that you recommend for beginners to learn? any apps, ebooks, podcasts, anything? i’ve been learning hanagana and katakana but i have a hard time understanding kanji. i’m learning radicals but it’s through JP101. should i switch to something better?
I like that Sakamoto Ryouma poster in the back. I recently finished Ryu Ga Go-to ku Ishin on PS4. He was the main character. Check it out when time permits.
Absolutely brilliant!
Every time I ask a native a question in HelloTalk i speak a bit of Japanese. It’s so motivating. I get corrected on the spot regardless. And it’s an awesome feeling to communicate in Japanese.
I’ll be going to japan for 3 weeks in August. And I’ll be speaking a lot. Even though I do MIA. It’s called an Approach for a reason.
Thats a quality thumbnail considering I just learned who Laoshu was yesterday
Same here hahaha xD
@@lorax121323 Obviously high I would never diss Matt
Cool Laoshu has been blowing up alot lately.
Yup doesn't sound like hating, at all... smh
@@Green-ld4gi Knowing about the subject makes you a hater now?
Rest in peace laoshu
Hi Matt, not sure whether you still watch comments on this video. But what about speaking lessons with Italki teacher that you tell to correct you every sentence? To still get in speaking practice (pronounciation) but also to not get bad grammar/vocab habbits.
As a beginner, you're going to be making far too many mistakes for a teacher to correct them all. In reality, a teacher is only going to fix the most egregious mistakes, plus, you won't be able to integrate those corrections because you won't be able to actually understand WHY what you said was wrong.
Matt vs. Japan Thank you for your quick response! 👍
This video saved me a ton of anxiety because I was thinking “oh, I used to text a little Japanese whenever it would just come out even though I know it’s probably wrong, and sometimes I would speak a little too.” At least I know that it was a good thing that I took all my attempts with a grain of salt. Now I’m in the phase where I’m just silent and not sure if anything I say is correct both in how natural the sentence is and in pronunciation/pitch.
Is it ok to practice handwriting in your TL?
Damn I had no idea this concept exists, especially when so many ppl advertise speaking since day 1
Gonna utilize it for my korean
Everybody has their own methods. But, the way I learned English is more or less matt's method expect I didn't call it that at the age of 7..lol It really works...and I am using it to improving my Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
How's the Korean going?
@@k.5425 It's going alright
Keep telling myself I can't be expected to know everything I hear/read bc it's been only a few months
Managing expectations is harrdd
If I'm honest, I feel about everything I say in Chinese is unnatural, but I'm in an immersion program and speak all day every day. Meanwhile, they're teaching us formal language when I don't even know how to converse naturally in everyday language. Weird situation, but I pay extra attention to how the teachers say things.
There is a perk to being "forced" to learn the formal language. It then seems natural to you and whenever you need it it's not hard for you to switch over. As for the local dialect and specific for the region informal expressions - you'll adapt to those without any problems by just conversing with people. That's how the slang develops and changes anyway. I notice it's easier for me to switch over to "high German" than some of my peers who are native speakers. They have a hard time filtering out all of their dialect. It's just "German" to them. Imho it's easier to first learn the formal language and then soak in the everyday informal language then to first learn the daily informal language and then, without nearly the same opportunities for immersion and without constantly being challenged to speak it swiftly (as you are with the everyday informal language) to learn the formal language.
Does that make any sense? Hehe
@@essennagerry That's really interested, thanks for the perspective! Truth is, I'm having a great time learning Chinese; the focus on grades and certain other aspects just make it a little stressful
Matt, does it count as outputting if I'm just reading the new word/sentence rule out loud to get a feel for it a little bit? I feel like i do it too much in the middle of a lesson
no cause the sentence you’re reading is probably correct lolol
@@jamh3426 pronunciation is a thing too dumdum
@@FlyingWhales13 ? okay
I am studying mandarin but also another language ( a completely new language) and I. want to go on a silent period because my mandarin is already at a really high level. I want to get rid of the bad ha it’s bc I always make sentences that sound unnatural. Will studying this second language interfere with my silent period ?
Also for this method, when you get input from all your sources, do u ever practice like speaking the sentences you write down?? Or you really just don’t speak at all
I agree more input than output does help the language process alot but I also disagree with the inherent motive- avoiding as mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable and its this mentality that inhibited me from speaking and still makes me nervous and stumble time to time around natives despite being fairly fluent (B2 speaking- C1 comprehension) in my second language. Truth is we will continue making mistakes and I find boldly making those mistakes out in the open makes it quicker for them to be corrected rather than avoiding output until I am certain. I dont believe you fossilize mistakes- kids say the wrong thing for years and eventually through both exposure and direct correction they improve. True input is key to acquisition, but I think early output has its place in active learning.
