In a nutshell, what is the "all Japanese all the time" method of Japanese language learning?
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Marcus Ford, Studies Japanese sometimes
Updated Apr 15, 2017 · Author has 296 answers and 1.3m answer views
(In this expanded answer I explain classic AJATT. I'm not going to explain the cloze stuff.)
What is AJATT?
It's a website that teaches you a method for studying Japanese by yourself, without moving to Japan or taking Japanese classes. Rather than giving you lessons on vocabulary and grammar, it explains how you can construct a special type of flash card and utilize native Japanese media to teach yourself natural Japanese.
Its claim to fame is that Khazumoto, the blog's author, went from zero to fluent after 18 months of studying in the United States and got a tech job at a Japanese company. He accomplished this simply by having fun in Japanese all the time, and you can do the same.
Spaced Repetition: The Crux of AJATT
Before I delve into the details of the method, I need to talk about spaced repetition.
Imagine that you don't know any Japanese and you've just acquired deck of 30 vocabulary flash cards. The difficulty of the cards ranges from simple words like inu (dog), to very complex words like seibutsutayousei (biodiversity).
The first week of your studies you review the cards daily, but you can't remember any of them very well. The second week, you're able to remember the easy cards like dog, but not the hard cards like biodiversity. Here's where the magic begins. Since you know dog so well, you decide that you don't have to review it every day anymore. You'll review it every other day instead, and save your mental energy for the harder cards. This is spaced repetition: a method of studying flash cards in which you review easy cards less frequently than difficult cards.
Every time you successfully remember a word, you make that card's review interval longer. At the beginning you review dog every day. Then, once every two days. Then, once every three days, and so on. Eventually you reach the point where you only review dog once a year, but still remember it effortlessly. You put all of your cards through this process of increasing time intervals. But, if you happen to forget a card, you start over and return to reviewing it daily.
Instead of lugging around hundreds of paper flash cards, AJATT recommends that you use your computer to download special a flashcard program called an SRS (spaced repetition software) program. Nowadays the most popular SRS program is one called Anki. You can use Anki to make your own flashcards and then review them on your computer or smartphone whenever you feel like it. Even better, Anki has a built-in automatic formula for calculating the intervals I mentioned earlier. You can use Anki to study anything you can put on a paper flash card, and your studies will be more efficient since you won't waste time over-studying easy cards.
Step 1: Writing
Studying a language involves the development four skills: writing, listening, reading, and speaking. In the AJATT method you learn how to write kana all the jouyou kanji before you learn any vocabulary. You do this by using a specific book called Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig. It teaches you how to write all the jouyou kanji via mnemonics. Heisig gives you an approximation for each kanji's meaning, but no actual vocabulary words. You can learn kana by rote memorization, or by buying Heisig's other book, Remembering the Kana.
You learn to write all of the kanji by using Anki. You will use Anki every day for the rest of your life, or until you're so amazingly fluent that you don't care anymore. After a while your intervals will become so large that they span several years.
Step 2: Listening
In the AJATT method you develop your listening skill by listening to natural Japanese. It can be from Japanese TV shows, Japanese movies, Japanese friends, Japanese strangers, whatever. The point is that from day one you are exposing yourself to the same kind of spoken Japanese that normal Japanese people hear. No language learning CD's, no Rosetta Stone, only "real" Japanese.
You decide what you want to listen to. If you like anime, go on Crunchyroll and watch Sailor Moon. Binge on J-dramas, download podcasts, whatever you want. The only catch is that you must never look at English subtitles. If you're watching a show with subtitles, either turn them off or visually block them somehow.
Do steps 1 and 2 simultaneously.
Step 3: Reading
At this point you're expected to be able to recognize all kana and all the jouyou kanji. You've been watching TV for a while and understand virtually nothing. It's time to make make a new Anki deck for vocabulary.
Like the listening step, you can read whatever you want. Books. Blogs. Manga. Newspapers. Whatever. Your knowledge of kanji from Heisig allows you to guesstimate the meanings of words. If you want to learn a vocab word for real, make a flashcard for it.
In the AJATT method you never learn vocab words by themselves. You only learn them in the context of sentences. This allows your brain absorb the natural patterns of Japanese. The goal of this step is to copy natural Japanese sentences from your reading/listening material and turn them into flashcards. Do this until you have 10,000 flashcards, or until you feel you're sufficiently fluent in Japanese.
In the beginning, when you know zero vocabulary, buy an introductory Japanese workbook that has a lot of example sentences. Copy down example sentences from the workbook on the front of the flash cards, and copy the translations on the back. You start with the basic sentences and work your way up. I'll give you a visual example from my old deck.
Front of card:
