this is fluency in Japanese

I found a new hero for Japanese language learners. Watch this video! This guy is fluent in Japanese. His speed of speaking matches the speed of native Japanese. It is really impressive. In this, his first video on YouTube, he is speaking without a script. He pauses to think about what he wants to say, not how to say it, nor does he pause to recall any words. The second video he posted is much more impressive, however it is longer and is audio-only, with him and two other people. But if you listen to that one, you will think it is a Japanese guy speaking. Here is a link to that video.



So, what did you think?

the US president speaks Chinese

Did you know? The president of the United States speaks Chinese? And so do his secret service agents. I don't know if it is a secret or not, but you can watch it on YouTube. I've embedded the video in this post below so you can watch it if you're interested in seeing the president speak Chinese. The scene is set in the Oval Office and there is only one bodyguard and the president. It's less than a minute long. If I add more people, they'll all be speaking Chinese! I had fun creating this video and doing the voices. When you record your voice, you can tweak the pitch so you can easily sound different for different characters.

Chinese comprehension challenge

Last night, I took another language test called The Friedemann Chinese Comprehension Challenge. It's a grueling 20-minute test where you watch scenes from a drama and have to catch every technical word and the names of all kitchen cooking equipment. Boy, was I not prepared!

The video below is the result of the previous post where I responded to a challenge from Friedemann.

Actually, Friedemann is not a bad guy. I think from watching the video, you can realize that he is coming from a different perspective than I. We are both learning Chinese but we have a different mindset.

We first tried to do the test mid-day, yesterday but the audio from my side was not transmitting clearly and he could not hear what I was saying. So we met up again late in the evening. At first, I loaded the wrong episode. So, the video you will see below is after a couple of false starts, hence, there is no introduction as I had planned.

breaking the silence

Here it is! My first time to speak after an extended silent period.
I'll refrain from criticizing myself and let you all criticize me instead.

Of course, I've kept my promise to record the first conversation. I will record more when I can.  This video is what I call a language time capsule. I'd like to thank Rony Gao again for allowing me to record and upload my very first Chinese conversation. You'll be seeing him again. I should also mention he is a tutor at LingQ.

Yes, LingQ saved the day! I could not find many new contacts on Skype. The search function of Skype has become useless for finding new friends, as you cannot limit it to online people only. I sent out a bunch of hellos, and all of them went "pending..." because the people in the results list were not online even though I set my search function to search for people in SkypeMe mode. In fact, I learned that Skype has recently removed SkypeMe from it's PC version.

The reviews are already pouring in on YouTube (sort of.) I look forward to someone bashing me and telling me they aren't impressed. I haven't put this video up to impress anybody. It just says this is where I am on January 24, 2011 with my Chinese. Let's see what the next few months bring. Happy New Year!

Language Blogging News 2

The last edition of my newscast on language learning blogs is ready and available. This is the last one I will do unless some funding should somehow come through. Since I'm not seeking any funding, it would be a miracle if it happened.

So, dim the lights, start the popcorn, and enjoy the news.

language acquisition news from language learning blogs

Here is a news report on the new blog posts and articles about language learning and language acquisition from this week. I hope you enjoy it.

perfect pronunciation in Japanese

I just found this video on YouTube of a Chinese-speaker introducing herself in Japanese. She says she started learning Japanese in Jr. High and she has lived in Japan for over 12 years.

what does it mean to learn a language without translations?

The conversation still continues over in the channel comments of algworld's YouTube channel. I think part of the reason that some people think languages are always learned through translation is because of a misunderstanding of what it means to learn languages without translations. I had a brief talk with my webcam to explain a point about this, and my computer graciously offered to record it for me. So without further ado, I give you that resulting video!




Please let me know if my speech makes sense, if I get my point across or not. Thank you!

