I have been interested in learning Japanese for a while but I fail to see how your method differs from purchasing a Japanese language book, listening to audio such as from Pimsleur, and going on italki.com and practicing with native Japanese speakers.
My goal is to use acquisition theory and massive comprehensible input to teach Japanese (and Chinese). Please look up some of Dr. Stephen Krashen's lectures on Youtube -- it really is quite fascinating.
Will you post your CV to back up your teaching qualifications?
Also, could you provide references of past students or maybe post a letter of recommendation from them? I have written recommendation letters for my past language teachers.
I don't think you understand what I am offering. My book will be interesting on it's own, but kongzi.ca is just software akin to anki or stackz or iknow.jp. Most of the content will be created and maintained by native Japanese (or Chinese, for Chinese) speakers. With acquisition theory and MCI it wouldn't matter how good my japanese was because one person alone cannot create the absolutely massive amounts of content you need for the method to work.
About the book tho, if you don't think that Acquisition theory is of any use, don't buy my book. Again it matters little how good my japanese is; the only thing that matters is that you are presented with a large (large!) amount of understandable source material. Over time I'll probably release quite a bit more of it for free on the internet. You will have plenty of time to read more about it yourself and decide if you are interested in it before it is finished and I start really charging for it.
I guess you could say I am actually more interested in the science behind it than the business end. Here's a snippet from "Welcome to Chinese" (the chinese book I am working on). I have 22 chapters (over 400 words) done on it:
Targeted MCI: Why Frequency Order?
One approach is to study characters by frequency. Consider that the most common 180 characters comprise approximately 50% of all written Chinese. *1 ("6000 Chinese Words”, by James Erwin Dew, pg. 33). If a student learned those 180 characters, he would have a lot more confidence in his progress because every single time he saw a Chinese book, sign, or newspaper, he would likely recognize some if not all of it.
This is a very good idea on it’s own, but cannot make a useable textbook. For one, it is not possible to construct any meaningful dialogue whatsoever out of the first 100 frequency ordered characters out of all written Chinese. Nor the first 200. The reason is that many vital words are from parts of speech classes, that while independently are very low frequency words, together make up a large portion of the language. For example, most nouns may be frequency 1000 or lower; but withot a decent number of nouns, one can’t really speak a language. Even if a student sticks it out and achieves a 90% comprehension rate by memorizing the first 1,000 characters, this will not be enough to actually understand anything since he or she will not understand core areas of the language (such as nouns). Attempting to read anything would be a laborious exercise in dictionary usage.
The problem can be absolved by reducing the sample size, lowering the target vocabulary. Trying to tackle a frequency ordered approach containing 5,000 characters for 99.9% literacy is not a viable option. By targeting the vocabulary to a restricted set of materials which are then used as a stepping stone to reach the next level of language usage, students can experience immediate usability and fluency in the language. This provides a strong reinforcement for learning the language.
Benefits of the Targeted Frequency Order Approach
The targeted frequency order approach used in this book consists of a short frequency analysis of a small to medium sized pool of low-level materials such as children’s books, contrasted with government approved grading systems such as BLI, HSK, CYY and IUP.
The results of the research into the construction of the core vocabulary was very suprising. Following is a small chart which rates literacy of the target material compared to an untargeted vocabulary of several thousand words, based on how many characters have been learned under either approach:
# of Words Literacy(Untargeted Vocabulary) Literacy(Targeted Vocabulary)
100 37% 70%
200 46% 80%
300 52% 86%
400 56% 92%
500 59% 95%
With untargeted frequency analysis, the first 100 characters learned comprise under 40% of the written language. But with the targeted approach we used it comprised an amazing 70%. As a result, the student would theoretically feels a much greater sense of progress than normal. It is hoped this would fuel their desire to learn as they would feel their fluency increasing measurably with every lesson learned.
As a reassurance, since all of the characters surveyed in this approach would naturally fall within the most common few thousand characters used in modern Chinese, a student isn’t wasting their time studying this method over any other, and could quite easily transition to a normal textbook or Chinse course if it became necessary.
Results of Core Vocabulary Selection Process
The approach used in writing this book was to conduct a character frequency analysis of a popular children’s book series. The intent was to create a subset of the most common characters which not only were common, but were able to be used to construct meaningful material. Hopefully, the student would be immediately able to read much longer stories and dialogues than appear in normal textbooks. It is also hoped that the charming, timeless stories would appeal to people of all ages.
As the results of the analysis came in, everyone doing the research was shocked. Here is a snapshot of the pool analysis data for the first 12 books:
Book New Characters New to Pool Pool
34-1 137 100% 137
34-2 66 48% 203
34-3 52 26% 255
34-4 42 16% 297
34-5 50 17% 347
34-6 39 11% 386
34-7 42 11% 428
34-8 40 9% 468
34-9 22 5% 490
34-10 0 0% 490
34-11 19 4% 509
34-12 17 3% 526
There are several ways to interpret the data. First, that given the results of the last four books (and especially book 10) we see that with a small, well-tuned vocabulary it is possible to create a large amount of different and interesting reading material. Most notably book 10, which was written entirely using characters which appeared previously in the series. Based on this data, it seems plausable that a core vocabulary could be constructed that would be even smaller, which would support the transition to the MCI approach within the first year of language instruction.
Designing an Optimal Core Vocabulary
There are several considerations to designing an optimal core vocabulary. First is the target size. If we aim for first year students this should be around 250 or 300 words. The set of 527 words from the books listed above is small enough to be analyzed for this purpose. Let's examine the most common characters in this list first.
Appearances Pool Size Literacy (to 1%)
> 1 526 100%
> 2 386 95%
> 3 273 90%
> 4 221 85%
> 5 186 80%
The above chart suggests that the core vocabulary does not need to use characters which only appear once or twice in the entire series of 12 books; a 90% literacy rate (over the target vocabulary) can be achieved with just 273 characters. Given the results of the previous table, it is proposed that a minimum of three or perhaps four readers could be constructed based on this material.
A further method is to examine the contents of the stories themselves. Of the most common characters, throughout the 20th to 60th most common chartacters appear many words used to refer to particular animals. This is due to the subject nature of the books (children's story books). Additionally, a large number of objects and places and descriptions vary from book to book. These words will be reasonably common as they appear a large number of times, however, they only appear in one or perhaps two books in the series. We may therefore hypothesize that we can reduce the number of characters in the remaining target vocabulary by 20 to 30 words by introducing a consistent cast of characters and a consistent set/scenery.
