That's ironic because usually it's the student who's like the host mom and the mom would have your value but in this case it's the opposite

Are you saying that LingQ is good for Japanese beginners????

I went to kansaigadai and skipped out on home stay because I thought it would be awkward. Got a house with another student the second semester, was pretty good

Yes, I started Arabian, and I like their alphabet, but I don' tl ike the sound and I gave it up 🎉😅

Your experience with this particular host family was NOT a case of a "clash of cultures." You just had the wrong host family. This is not the first and only KZfaq video I've seen about a bad Japanese host family. These bad experiences are the exception, not the rule. Most people I met that had the host family experience in Japan report nothing but a positive experience. From your description in the video, your college placed with this particular host family. You should notify the college and tell them about your experience so they don't place another home stay student with this family again.

I just find it silly that you wanted to be treated as part of the family. But the moment your host mum openned up to you about her past, you judged and ridiculed her. Sounds more like a YOU problem

"learning has to be fun" is what boils my blood. I was a skinny-ass dude and managed to go from 135 to 190 pounds. How? Having freakin' fun!? No, waking up at 5:00 in the morning four times a week to lift heavy weights and eating a freakin' lot. I hated every part of the process, but loved the results. Oh, and I taught myself English and French, which wasn't fun 100% of the time.

Regarding the"dormant knowledge" concept mentioned in the "Discrediting education" section combined with the also discussed taking things to the extreme, I've noticed that the more fluent someone is, the more they discount their own acquisition experience and thus the more unrealistic their advice is to beginners. Sometimes it gets downright silly with advice bordering on, "Learn all regular Japanese stuff in a month or two and then spend two years on pitch accent". While the better resources are more realistic about the learning process, I think in general learners might be better off taking advice from people a level or two above them opposed to people who have spent 10+ years learning the language and have completely forgotten what it was like being a beginner.

Thanks for your honesty. My daughter (18) will be going to Japan in a year or so and is good to hear from all perspectives specially as most of what you hear is mostly “amazing”… I’m sorry that your host family failed to welcome you and hope you will have many great intercultural experiences in the future.

I’m 2 years late but in my view the argument for anki at late stages while common isn’t convincing. Word frequency is a function of context. A word infrequent in general may be very frequent if you are reading about the Italian renaissance, astrophysics, or African wildlife. The way to learn less frequent words is to focus on reading many sources on a specific topic, just like native speakers do in school. That’s why the vocabulary of an educated native speaker can be 4 to 5 times that of an uneducated speaker. If this method isn’t enough to expose you to a word it’s probably not a word you really need to learn. Sure it might have some slim chance of coming up and confusing you, but so what? That happens to native speakers, too.

You have to understand, your host family was in the same situation as you. They didn’t know anything about you or your home country. Also, it’s really hard to have a host student. We had one for two week. Because we were half Japanese family. Both my kids were half. I’m American, my wife was from Tokyo, but has been in America for 20 at this point. Both my son & daughter were preparing for college and busy with activities and their lives. So they did not want to be stuck with a shy teenager from Japan that barely spoke English. She stayed in her room mostly crying. My wife did try to take her places. But mostly she just wanted to go to Japanese markets. It was an extremely difficult two weeks for both sides. We didn’t do host family anymore. The first time i went to Japan, i discovered, its very fast paced. My 日本語 was not up to par… and i would get mentally exhausted. I could only last for a week. But i went back 10 years later for Kendo and vacation, and i enjoyed it immensely. Two factors helped: i was more mature and i started alone, & i understood the culture more and could speak & read more 日本語 . I think once you are a stronger adult, and more mature, you should take a vacation and go there on your own. You will enjoy it more. Also your opinion of the host mother because of her choices was a little too judgmental. When she was growing up, Japan had a lot patriarchal aspects in their culture. And actually, throughout the world, there are a lot of women that would prefer to be Homemakers. So for them, they must marry the right person. Anyway that’s my thought as i have experienced as a host family.

the only thing i really disagree with is the words ´spilling´. im not sure how applicable this is for other people, but for me. its a very simple concept. if you can think in the language, you can speak in the language

These all seem personal problems

For me, learning grammar on my own was really hard, but taking classes made it much more bearable. People say that school is too inefficent, but I think that its really useful because it gives you direction while you lay the foundation for your knowledge, making it easier to move on to immersion and sentence mining afterwards.

The issue: Go to a different country and family and expect them to adapt to you, instead of the other way around. Why didn’t you get out of your room and participated instead of waiting in a closed door room for someone to come plead you to join?

20:40 I agree that reading a book is WAY better than reading subtitles BUT if u r going to watch a TV show w/out ur TL subs the learning will be less than if you use the TL subs. And It's an easier approach to reading if u are just listening, like refolders tend to do.