Koreans learning Japanese

I had a video conversation with Hyunwoo Sun. I asked him about this podcast series on Language Cast that is for Koreans who are learning Japanese. It was very interesting.

brain research and language learning

Can we trust what the brain researchers say about language learning? Steve Kaufmann noted there was some contradiction in the research conclusions. So I decided to create a little video in response.

natural language learning

I decided to talk about my preferred learning style for languages. I spent 5 hours on this 17 minute video. I had to edit out all the pauses. In the first part, I mostly talked about ALG and Dr. Brown's background teaching Thai.

This is not a prepared presentation, so there are some parts that I should have expanded on and there are some parts I should have clarified better.  Also, I did not conclude the video properly.  I decided to stop talking when I realized I had used almost 3 GB on my hard drive while recording.

My speech goes rather slowly, so I hope you don't fall asleep. It's probably good for those learning English. I created a playlist for the two parts so the second part could start right after the first and be viewed in the same player.

I hope you enjoy the talk.




Link to the playlist.

book report video

Here's an idea. Read a book in your target language and then give a report on it. That's what I did! I uploaded my report to Youtube.  I read a Japanese book in about 1 week.

I'm planning to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test level one. I have only 2 more weeks left to apply for the test. I think reading is the most important thing for me to be able to pass the test. So I want to improve my reading ability. Therefor, you may see more book reports from me!

I encourage you too, to read and create a book report like I did. You can link your video to mine as a response on Youtube. Responses will be accepted automatically.  I'm doing the book reports as a way to keep track of how many books I've read and which ones.  My books will be in Japanese but the reports will be in English.

the TV method!

Here is my first attempt to try to describe the TV method in a video. I want to get better at talking about second language acquisition and language learning like Steve Kaufmann. Some of my thoughts may not be well connected or well said, so please forgive me. This was my first time speaking about the TV method. I was not able to cover everything in 10 minutes. I actually spoke for about 13 minutes, but I cut off the end so I wouldn't need more than one video. I also cut out a few seconds where it took me time to recall the word "unproven" in the beginning of the video. The rest is uncut. I hope you enjoy my very first video about the TV method.

ALG Thai interview with David Long

Antonio Graceffo has uploaded an interview with David Long, the director of ALG (Automatic Language Growth) Thai. It has 5 parts, and since Antonio hadn't created a playlist for it, I created one myself. It's a very good interview. Thanks Antonio!



I hope to some day get a chance to go to AUA and enter this Thai program. I want to experience it for myself. And I don't mean "just experience it." I would complete the program and come out a native Thai speaker.

Here is a link to my playlist: ALG Thai presented by Antonio Graceffo

Hyunwoo Sun

I have a new interview on YouTube. This time, I would like you to meet Hyunwoo Sun. He is a Korean polyglot who excels at learning many languages. The skill which he has achieved in English just awes me. That is how I want to speak Japanese, Chinese or any language I persue. So I interviewed him to find out what he does, because I could not find that information on Hyunwoo's YouTube channel, in all the videos he has. Maybe he talks about it in Korean. I don't know because I don't know Korean at all.

Since he came to Japan on business for 2 weeks, I grabbed the opportunity to interview him. I threatened to kidnap him if he didn't tell me his secrets for language learning. So he agreed to meet me in a public place where I could not use any special tactics to extract information from him. So with the camera rolling, I set up on the streets of Shinjuku and asked him some grueling questions. And then I edited out all of my questions so the video cannot be used against me to press charges.

Of course, the truth is, I'm a tame fellow and there just wasn't room for my babbling in a YouTube video because of the length restrictions. And Hyunwoo is a great guy too whom you can learn Korean from if you are nice to him.

Really, I got a great interview from Hyunwoo Sun and I want to share it with all of you. He is one of the followers of my blog and that is how I first heard his name. So if you have questions and post comments here, he will read them and probably even reply.

tips for learning Japanese

Here is the second video with Charith. After we had finished the first interview he had some more he wanted to say. At first he starts talking about watching TV even when you don't understand any of it, and about not using a dictionary. He says that the words will enter you and you will acquire them naturally. But then he goes on to give some more tips and advice. At the end of the 5 minute video I have provided a list of the points he makes. I put the list up in Japanese and in English. You can just hit the pause button to read the list.

