The app I use to learn languages -> bit.ly/3TU2GPF My 10 FREE secrets to language learning -> www.thelinguist.com Has reading a lot in your target language improved your ability to speak?
I can confirm this theory, I have proof for that. I'm learning Ukrainian and one day I had a conversation with a friend and wanted to say something and suddenly an expression came to my mind, but I stopped speaking, because I wasn't sure what the meaning of it was and completely didn't know where that came from. Then I asked my friend what it means and it was exactly what I wanted to say. This was somehow a special moment to me, because I saw, that the language was becoming more natural to me, so I was very happy :) thank you for the good motivation. Дуже дякую за гарну мотивацію)))
same here. Except that I was talking to myself, so I had to google translate that unfamiliar word suddenly popped up in the mind. Extremely fun experience!
Reading is amazing. It forces one to think in their target language. They’ve also found through research that our throat makes tiny motor movements and below audible sounds while we read. So when we read, it is like we’re practicing speaking.
Your comment that we don't deliberately learn things has really struck home for me lately. I started 10 months ago learning Norwegian. Drills, flash cards, etc. worked, but there were lots of words I would see over and over and over again, and NEVER could remember. Two months ago, I subscribed to LingQ and confined myself to reading. I scan the news headlines at NRK, etc. and pick one or two stories a day to add to my LingQ Library. I stopped worrying about memorizing and just kept reading (currently the first of The Last Kingdom series in Norwegian). My vocabulary retention hugely improved with no attempt to memorize. At least once a day, I'll read a word with instant recognition only to realize I've had to look it up at least half a dozen times before without learning it. Now it feels permanent in my memory. It happens daily. Almost no effort. I'm building quite a vocabulary of 9th Century warfare terms :), but fortunately the books are vividly written with lots of vocabulary suitable for the 21st Century as well! Read what interests you and read a lot of it. Best advice anyone has given me for language learning. Thanks so much.
Like you, it took me a year of learning my second language before I realised that I should be focusing more on acquiring the language naturally through listening & reading. Learning words in context is king.
I'm a Norwegian currently studying Farsi(Persian) and I must say that I'm struggling. A lot. I'm extremely bad at memorizing words or phrases or vocabulary. It's just not an effective way for me to learn. Lately though, I've started listening to songs and are trying to just read/memorize the songs. I don't care at all what they mean or about translating them. I'just listening and trying to sing along. This just came to me as a way I wanted to explore my learning. I love music and listen to music every day, so why not listen in my target language? My thinking is that this will teach me structure, rythm and give me a HUGE passive vocabulary. For anyone who has studied Farsi, they know that they don't write their vovels, so it's really hard to read, if you don't already know the words and have heard (or looked up) the correct spelling/pronounciation. What started happening after this, is that I'm listening to a song and then suddenly a phrase or word comes up and my brain goes "oh, oh, oh", I know this(or a similar phrase/version of the word), then I ask my gf and after that I remember it and try to use it in day to day talk. I mostly just try to substitute whatever I want to say, with words or phrases in Farsi, just to get practice in expressing myself and rather thinking i Farsi. I'm learning Farsi through a second language, English, but I am using a private tutor for studying. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but listening to music and trying to sing along with the songs, is way more pleasurable, than reading some stupid text/conversation about some moronic topic, over and over - but I think in the end, it has the same effect. You practice pronounciation, listening skills and it feeds the brain with the structure of the language. Even though artists may take liberties with pronounciation to fit the rythm and rhymes, but that's all part of language. I feel this gives me a true feel for the language in the end, even though the process for me is very painful and slow. This far I've taught myself three songs, that I can just sing from memory and whenever words from these songs come up in texts I read, I do know how to pronounce them, which is a pretty exciting feeling.
I like his style, when instead of blaming me for that I don't want to learn difficult parts of language learning, he's saying: "No problem, do something else, what you want - it will benefit anyway" It really motivates not to give up. Thanks
Agree. The larger your passive vocabulary, the larger your active vocabulary will be. That being said, you passive vocabulary will always be bigger than your active one, simply because its much easier to just recognize than to actively recall it. The passive vocabulary is like your potential. Kind of like a "pool of words" you can draw from. Plus when you start speaking too early, some mistakes or bad habits might get ingrained in your long term memory, because you simply don't know the way a native would say it. It can be a laborious process to correct them.
I recently passed a C1 exam, which included some short oral test, without speaking that target language (english in this case) for the last 25 years. So, according to my own experience, you don´t need to be constantly speaking to do that. In my opinion, I think when you are reading you´re somehow 'speaking' it to yourself at the same time.
Steve, I'm a psychotherapist and Deliberate Practice has began to become a big buzz word and some forms of therapy are really stressing this. It has been helpful in that most in our field don't practice and thus most therapists are pretty damn mediocre. But language learning has taught me that excellence in learning is mostly immersion and deliberate practice is for refining. It makes it less stressful as deliberate practice is kind of obsessing over a point
I agree. I am more or less on a B2 level with Spanish, and I came there mostly through reading and listening. Even though there is much room for improvement to my speaking, I can still engage in a variety of subjects, albeit with pauses sometimes.
First I would like to thank you for the effort that you have been making to help us reach our goal in language learning. During my English learning I reach a level at which I can read comprehensively and I read a lot, but I was reluctant to speak. When I started to speak then I discovered that some words are just coming out naturally, to my surprise some of the words I say, I don't even think I came across. From my perspective I believe this method you have mentioned is extremely effective. Thanks again.
Totally agree, before speking is very important to have exposure to the target language. Yesterday i was talking with my japanese tutor and i realized about one thing during the conversation. It was that after a lot of exposure to the language one knows the words but are kinda too passive. However once they are known and you can speak, during the conversation the best thing that should be done is comprehension as you mention, with that comprehension even you might have a word deeply hidden in a subconcious level, once you hear it again while comunicating you should try to use it in an answer during a conversation in ordr to activate it.
That still sounds to me a little bit like trying to force it. Like you're attempting to nail a small thing down by targeting it in the hope that it'll be 'activated.' I don't believe that's all that helpful. I believe output comes when it comes, naturally. So long as you're getting enough input. That's the key, most people just don't get anywhere close to enough. If you do, and you regularly attemp output, it'll _all_ come eventually, it's kinda unavoidable. So there's no need to deliberately target certain words, IMO.