Another well made video! Thank you for your insights. With regard to reading vs. listening, reading is surely a great way to build fluency in a language. But, because reading tends to be easier than listening, this creates a comprehension gap between the two skills. The only way to close the gap is to do a lot more listening. I understand if your goal is to communicate as quickly possible, reading may serve that purpose better. But in the long run, if you want strong listening skills, you'll have to prioritize listening at some point. Also, the timeline of 1 year to fluency may not be realistic for certain languages. I'm learning Japanese and because of the obstacle of Kanji, as well as the grammar, learning to read is a much longer process than with phonetic scripts. I learned to read in Korean in a week and after almost 3 years of Japanese studies still haven't learned all the Kanji necessary for basic literacy 😂 I think we have to be realistic about the challenges certain languages pose, when they are as different as English and Japanese.

Appreciate your insights. What's the e reader you use here in the video 29:25

What graduate programs did you check? what were your criteria in selecting the school?

Kudos to you for speaking your mind about Refold! I thought you raised these problems with great clarity and thoughtfulness. I'm well acquainted with Refold's methodology and have a few things I think are off as well. As you mentioned, making early output a taboo because it will lead to poor speaking habits I think is way overblown. The only way you would cement bad speaking habits is if you didn't study the phonetics of the language at all, don't do any listening immersion, and only communicate with other non-native speakers who also speak with poor pronunciation or poor grammar. This is a very specific circumstance that I think most learners would have enough common sense to avoid. Will Hart is a great example of someone who did early output and had great results learning Mandarin Chinese. I also think the reluctance to study grammar is somewhat misguided. I think if your target language is similar to your native language, you could get by and pick up grammar from immersion. I'm learning Japanese and as an English speaker, if I didn't spend time studying grammar, I'm sure that certain grammar structures would never be acquired because they are so different from my native language. It could take hundreds or thousands of hours of immersion before a grammar structure becomes clear, if ever, but if I spend ten minutes studying the grammar point, it basically clears up immediately. Honestly, I think some of these strongly held opinions in the Refold community is a product of the dogma of MattvsJapan. He helped bring immersion learning to the forefront, which was a great benefit to the language learning community, but he has such a strong conviction that his way is the ONLY way, it created a little bit of a toxic culture in that community. Just my perception! Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I mean of course there are downsides. There are downsides to every method and what method is the "best" depends on your goals, learning style, and amount of effort you're willing to put in. Any method one uses, even if inefficient or has downsides, will impart some knowledge of a language. Barring any method that teaches anything outright wrong. I at one time tried that hot garbage called Rosetta Stone and for as bad as that program was, I still learned SOMETHING at least. I tried Pimsleur and while it was good at speaking practice I learned jack at reading and writing. Find a reputable method that works for you and jump in. If your main method has a deficiency in some way, fill that hole by supplementing with another method. Even traditional classroom learning has major downsides, else people would look back negatively on the experience despite the solid foundation it provides in the long run.

I don't think you know how to have any fun.

9:22 so I’m learning Japanese and the levels the Japanese gov has (JLPT) seems more divided on comprehension and output. Like if you score the highest you’re expected to be able to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere with people who only speak Japanese and be fine for months on end or be entirely literate kind of comprehension. And that’s kinda how I see fluency levels like that. How much can you comprehend, how long can you survive being in a place with only that language, etc.

15:45 “took classes for 5 years learned nothing” I call bullshit I’m studying Japanese again but I’m high school I took 2.5 years. I don’t consider myself as skilled as I was back then but even if my skill was less than it was, the classes gave me familiarity with the language. Even if you don’t build a lot of skills, formal education of a language will give you familiarity with it that will boost your ability to study. Idk how to describe it. But it’s easier to study on your own after taking classes for a year or more.

I would have loved to go to those places with you!

I find it surprising that you decided to do a year of exchange in a country that is culturally so far from European countries without first learning about the culture of the country and trying to understand it somewhat. Unfortunately, through your speech, it does not seem that you made the effort to understand it when you stayed there and only noted that the values were different without ever trying to understand the reasons for these differences. It's too bad. Japanese culture is rich and complex, made up of customs and traditions, and judging it based on the values of its country of origin can only lead to dead ends. Your host family probably tried to bond with you, but you didn't understand it because you expected them to behave like your compatriots would. What your host mother told you about finding a husband was an important point in the women's culture of her time, but you definitely decided it was wrong based on the values of the society you grew up in, always lived without wondering why it was different in Japan. I am sorry to tell you that you have missed out on the wealth of this country because of a narrow vision of the world and a certain lack of open-mindedness. Yes, cultures are different depending on the country and even more so if the historical and cultural roots are different. I invite you to read some works on cultural differences and you will see that even geographically close countries can present major cultural differences which greatly complicate collaborations between companies in these countries. Perhaps with age you will become more tolerant and understand that it is up to you to adapt to the country you are staying in and not expect locals to behave as your relatives would. This is what I hope most for you. Kind regards.

While I agree that immersion is very beneficial, my eyebrows totally left my forehead when I, too, stumbled over the 'words will magically pour out of you'. Was this former strict output restriction stance based on any real data? I grew up in a multilingual environment and am pretty decent in listening comprehension in a couple of languages, but never have sentences started pouring out of me. Many fellow third culture kids, who share the same language background as I do, can attest to this. It is a common topic among us that by neglecting output, we have never gained fluency in conversation.

Hey. I'm going to Japan this next fall semester. And I am on the fence about staying with a host family or staying in a dorm. But I don't think I am stuck with a host family. It is the cheaper of the two options and I think it will be a good language practice option. So if I don't like my host family I could move to a dorm. I just hope that I get a good match in terms of personality.

Solid video. Really well done. I’m still afraid of sub-vocalisations.. We say it doesn’t matter if we take 10 years to learn a language but I also know there is little foundation for me being worried.. but I can’t get rid of it and I’m not in a rush ! But if anyone had any advice I’m all ears (😉)

My opinions have altered over the years. AJATT proposed an immersive framework for learning. It's one interpretation of comprehensible input. A lot of progress can be done with quite a little. Periods of immersion sound good but it underestimates the ability of the brain to process language and generate both grammatical knowledge and vocab learning between study sessions. My opinion is knowledge is not obliterated. Sometimes it is consolidated in sleep and cleaning the house. Comprehensible Input is a good guide. Once you're bored or tired it's time to move on. Dont scrimp on sleep or exercise. Ever. In the early days less time is probably better. Some every day. Language learning should be pleasant. Your brain is your friend. It's already primed to acquire languages, no trickery or forcing is required. Also falliw time is OK. Consolidation is OK. It all helps in the long run.

i think you put far too much emphasis on how good school is. I did french in school, then decided i want to learn spansih, started with textbooks grammar, it was awful. Started dreaming spanish and committed to 200 hours of listening and i have improved so much more. When you were born, you learn english and grammar inductively. Through just listening to your mum and dad, Before you even start school you can spoeak fluent english and your not even aware that your using grammar correctly. Only when you can speak english fluently do we learn the grammar. There people who are illerate and yet can still speak fluently. A few well known people agree that listening is the most important skill. When you listen you pick up the accent, conjugations, you get used to how the language sounds. Whats the point in practising speaking when you cant even understand whats being said to you? There people with degrees in languages and can still barely use them, because the focus is so much more on the grammar. People that have immersed and have thousasnd hours of listening and reading will be able to communicate in real life stiuations then someone you spent there time focusing on grammar.

Thanks so much this really helped now i might get a good grade in my german assesment!!

As a full-time working person with a large circle of friends, a social life and multiple hobbies, I just couldn't relate to a community that includes people who say they spend 12+ hours a day consuming their target language and then give advice on how to learn languages to people who only have 1-2 hours a day, which is just ridiculous. For me, Refold would only make sense if I had a lot of time every day and was willing to invest that time in learning a language (this is was the roadmap imo indicates as a given fact). The latter would never be the case, as even if I had the time, I rather build my carrer or business and social circle and when I take off a longer time from responsibilities, travel the world and make precious memories.

I think about diminishing returns like this: yes the returns are diminishing but I think you can cover more ground this way, meaning someone who only does 1-2 things over a couple hours will likely not be as well rounded. Someone who reads for two hours, watches shows for two hours, and reads articles or watches youtube for 2 hours will probably be more well rounded overall. At the end of the day people should put in the time they have but i still think more is better

I found your story very interesting and can see you've really learned a lot about yourself and the host family and you've come to understand the dynamic that was occurring when you were there. You were so strong to stick that out! It sounds like it was very difficult. Anyone would have found that very hard and it does sound like you suffered some trauma from the experience (not surprisingly!) I do have a question, our 16 year old (very quiet) son is going to stay in Japan for one month as an exchange student. His school has arranged it and there will be other students staying there also, in different homes. Can you give me any advice to give him about how to behave with a Japanese host family? What to do, or what not to do?

Hi. Very helpful. Not sure I understand the known words thing. Just clicking to create a link doesn’t mean you know a word, right? And what about words that have multiple definitions based on context. Would these be two links? Thanks.

