Ajatt is absolutely ridiculous and I never understood how it rose to prominence online.

His result to efforts ratio listed back in the days was terrible and reading through is blog - back when it was a blog - was impossible. Everything read like an informercial and never got to the point.

Last time I checked it was a book club. Didn’t bother to check this time.

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jaredklewis 4 days ago | parent [-]

What's ridiculous about it? Long before AJATT was a site, I think most people would've told you that immersion is a good way to learn a second language.

You mention "result to efforts ratio," but I'm not sure I understand what this could me. In language learning, "results" and "efforts" are more or less the same thing. If you read a lot of books, you'll be good at reading books. It's not like there's some reading that is "effort" reading and other reading that is "results" reading; it's all just reading. For most people, the goal of learning Japanese is to be able to use Japanese in the real world. In which case I don’t see why any amount of time spent using Japanese should count as effort (but not results), since that’s the whole point.

I never paid any money to AJATT nor agree with everything on the site, but did find it inspirational in various ways early on in my studies. I'm fluent in written and spoken Japanese, and I do think living in Japan as well as immersing myself in Japanese media was a big part of that. I studied French in high school and college using traditional courses and I was never a great French speaker, I think in large part because I didn't do much with French outside the classroom.

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wodenokoto 4 days ago | parent [-]

First time I went to ajatt it basically said “with only 18 hours of study a day you too can be fluent in Japanese in two years”

	▲	jaredklewis 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		From what I remember, the site mostly recommended immersion supplemented by studying methods like spaced repetition, so if that’s like 16 hours of immersion and a couple hours of “study” I think that probably seems about right? Though maybe sleep a bit more. When I lived in Tokyo I met lots of immigrants that came over with little or no knowledge of Japanese and if they were working in ordinary jobs like in a restaurant or convenience store, they would usually be conversational in a couple months and verbally fluent in a half year. The ones that studied were usually ready to take the N1 after a few years. People that struggled were usually in jobs like English teaching or programming where most of their day was not in Japanese. And like I said above, if you want to learn Japanese, the whole point is to use it, so using Japanese for most of the day doesn’t necessarily seem like a burden. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but that’s true of everything. Do you think there is another, faster way to fluency?