You might think from the title that this would be a story of me walking in to the testing hall, 4 weeks of nothing but Japanese on my mind, waving to the only other white guy in a room of 60 Taiwanese high school kids, then sitting down to obliterate the highest level Japanese test they’ve got.

Man, it would be great if I could write that post.

I won’t say I definitely failed the test. People have a habit of low-balling their expectations as a coping mechanism.  I will say that there came a point about half way through the kanji and grammar section where I decided reading the question was only taking up valuable time which I could devote to less pointless questions.  Maybe it helped me, I can’t say until I get the results back in February.

So what does this mean for the idea of total immersion as a language learning tool?  Well, maybe nothing.

There are a number of ways to view the situation, depending on where your loyalties lie.

Bombing the JLPT, as Explained by:

A total immersion “input” learning  supporter

“See, this just goes to prove that the test isn’t really testing your ability to speak and understand Japanese. It’s just studying your ability to memorize obscure grammar points in a book.  It’s also a completely unnatural way of accessing the information.  When, but a test, will you have to answer 70 questions and read 10 reading passages within a 2 hour time limit?  Failing the tests just means you’re bad at tests.  Besides, eventually your Japanese will be native level fluent if you keep accessing native materials, and then you can walk in and pass the test on intuition.  Suck it up, and go read something in Japanese while listening to J-pop to make yourself feel better.”

A textbook/studying learning supporter

“See, this just goes to prove that you can’t learn higher level Japanese without going out of your way to  focus on and study it.  You can’t have enough exposure to higher level Japanese by randomly stumbling across it, even if you make a flashcard or two to represent that grammar point, or word.  There just isn’t enough random exposure to progress to a deeper understanding.   Studying can be unpleasant, but the idea that you can do nothing but fun, fluffy stuff and expect to make serious high level gains is ludicrous.  Suck it up, get it done, thank me later.”

An immersion “output” learning supporter

(I don’t know exactly what to call it, but that comes close. This would be the work of Benny over at Fluent in 3 Months.)

“See, this just goes to prove that you can’t internalize a language into your subconscious unless you are actively using it in conversations. Massive output is the only way your brain can really come to understand all that information, and if you do it right you can be speaking fluent Japanese, which is the fun part anyway, not reading books, a hell of a lot faster.  As far as the test goes, tests throughout history have always suffered from a profound disconnect from reality.  Suck it up. Learn the test. Study specifically for the test.  Treat it as something separate from your real studies if you have to.”

Why Immersion Is (Mostly) Wrong

Let’s start with the total immersion crowd, since that’s the one I was specifically playing with this month.  Did it help my Japanese? Sure it did.  I learned all sorts of interesting words, from hand grenade, to indecisive.  I’m also sure hearing and reading the same grammatical structures thousands of times, helped to imprint them into my subconscious Japanese brain.

Using native materials is also a great way to get native sounding Japanese.  If nothing else I think the decision to favor materials designed for Japanese people was infinitely better than anything designed for people learning Japanese, because you are guaranteed natural Japanese.  Too many textbook learners sound like robots.

But.

At a certain point, I am forced to acknowledge the writing on the wall:  fun and progress are detrimental to one another if you try to combine them. If all of my fun is tainted by work, then I enjoy it less.  If all progress is filtered through repeated exposure in the name of fun, then I progress significantly slower from all that redundant effort.  The point is not to disguise work as something fun, so that you can eat it 24/7, 365.  Fish oil in a glittery capsule with a cartoon dog mascot still tastes like death.  Similarly, even if you can get something good out of it, junk is still junk.  Chocolate chips and sugar is still bad for you, even if you sprinkle in some granola.

Also I think it begs mentioning that the guy who came up with this idea reads almost exclusively non-fiction.  If you’re, say, the type of person who doesn’t happen to like self-help books, you might find that there’s a certain range of Japanese you just don’t get enough exposure to.  That is, unless you force yourself to read something, well, kind of unpleasant.  And even if you do, you still suffer from the same wasted effort problem.

Admittedly the idea of total immersion works fantastic for the first 90% of a language.  Really. If you’re aiming for functional fluency, I think grabbing a bunch of native materials and stewing in them is probably the most absolutely painless way to bring your abilities up. 

