There have been some definite contention on the AJATT theory and how valid Krashen’s concept is at its purest replication. The idea of AJATT or insert other language is said to replicate this path strongly.
My question is to valid the AJATT hypothesis why don’t we create an environment of a VERY difficult language to learn or near master outside of childhood like Denae/Navajo? Use the same idea and close condition for as long as Matt and others used it. I mean it’s been said it’s nigh impossible to become native in Navajo so wouldn’t near native speech here establish a strong validity to this concept?
Thoughts? I brought up Navajo because it’s very famous for the sheer difficulty in this, if someone has a language with a much steeper learning curve I’m open to suggestions.
Or corrections for that measure.
AJATT??
All Japanese All The Time
AJATT: All Japanese All The Time.
Will you please clarify what concept you want to test?
I know of a couple concepts that you might be referring to.
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Concept that grammar is not needed: Mr. Salas (YouTuber) did input only in Japanese with no grammar and went to Japan recently. He made a video stating that he was behind students who studied grammar some, so learning grammar does help in learning a language. So you can learn a language without it, but it does help to learn a little.
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Concept that the first time you open your mouth after a silent period you will sound like a native: Asked Refolders what to expect with my Spanish. Was told if you go 1200 hours in Spanish without talking, their tests show that you would need an additional 200 hours of speaking practice to be able to speak comfortably. And you still wouldn’t sound native. That means that even with a close language, you won’t speak like a native off the bat.
If you were referring to another concept, please explain further.
I’m mostly thinking of #2 which Matt Vs. Japan adhered to.
#2.
German speaking after immersion approach(3 years). I would like to know the opinions of German natives with regards to her pronunciation more so she is not living in a German-speaking language country.
But how many hours of concentrated immersion did she get? I think I’ve seen one of her videos before, and I believe she actually logs her hours, but I don’t think she’s ‘full time.’
The thing about this method, as far as I’m aware, is that you have to do it full time for years to see a genuinely high level of acquisition. I think Matt has rebranded it for his Refold website to make it sound like you can do less, but I suspect that deep down he knows that’s not possible, at least if you want a really high level.
IMO, there would be a huge difference between a few hours/day of less than super concentrated effort Vs being highly motivated and concentrated for 8-10 hours/day living in the language. Something that Matt himself did with Japanese.
Just to clarify, I’ve never attempted it myself.
Hi, Asad!
Her pronunciation of German is excellent.
She makes a few mistakes so that it’s clear after a few minutes
that she isn’t a German native speaker. But, apart from that,
it’s a real pleasure listening to her 
To be fair, even with the caveat specified, if someone managed to get to where Matt is with Japanese with Danae/Navajo that would be huge and possibly unprecidented.
The idea has already been testing millions of times whereby people learn English with the internet. There have been several notable examples of monolingual English speakers reaching very good levels in Japanese by consuming only Japanese for years. Taking some language that hardly anyone is interested in, has almost zero media and very few native speakers, doesn’t prove the point any better than someone learning Japanese from zero to fluent with nothing but media.
Actually I would argue if they were in a proper immersion environment it does because Navajo is notorious for being incredibly difficult to learn. One receives the impression if you don’t grow up with it it’s nigh impossible to come close to Native fluency. Don’t forget this is the language that was used for the codetalkers for WWII that the Japanese couldn’t manage to crack.
Picking a language based on its perceived difficulty in order to prove a point about AJATT would be self defeating - part of being able to immerse for 8-10 hours a day for half of a decade takes an incredible amount of desire to acquire that language. And like previous posters have said, AJATT has been validated already - but the reason it’s hard to replicate is that it takes >4 years of near all day, every day depending on the language and most people don’t have that time or motivation.
I’m guessing the reason Navajo is so difficult is because there isn’t a large amount of accessible content to immerse in. I’m sure if there was thousands of hours of youtube / literature / podcasts etc in Navajo and the language was added it to yomichan or whatever pop up dictionaries / Migaku and LingQ and you gave someone a grant or a prison sentence and no other option they could “prove it”. But why? You could just look at other examples in more popular languages of people learning by mass immersion.
And Japanese isn’t notorious for being difficult to learn? Lol.