From: tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu ()
Subject: Re: Proficiency Test/Jorden
Summary: LONG description of one Japanese learner who used Jorden and succeeded
Organization: clearer than blir
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 07:53:20 GMT

In article <9208291055.AA00229@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu writes:
>
>[lots o' stuff deleted]
>
>Summary statement:  This post contains lots of useless gossip (by me)
>with one potential main point:  I certainly don't recommend using the
>Jorden system (Japanese:  The Spoken Language) by itself unless you are
>a romaji fiend or hate the written language.
>
>Robert Graf
>robert@ahi.pbrc.hawaii.edu

I'm beginning to see your point here. But doesn't it just boil down to
the well known fact that the success of a second language learner is
proportional to his/her motivation? Given very high motiviation (which
I was lucky to have at the time), I'd expect that a language learner
would do well in just about any system, even a flawed one, as long as
it wasn't downright fraudulent.

When I studied Japanese in 1985 at the University of Washington (Using
"The Spoken Language" books by Jorden.) I read all through the
preliminary stuff on pronunciation before the first class. (A lot
can be gleaned from that introduction if you're attentive.) We were
also using the Written Japanese book she did. Our year was forced to
memorize every dialogue of every chapter. Every student absolutely
would have to go thru one random dialogue by rote on every class day.
I was very serious about having them all memorized. (The professors
and staff all said that the year before and years after in which
students did *not* have to memorize dialogues achieved much less than
my class did and that the staff, including the Japanese TAs who did
almost all of the classwork, attributed this to not requiring rote
memorization.)

During that year we were expected to know the kanji from Written
Japanese up to the point we'd covered in Spoken Japanese. Few students
did it. I did. After First Year Japanese was over (the Jorden books
nearly finished) I studied kanji cards up to eight hours per day
almost every day of summer vacation. When Second Year started everyone
was expected to know all the kanji (what? something like just under
500) from Written Japanese. I was surprised to find that I was the
only one who had done it. A handful of the good students knew about
one hundred. Everyone didn't have a clue. The professors were very
upset and disappointed.

Starting at about that point I hired a Japanese tutor who forced me to
speak Japanese only on a variety of subjects two hours every week.
When I stopped those lessons I was real slow but I could spit it out
if given some time. Then I started meeting Japanese people and started
playing the game I mentioned in another thread about speaking Japanese
only and seeing if I could last in Japanese longer than my partner
could last in English. According to language learning stuff I'd read
a student reaches "living skills level" fluency at 700 to 1000 hrs
of oral production of the target language. I wanted to get my hours
in before I actually got to Japan.

Concurrently, in class we'd advanced to those Modern Japanese readers.
We were required to read aloud from those in class and have a
translation of each chapter ready by the end of each week. I continued
to memorize those. When we were asked questions on the text that we
had to answer with books closed, my hand was usually the only one that
went up. It was pathetic. By the end of the second year I didn't have
to prepare for that class much because I could translate those
sentences on the fly as long as I'd read through that weeks chapeter
once or twice before class. In a sense, I think that was the level
they *wanted* us to be at.

After graduation, when I finally got to Japan, I was still slow but I
got around. I rented my apartment in Japanese. I read the contract in
Japanese. I got to know the business people in my neighborhood.  I
bought what I needed, got things fixed, etc. I was a teacher that
year, but I went on to be a translator in a shitaukegaisha for Sony.
I was the only gaijin and I went the next three years speaking nothing
but Japanese at work, and little else outside it save for the gaijin
friends most of us eventually develop for psychological support.  Even
so, I had married a Japanese and was speaking it all the time at home
too. With many complaints from my wife to speak more English because
she wanted to "practice". By the time I came back to the states I
rarely used a dictionary to read a newspaper or anything in my field.
(I found magazines of the Focus and Friday variety the most difficult
actually, averaging 8 to 10 unknown words or readings per article. I
would keep count in the corner of the page; I was *still* studying.) I
didn't stutter or stammer. I didn't need time to think when I spoke.
There were still some rough edges but I was pretty satisfied with
where I I'd gotten. Regardless of the discussion on what constitutes
fluent, I did, and still do, consider myself fluent at Japanese.
Not at pidgin; at the native Japanese language as spoken in Tokyo.

My friend who graduated from the same school and went to Japan at
about the same time rarely spoke to anyone in English if he thought
they knew some English. In class, he did nothing outside the
curriculum to work on his Japanese. Zero. He was (still is) *terrible*
at speaking the language. The only thing those classes taught him (he
claims) was to translate. But even by that he means *decode Japanese*.

My point, to bring this full circle, is that the type of student who's
really going to learn a second language well probably isn't the type
who is going to just sit back passively and go through the classroom
motions fully trusting the system placed before him or her. I think
the student you mentioned who was disappointed in his performance in
Japan was probably placing too much faith in the "elite" system he was
part of. (Your point, I believe.) I've seen the same thing from
Middlebury graduates and graduates of the Stanford Center. They may
have been given more opportunities than me to learn the language
right, but in all the cases I've met they didn't get all they could
have gotten out of those places whereas I tried to get every drop out
of the "backward" system I happened to wind up in.

To the beginning students who may be reading this, I'd say:

<gets on soapbox>

If you're not doing anything outside class to *study* Japanese, if you
sit back passively doing the bare minimum in terms of even classwork,
I promise you will not learn the language. You *will be* another
casualty. Joining this newsgroup and talking to people with similar
interests and going to parties at "Japan House" or whatever, may be
fun, but you're engaging in a lifestyle, not language learning.

<gets off soapbox>

Thank you for your attention. I return you to your regularly scheduled
programming.

-- Tad Perry   Internet:    tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu
               CompuServe:  70402,3020