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Katz vs The Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6541 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 1 of 22 16 October 2010 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a bit of a forum junkie. It helps me a lot with learning material selection and study methods. It also provides
many hours of entertainment. Regarding language learning discussions, over the past few years I've noticed what I believe is a shift from diligence to nonchalance. I wonder if there is really a shift, or if it's just the people who have grown up on the internet showing the world what they are willing to do to learn a language. From my diligent point of view, I believe the nonchalant ideas that are growing in popularity now, while harmless to some, can set the young learner off on the wrong path. In addition, this nonchalant attitude intrigues me. Mostly because it's so foreign to me. I could never see myself adapting the attitude, any more than I could see myself robbing a bank or pirating things off the internet. It just seems so wrong. Hence, it is very interesting. So I'd like to get a feeling of how this forum swings. It's a hard thing to put a finger on, but I though this poll might be a good starting point. And it seems like a fun comparison. So who's learning philosophy is more like your own - Katz or The Korean? As with most successful language learners, they have many things in common. But I want to focus on the differences rather than the similarities. Here is a brief summary of their differences: Katz - don't learn grammar directly; don't use textbooks; don't use teachers; don't take classes; don't do anything that isn't fun The Korean - learn grammar; use textbooks; use teachers; take classes; do all the work required even if it's not fun 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5977 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 22 17 October 2010 at 7:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Leo, I suppose these are my thoughts after thinking about the language learning myths thread for a while (being a forum junky myself). I only found out about The Korean when you posted the link, and I enjoyed the site and reading about his method quite a bit.
I gathered that the core of his method was to first practice reading and writing simple sentences, using his "word building" writing exercise. During this phase you have to learn all of the grammar rules (he points out that these are being finite in number, but this seems pretty difficult to me). The second part is to then to memorize tens of thousands of individual words. To quote from his post on language learning: “Doesn’t the Korean’s method for the most part rely on rote memorization?” No, that’s not correct – the Korean’s method relies entirely on rote memorization. Throughout this process, you're supposed to immerse yourself in the language, listening and speaking as much as possible. In a nutshell, if you continue to immerse yourself and learn enough words, you eventually attain fluency. The core parts of Katz's method are also memorization and audio/video immersion. He uses the Krashin approach and advocates not speaking until you've listened to a lot of the language, but it's immersion, nonetheless. He says you should use SRS to memorize ~2100 individual characters, and then only memorize sentences (~10000 of them) after that. He talks specifically about learning character-based languages on his site, so I'm not quite sure how tally of words and sentences would work for alphabet-based languages. Either way, memorization is king. I don't think these methods are horribly different. The biggest divergence between the two is clearly the grammar, that is whether you should actively learn it or passively acquire it. Both of these guys successfully learned their target language to a high degree, so I don't know if it's really necessary to determine that one way is superior to the other. Another big difference is the perspective: I believe The Korean's method is more for people living in a place where the target language is spoken, whereas Katz's is for people outside the TL's locale. Maybe the approach to grammar can/should change based on this change in learning environment, I think it makes sense based on day-to-day needs of the student and the availability of native speakers. One thing that struck me, however, was that both of these guys state in so many words: "If you really want to learn the language to fluency, suck it up and work at it. There are no shortcuts, mastery in anything requires obscene amounts of work. This is no exception." What makes these methods unique is that they both acknowledge the monumental task of learning another language while Assimil, Linguaphone, MT, etc. stress how easy it is. The commercial courses are fine depending on your goals (I think these are better for learning multiple languages simultaneously), but can't teach you an entire language on their own. The Korean/Katz methods are holistic, in that you can use them from day one until the theoretical day when you reach fluency. In my mind at least, I calculate these two methods as being inches apart, while all the other options (TYS, Assimil, Rosetta Stone) are on an all together separate continent. Iverson's is extremely similar to The Korean's. L+R leads down the same road as Katz/Korean, except that I don't think it can take you to the same level of active fluency on its own, and it isn't really sustainable for extended periods of time. I honestly don't see the debate between these two methods as dilligence vs. nonchalance, but rather active vs. passive grammar and procedural differences in memorization. Edited by carlonove on 17 October 2010 at 7:00pm 15 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5526 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 3 of 22 17 October 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually...this isn't quite true. In fact, he even points out that memorizing the sentences should *not* be the goal, but rather simply understanding them. The only real intentional memorizing with his methodology is for the characters themselves. You will eventually learn the sentences perhaps even to the point of memorizing them, but this is more a function of seeing them repeatedly in the SRS, rather than an intentional goal. FWIW, I answered "it's a draw" in the poll. While my methods lean more toward those of Khatz/AJATT (including heavy SRS use and native material immersion), I still study grammar explicitly as I personally feel that grammar is a useful shortcut rather than an unnecessary difficulty. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6541 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 4 of 22 18 October 2010 at 2:46am | IP Logged | |||||
There was nothing in your post that made me believe the differences are other than I stated. I would dig through the 2 blogs and site reasons, but I have to go to sleep, and Katz site depresses me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ALS Senior Member United States Joined 5795 days ago 104 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Finnish, Russian | Message 5 of 22 18 October 2010 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
This is part of what I think is a huge flaw in AJATT's method, and that is, how exactly *do* you "understand" the sentence? How do you know you're correctly understanding it? If you translate it, how do you know it's correct? If it came from a dual-language source, how do you know they were both the same sentence without liberties being taken by the translator? Without "proper" study of grammar of some kind, the chances that you will misunderstand something are huge. It will eventually be filtered through many thousands of other sentences and you will probably understand eventually, but it's such a long time to wait to understand possibly simple concepts that could be explained with a few weeks or months of regular grammar study and practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6940 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 22 18 October 2010 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wait.. at which point was Khatz not diligent?
