I remember he said “I didn’t even know people studying Japanese are struggling with its grammar, just read some books (on LingQ) and you don’t even need (or rarely, just a quick look) to deliberately study Japanese grammar”. What is your opinion on this take? Do you think this natural method suits for everyone?
— Previous article
Sometimes people order chef select plates and I have a little fun. This time I kept it as clean as possible.
Next article —
9 comments
Idk. Maybe people more familiar with language learning and perfected their personal methods (such as Mr LingQ) or just simply way more patient with the process than I am.
When first starting out, without specific education on what even constitutes grammar, I had no idea where a word began or ended, which thing was a particle, etc.
I think you pick up grammar a lot more when you read it than when you do anything else. He’s obviously financially partial to the reading method, but it is a good method.
I tried as a beginner to study grammar and found it pretty hard…so what I did is I dropped it…focused on reading and expanding my vocab and kanji knowledge…got very familiar with Japanese…..got to the point where I was already reading light novels (with difficulty)….after my 4th LN, I went ahead and started studying grammar again from zero all the way to N1 grammar….but because I was now used to the language it was so much easier to understand
Personally it was hard understanding what was a grammar point from just reading…so imo it is worth it to study grammar separate…but as I mentioned before it is easier if you have a better understanding of the language first
Basic grammar is pretty straightforward. You only struggle if you have lousy teaching materials. More obscure stuff can be left to later when you come across it in reading, but it is such a boost to get the grammar basics down first that it’s almost silly not to.
I would say that the natural method is successful for more people. The best answer probably is – as always – a middle road.
There’s an interesting difference in the type of errors people make too. I pretty much never see faithful textbook-warriors write 帰るました – but people who are learning from input do seem to make that particular mistake along the way.
On the flip side, I almost never see natural method learners mess up by using complicated syntax that they can’t understand and that I can’t understand either.
The natural method leads to a better quality of intermediate-level output, I’d say. The difference can be significant. Adding a little bit of grammar study at that point can help people get unstuck quickly. (Even just “Japanese people actually say 帰りました don’t they?”)
Personally I feel that I hurt myself with too much grammar study (even though I didn’t use textbooks) and tend to make the second kind of mistake too much. The first is so cute and I’m kinda jealous of it, tbh.
As always: Doubt polyglot YouTubers who have a (financial) gain from convincing people of their methods. They simplify things to be more appealing.
Even real deal polyglots have a lot of experience with learning languages. Most from an early age on. This means they have experience with recognizing language patterns, good habits, and if you are learning languages for a living then you are naturally more effective/efficient at it since you can dedicate more time to it. Things that work for them will not work for everyone.
In the end, choose what learning method suits you. But balance things out and be honest with yourself when you notice shortcomings, else they will leave scars in your language ability. People like to declare new things they have committed to, to be the greatest thing ever. People don’t like admitting mistakes. Same goes for learning methods.
incomprehensible immersion is all but useless, this is shown over and over by linguists and language teachers. you need to learn vocab and grammar as you go. even the savants that make insanely quick progress are clear that they needed to study as they went. one cannot pick up a language by just looking at characters of words and sentences you don’t understand. and that’s not “a natural method”, either. a lot of people claim this is how children learn natively, but that’s false. they learn with a ton of communication and correction by parents, and are fluent before they read their first book.
immersion is good, by all means read and listen to (and speak and write) anything you can along the way. but there’s no silver bullet shortcut, you still have to do the hard work of studying the grammar and vocab. you can’t skip it.
he advertises his website every other sentence. what more do you need to know
I learnt a lot of grammar through Japanese children’s books when starting off. If I saw the same grammar multiple times I looked it up. Personally I think it’s a great way to learn the basics like negative, past tense ect but when you get into the fancy stuff like たりたり ～する I’d reccomend looking it up. The great thing about being an adult is being able to make sense of concepts much faster than children. I reccomend Tae Kim’s grammar guide, it’s really straightforward and to the point: https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/stateofbeing