Item — HN Reader

"Headcanon" implies I made it up and it's plain incorrect. Now we seem to be litigating that it's correct within its scope but the pedagogical approach is unsound?

I'm not saying that I wrote this article for everyone. I wrote it for me and people like me. Specifically, for people who appreciate the rigorous-and-ridiculous — like teaching from the linguistical perspective while using romaji.

It's the same approach that my "Just JavaScript" course uses — it's 100% by the spec, but I'm using unconventional metaphors (like "wires" for variables instead of "boxes"). I take pride in making rigorous explanations approachable by slicing the explanation differently.

This is not for everyone. But it's also not a reason to say this shouldn't be written.

1 comments

I am not a native english speaker so perhaps I misunderstood what headcanon meant. But I took it to mean as expanded upon by GP, that you were a well meaning but misguided beginner and have some ideas about what works for language learners that is not expressed by language learners experts.

My personal headcanon to verb conjugation is that you know them when you know them, the shorter the explanation the better, spend more time with examples then explanations, and maybe just learn one or two forms at a time. And when in trouble, find a conjugation chart (preferably at the back of your textbook; after the glossary). My main criticism of Genki was that they should have taught the short form first (before the -masu form; 食べない and 飲んだ before 食べません and 飲みました etc.).

> have some ideas about what works for language learners that is not expressed by language learners experts.

This seems like a culture clash. In programming blogging, it is completely fine to write blog posts about the mental model that works for you (as long as it doesn't contradict evidence) and then maybe it works for somebody else. The idea that I need to first get an approval from a commission of Serious Teachers That Verified Which Approaches Work Well For Learners Statistically is laughable to me.

I write for myself and for people like me, period. I do not claim this is useful to anyone but a tiny group. This tiny group is who it's written for. I explicitly say in the article that I struggled and this is what got me unstuck. If it isn't helpful, just close the tab.

I think you may be spot on about the culture clash. Language learning takes a long time, and there are really no short-cuts nor magic solutions that will get you from zero to competent within any reasonable amount of time. This is in stark contrast with programming. If you already know a programming language, you can get reasonably acquainted with your second one by following a really good tutorial in a single afternoon (depending on the languages though).

This make a lot of language learners (including my self) extremely vary and reactive of tutorials and explainers such as these. In the language learning space, tutorials belong as chapters in a good textbook, and explainers belong in dedicated sites written by teachers who have proven their worth with dozens of other explainers (e.g. https://www.tofugu.com/). The difference is that these are meant as part of a much much much longer journey.

[Aside]: Japanese is actually my 5th language and the first that is self taught and outside the language environment. I am also a self taught programmer. I have observed that learning Japanese is in a totally different league then any programming language. I am now two years into learning Japanese, and I can barely read a kids book, and no way can I hold a conversation. At this point in my programming journey I was already writing three programming languages fluently (JavaScript, Python, and R) and was learning the 4th and 5th at the same time (Rust and Julia).

[Re: “this is what got me unstuck”]: It is quite common in the language learning space to learn things intuitively by mere exposure. And sometimes a language learner will falsely attribute some (what appears to them as a) novel approach to what got them unstuck, but what really happened is that just engaging with the language reinforced old neural pathways and they just suddenly “got it”, the novel approach could have been anything, what mattered was the engagement, not the technique. This is also true in programming, but in language learning it is extremely common. Our brains are wired to learn natural languages, and given enough exposure to the language we will learn it.

That seems like the best diagnosis so far for what’s happening in the thread and gives me some peace. I guess it also means I’ll try to keep my future explanations to myself because intersecting with a community with these norms is highly unpleasant. I wouldn’t say I regret writing this post, but this whole discussion killed my joy about sharing further on this topic.

That's a real shame. Personally I thought it was a great article and the concept of the stem struck a chord.

The trick with posting this sort of stuff (or finding out someone else posted your stuff) to forums, particularly this one, is to never read the comments. Ignorance really is bliss.