@@futurez12 What i mean is that once you can make some output (of course once you have a very good comprehension), if you have words that you can recognize but you don't really remember and that during the conversation might appear, so once you can answer to what is told to you use in that answer those words you just redetected. That is useful for kinda activate them. Yeah you are likely to forget again, but they will gradually come natural as you say.
I like to think that, at least to me, learning a language is about being able to understand and then later being understood. You need to be able to understand first, because you can't just copy and paste a language into your head from grammar lessons. You need to build a structure for the language inside your head through reading an listening to natives so that you can build these tools and know how to use them to speak and write.
Hello, how are you, Mr. Steve? My name is Hllema, and I am following you from Iraq now. I am 53 and I started learning English and French together, as a hobby, and because of my love for these two languages, can I succeed?❤❤❤❤❤
Reading is amazing and I don't understand why people don't try to read on foreign language. I learn my native language when I reading and listening book and I think that I can learn English on the same way. For me good B2 is enough to communicate and understand people. It's a good start to free talk. Reading is very helpful to be better of speaking skills.
I know you said it. But I think listening is as important as reading. For instance, as a native Swedish speaker I can read Norwegian and Danish very well, but I could never speak those close languages by only reading since they basically look like Swedish when they're written (but I assure you all three are very different languages). I would say reading is best for vocab, grammar and learning structures which as you point out is a good starting ground for listening.
That's interesting, Jacob. I can read Dutch and find that I can also read a good deal of Afrikaans, which is a very close language, but can hardly speak it - a drawback, since I presently live in South Africa. If you wanted to speak in Norwegian/Danish, or in my case Afrikaans, what would you you would advise to help to bridge the gap? Best wishes.
but if you're able to read a language, you can leverage your reading skills into your listening skills, just by reading and listening at the same time, you can use lingq, but if its already easy, you can just jump to subtitled content, a lot of them
Hi Steve, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your channel and for all the advice and experience you share! I have come as far as I have in my language learning more than I could have ever imagined thanks to your advice of reading, reading and listening, input and I speak well for my level thanks to all your pointers and advice. All the other pointers you've also said such as trusting the process,trusting our brains to acquire the language has also really made the difference with me not giving up and eventually breaking through my perceived limitations!!! I wish you all the best for your continued success of your channel, Lingq(which i also use!) and life!
Hi, Steve. Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it. Regarding this video, in particular, I see no controversy at all between your point and Hadar's. They are quite complementary. Cheers from Brazil!
I think also having languages that use one word/character that can mean mlre than 1 thing may be challenging, but could also be good. I think the fluency depends on how much the person studies the multiple meanings (or just a few, or even one) could make a good fluency level. but i encourage everyone to find things that inspire you to learn it so you are way more hooked. im learning Japanese and all of Steve's tips and knowledge has helped me a lot, as well as trying to immerse myself in Japanese culture and every aspect of it's lifestyle that makes me crave the language more.
Thats exactly what i am doin right now. They say you should just speak but how i can speak if i am novice at learning a certain language . According to be able to have a reasonable conversation at least i must have considarable vocabulary and understand passivly a lot of words.
Hey everyone I from India 🇮🇳 ♥️ I am also trying to learn English ,I also feel that reading and listening are very important to learn any new language , because these two thing really help me to improve My English,....c
I think there´s some psychology to it as well. When you spend time listening and reading, your intuitive sense of the language improves. That´s great but it also means you´re becoming more aware of how different you sound from native/proficient speakers. When you speak early, you know that you´re probably making mistakes but you don´t "feel it" as much as when you´re speaking a language you´ve had a lot of exposure to. I might´ve had 100 hours of exposure to Spanish and 5000 hours of exposure to Czech. When I make mistakes in Czech, I´m usually aware that somethings off but I don´t really mind sounding like a caveman in Spanish.
Thanks for this video, Steve. I'm currently learning Japanese, and I am very motivated to get to the point where I can recognise enough hiragana, katakana and some kanji to be able to read basic texts and build from there.
Hi Steve, there's a topic I'm not sure if I've ever heard you cover ( I might be wrong) but if you haven't I wondered if you'd consider discussing the fact of mistaking one phrase or meaning for another when listening. This is something I've noticed that happens to me on and off on my path to reaching an intermediate level, and when asking around online the general response is " no, that doesn't happen to me/ that shouldn't really be happening", and it's always felt rather discouraging. I wondered what your experience was with this and if this is quite normal to happen where you mistake a phrase for meaning something else ( hearing the right words but the complete sentence has a different meaning than you pick up). In the meantime, I always appreciate your videos because I feel like I can already hear you as you are in many other videos saying not to worry about it and that all sorts of things happen during the continual forgetting and relearning process. Thank you so much for all your work in this community, you are the one person whose videos are right on time, both on the subject of language learning and mindset.
Reminds me of that joke about the guy who keeps on hearing people say "Knowledge is power. France is bacon." and for years he just rolls with it. He has no idea why France and why bacon, but he just accepts it as a weird cultural tidbit. Until one day he finally asks someone about it and understands that they're saying "Knowledge is power" - Francis Bacon. ^^ Personally that's why I don't delay output. To me the idea that you should first gather input and only after try output is based on a false premise, namely that bad habits only form through output and not through input. Seems pretty clear to me that you can spend years hearing something "wrong" and never realize it. I don't always notice whether I'm hearing something "wrong" or not, but I figure that if I am, that mistake will be reflected in my output and a conversation partner will be able to pick up on it and help me notice it. But that's just me!
@@bofbob1 i think that for steve, the point its not that it can cause harm to your language skills directly if you try to speak too early. the point its that trying to speak too early can harm your language learning IF speaking stress you out, IF speaking stress you out you can end up abandoning the language learning process. What Steve is saying is basically: Relax, just keep reading and listening a lot, just keep improving, that sometime, speaking will not stress you out so much and then you will feel much more confortable to start to practice speaking
Finally, someone tells a truth You're 100% right, even if someone is not fluent in English can reach the fluency level in a short amount of time if they're are good at reading but the opposite is not true.
People don't like to read especially a language they are trying to understand. But the truth is it's the road to learning a foreign language. All that's required is work (ugh) .
Hadar says "you should read aloud, repeat, record your voice to have better pronunciation, and discuss about a book at a book club. you need to speak to get fluency." But you need to understand the phrase first. You need to understand the meaning before practice repeating. And when you talk about something in your target language, you need listening skill. She didn't mention about listening skill at all. Reading helps you to improve your listening skill. She omits important things.
I don't think she works with beginners. I suspect that most of her students are already around B2 but do not feel comfortable to speak. If they had difficulties understanding the speech, they would not come to her for help. So the main problem that her students have is insecurity about their pronunciation or fear of making a mistake, etc. I have watched a few interviews with her students, and some of them were teachers of English as a foreign language in their home countries. So not only they studied English for 8-10 years in school, presumably their level was already B2 when they were admitted to the university.
@@atf300t Maybe what you mean is right, her students have gotten a B2 level on their comprehension of the language, and that´s the reason why she only takes the ¨speaking¨ part of the language. But i´m gonna tell you something, when i get a solid B2 level, i´m gonna continue reading too much, because i want to get and advanced level in the language and for that, i know i have to acquire more tons of words to get the C levels, input always have to be the main part of learning a language
atf300t In my opinion, You should learn pronunciation first. But she suggests that you listen to audio books, pause and repeat (imitate). But if you don't like pronunciation mistakes, you should master each phoneme. otherwise you have to repeat tons of words forever. And learning phoneme is very basic thing. I don't mean you should master phoneme. I say this to people who cares their pronunciation. What I want to say is that advice is a beginners thing. And her students say "I can't be confident when I have conversation" They explain in "English" She says you can't speak confidently because you just keep reading. But her students are having conversation. In my opinion, you can't be confident because they just try to speak without input such as reading. I assume only few her students like reading. I have English mistakes but I don't care, because I read a lot. Reading gives you confidence. You can decide when to start having conversation. She says like you should start now. But if you don't feel like it, you don't need to do it. I think trying to speak now is faster to improve, but why are you rushed? You can start when you feel like it.
@@javierfernandoagudelogomez1794 Sure, reading is important at any level, but you can't achieve native-like fluency if all what you do is reading and listening. At some point, you have to speak (and probably speak a lot) to activate your passive knowledge.
@@coconutpineapple2489 If you want to speak fluently, getting the intonation right is usually far more important than focusing on individual sounds. That is why listening and repeating can be very helpful. Of course, it makes sense to spend some time on new sounds, which do not exist in your native language. However, learning about sounds is not exactly the same as acquiring their proper pronunciation. Anyway, her students are clearly not beginners. They can understand native speakers well enough, they can have some conversation in English, but they do not feel confident doing so. It could be different reasons for that. Some of them are perfectionists, who tend to set very high goals for themselves, like having native-like fluency in English.
@@furiifouru Come now. Articulateness is a level beyond fluency. People are fluent in their native tongue, but few are articulate. Just listen to any interview with an American athlete.
@@coconutpineapple2489 A five-year-old is fluent in his native tongue because, with his limited vocabulary, he can say what he needs to say. A poorly-educated adult with a small vocabulary is still fluent. Not everybody can, or wants to, talk about "difficult topics." I recall once being in a laundromat (I love laundromats), listening to two women talk. All of their words consisted of one or two syllables. Yet they were fluent, saying everything they needed to say.
Making money, starting a business and self development can only be achieved if you consistantly work on it, it is my personal experience... if you are reading this keep in mind that you cannot become successful in a week. BTW: enjoyed watching your video, thanks. a fellow creator////
A bit of a conflict of interest because LingQ is mainly reading but he's right nonetheless! Reading, especially if you enjoy or are interested in content, is kind of magical. Any if you can read one thing, you can read another thing. And if you can read a few thongs you can read many things and read things again. This is powerful as a base in the language and anything else can be built on top of reading like listening and speaking. I'd like a bit more study on SL reading processes as I think there are multiple phenomena occurring. One is frequent exposure to basic vocab and basic grammar. I think thete is a mental prediction involved in smooth reading which is very powerful. Recognition of words in implicit processes and prediction about what comes next in a sentence. Finally. My theory is big readers will be more secure in various inflexions. Like gender, plurals, case endings, irregular forms. These things can only really be got from reading, I think. But the reading can becat quite a low level.
I've found that reading a book out loud is better than reading it without speaking the words. You can work on pronunciation and comprehension, learn new words, all at the same time.
I was curious about what other languages the Quora site has. I was surprised that it has all of these: Arabic, Marathi, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu This is a follow-up to my comment about the enjoyment I get reading articles in my target language of Spanish.
I wrote this because I thought I had commented about the fact that I enjoy reading articles in Spanish that I find on the Spanish section of Quora. I have spent many enjoyable hours reading them and Quora only sends me alerts about items that are in the sections I have chosen to find out about, ie history, art, geography, public figures, etc.
Quora does this annoying thing where they send me emails for random stuff. and unlike most people i subscribed to a lot of languages so my email got flooded with their junk. and then to add insult to injury they banned my account because i did not use my real name. because i don't want people chasing my internet activities. but even after they banned me they kept emailing me. i really HATE Quora and they also force people to log in just to read stuff what a nightmare. i hope they go out of business and get shut down.
@@jannlavalley686 Thanks, Jann. I didn't realise that Quora did this. I'll see if I can find some interesting articles for myself in Dutch now, Thanks again.
I think we need both to suceed fast. It is important to study and it is even more importan to read and listening. If you only study you will never reach fluency because you will never get to adquire the language but If you only use comprehensive input the process will be slow and you can get confuse. In my case, I like to balance 1 hour of study with 10 hs of input specially after reaching a solid intermediate level.
Great stuff Steve! So i guess reading widely in the target language is advised - such as novels and newspapers, as opposed to reading say a phrase book with the top 200 phrases?
Hi Steve, thanks for your video, it's great as always! I was wondering about one thing on the topic. Can reading affect our pronunciation in a bad way? I mean when we're B1-B2 even in listening, our pronunciation is not yet solidified, let alone there are still many words that we read and cannot understand. So when we're reading we are vocalizing words in our head. Can it be that this vocalizing solidifies bad habits in our pronunciation and creates more of them with new words? I'm really interested what do you think on this
Hi there, here mario. Coming a mindful topic for your chanel: i understand 90% of words in medias, but i don't retain the ideas, what to do? Thky Steve.
How to read more when the target language is not Romanized? I am pursuing Cantonese, and it seems quite difficult to listen while reading Chinse characters, and learn words, and thus read, when the characters must (?) be learned first? Please advise.
95% of language is comprehension, the rest is output, which will come to you once you have enough input. Without comprehension, speaking is just mental masturbation. What's the point of speaking if you can't understand what is said to you half of the time? Reading is crucial, the more I read the more output I can deliver if needed. That is pretty much where much of it stems from, wanting to learn the language vs liking the idea of knowing another language. If you have no interest in the language itself you will never be fluent.
My native language is polish and once during the english lesson the teacher asked me about the word "kate" I didnt remember this word yet and she said "this is the most important word, how did uou forgot it?" But for me the word "kate" is not the most useful word in the World:)
Learning can certainly also be done consciously but this is much less effective because our subconscious mind can store/learn more data than our conscious mind. This explains the experience of ERICCSUF. So Steve is clearly on the right track.
I struggle so much to create sentences and to combine words with grammar or even verb conjugations...I know the words, but when I try to speak, my sentences becomes awkward and full of mistakes... Does anyone have some advice?
Hello, Agatha. You may find that making little sentences just for yourself when you are under no pressure, e.g. when you are taking a walk, can help. I sometimes pretend that I am describing to someone the things that I see or have done during the day is useful. Good luck!
Keep speaking and don't be too hard on yourself. You will gradually, very gradually, get better. There will even be occasions when you feel you did really well.
For example, you could read contents that you know very well in the languages you speak. Especially if those contents have pictures and/or sounds, or even some "fun" (like videogames), so that you could enjoy the reading without feeling frustrated nor stucked by not understanding it (because you already know the content very well). By doing that, you can focus first on just reading the kanas with more and more ease, and recognize some kanji and words, without trying to really the sentences. Then, you will gradually manage to understand more and more kanji, then parts of sentences, then entire isolated sentences, then entire paragraph, and finally the whole writing content (not necessarily all details, just understanding the whole "picture"). If those contents have audio, it could be better to read it easily. 頑張ってください (がんばってください)。🙂
English is not my native language so I hope to be understable.Say humanity is two millions years old.I don't know when writing appears but pre socratic texts are recent in human History.So human beings are organised without reading.A human being is a speech creature.To Say it fast,it's because a language help to think .Your mother tongue is there to help the baby to pass all the stages of psychological development,mainly what's forbidden and what's not forbidden.So in your mother tongue ,someone often speaks with some hesitations,and euh and oh and ah,because of the réminiscences of this development.For not native language,if someone learns with desire a language ,and at this level only, there's not this hesitation.And that's why you got polyglots.Because il you want to learn a new language, all you need is to be a hard working guy.So all what's helpful is another chance to learn . Please excuse me to be so long.Just to say Hadar,for me,is right when she note the importance of speaking.But you're right when you try to put your stuff together by all means you can find,reading obviously included.
I don't agree with you. When you try to talk: 1) you strain your brain in an attempt to remember the right word, the brain is actively working and developing in this skill, so that in the future you do not spend a lot of energy on this task 2)You are responsible for the conversation, because the other person will be waiting for your answer When you read: 1) You are missing 2 points above. You don't develop this skill, and you don't have the proper motivation in the moment. How to communicate with the interlocutor It's so obvious to me. The main thing is not to be stubborn, and not to believe only in your beliefs.
Sure, reading is not the same as speaking. You are right on your points. However, how can you come up with words when you don't have passive vocabulary? If I don't watch football, then I can't talk with people about it even in my mother tongue. It takes both input and output to become fluent because like you said, when you speak, your brain will work harder and squeeze everything you know to make a conversation. And this is another skill that we need to practice too.
@@NinPossible I did not say that reading is not necessary. In general, I said. Your 3,000 words of the language you are learning are useless if you don't practice them. 300 practiced words, better than 3000 poorly practiced.
Reading doesn't = speaking. Reading is good in regards that your processing tons of vocabulary and ingesting grammar, great for developing your comprehension skills, but the only way to really get better at speaking a language is to speak the language.
The app I use to learn languages -> bit.ly/3TU2GPF
My 10 FREE secrets to language learning -> www.thelinguist.com
Has reading a lot in your target language improved your ability to speak?
Thank you Mr. Steve! 🥰❤
👍
@@alkhatib2012 то к4
I can confirm this theory, I have proof for that. I'm learning Ukrainian and one day I had a conversation with a friend and wanted to say something and suddenly an expression came to my mind, but I stopped speaking, because I wasn't sure what the meaning of it was and completely didn't know where that came from. Then I asked my friend what it means and it was exactly what I wanted to say. This was somehow a special moment to me, because I saw, that the language was becoming more natural to me, so I was very happy :) thank you for the good motivation. Дуже дякую за гарну мотивацію)))
same here. Except that I was talking to myself, so I had to google translate that unfamiliar word suddenly popped up in the mind. Extremely fun experience!
Чудове пояснення)
gratz on learning a travesty of a language
You mean you're learning Russian?
@@Ilham-bm2ss Ukrainian and Russian are two different languages. Ukrainian is closer to Polish than to Russian.
Reading is amazing. It forces one to think in their target language. They’ve also found through research that our throat makes tiny motor movements and below audible sounds while we read. So when we read, it is like we’re practicing speaking.
Very impressing!
Your comment that we don't deliberately learn things has really struck home for me lately. I started 10 months ago learning Norwegian. Drills, flash cards, etc. worked, but there were lots of words I would see over and over and over again, and NEVER could remember. Two months ago, I subscribed to LingQ and confined myself to reading. I scan the news headlines at NRK, etc. and pick one or two stories a day to add to my LingQ Library. I stopped worrying about memorizing and just kept reading (currently the first of The Last Kingdom series in Norwegian). My vocabulary retention hugely improved with no attempt to memorize. At least once a day, I'll read a word with instant recognition only to realize I've had to look it up at least half a dozen times before without learning it. Now it feels permanent in my memory. It happens daily. Almost no effort.
I'm building quite a vocabulary of 9th Century warfare terms :), but fortunately the books are vividly written with lots of vocabulary suitable for the 21st Century as well! Read what interests you and read a lot of it. Best advice anyone has given me for language learning. Thanks so much.
Like you, it took me a year of learning my second language before I realised that I should be focusing more on acquiring the language naturally through listening & reading. Learning words in context is king.
I'm a Norwegian currently studying Farsi(Persian) and I must say that I'm struggling. A lot. I'm extremely bad at memorizing words or phrases or vocabulary. It's just not an effective way for me to learn. Lately though, I've started listening to songs and are trying to just read/memorize the songs. I don't care at all what they mean or about translating them. I'just listening and trying to sing along.
This just came to me as a way I wanted to explore my learning. I love music and listen to music every day, so why not listen in my target language? My thinking is that this will teach me structure, rythm and give me a HUGE passive vocabulary. For anyone who has studied Farsi, they know that they don't write their vovels, so it's really hard to read, if you don't already know the words and have heard (or looked up) the correct spelling/pronounciation. What started happening after this, is that I'm listening to a song and then suddenly a phrase or word comes up and my brain goes "oh, oh, oh", I know this(or a similar phrase/version of the word), then I ask my gf and after that I remember it and try to use it in day to day talk.
I mostly just try to substitute whatever I want to say, with words or phrases in Farsi, just to get practice in expressing myself and rather thinking i Farsi. I'm learning Farsi through a second language, English, but I am using a private tutor for studying.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but listening to music and trying to sing along with the songs, is way more pleasurable, than reading some stupid text/conversation about some moronic topic, over and over - but I think in the end, it has the same effect. You practice pronounciation, listening skills and it feeds the brain with the structure of the language. Even though artists may take liberties with pronounciation to fit the rythm and rhymes, but that's all part of language. I feel this gives me a true feel for the language in the end, even though the process for me is very painful and slow.
This far I've taught myself three songs, that I can just sing from memory and whenever words from these songs come up in texts I read, I do know how to pronounce them, which is a pretty exciting feeling.
I like his style, when instead of blaming me for that I don't want to learn difficult parts of language learning, he's saying:
"No problem, do something else, what you want - it will benefit anyway"
It really motivates not to give up. Thanks
Agree. The larger your passive vocabulary, the larger your active vocabulary will be. That being said, you passive vocabulary will always be bigger than your active one, simply because its much easier to just recognize than to actively recall it. The passive vocabulary is like your potential. Kind of like a "pool of words" you can draw from.
Plus when you start speaking too early, some mistakes or bad habits might get ingrained in your long term memory, because you simply don't know the way a native would say it. It can be a laborious process to correct them.
What about speaking to early is their a way to fix that or somewhere I can read about that
I recently passed a C1 exam, which included some short oral test, without speaking that target language (english in this case) for the last 25 years. So, according to my own experience, you don´t need to be constantly speaking to do that. In my opinion, I think when you are reading you´re somehow 'speaking' it to yourself at the same time.
Steve,
I'm a psychotherapist and Deliberate Practice has began to become a big buzz word and some forms of therapy are really stressing this. It has been helpful in that most in our field don't practice and thus most therapists are pretty damn mediocre.
But language learning has taught me that excellence in learning is mostly immersion and deliberate practice is for refining. It makes it less stressful as deliberate practice is kind of obsessing over a point
I agree. I am more or less on a B2 level with Spanish, and I came there mostly through reading and listening. Even though there is much room for improvement to my speaking, I can still engage in a variety of subjects, albeit with pauses sometimes.
First I would like to thank you for the effort that you have been making to help us reach our goal in language learning. During my English learning I reach a level at which I can read comprehensively and I read a lot, but I was reluctant to speak. When I started to speak then I discovered that some words are just coming out naturally, to my surprise some of the words I say, I don't even think I came across. From my perspective I believe this method you have mentioned is extremely effective.
Thanks again.
I need improve skill reading my level beginner i want Jump B1
Thank you Steve, you will always be my biggest language learning inspiration.
Totally agree, before speking is very important to have exposure to the target language. Yesterday i was talking with my japanese tutor and i realized about one thing during the conversation. It was that after a lot of exposure to the language one knows the words but are kinda too passive. However once they are known and you can speak, during the conversation the best thing that should be done is comprehension as you mention, with that comprehension even you might have a word deeply hidden in a subconcious level, once you hear it again while comunicating you should try to use it in an answer during a conversation in ordr to activate it.
That still sounds to me a little bit like trying to force it. Like you're attempting to nail a small thing down by targeting it in the hope that it'll be 'activated.' I don't believe that's all that helpful. I believe output comes when it comes, naturally. So long as you're getting enough input. That's the key, most people just don't get anywhere close to enough. If you do, and you regularly attemp output, it'll _all_ come eventually, it's kinda unavoidable. So there's no need to deliberately target certain words, IMO.
It's like a videogame...you have to develop your attributes and skills separately yo be a complete fighter in the arena
@@futurez12 What i mean is that once you can make some output (of course once you have a very good comprehension), if you have words that you can recognize but you don't really remember and that during the conversation might appear, so once you can answer to what is told to you use in that answer those words you just redetected. That is useful for kinda activate them. Yeah you are likely to forget again, but they will gradually come natural as you say.
@@mcmerry2846 What do you mean bro?
I like to think that, at least to me, learning a language is about being able to understand and then later being understood. You need to be able to understand first, because you can't just copy and paste a language into your head from grammar lessons. You need to build a structure for the language inside your head through reading an listening to natives so that you can build these tools and know how to use them to speak and write.
Hello, how are you, Mr. Steve? My name is Hllema, and I am following you from Iraq now. I am 53 and I started learning English and French together, as a hobby, and because of my love for these two languages, can I succeed?❤❤❤❤❤
Reading is amazing and I don't understand why people don't try to read on foreign language. I learn my native language when I reading and listening book and I think that I can learn English on the same way. For me good B2 is enough to communicate and understand people. It's a good start to free talk. Reading is very helpful to be better of speaking skills.
The best language motivation channel 🖤
I know you said it. But I think listening is as important as reading. For instance, as a native Swedish speaker I can read Norwegian and Danish very well, but I could never speak those close languages by only reading since they basically look like Swedish when they're written (but I assure you all three are very different languages). I would say reading is best for vocab, grammar and learning structures which as you point out is a good starting ground for listening.
That's interesting, Jacob. I can read Dutch and find that I can also read a good deal of Afrikaans, which is a very close language, but can hardly speak it - a drawback, since I presently live in South Africa. If you wanted to speak in Norwegian/Danish, or in my case Afrikaans, what would you you would advise to help to bridge the gap? Best wishes.
@Izaltino D. Souza Thanks for the suggestion!
but if you're able to read a language, you can leverage your reading skills into your listening skills, just by reading and listening at the same time, you can use lingq, but if its already easy, you can just jump to subtitled content, a lot of them
Hi Steve, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your channel and for all the advice and experience you share! I have come as far as I have in my language learning more than I could have ever imagined thanks to your advice of reading, reading and listening, input and I speak well for my level thanks to all your pointers and advice. All the other pointers you've also said such as trusting the process,trusting our brains to acquire the language has also really made the difference with me not giving up and eventually breaking through my perceived limitations!!! I wish you all the best for your continued success of your channel, Lingq(which i also use!) and life!
No question reading and listening are the foundation to learning a language. Reading #1 imo.
Hi, Steve. Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it.
Regarding this video, in particular, I see no controversy at all between your point and Hadar's. They are quite complementary.
Cheers from Brazil!
I think also having languages that use one word/character that can mean mlre than 1 thing may be challenging, but could also be good. I think the fluency depends on how much the person studies the multiple meanings (or just a few, or even one) could make a good fluency level. but i encourage everyone to find things that inspire you to learn it so you are way more hooked. im learning Japanese and all of Steve's tips and knowledge has helped me a lot, as well as trying to immerse myself in Japanese culture and every aspect of it's lifestyle that makes me crave the language more.
Steve you're AMAZING ! Thanks for all your help and for being such an incredible guide in this language learning journey
Thats exactly what i am doin right now.
They say you should just speak but how i can speak if i am novice at learning a certain language .
According to be able to have a reasonable conversation at least i must have considarable vocabulary and understand passivly a lot of words.
Hey everyone
I from India 🇮🇳 ♥️
I am also trying to learn English ,I also feel that reading and listening are very important to learn any new language , because these two thing really help me to improve My English,....c
I think there´s some psychology to it as well. When you spend time listening and reading, your intuitive sense of the language improves. That´s great but it also means you´re becoming more aware of how different you sound from native/proficient speakers.
When you speak early, you know that you´re probably making mistakes but you don´t "feel it" as much as when you´re speaking a language you´ve had a lot of exposure to.
I might´ve had 100 hours of exposure to Spanish and 5000 hours of exposure to Czech. When I make mistakes in Czech, I´m usually aware that somethings off but I don´t really mind sounding like a caveman in Spanish.
Thanks , you ´re absolutly right , I tested it and it works quite well,
Thanks for this video, Steve. I'm currently learning Japanese, and I am very motivated to get to the point where I can recognise enough hiragana, katakana and some kanji to be able to read basic texts and build from there.
Hi
Steve, thank you for answer my question
5:05 wow, that picture takes me back so badly. I used to love that movie.😍
Thank you Steve for the memorys.
Hi Steve, there's a topic I'm not sure if I've ever heard you cover ( I might be wrong) but if you haven't I wondered if you'd consider discussing the fact of mistaking one phrase or meaning for another when listening. This is something I've noticed that happens to me on and off on my path to reaching an intermediate level, and when asking around online the general response is " no, that doesn't happen to me/ that shouldn't really be happening", and it's always felt rather discouraging. I wondered what your experience was with this and if this is quite normal to happen where you mistake a phrase for meaning something else ( hearing the right words but the complete sentence has a different meaning than you pick up).
In the meantime, I always appreciate your videos because I feel like I can already hear you as you are in many other videos saying not to worry about it and that all sorts of things happen during the continual forgetting and relearning process.
Thank you so much for all your work in this community, you are the one person whose videos are right on time, both on the subject of language learning and mindset.
It happens to me all the time. I'll do a video on it. Thanks.
Wow, thank you so so much!!
Reminds me of that joke about the guy who keeps on hearing people say "Knowledge is power. France is bacon." and for years he just rolls with it. He has no idea why France and why bacon, but he just accepts it as a weird cultural tidbit. Until one day he finally asks someone about it and understands that they're saying "Knowledge is power" - Francis Bacon. ^^
Personally that's why I don't delay output. To me the idea that you should first gather input and only after try output is based on a false premise, namely that bad habits only form through output and not through input. Seems pretty clear to me that you can spend years hearing something "wrong" and never realize it. I don't always notice whether I'm hearing something "wrong" or not, but I figure that if I am, that mistake will be reflected in my output and a conversation partner will be able to pick up on it and help me notice it. But that's just me!
@@bofbob1 i think that for steve, the point its not that it can cause harm to your language skills directly if you try to speak too early.
the point its that trying to speak too early can harm your language learning IF speaking stress you out, IF speaking stress you out you can end up abandoning the language learning process.
What Steve is saying is basically: Relax, just keep reading and listening a lot, just keep improving, that sometime, speaking will not stress you out so much and then you will feel much more confortable to start to practice speaking
Finally, someone tells a truth
You're 100% right, even if someone is not fluent in English can reach the fluency level in a short amount of time if they're are good at reading but the opposite is not true.
Your video are so insiring. Thank you for sharing!
I like this background
Thanks for sharing your know-how Mr Steve
People don't like to read especially a language they are trying to understand. But the truth is it's the road to learning a foreign language. All that's required is work (ugh) .
From Reading to fluency.
assimilate, retain and retrieve
activate the passive vocabulary.
Hadar says "you should read aloud, repeat, record your voice to have better pronunciation, and discuss about a book at a book club. you need to speak to get fluency."
But you need to understand the phrase first. You need to understand the meaning before practice repeating.
And when you talk about something in your target language, you need listening skill.
She didn't mention about listening skill at all.
Reading helps you to improve your listening skill.
She omits important things.
I don't think she works with beginners. I suspect that most of her students are already around B2 but do not feel comfortable to speak. If they had difficulties understanding the speech, they would not come to her for help. So the main problem that her students have is insecurity about their pronunciation or fear of making a mistake, etc.
I have watched a few interviews with her students, and some of them were teachers of English as a foreign language in their home countries. So not only they studied English for 8-10 years in school, presumably their level was already B2 when they were admitted to the university.
@@atf300t Maybe what you mean is right, her students have gotten a B2 level on their comprehension of the language, and that´s the reason why she only takes the ¨speaking¨ part of the language. But i´m gonna tell you something, when i get a solid B2 level, i´m gonna continue reading too much, because i want to get and advanced level in the language and for that, i know i have to acquire more tons of words to get the C levels, input always have to be the main part of learning a language
atf300t
In my opinion, You should learn pronunciation first. But she suggests that you listen to audio books, pause and repeat (imitate). But if you don't like pronunciation mistakes, you should master each phoneme. otherwise you have to repeat tons of words forever. And learning phoneme is very basic thing. I don't mean you should master phoneme. I say this to people who cares their pronunciation. What I want to say is that advice is a beginners thing.
And her students say "I can't be confident when I have conversation" They explain in "English" She says you can't speak confidently because you just keep reading. But her students are having conversation.
In my opinion, you can't be confident because they just try to speak without input such as reading. I assume only few her students like reading.
I have English mistakes but I don't care, because I read a lot. Reading gives you confidence.
You can decide when to start having conversation. She says like you should start now. But if you don't feel like it, you don't need to do it. I think trying to speak now is faster to improve, but why are you rushed? You can start when you feel like it.
@@javierfernandoagudelogomez1794 Sure, reading is important at any level, but you can't achieve native-like fluency if all what you do is reading and listening. At some point, you have to speak (and probably speak a lot) to activate your passive knowledge.
@@coconutpineapple2489 If you want to speak fluently, getting the intonation right is usually far more important than focusing on individual sounds. That is why listening and repeating can be very helpful. Of course, it makes sense to spend some time on new sounds, which do not exist in your native language. However, learning about sounds is not exactly the same as acquiring their proper pronunciation.
Anyway, her students are clearly not beginners. They can understand native speakers well enough, they can have some conversation in English, but they do not feel confident doing so. It could be different reasons for that. Some of them are perfectionists, who tend to set very high goals for themselves, like having native-like fluency in English.
Sir,I am watching your videos here better than ever before amongst all the other english teachers so please do reply your advice.
Fluency means being able to say what you want to say when you want to say it.
That just means being articulate, not fluent. Even I don't know how to say everything I want to say in my native language.
Children can express everything but can't talk about difficult topics. Fluency needs lots of vocabulary.
@@furiifouru Come now. Articulateness is a level beyond fluency. People are fluent in their native tongue, but few are articulate. Just listen to any interview with an American athlete.
@@coconutpineapple2489 A five-year-old is fluent in his native tongue because, with his limited vocabulary, he can say what he needs to say. A poorly-educated adult with a small vocabulary is still fluent. Not everybody can, or wants to, talk about "difficult topics." I recall once being in a laundromat (I love laundromats), listening to two women talk. All of their words consisted of one or two syllables. Yet they were fluent, saying everything they needed to say.
Making money, starting a business and self development can only be achieved if you consistantly work on it, it is my personal experience... if you are reading this keep in mind that you cannot become successful in a week. BTW: enjoyed watching your video, thanks. a fellow creator////
A bit of a conflict of interest because LingQ is mainly reading but he's right nonetheless!
Reading, especially if you enjoy or are interested in content, is kind of magical. Any if you can read one thing, you can read another thing. And if you can read a few thongs you can read many things and read things again. This is powerful as a base in the language and anything else can be built on top of reading like listening and speaking.
I'd like a bit more study on SL reading processes as I think there are multiple phenomena occurring. One is frequent exposure to basic vocab and basic grammar. I think thete is a mental prediction involved in smooth reading which is very powerful. Recognition of words in implicit processes and prediction about what comes next in a sentence.
Finally. My theory is big readers will be more secure in various inflexions. Like gender, plurals, case endings, irregular forms. These things can only really be got from reading, I think. But the reading can becat quite a low level.
I've found that reading a book out loud is better than reading it without speaking the words. You can work on pronunciation and comprehension, learn new words, all at the same time.
I was curious about what other languages the Quora site has. I was surprised that it has all of these: Arabic, Marathi, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu
This is a follow-up to my comment about the enjoyment I get reading articles in my target language of Spanish.
I wrote this because I thought I had commented about the fact that I enjoy reading articles in Spanish that I find on the Spanish section of Quora. I have spent many enjoyable hours reading them and Quora only sends me alerts about items that are in the sections I have chosen to find out about, ie history, art, geography, public figures, etc.
Quora does this annoying thing where they send me emails for random stuff. and unlike most people i subscribed to a lot of languages so my email got flooded with their junk. and then to add insult to injury they banned my account because i did not use my real name. because i don't want people chasing my internet activities. but even after they banned me they kept emailing me. i really HATE Quora and they also force people to log in just to read stuff what a nightmare. i hope they go out of business and get shut down.
@@jannlavalley686 Thanks, Jann. I didn't realise that Quora did this. I'll see if I can find some interesting articles for myself in Dutch now, Thanks again.
@@belstar1128 I'm sorry that you had a bad experience with Quora. So far, I have had none over the several years I have been signed up.
I think we need both to suceed fast. It is important to study and it is even more importan to read and listening. If you only study you will never reach fluency because you will never get to adquire the language but If you only use comprehensive input the process will be slow and you can get confuse. In my case, I like to balance 1 hour of study with 10 hs of input specially after reaching a solid intermediate level.
Great stuff Steve! So i guess reading widely in the target language is advised - such as novels and newspapers, as opposed to reading say a phrase book with the top 200 phrases?
Yea i notice i remember words that i read better. and in languages that have their own script i tend to learn way slower.
Hi Steve, thanks for your video, it's great as always! I was wondering about one thing on the topic. Can reading affect our pronunciation in a bad way? I mean when we're B1-B2 even in listening, our pronunciation is not yet solidified, let alone there are still many words that we read and cannot understand. So when we're reading we are vocalizing words in our head. Can it be that this vocalizing solidifies bad habits in our pronunciation and creates more of them with new words? I'm really interested what do you think on this
I don't think it harms us. The quality of our sub-vocalizing improves as we hear more of the language and start speaking.
@@Thelinguist Definitely harmed my pronounciation of the word "simile" when I learnt it only through reading ;)
I'm following you on Spotify 😊
Hi there, here mario. Coming a mindful topic for your chanel: i understand 90% of words in medias, but i don't retain the ideas, what to do? Thky Steve.
Excellent
How to read more when the target language is not Romanized? I am pursuing Cantonese, and it seems quite difficult to listen while reading Chinse characters, and learn words, and thus read, when the characters must (?) be learned first? Please advise.
hi how i can join you on the podcast service plz let me know. thanks
95% of language is comprehension, the rest is output, which will come to you once you have enough input. Without comprehension, speaking is just mental masturbation. What's the point of speaking if you can't understand what is said to you half of the time? Reading is crucial, the more I read the more output I can deliver if needed. That is pretty much where much of it stems from, wanting to learn the language vs liking the idea of knowing another language. If you have no interest in the language itself you will never be fluent.
Thank you for sharing this informative video, Steve. You always inspire myself. I hope I can be a polygot like you
Hey teacher, Which is better( reading aloud or reading silently)?
I mostly read silently. Reading aloud slows me down, although I do subvocalize.
My native language is polish and once during the english lesson the teacher asked me about the word "kate" I didnt remember this word yet and she said "this is the most important word, how did uou forgot it?" But for me the word "kate" is not the most useful word in the World:)
Actually it is "kite" 😀
Learning can certainly also be done consciously but this is much less effective because our subconscious mind can store/learn more data than our conscious mind. This explains the experience of ERICCSUF. So Steve is clearly on the right track.
I struggle so much to create sentences and to combine words with grammar or even verb conjugations...I know the words, but when I try to speak, my sentences becomes awkward and full of mistakes... Does anyone have some advice?
Hello, Agatha. You may find that making little sentences just for yourself when you are under no pressure, e.g. when you are taking a walk, can help. I sometimes pretend that I am describing to someone the things that I see or have done during the day is useful. Good luck!
Keep speaking and don't be too hard on yourself. You will gradually, very gradually, get better. There will even be occasions when you feel you did really well.
I have a question. How loudly or silently should we read? Does the voice volume matters?
Whatever you feel like doing. It will not doubt vary. Sometimes aloud. Mostly silently while still sub-vocalizing.
I'm from Hong Kong. My target is English, but my Writing is very horror. The grammar and vocabulary ,that is very hard for me
Thanks Steven hi I like Inglish I want l to learn
How can I practice reading japanese if I only know about 100 kanjis and there are thousands more
Just keep going. Learn the Kanji. Find a method that works for you and keep reading. Try LingQ.
Japanese and Chinese take time to get reading skill ,so it's good to learn reading and listening at the same time.
I need improve skill reading my level beginner i want Jump B1
For example, you could read contents that you know very well in the languages you speak. Especially if those contents have pictures and/or sounds, or even some "fun" (like videogames), so that you could enjoy the reading without feeling frustrated nor stucked by not understanding it (because you already know the content very well). By doing that, you can focus first on just reading the kanas with more and more ease, and recognize some kanji and words, without trying to really the sentences. Then, you will gradually manage to understand more and more kanji, then parts of sentences, then entire isolated sentences, then entire paragraph, and finally the whole writing content (not necessarily all details, just understanding the whole "picture"). If those contents have audio, it could be better to read it easily.
頑張ってください (がんばってください)。🙂
well, that's the problem with leanning japanese isn't (and all other languages that aren't romaji)
Do you still plan on learning Indian languages next, Steve?
If we get Hindi or Punjabi on LingQ. We have Gujarati but I am waiting.
@@Thelinguist 🤞 hopefully you guys get it soon. I was interested in following you on that journey.
Wow! Hugh Hefner teaches languages now?
Just kidding, great advice as always.
English is not my native language so I hope to be understable.Say humanity is two millions years old.I don't know when writing appears but pre socratic texts are recent in human History.So human beings are organised without reading.A human being is a speech creature.To Say it fast,it's because a language help to think .Your mother tongue is there to help the baby to pass all the stages of psychological development,mainly what's forbidden and what's not forbidden.So in your mother tongue ,someone often speaks with some hesitations,and euh and oh and ah,because of the réminiscences of this development.For not native language,if someone learns with desire a language ,and at this level only, there's not this hesitation.And that's why you got polyglots.Because il you want to learn a new language, all you need is to be a hard working guy.So all what's helpful is another chance to learn .
Please excuse me to be so long.Just to say Hadar,for me,is right when she note the importance of speaking.But you're right when you try to put your stuff together by all means you can find,reading obviously included.
I don't agree with you.
When you try to talk:
1) you strain your brain in an attempt to remember the right word, the brain is actively working and developing in this skill, so that in the future you do not spend a lot of energy on this task
2)You are responsible for the conversation, because the other person will be waiting for your answer
When you read:
1) You are missing 2 points above. You don't develop this skill, and you don't have the proper motivation in the moment. How to communicate with the interlocutor
It's so obvious to me. The main thing is not to be stubborn, and not to believe only in your beliefs.
Sure, reading is not the same as speaking. You are right on your points. However, how can you come up with words when you don't have passive vocabulary?
If I don't watch football, then I can't talk with people about it even in my mother tongue.
It takes both input and output to become fluent because like you said, when you speak, your brain will work harder and squeeze everything you know to make a conversation. And this is another skill that we need to practice too.
@@NinPossible I did not say that reading is not necessary. In general, I said. Your 3,000 words of the language you are learning are useless if you don't practice them.
300 practiced words, better than 3000 poorly practiced.
@@NinPossible there is only one normal way to learn a language. You read, repeat, discuss what you read.
you read what you like or what you need for work, but it's better what you like
@@Just__Ilya okay. I got it. 😊
In King Lord and my Master Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Reading doesn't = speaking. Reading is good in regards that your processing tons of vocabulary and ingesting grammar, great for developing your comprehension skills, but the only way to really get better at speaking a language is to speak the language.
8:28
Hello
Reading kills the pronunciation in the early stages and it can harm the listening skills.
Thank you mr. Steve ! So nice to hear an encouragement that you're on the right way with the right priorities in learning❤️🩹🇺🇦