Change title from "I regret staying with a Japanese host family" to "How I Overcame and Learned More About Values Via Host Family". :)

Succes met je nieuwe doelen❤

I’m finding the step system really useful for mandarin since there are several levels of “knowing” a word in that language. e.g. “I can infer the reading/meaning but it takes some work,”“I know what this means but I don’t know the reading,” “I know parts of this word but not every character”, “I can read this intuitively with accurate meaning and pronunciation” etc. This kind of situation pops up a lot with non-native scripts. You could do the same with Arabic vowels, Japanese and its lists of possible readings, even English and its unpredictable spellings.

I've already been in my Japanese learning journey on and off for a few years now so I would call myself an intermediate to pre-advanced level. I discovered Refold recently and I do agree with the comprehensible input part, where it encouraged me to take the plunge and start consuming more native media with the TL subtitles, focusing more on getting the meaning and not stressing out about getting everything 100% first time. This works for me because I already have a basis of vocab/grammar which allows me to understand at least 40-50% of what was being said. I think what makes immersion hard for beginners is the lack of toolbox words in the TL that they already know. I think there's no shame in looking to traditional language study resources like textbooks to learn those basic grammar structures and vocab until they get that down. I think immersion with native media is better placed for intermediates and above. I do agree with you that their advice not to speak until fluent seemed contrary to other language learning advice I've heard, even from other comprehensible input practitioners. I have heard people say hold off on writing until fluent particularly for languages with different scripts (because you can easily waste time learning how to write kanji strokes when it's more useful to learn reading listening and speaking first), but I think speaking is crucial to learn early on because what's the point of language? To communicate! I think the hardest part of learning a language when you live in a country that doesn't speak it is finding native speakers who will help you practise their language at your level. I haven't tried the refold discord yet so not sure if it's possible to find language learning 'parents' there, but that's been my main struggle at the moment for language learning. My listening's thankfully been improving thanks to the immersion technique by Refold, but my speaking definitely needs more work.

Everyone: ohh poor you sorry they did that to you. Me living in japan: nooo you were wrong. You not the main character. You had to put yourself more into their life. Atleast they gave you food. Their life goes on you just need to adapt. Japanese culture is not for you 😂😂😂😂 you germans always think its all about you.

If Germans don't like ambiguity, why do they let things like "Haben sie..." and "Haben Sie..." mean two different things when in spoken German there is no way to distinguish what they mean, other than the context (which can be entirely absent)?

Interesting to come from your refold criticism video where you're criticising them for saying how it needs to be fun, only to come to this video and seeing you using refold in clips (for korean at least) and saying that your language learning needs to be fun. Anyway, maybe I missed it in this video, but what happened with your n1 exam?

I like you nose it looks pretty and sexy on you 😎

Facts.

what app do you use for reading? like at 28:45 or 26:55

Hey, just wanted to say it is amazing and refreshing to see someone with a balanced mindset that has more experience with a number of languages talking about stuff and not making up any scientific theories out of their head. You are amazing, for me you were right about 100% of the stuff you said. I think people who made criticism, for what I read down here, are just people on sunken cost fallacy being in deny.

I can't believe KZfaq is just showing this video to me a year later after it came out. I'm struggling so hard with Korean. I got to take 4 semesters of Japanese grammar in a college setting and that set me up for success so much. And then afterwards because Japanese is a bigger language I could also find online small group classes to learn grammar all the way up to N1. I learn grammar so much better with other students than in one on one sessions or solo. 1 on 1 classes are great for me to practice speaking but not for grammar. I envy you and your ability to stay focused on graded readers. I have to jump into something like Harry Potter level or I can't stay interested. I abused the sentence mode on LingQ with its Google translations literally reading whole books sentence by sentence parallel translation style because my Korean wasn't good enough to fight through the grammar and not knowing so many words otherwise. It's getting better but really I'm still not good enough to turn this function off for very long without getting really really tired. I'm up to 42 thousand "known" words in Korean on LingQ from reading so many books. It sounds like a lot but it's really just the more common words over and over and over again but conjugated slightly differently. The LingQ method of counting words isn't very useful really.

Veel succes! Nederlands is een goed idee omdat het redelijk makkelijk is voor een Engels spreker :)

Wow what an experience you had in Japan, usually I only hear a life-changing good experience from foreigners so it was kind of shocking to hear that the lady made you go through the nightmare and pains. I had a similar experience in US staying at American host family home. I felt like I am outsiders (I am but...) , felt like I was always on their way and not getting included in any family event/activities, evidently my 1st host mom was doing that for money not getting to know other country's cultures which she cared less from first place. I called up my agency and having them changed to different host family after 1 month of stay , 2nd host family was great, I actually stayed there for 3 years until I graduated. It is a past , can not change it but you should have changed to different one if you had a choice. I am sorry for your horrible experience in Japan and glad that you came strong. As a Japanese , shame on her that she could not perform ”おもてなし”。She might not be a real Japanese after all........