If you want to understand many of the concepts mentioned on this site, begin here:
This site assumes you’re willing to invest the time and effort to read at least those above papers, and that you’re savvy enough to procure the various resources mentioned in the posts, e.g. to download shared decks and plugins or search online for items.
Some questions for you.
Do you believe that instead of there being a hard-wired language device that shuts you out at a certain age, that the brain is always ‘plastic’ and growing and that an adult can learn any language as well or better than a child? Do you believe your intelligence and language-learning aptitude can grow? If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, research indicates you’re right, and that knowing this actually improves your learning.
What are your language learning goals? Are you looking to be a failed imitation native speaker, or a successful multi-language user?
If you’re feeling optimistic or intrigued now, then Dark Japanese just might be for you.
Dark Japanese isn’t a particular system or method. Hence the ‘dark’. The name is just a bland referent, a temporary heading. It’s a research-based collection of principles with little to do with this author, principles that lend themselves to certain methodical study configurations that can be rearranged to varying extents by self-directed learners. Hence the tutorials, examples of how one learner thinks they can be applied. It’s all very simple or very complex, depending on how deeply you want to venture down the rabbit hole, how much you’ll invest—which depends on what scale you’re working at: simply learning Japanese as optimally as possible, or learning Japanese and wanting to be able to help others learn it, or wanting to learn a bevy of languages, etc. The empirical basis and the metacognitive awareness of the motivated learner are the key aspects of Dark Japanese.
A simple roadmap to begin learning JApanese
UPDATE:
Introducing ja-minimal, a series of concise entries comprising a minimalist program for Japanese self-study, encompassing the process from scratch to ultimate attainment, though actual fluency will be achieved in one hour*.
*What does it mean to claim you will become fluent in one hour? It means that you will efficiently and robustly study language items to fluid mastery such that total time for any given item over the months and years leading to ultimate attainment will be one hour or less.
These are the basic steps used in Dark Japanese:
Stage 1: kana/kanji + basic grammar + vocabulary + simple native materials →
Stage 2: vocabulary/kanji readings + basic/intermediate grammar + more complex native material →
Stage 3: vocabulary + intermediate/advanced grammar + the most complex native materials
- What is basic or complex, etc., is up to your own needs and assessments, but is also informed by resources structured with these ideas in mind, from children’s shows, graded readers, to texts literally labeled basic or advanced.
- At every stage of learning, you are addressing input, output, fluency development, and form-focused learning, as described in The Four Strands, a paper contained in the link above.
- You use tools and strategies designed for optimal scientific learning, e.g. spaced retrieval and mnemonics, as cited in the Four Principles, etc., papers contained in the link above, as well as across the site.
- All stages are subject to rearrangement based on your aims, be it moving to Japan or simply watching Japanese videos or reading Japanese texts from outside Japan.
Stage 1
- Begin learning the hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
- While learning the writing system as above as part of this assembly line process, you are also learning basic grammar points, tied to authentic examples, and a core survival vocabulary. You may begin learning vocabulary with kanji, and thus readings, in small batches of kanji you’ve mastered in the RTK style.
- The primary aim of this stage is explicit learning, so native materials are primarily for developing familiarity with the sound of the language, as sources for grammar points and example sentences, and as reinforcement of not-yet-mastered language items.
- Output and fluency development are used for mastered or nearly mastered basic items. Output is necessarily minimal in volume.
Stage 2
- You begin learning the readings for the writing system, from words whose readings slot into the core batch of kanji you’ve learned, while continuing to study grammar, in context.
- Keep in mind that you are using the aforementioned variety of tools and strategies during this process, from Anki to output practice.
- Explicit learning and meaning-focused input are used more equally as this stage progresses to the midpoint, as the number of known words enters the hundreds and early thousands, and a basic grammar foundation is established. Native material becomes as much about content and enjoyment as it is a source for explicit learning.
- Output and fluency development likewise become more of a constant and more complex as the mastered or nearly mastered repertoire increases.
Stage 3
- Once the kanji, their readings, a solid level of grammar, and a hefty repertoire of words are learned, you will also have developed solid self-study skills with experience in mnemonic techniques, spaced retrieval, text analysis, et cetera. These skills allow for fully spontaneous, informal implementations.
- At this point your study will become even more highly customized, with less deliberate study such as consulting grammar and using the SRS, to simply taking in native media or conversing and writing to your heart’s desire. It becomes a matter of refinement of knowledge, including language registers and written and spoken stylistics.
As suggested by Nation, time spent on the four strands can be reformulated based on proficiency. I have rewoven them so that language-focused learning is used more at basic stages of learning, so that initially, the meaning-focused tasks are subordinate to the deliberately learned language components they integrate with. This funneling allows the autonomous learner, amidst the assembly line process, to regulate the acceleration of their learning based on the increased efficiency enabled by self-study resources, with the understanding that in turn, such scaffolding becomes less and less necessary both for previously learned items and novel items as proficiency progresses toward ‘ultimate attainment’, a steady-state of knowledge, intuition, and internalized skills.