I have Japanese Class where i am forced to talk and write every other day. What should I do?
Damn thats a cool shirt.
What does it say?
@0000 Z hahahaa i love it lol but for the sake of our pal, it means something like " In preset of knowledge " or something along those lines
essennagerry it means “your mother is gay”
@@essennagerry修行中 in English it means “learning” “acquiring”
I don't fully agree with you on this one.
I am a French native speaker and became fluent in English within a year of daily practice with people online (maybe 6 to 8h a day). Indeed, my grammar was flawed and I made a lot of bad habits. However, I do believe it is possible to get rid of these bad habits, as long as you ask people to correct you whenever you say something that may sound off.
I have spent 12 years of my life studying Dutch at school with no progress but once I started talking to people online, my level skyrocket.
I have spent so many hours watching animes, yet I am still unable to watch animes without subtitles.
Now I have been studying Korean for a few months and the only way for me to learn grammar patterns is by trials and errors. I think people who like output just have to be open-minded to the idea that they may sound strange and accept to be corrected when needed.
Genuinely curious what you don't agree on?
lol, that thumbnail
i got curious about MIA a few days ago, by the idea i heard of how babies have a pre-existing pattern-matching parts of their brain that learn language through lots of input. but babies also do a whole lot of early output, too ... so what makes lots of early input good but early output bad? is the idea "it's good to learn languages the way babies learn languages" flawed?
Babies/children do make bad habits which they correct over the course of years. There's tons of videos of toddlers saying ridiculous/comically wrong things. Separately, even with a target language fairly different from your native language you will be able to make 90% of the sounds sound 80% correct. A baby cannot do that so it has to practice, and it has to be very wrong before it can approach being almost right.
Just wondering, could reading native materials out loud improve on speaking intuition faster? Or should I just read in my head and stay silent?
Also is it ok for me to practice writing kanji?
For your first question I think it depends. I guess you should try to record yourself when trying to read and then compare it with a native speaker and pay attention to the differences until you get right the pronunciation. Otherwise I think it could do some harm if you constantly pronounce words the wrong way without even noticing it.
When ever playing an online game Russians never want to talk to me lol
So... Anyone in the community. When I am studying Anki cards (J-Recognition sub2srs), should I try to read over the sentence out loud or should I continue to stay silent and simply make mental notes? I know it may sound silly but I've been constantly switching between the two styles and it bothers me a little. Thanks in advance!
Whatever you feel like.
@@mattvsjapan Big thanks.
Yo Matt,
I've been using the Antimoon/AJATT/MIA method with Arabic and have for almost three months after using other methods and I must say, it's by far the superior approach for the serious learner in it for the long haul. However, I adjust the approach as needed to suit my strengths and motivation. My only hesitancy in using the approach was jeez, it seem to attract a bunch of Eminem - like Stan characters, who spend most of the time spewing hate against other approaches, and riding you hard (pun intended). To be clear, MIA is a serious, tedious, consistent commitment of the daily grind of putting in major work in expectation of a very delayed reward. Not everyone has the personality, temperament, or stamina to see it thru, to that end, it seems destined to be a underground type, fringe method. I mean yeah, even some of your most extreme fans, the geeky, extra introverted, weeaboos ones, immersing in their mom's basement, sliding Cheetos under their output gag order covering their mouth, spending more time with Anki, then a female, whacking off to anime in between anki reps, can't even see it thru at times and vicariously live through you. Geeky and Hardcore are not synonymous terms.
Again Matt, I love the approach, your insights are amazing but due to the hardcore nature of the method, you won't be as popular as the instant gratification methods types, flooding the market compounded with your obsessive stalkers alienating, potentially interested people. I would recommend you think about and develop a two- tiered approach, which caters to the hardcore type but also a more moderate approach as well, for those with less testicular fortitude. I know this maybe difficult to develop without compromising the quality result. However, it will grow your channel and in turn your income. Do you think something like this is possible?
God bless
What do you think of refold? Seems very beginner friendly, all the way up to the website layout.
How much intuition of the language do you think is necessary in order to be at a C1 level?
Even though I'm using the Genki series as my main learning method, should I still do input before output of should I just do what Genki is telling me?
Refreshing as so many language learners these days say that you must speak as early as possible and as much as possible to get fluent...I'm sure it works for some people but not me....doesn't make sense to me.
