A Biased Critque of Two Methods

Since I support you visiting jamaicanlearningjapanese I also think it is important that I comment on the differences in our methods. Again I am no expert and am only giving a naive personal opinion which could very well be incorrect. I am also by no means trying to put down the AJATT method. Each method's effectiveness will depend on the student's personality and goals.

From what I have read it seems that our Jamaican friend is learning the whole 2,045 jooyoo Kanji. And if I am correct, he is focusing on their meaning and how to write them only. This would not include their pronunciation or their use in sentences. It appears that those aspects are to come after learning the whole 2045. I can see the benefit in this method and suspect that our two methods will have similar results to the following picture. (I'm sure this is painful for Marcus to look at as he works with graphic design)To me the AJATT seems difficult and brings your focus away from the actual comprehension of the langauage (ie: speaking, reading full sentences and knowing in which context to use words). This became apparent when he posted sentences he would figure out which I found were fairly simple. Granted this post was early in his journey but he claimed to know 330 kanji before this which is more than I probably know right now. Also the pictures he posts of the Kanji he knows proves he is MUCH more knowledgeable than I am in that department. I think what happens with the AJATT is that after you hit a certain critical point and get to a certain number of kanji it will just snowball. You'll know almost all the kanji you see and you won't have to waste time looking up the kanji you don't know. You can make connections using your own logic.

Now on the other hand I think that the smart.fm method is always toward the goal at the cost of being slower (hence my grey beard and cane). In smart.fm:
1) some kanji are repeated to cover the different context (見ける, 見る, 見出す)
2) some are repeated to cover changes made by combining them (many+ minute/part = probably 多分. I don't know if I could have made this connection if I knew each Kanji on their own.)
3) some of the words taught are made of only hiragana/katakana.
So the kanji progress is slower but you will continually be gaining REAL understanding which should be more motivating to the me. As I have previously posted , I think motivation one of the hardest and most important things in learning a language.

It seems that AJATT is more for people with an iron will who want to learn the language ASAP. I find it funny because I would think that following the fastest method is probably not a concern for people with an iron will.

One problem I can see with my method is the ability to fall into a comfort zone. I could very well hit a point where I can have conversations and do basic readings so I won't feel motivated to learn more. I could just look up the odd word I didn't know. Why should I learn words I will hardly ever see? By delaying the gratification of being able to use your knowledge you feel that you need to keep studying and you push harder. You end up with a larger word bank from which to draw before you switch gears and start applying / using your knowledge for conversation and sentences.

The last thing I would like to talk about is how jamaicanlearningjapanese talks about stories using things like Homer to help learn the kanji. In my opinion one should be very careful with these stories as they can use a lot more brain power to think up but provide only a little more retention. Also if you're not careful making your stories they could hold you back (ie: if two are too similar and you mix them up). It reminds me of a site I found with stories for hiragana. I found some of the hiragana stories so unnatural that I would expect they would hinder me more than they would help. (would appreciate other people's comments on this)

So far I've noticed when I think of the kanji what I have been doing is visualizing the picture that comes with the sentence in smart.fm. Sometimes I think of the stroke patterns as well. The best is when I can link kanji to kanji. my favourite is that eating (食)and drinking (飲) are good (良) for me.