Classes

Traditional language classes suck. They cost money. They are boring. And they are not effective.

If you're enrolling in a typical textbook-based Japanese class, hoping that teachers will magically transfer textbook material into your brain during short daily lessons, you might want to rethink your strategy.

Toxic input

In class, you receive toxic input. You listen to speech produced by other learners, which is filled with mistakes. Hearing poorly spoken phrases with a terrible accent like "ah ree gar toe go zai moss oo" is not conducive to your language learning.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you start using the same set phrases as your friends? Or that you accidentally memorize a TV commercial? Simply being exposed to toxic input is dangerous. You risk unconsciously absorbing the mistakes and poor pronunciation of those foreigners you listen to in class. Input should only come from native speakers for the results to be satisfactory.

Premature output

In class, you are often forced to speak before you are ready. Most people who learn a language through immersion using the AJATT method naturally begin to output after 1 to 2 years of study. Speaking ability develops as a result of daily immersion, similar to how children first learn to speak. Without immersion, it's very hard to force natural output to emerge early. Newborn babies don't speak because they haven't gotten enough input yet. Teachers demand that you speak from day one, seriously damaging your ability to understand and acquire language naturally. Pronunciation suffers the most because to speak with a native accent you need to be able to hear the sounds of the target language. Many sounds in Japanese do not exist in English. You need thousands of hours of listening practice to train your ears and learn to decipher the sounds correctly.

Lack of input

Essentially, classes are the antithesis of mass immersion. People go to college to study Japanese for 4 years. During that time, they have Japanese classes maybe a few times a week. Plus some homework. After they finish the classes, they go back to their native language bubble. They don't bother immersing in Japanese, watching Japanese movies, or reading manga. So in reality, they spend only 3 to 6 months engaging with their target language, counting by hours. As a result, they cannot speak Japanese. It is unsound to expect to have even passable proficiency with an order of magnitude less effort than what even a typical Japanese toddler has put in. A 4-year-old child runs rings around people who studied Japanese for 4 years in college. Why? Because the child has spent 365 days a year for 4 years learning Japanese, a commitment that far surpasses the effort put in by many college students.

Boring content

Classes don't provide compelling content. Language acquisition is a result of receiving input. Input has to be compelling for you to pay attention and try to understand it. When learners pay attention, only then the language acquisition center of the brain becomes active. To succeed, you need to learn from something you enjoy, whether that's books, comics, movies, music, radio, or podcasts. Interesting input allows learners to absorb language in context, helping them intuitively understand vocabulary, grammar, and how words fit together. Sometimes, we can even acquire language without looking up words in a dictionary. When learners engage with compelling content, they are more likely to stay motivated and committed to their studies. They are also more likely to retain what they learn. Interesting content creates emotional connections, enhancing retention and motivation. Everyone has different tastes, so it's unreasonable to expect classes to provide universally engaging content. While some classes may teach language through stories, these stories rarely exceed a couple pages and often use very limited vocabulary.

Learning vs Acquisition

In class, you memorize words, set phrases, dialogues, questions and answers. This method teaches you to translate your thoughts from your native language (NL) into your target language (TL). While preparation isn't inherently bad, real-life conversations rarely follow pre-planned scripts. Improvisation becomes necessary when unexpected complications arise during conversations. In a real conversation, your plans can easily fall apart. You might forget a word and have to explain your way around it. To speak fluently and handle every situation, you must acquire your TL as natives do — through extensive input. This means absorbing the language by listening to it for 10,000 hours. When we were little kids, our moms didn't sit us down and teach us vocabulary and grammar rules. Instead, we were exposed to our native language for thousands of hours until we could understand and reproduce it ourselves. With acquired ability, when you want to say something, phrases in the target language start popping up in your head just as they do in your native language. Since native speakers rely almost entirely on acquired ability, if you want to function like a native speaker, you need to acquire your target language as well.

Incompetent Instruction

A simple comparison between the number of people taking Japanese classes and those who achieve proficiency reveals a startling gap. Teachers may attribute this discrepancy to the perceived difficulty of the Japanese language, or the complexity of kanji, or even blame cultural barriers. They believe that reaching a truly high level of proficiency is impossible. I've seen many people who suck at Japanese say things like, "you can never hope to read newspapers without decades of study". Such claims are baseless. There's nothing inherently challenging or unique about Japanese. Millions use it effectively every day. The issue lies in the learning methodology rather than the language itself.

In class, you learn from teachers who lack proficiency in the TL. No one would take dieting advice from someone who is fat. Yet, in language classes, people are forced to learn from incompetent teachers. If you learn your TL from such teachers, you cannot expect to surpass the low level they are at.

Even if you have a native speaker as a teacher, they likely have no idea how language acquisition works, they don't remember how they learned their own language, and they've never actually followed their own advice. Consequently, they will teach you in the same manner as other teachers.

Perhaps traditional teaching methods were justified back when information was harder to find elsewhere. In the past, access to foreign language resources would have been limited outside a class. Particularly so if you were outside Japan. However, with open access to information nowadays thanks to technology and abundant online resources, we have transcended the limitations of traditional classrooms and can learn more efficiently than ever before. It's time to embrace new methods that prioritize immersion over outdated practices that often lead to frustration and stagnation.

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