Hey. Obsessed with your work. But one question: When starting with the RTK? Am I supposed to do both 1 and 3 at the same time or am I supposed do RTK 1 first and then 3?
According to the MIA website, you should start with the lazy kanji 1K most used kanji anki deck. I'm currently doing it and I'm enjoying it.
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 Und wie weit bist du schon? Wie genau gehst du vor? Merkst du dir die Kanji nur oder schreibst du sie auch? Würde mich echt interessieren. Gehe einmal davon aus, dass du Deutsch kannst ^^.
@@AECH_CH Hallo, I don't speak German but Google translate helped me, haha. I hope you understand English.
So, I've been doing it for a month, 20 new kanji a day. It usually takes 1h a day. I've seen 51% of the kanji (but only 13% of them are mature). I always write the kanji I'm reviewing. It's been good and I'd recommend you doing something similar. Just tune the amount of new card a day so you don't get too many and end up burning yourself out :)
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 Ah sorry :D! I assumed you were German by your name... Anyways: Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately I had to skip some rep-days due to exams in school. Now I am fully motivated to continue with 20 a Day. For me it's actually a lot of more work since I need to look up the german keywords and meanings etc... I mean my English isn't bad but not good enougth to learn a foreign language with :). I also got 10% of the Kanji which are mature but I haven't rept one of them yet. I wonder how my retention rate will be.
Is there any way to connect with you? It would benefit both of us since we are doing the same Thing :D.
@@nicolaspfeifer4506 so RTK 1 takes 4 months, how long would RTK 3 take?
I think it depends. I knew a girl who inputted from day 1 with natives, and passed n1 in 2 yrs, and can now also trick natives like matt. Ofc she was lucky enough to be dating a native who correct every. Single. Thing. She did wrong xD. Also never touched anki and only used textbooks. Any method can work but if your shy like moi and find it hard to find/talk to natives who will do that for ya, then doing what matt said is a.ok!
the reason she became fluent was because of the amount of input she was getting during the conversations. Not the output pol
this is the exception not the rule, if it happens 1/10,000 times that doesn't mean you should follow that experience. try something that's guaranteed to work 10,000/10,000 times instead.
Isn't reading some kind of "internal outputting"? I mean, you couldn't get bad grammar habits from it, but what about pronunciation? Since you read it silently to yourself, is it possible to get used to a wrong pronunciation of some words even if you are just imagining how they should be pronounced?
4:13 list spread lines?
Wrist
I resonate with your point of view and what you say is very interesting and enlightening to me. However I guess, for people who are not doing the complete MIA approach, like me, and depending on your personality and your study schedule it is OK to output.
Let me explain:
It is true that the more you talk the more prompt is someone to create habits, and within those there are bad habits that come from bad output and not enough correction. But, I find motivating and encouraging doing a language exchange with native people and getting corrected from , even although I have not been learning Chinese for more than a year.
Combining about 2 hours of speaking practice along 6 hours of studying per week is OK (you practice what you learn during the week and focus on pronunciation and new words to introduce to the grammar structures you use).
Therefore there is no room for bad habits to be created, as you are putting boundaries to your speaking (current knowledge of the person) and getting constant correction from native people. (Unless you get creative and ignore the correction of your teacher).
Example: A child keeps talking to the mother and the mother is constantly correcting his mistakes.
Although I like my approach, it is true that I am introducing loads of Input during the week(Chinese podcast and interviews with both Hanzi and Pinyin), that adds about 4/5 hours of listening and active comprehension most of the time. This is where it comes my interpretation of MIA (Input is one of the major points of MIA).
I guess it all sum up with:
1.Be aware that bad habits can develop (this should be enough to prevent someone to develop those habits and to become more active in the learning process)
2. Limit your speaking output by trying to talk only with people that will correct you (i.e: online teachers)
3. Immerse yourself with loads of weekly inputs.
I am not against the MIA, but I am just adding a different opinion to the debate. Keep it up Matt, I think you are doing an awesome work.
I feel like you might have missed a few aspects of speaking, you mostly talk about saying the right things but not anything about how you are speaking, as in what sounds you're producing. Wouldn't outputting early while being mindful that you probably say things wrong still ingrain bad pronunciation habits? Like saying words with the wrong pitch/intonation/stress?
Or are these habits easier to fix in your opinion?
The idea of staying aware of whether what you are saying is natural or not isn't a replacement for avoiding early output. It's just a technique to minimize damage when you do early output. This is especially important for people stuck in a situation where they need to do early output on a daily basis, as I said in the video. Regular early output will lead to bad pronunciation habits that will be hard to break later, but I think that speaking less than once a week isn't going to make any meaningful negative impact in the long run.
Has anyone else finished AJATT and started chinese with laddering from japanese? I am starting but confused for Hanzi, that means key words and stories must be in japanese?
But is it okay to mimic? I use a spectrograph
I'm a beginner in learning Japanese, but I talk in Japanese with my neighbors more or less every day. My neighbors are native japanese and willing to correct my output..... Is it still alright to continue conversing in Japanese with them daily?
He has said in the past that this works but is much slower than if you start with understanding.
@@ChaiKirbs I still do my daily listening of about 2 hours and focus on input.... Its just usually there is also some daily output when talk with them
People learn in different ways. Having native speakers this close to you (and willing to help!) is an advantage and you should use it!
@@evsian yeah, the environment definitely helps. I'm kinda lucky that where I live in Canada is close to a few Japanese cultural centers/library, as well as a Japanese bookstore among other things. Asides from my neighbor, there is a decent number of Japanese people and communities to talk to. Also a few Japanese run restaurants in my area that are frequented by Japanese people (I don't know why, but I enjoy just hearing people naturally speaking Japanese in the background).
Continue talking if that's what you like, you're going to make mistakes no matter what. But the more you speak, the better you'll become at speaking.
Aren't the problems you see with early output easily solved through feedback? Isn't that the whole point of having a teacher who can provide quality feedback? i.e. to prevent the growing pains from cementing into bad habits?
Unfortunately not. Language is far to exact for that to actually work. Assuming you're a native English speaker, I'm sure you have met people who are at a near-native level of English, but still make minor pronunciation, usage and grammar errors quite often while speaking. For someone like that, you may be able to correct most of their mistakes in real-time. But as a beginner, you're probably making literally 10+ mistakes every single sentence. There is no way for a teacher to correct every single little way you mispronounce vowels and consonants, the way your intonation is unnatural, the way you use words in unnatural ways, etc. And even if they did try to correct every single mistake in that way, there would be no way for you to retain it. In reality, teachers only correct the more egregious mistakes that people make, and ignore the rest.
@@mattvsjapan Cheers. Dunno, I tend to think of language acquisition as consisting of layers. When you're beginning, mistakes from the higher layers aren't even available for you to make. In that sense, the amount of mistakes a learner is making doesn't necessarily decrease exponentially as he advances. Though of course it's not like there's a clear-cut boundary between layers. Hence the fact that teachers will focus on certain mistakes instead of others depending on the level of the student.
In the end I guess I just don't share all that much your concern about bad habit formation. To me there seems to be a lot of wiggle room there. And besides, don't you have the same risk with input? Even if you're "just" listening, you're most likely making many comprehension mistakes when you're beginning, and you gradually clear those up but there's always a risk of making a mistake and forming a bad habit.
Dunno. I just watched your vid comparing language acquisition to MMA (really good vid btw), and the guy said that he gets his students to spar from the very beginning. To me the equivalent of sparring in language would be to have an actual conversation with someone. Sure, you'll make plenty of mistakes, probably "lose", maybe not even realize some of the mistakes you're making and you risk forming bad habits, but I'm not sure there's any way around that. And, to me at least, that experiential aspect really boosts the learning process. When you make a mistake that has real-life consequences, well, let's just say you won't be needing any flashcards to remember that one ^^.
Anyway, I'm just discovering this approach so I definitely haven't put as much thought into it as you have (and I appreciate the reply btw :-) ). Just thinking out loud. I agree with the basic premise. My old music teacher used to say: "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent." I guess I just see a difference between "practice" and "performance". Like, in music "practice" would be repeating the same thing over and over again, and damn right if you're doing it wrong in practice, repeating it over and over again will just make it worse. But when you perform, you have to let go of your practice. In some ways that's the hardest part about performing, and for me it was good to get used to that very early on. Honestly that problem doesn't go away the better you get, but when you start early on you learn certain strategies to cope with performing, learn strategies to let go and let the chips fall where they may. Dunno if that makes sense.
@@mattvsjapan "Language is far to exact for that to actually work"
Do you have any empirical proof for this claim? Because I have personally known a number of highly fluent English speakers who have experienced the exact opposite of what you are saying. People of whom still achieved an extremely high level of fluency. I once worked with a student(21 years old) who couldn't speak a lick of English when she moved to London. After frequent conversational lessons on Skype with a teacher, she was communicating with native speakers very comfortably after a year. She had an accent, yes, but it wasn't an unnatural one(in that "it was hard to listen to her speak" sense. It was obviously foreign but very clear ). We had conversations frequently and there was never a time where we struggled to understand each other.