Was it when he became fluent in Japanese in 18 months as a full-time university student? Or when he bought the Japanese version of every one of his Computer Science textbooks he could find? Or when he was doing several hours of SRS every day? Or when he denied himself all forms of entertainment in his native language in order to be immersed in his target language every waking minute? Is it when he's constantly devising new ways to increase his productivity and counter procrastination (or at least the unhealthy kind that pushes you in the opposite direction of your goals)? Why does he always cite people like Wayne Gretsky, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs in his motivational tweets? As examples of how to be 'nonchalant' and not diligent, I suppose? I agree with carlonove:
As for their methods, I don't know that much about The Korean so I'll refrain from comparison, but I have mixed feelings about the whole 10,000 sentences thing. I like to supplement my massive target language exposure with grammar studies and faltering attempts at conversation... when I feel like it. So my learning style I think has AJATT at its heart, but is not so fanatical in its execution (which in itself is a tenet of AJATT, I guess! Oh, the irony!) Edited by Lucky Charms on 18 October 2010 at 1:44pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5640 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 22 18 October 2010 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The Korean also advocates watching a few hours of TV, reading, speaking, writing, etc., not just memorizing vocabulary words. And 20,000 words over 2 years is roughly 30 words a day, so it's not like he sat in his room all day studying vocab (after the very beginning, he had to in the beginning to understand any homework he was doing.)
As for me, I fall in the middle but lean towards The Korean's side, as grammar is a shortcut to seeing the same structure 1,000 times and eventually learning getting it. But to me, the basic idea behind their methods differs a lot. Khatz advocates just do fun things and eventually it will suck in, while The Korean says stop being soft, learn words and grammar, and reap the benefits when you're doing more enjoyable things such as watching TV or talking with friends. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5526 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 8 of 22 18 October 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's one thing that bothers me as well is that he doesn't clarify this part enough...especially for beginners. There is plenty of translated material out there that is quite poorly translated (even some that is translated by people paid to do so) and plenty that is well translated. However, it is nearly impossible for an early learner to distinguish which is which. For example, I quickly learned not to rely on subtitling on KBS World (the international version of South Korea's KBS network) as they are often surprisingly inaccurate. On the other hand, I initially distrusted all fan subs outright, but some fan subbing teams are actually very good at what they do, often even including translator notes along the way, so there are certain subbing teams that I consider to be "trusted sources" now. He mentions using example sentences from a dictionary (which is a great idea and usually bypasses the bad translation issue), but this can often go against the "make the sentences interesting" aspect. For what it's worth, nearly all of my SRS sentences come from either dictionary example sentences or language learning material. In addition, I *don't* add dictionary example sentences unless the sentence makes sense to me (after looking up any unknown words, of course). If it seems "off" somehow or I don't recognize a grammar construction that it contains, I'll pick a different sentence that is more familiar to me instead. Or...if I really like that sentence, I'll go look up the grammar construction and learn it first. In a way, this is similar to Krashen's "i+1" concept in that relatively small amounts of new information should be introduced at one time (which is why I also try to avoid sentences with too many new words). Edited by Warp3 on 18 October 2010 at 10:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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