It’s definitely not the fastest. It assumes that you cannot actually get anything done if you’re not constantly having fun.  It assumes you will give up if it’s hard.  Personally, working 24/7 is unsustainable, even if it’s fun.  I’m sure people would say I’m missing the point, that it’s not supposed to feel like work.  But there’s a balance.  If the returns and progress I’m getting on my invested time are too low, then even if it’s supposed to be fun it instead becomes ungodly frustrating because of all the missed opportunities, all the other stuff I could be doing with my time. Learning is fun unto itself for me, so the efficiency of the system is a big part of whether I’m enjoying my time, or forcing myself.

No one likes to work hard, and achieve nothing.

But I think for people who have a hard time motivating themselves to do anything, it is an amazing way to overcome that hurdle. The system seems designed for people who have been chronically bad at making any kind of progress in their lives. It removes all the barriers. For most people who’s idea of studying Japanese is lamenting the fact that they should be studying Japanese, this is an incredibly powerful place to start.

So, Does This Mean We Have to Study?

Yes and no.  If your goal is to pass the JLPT, I suggest you approach it with the following mindset:

The JLPT is not Japanese.

Study for the JLPT as an exercise in learning the test.  Assume that after you are done you will maybe have learned some new Japanese, but mostly you will have learned to pass the JLPT.  It’s like the SATs, or whatever arcane testing system they threw at you in high school.  You’re not really learning all those words, or how to do all that math, you’re just learning what they like to throw at you, how they think, and how to beat them.  How else could income correlate so strongly with test scores? Rich kids get all the cool toys, that’s why.

The JLPT is basically the SATs, in Japanese.

When it comes to actually learning Japanese though, the “suck it up and study” crowd is, in my opinion, just as wrong.  You’re just as likely to have tons of wasted effort by studying.  After a certain point, hell, even from the very first page in some cases, most textbooks for learning Japanese don’t use vocabulary you actually want to know, or will use frequently.  The grammar is equally hit or miss.

And the drills and exercises are absolute garbage.

There’s a difference between using something 100 times, and applying something 100 times.  The best (musicians/athletes/scholars/etc.) in the world aren’t the best because they’ve put in the most time, it’s because they’ve put in the most quality time.  And every textbook I have ever seen is just too simple to engage your brain on the level it needs to be engaged.

The monotony of it all, one of the things which the immersion system goes out of it’s way to overcome, not only leads to slow progress, it leads to a pretty high degree of burn out.  Especially if you’re out of school, and don’t have a grade to motivate you.

If you’re finding that the textbooks are working, by all means plow ahead.  Personally, I can’t handle them.

There has to be a better way.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Total input immersion “works”, but it’s inefficient.  This is actually something Khatz over at All Japanese All the Time himself seems to be coming around to.

Textbooks probably don’t work, unless you’re a textbook type, because your odds of quitting before you reach fluency are rather high, and also because they are, all said and done, pretty irrelevant to what you actually want to use the language for.

I think the solution might lie somewhere in between All Japanese All the Time and Fluent in 3 Months.  I haven’t talked about Benny and his craziness yet, because I’m extremely conflicted about the man.  His basic shtick is to speak the language as much as possible, massive output, rather than read or listen to the language, massive input.  On the one hand, he gets results. Crazy results.  On the other hand, he writes at you, not to you. Like I’m a 4 year old. Like anyone who doesn’t speak 8 languages by the time they’re 30 is not only a failure, but a stupid one, because it’s all your fault.  I also get the feeling lately that a lot of what he’s preaching now doesn’t work nearly as well if you haven’t already learned at least one language.  There are certain fundamental truths he has begun to take for granted.

Regardless, for now I think it might be time that I shelled out for his language hacking guide, and see what the man has to say.  I will admit, the curiosity has been building.

Ultimately what I come up with is probably going to be a mix of all sorts of different systems, as it should be.  I think people can get really devoted to systems and teachers that have given them some results, so much so that they never take the time to evaluate what parts of the system are working, and what parts aren’t. Take the best parts, and leave the rest.

I learned a lot from All Japanese All the Time, and am really grateful for how much it moved me forward. If I hadn’t stumbled across the site, I’d probably still be poking my JET program Japanese textbook and swearing I’ll catch up tomorrow…on the year and a half of backlog.  But while I totally agree that native is the way to go, I definitely disagree with the “all the time” part, and think the input/output question still needs to be worked out.

Stay tuned.

This being a blog about Japan, and Japanese being a pretty big part of living in Japan, I don’t think this is the last you’ll hear on the language learning front.  Being a language learner, and also a language teacher surrounded by frustrated students, it’s something of an obsession of mine.