Also you have the wrong idea about fluency. You can have an accent and still be very fluent. I have Indian and Somali friends who have accents but speak English very fluently. You can be fluent and still made mistakes from time to time.
Another thing, doing what you suggested "the silent period" is very risky because you normally forget everything you learn when you are not 'frequently speaking". Speaking a language is like going to the gym. If you are not exercising those muscles frequently, you risk "reversibility". I am currently learning Arabic using Italki and my pronunciation has come a long way because of how frequently I speak. Accent matters a lot to me, so choose a teacher who is especially "picky" on accent. We do drills repeatedly until he is happy with what he hears
nice shirt bro!
hi, i found it here lmao www.etsy.com/listing/703338071/xi-xing-zhng-in-training-t-shirt-shugyo?ref=listing_published_alert
Moving to japan in a month, so I’ve got no choice. Got a few months of MIA listening in before that at least. I’ve decided it’s really silly to not output or try to reduce output out of some dream of perfect fluency in the future. Why the hell move to japan if not to speak and interact and connect as much as possible.
Well, if you are going to be in Japan for the long run, it's not hard to justify reducing output during the first year so that your experience speaking the language is better for every year after that.
Matt vs. Japan Unfortunately I’ll probably only be there 1-3 years, in a small town with no almost no English speakers and therefore a huge impetus to output for both work and a social life. I do plan to follow the assumptions you talk about in the video and hope that counteracts the bad habits. That’s really all I can do, right?
@@vaildog1 How was it?
3:34
is the video like half a second off from the audio or am I just tripping? Anyway great content as always!
looks like 200ms or so, but yes
Zen matt too op!
Underrated comment!
damn really liked the video + thumbnail! thanks !!
Thanks Matt, but ultimately I'm in this to have fun and don't mind coming off as a funny foreigner. So I don't care.
安心した
This is an interesting perspective on this.
Hmm, I sometimes have written RUclips comments in Japanese to practice, but maybe I should give that a rest for a bit, or simply just remind myself "even if they understand, I'm still probably messing up."
I do lot's of listening as well, I need to catch up on reading though.
You look like MIA Jesus with your pose in this video, and that beautiful beard. You're preaching to the masses haha
Thanks for the video as always my dude
いいね 坂本龍馬😙
i mean, do you don't like pismleur ? cause they teach how to speak ,and start speaking the language from the start.
I want you an Lydia Machova to hav a debate because she says almost the opposite
Do a "how fast can you learn Spanish" video challenge.
How many weeks until beny lewis' spanish level
(yes, love the beard
- thirsty subscriber )
list, spread, lines. Lol, amazing example.
RIP LAOSHU50500!!!!!!!
I just started the MIA like a month ago with Japanese and man... I am so happy every time I understand something in an anime :D. At first I hadn't much time to immerse so I just did "Lazy Kanji". Now I turned up my exposure to at least 2 hours a day.
My question ist: How to start on getting reading input? As I usually don't read mangas or japanese books. What is a good source for beginner friendly reading content (which is also used by natives)?
Keep this concept and the MIA website going Matt. I think you have potentially discovered a language concept that will be the standard in 50 years. I do also believe true native like level can be reached allmoast just through exposure (how else would babys do it?)
Start reading manga? You're looking to learn the language, not look for stuff you already like.
@@Asdayasman それは違うよ！Sorry, but one of the key philosophies of Khatzumoto was to do things in the language that you like so that you would be able to maintain this for an extended period of time. To the person who asked: What do you usually read in your native language? Video games? Blog posts? Articles? Try to find the Japanese equivalent and start out with that.
@@AJGress Philosophy is another word for opinion. The fact is that you're gonna learn with input, _comprehensible_ input, not _enjoyable_ input.
I barely read _shit_ in my native language besides technical documentation. Reading that in Japanese ain't gonna help at all.
@@AJGress I actually read a lot about news and politics... The main problem is: How to read the Kanji when you don't know the readings yet? Should you read it out loud, what if you mess up the pronounciation, etc... :D. I still have a lot of questions about the MIA method so I hope Matt will keep updating the site and make it more beginner friendly.
@@AECH_CH That's where i+1 sentence mining comes into play. Let's say you were reading a sentence with Kanji「ドイツの科学は世界一！」 And you didn't know 科学. Now what you'd do is look up the definition and pronunciation and make a sentence card for it. Now you know that those characters are pronounced 科学. Only do it from J-E or J-J though, never E-J. But Matt talks about this in other videos.
How about output when learning vocab?
Every time I speak Japanese I go to church