I have also subtitled this video, in Japanese and in English. Go to the YouTube site to get the subtitle functionality. You can turn it on or off in the lower right corner of the player. It is called 'CC' for closed captioning. I think this will be the last time I try to subtitle a Japanese video. It takes too much time. But since I figured many people here who don't learn Japanese will want to watch the video and know what he says, I subtitled this one. After writing all the Japanese down, creating the English translated subtitle file is easy. It's just the Japanese part that is difficult because I have to keep listening to parts over and over trying to catch the exact words used.

What's interesting about that is that I will have a part already transcribed and I'm trying to hear what is said after that part, and so I rewind and listen to it again but my mind gets stuck on what is being said and when the part I'm supposed to be listening for comes along, I miss it because my mind was preoccupied. That can happen like 3 or 4 times in a row!

Tips for Learning Japanese from Charith

watch a preview!

On March 27th, I wrote a post where I told you about a coworker who used TV to get his Japanese fluent. I will do a full interview with him and put it up on YouTube in 3 weeks.

For now, I have a preview that you can watch. I do an introduction to it in English and also the concluding part is in English as well. I also have painstakingly made sub-titles for the video. It should default to the bilingual one, but there is also an English only one and a Japanese only one. You can turn them off, of course, if you like. The bilingual subtitle is the same as the other two subtitles. There are no translations.

Here is a link for you so you can go watch the preview.

Keith speaks with Steve Kaufmann

I had a conversation with Steve Kaufmann in Japanese. This is the first time I have ever spoken directly to Steve and we did it face-to-face. Well, it was through the help of our webcams and Skype. For those of you who don't know, Steve Kaufmann is a super-polyglot.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to record myself speaking Japanese as a record of my Japanese level before the up and coming self-improvements. This is that video of me speaking Japanese. I will make some more but I don't know if anybody wants to be alerted to them. If you do, you could just subscribe to my YouTube channel.

The video is in 2 parts. The total time is 16 minutes. You can watch the video below if you want and when it finishes I'm sure you will be able to choose the 2nd part. Else, you may go to my YouTube channel. Oh, and I must say. The microphone on my headset is really bad. Sorry about that, but the sound on my side is not clear. Steve's side is very clear. I'm going to have to breakdown and buy a microphone if I can find one or else buy a new headset.

A few comments about my Japanese speaking ability. As you will be able to see in the video, I almost always need to think about how I want to complete a sentence. So many options come to mind while I'm speaking that I just get overwhelmed with what I should do to finish my sentence. I just want to get to where I know what I want to say and I just say it straight through without stopping or pausing. Another critique about my Japanese is that I do not know how to say everything that I need to say. I don't know all of the grammar. I think I will be able to discover a lot by watching TV.

And last but not least, I do want to improve my pronunciation. This has mostly to do with vowel sounds but also with intonation as well. I would like to sound the same as a Japanese person. I want to be indistinguishable. And why not? I live in Japan so it would be to my advantage. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to improve my pronunciation or not but we'll see.

I would like to speak with some more people in Japanese and record it and put it on YouTube. Even if you don't have a webcam, but you have a microphone and Skype and a good connection, we can still record me in the picture with our conversation. If we have a noisey connection then it won't be worth recording and putting up on YouTube. Anybody who can speak Japanese. You don't have to be a native speaker. Just contact me via email. You can find my address in my blogger profile.

ALG World

I might consider ALG World the ultimate in extreme language learning and seems by far the best method there is. ALG stands for Automatic Language Growth. This is total immersion and no translation. So you start at Level 1 with no knowledge of the language and the teachers only speak in the target language. Notice that they have 2 teachers, not just one. I think that it is best to have 2 teachers in the classroom. 2 native speaking teachers. Since you start out not knowing the language, the teachers use more than just speaking in order to communicate to you. So you are understanding. You are not trying to remember words and not being asked to speak in the target language. You are just acquiring the language. Your ability to guess is what facilitates your acquisition of the language. This natural acquisition gets you native fluency. That means you speak with the facility and pronunciation of someone who grew up speaking the language.

In a way, this seems similar to an English lesson at a conversation school in Japan because the native English speaking teachers here (in Japan) cannot all be expected to be able to speak Japanese so therefor the lessons that students take at one of these "schools" is all in English. Therefor I would like to point out what some of the differences are. First and foremost, here in Japan, you get only one teacher teaching a lesson. At ALG World there are 2 teachers in the classroom. Having 2 teachers provides natural interaction and dialog for the students. With only 1 teacher, the teacher has a much bigger challenge to display the natural language. The next point is that at ALG World, the students are not under any pressure to produce output. In Japan, progress is measured by output. The pressure and stress to speak is quite counter productive. I know I can perform better and remember things more easily when I am not under any pressure. The last major difference I would like to point out is the number of hours. At ALG World, the students take class for 6 hours a day. So that would be 1500 hours in a year and could be 3000 in 2 years. The average student may take 1 or 2 hours a week of lessons in Japan. So it could all just be the number of hours. But the difference between the approaches shows up in pronunciation and facility in the language, not just the number of years it takes.

There are some videos on YouTube. This one is a Japanese lesson at ALG World.
I don't know which level that class is, but I can understand it 100%.

Here is a level 1 Thai lesson. Very interesting. It seems to me that in Thai some sounds are made with the whole mouth. It's like the sound is not just being pushed out but it is being held in the mouth. Obviously I can't describe what I mean or what I hear. But it just feels like the sounds are produced in a totally different way. Maybe it's not just some, but maybe all the sounds. I noticed this also in the movie Ong Bak. I bought this movie in May or June this year here in Japan so I've got the original Thai as well as a Japanese dub and Japanese subtitles.

If you want to know more about the ALG method, there is a presentation on YouTube divided into six parts. The first part is here.

Is YouTube good for learning languages?

Is YouTube a good way to learn a language? While I think it could be a good way to present a language course, I am not currently aware of any good language courses on YouTube. There are random videos with people giving language lessons but they are not structured well. A really good video course would be French in Action. It predates YouTube and is copyrighted so it is not likely to show up on YouTube. But to make a language learning course like that takes a lot of planning and production costs. We cannot expect such a fine product from an individual's home-made language lesson.

In fact, to make an excellent video course for language learning requires a genius. You have to present the language in a piece by piece offering and yet make it engaging. The audience should get a lot out of the current lesson and want to go right on to the next lesson. When the learner doesn't know that he is learning, then he can make real progress. And that's the beauty of film. Your whole attention can be taken up and you can SEE what is going on. When you see what is going on, then you know what is being talked about. Keep the phrases short in the beginning lessons and it will be obvious what the words mean.

Some languages are better for this than others. Why? Because in those languages, whole sentences are just one or two words long. And those are natural sentences, not baby sentences. For example, in Japanese, in order to say 'It is hot,' you need only one word, 'atsui.' That one word conveys all the meaning. No need for 'it.' What is 'it' anyway? And no need for 'is.' If you just said 'hot' in English, you would conceivably convey the meaning, but you would be criticized for using unnatural methods to teach.

One of the most critical aspects to presenting a language is the 'build-up' approach. The words and phrases that are introduced in one lesson need to keep showing up in the next and subsequent lessons. If not, they will just be forgotten. And I think this is where the current YouTube lessons are failing. As I said before, it takes planning. Not for each lesson but from one lesson to the next so that no new words are left behind.