From: robert@AHI.PBRC.HAWAII.EDU (Robert Graf)
Subject: Jorden System, VERY long
Reply-To: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 01:35:56 GMT

>>Summary statement:  This post containspoots 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

-- Tad Perry writes:  [ Internet:    tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.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.

Tad,

First off, what a well written and lovely post.  Omedetou gozaimasu on
your success learning Japanese.  I'll bet we all wish we had a story
like THAT !   Jorden's program has some good points--that I never
denied, and I don't think you are saying I did ;-) Personally, I
learned 90% of Japanese pronunciation reading the roadsigns in Hawaiian
while stopped at intersections in Honolulu.  Not much difference--but
some of course.  You raise a humorous point--I went through that
pronunciation section and then asked my sensei some things about it
and she said, "Don't read that, it's for mainlanders."

My assault on Jorden is aimed at the system's incomplete nature without
admission of that fact.  I think you would have done well with anyone's
program, maybe even without one ;-)  I whole-heartedly agree with the
motivation principle.  I also think that you basically did what I was
alluding to above, namely using everything you could get, but maybe a
little later on--toward or after your Jorden proper.  You found the
extra things that you needed to fill THE VOIDS.  The way I look at it
is, if you have 2 years to work with students with language
requirements, what are you going to do??  On retrospect, maybe NOT the
Jorden system would be my answer.

Although I wouldn't say the Jorden system is `fraudulent', I
would say it is a bit .. `dishonest'.  I guess my point would be best
stated as follows:  I wish Jorden had written a preface that said
something like:  "This system will teach you a small capsule of the
Japanese language.  Upon finishing the three volume set and Reading
Japanese, you will have learned about 1/4 of the kanji you will need to
know to read a newspaper.  We realize that we only have 2 years to work
with you for those of you finishing your language requirement [where
the market is] , so we will try to address a small kernel of what the
language represents."  THERE, I would have been satisfied.  But
instead, we get: "You are now about to begin learning the Japanese
language following a carefully developed system."  Not fraudulent, not
WRONG, but slippery, and a certain sort of `slick with intent', so I'd say,
`dishonest'.

>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 whole-heartedly agree with the motivation principle and you were/are
obviously motivated.

[stuff deleted, unfortunately]
>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.

I reiterate that I think you basically used everything you could get,
but maybe a little later on--toward or after your Jorden proper.
  You found the extra things that you needed to fill THE VOIDS.

I imagine you used Reading Japanese around 1985, which was at least a
complete book.  I took it more recently and our class used the field
editions of JWL (Japanese:  The Written Language).  There was no
explanation of the written language (you know--grammar explanations of
any kind), since the idea was that the teachers did this in class.  The
problem was that there was never any time in class because we didn't
have time to finish the JSL part.  [I'm fully aware that now I'm
criticizing the UH system's use of the Jorden system as well, but
experience has to do with your own case, it seems.]  So nevermind that,
the point is that the system isn't finished.  I've heard that Mari Noda
will not even address the question of when JWL will be finished.  Why
use an unfinished system on students when there are many complete
systems that exist?  This is just a tip-of-the-iceberg example.  a.  It
is hard to change. b.  politics (again, sorry).  The students suffer,
no one else.  The queens are not going to cancel their roadtrips with
their system to finish it!  Are you kidding !  There's too much
um .. a. `diplomacy' to be had. :-)  You might ask "Why didn't you
just use Reading Japanese and stop complaining?"  I did use Reading
Japanese, and Learn Japanese, and Japanese for Everyone to name a few.
I just found that the system wasn't a complete SYSTEM--that's my
point.  Don't call it one if it isn't.  i.e. be honest.

What's the result:  A disgruntled student--namely me--who is looking up
"yama de aru" because he's never seen that construction anywhere
before--"What's the name of the book ??" --The Spoken Language.  Yes
Dr. co-queen Noda, I know.  Later I start reading Basic Technical
Japanese and find out, well that's how you WRITE it, not SAY it.
MAJOR POINT:  Well, if they are going to be soooo slick at this level,
what about the Japanese they are teaching me!!  Is it right--even ?!
My immediate reaction was to get 5 other Japanese books out and check
every TOPIC that I read in 5 books.  I never stopped doing that.  I've
never stuck with one system since.  To Jorden's credit, sort of, I
haven't found any errors but I have found some VERRRY interesting
omissions and biases.  Omissions seem to be the name of the game around
Jordenland.  The entire system revolves around `using her system',
something that has left me with a lot of questions too much of the
time.  It's not complete enough to be insular.

>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.)

This is the way Jorden inteneded her system to be done, as I understand
it.  The FALCON student memorized all the dialogues too and was unhappy
at not finding `a way/the right time' to use them in Japan.  I should
also point out that I'm not complaining due to my performance in the
system.  I did very well in Jorden's system, usually getting higher
grades than my fellow students--all of which were Americans with
surnames like Tanaka or Nishihara.  That's another story though.  They
have my heart-felt sympathy.  A lot of them weren't motivated, probably
partly due to not having been exposed to Japanese as something they
HAD TO DO instead of a creative process.

>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.

Me too !  I learned to recognize about a thousand of them before I
started 101, it is a hard language (for native English speakers), after
all.  I think the other students kind of hated me for it too. ;-)
You see, I saw NO INTEGRATION of the kanji I could recognize relative
to the romaji vocab I was learning.  I spent a lot of time asking the
sensei what the kanji were.  I saw Jorden's system as missing some good
opportunities there.  Finally, I just bought a romaji dictionary and
started looking them all up as I went.  No one else in the class was
doing that either--it added to the tension I think.  I think
there were major differences between your U-Dub course and my UH
course, though, so it isn't easy to compare.

>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.

You must be a very patient person willing to put your ego at
stake--that takes umph!  One of my sensei always told me "Graf-san,
language learning has to do with how much ego you are willing to
sacrofice.  Language learning is so frustrating!"

What follows is beautiful:

>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*.

I wonder if he cared when it didn't make sense.

>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 couldn't agree more. :-)

>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.

It's interesting to imagine that if language learning is in fact up to
how much frustration and ego are involved, why these programs try to
build the student up to think they will be flawless.  It just doesn't
work that way, it seems.

>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>

You're a star, Tad. No kidding !  This list is full of talented
people!  Too bad I seldom get around to posting, but I guess I'm making
up for it with this one !!!

Sorry for the length.

Robert Graf
robert@ahi.pbrc.hawaii.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan