I’ve never met a single person who spoke a language well without having spent an inordinate amount of time reading/listening to that language. On the other hand I’ve met tons of people who had bachelor’s and master’s in X languages and could barely speak them.
In the early 2000s, I had a roommate who studied English. He sometimes came to me with some random word of Greek or Latin origin and asked me what I thought it meant. And frequently enough it was some random word I had learnt from reading Harry Potter in English. So... At least anecdotally that seems true.
I haven't met many people with a bachelor's or master's but I have had roughly 150 classmates at different schools. English (as a foreign language) is a mandatory subject for about 8 years (varies depending on school type). I could probably count the people who achieved a good level of English on one hand. Each and every one of them had contact with the language outside of school. Some had been abroad for a student exchange, some would travel a lot, and some would simply watch TV/read etc. When I was growing up, we had a pretty crappy internet connection, so I didn't have access to a lot of English media. I would simply rewatch a couple of DVDs over and over, and while that certainly helped - I distinctly remember seeing a "new" word on the vocab list which I had already subconsciously learned through input - a couple films can only take you so far. But when we finally got a decent internet connection (must've been 5 years into learning English at school), my English skyrocketed because I was no longer limited by which DVDs I had at home
true enough but that doesn't mean studying grammar is useless. For me at least it really fast-tracks the process of acquisition. I think input is necessary for learning but, at least for some of us, not good on its own
My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory. I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it. After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish. So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue. Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands. One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH. I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it. Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did. So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish. Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!
Now into my fifth decade of language learning, and currently starting a new language, I'll put my money on A + B + C + D, and not A or B or C or D alone. In other words, combining Comprehensible Input with Structured Analysis of Grammar, combined with Recall Speaking and Translating practice like Pimsleur, combined with working one-on-one with a tutor like on iTalki, is way better than any single method alone. Have fun, everyone!
100% agree with you. Are textbooks boring? Yeah, they’re not the most fun. However, 30 minutes to an hour a day + tons of comprehensible input and seeing a tutor will go miles. It’ll also help someone learn a language grammatically correct, which I believe is the main issue with a pure comprehensible input only approach. Grammar is annoying but it has to be drilled in 😭
It depends on your objective. For me the point is not simply to master a language. I can always consciously do that if necessary. It’s to learn a language with minimal effort because oftentimes I don’t have to learn a language and putting too much effort will just make it not worth it. If your objective is just to be effective in learning a language I think your summary is perfect
People love the idea of universal theories like "everyone learns in such and such way" or "X is the best method of doing Y". In my experience once you get out of the realm of basic physics the world isn't that black and white. I personally find comprehensible input to be a great method for language learning but I also find intensive study to be boring and demotivating in pretty much everything I've studied, not just languages. But I find that short bursts of grammar exploration or looking up specific words and phrases that I haven't deciphered yet from input greatly helps the process of "acquisition" (learning). From exposure to how friends learn things differently than me (in school or otherwise) I am pretty comfortable in thinking that not everyone learns/acquires/studies in exactly the same way. There may be universal principles that apply to everyone but in different degrees depending on one's personality and other experiences.
Etymologies do it for me. A lot of the time, if I look up the etymology, the story of the word helps me remember both the word itself and what it means now.
@@languagejones6784 this is one of my favorite things to do, not only for language learning but just in general. Some of my earliest language related memories were of browsing wiktionary on the family computer looking up any word or phrase that came to mind. etymology and cognates were also a huge focus of my latin classes in middle school (thinking back thats probably how the district justified keeping latin in a non-catholic school lol)
This definitely also applies to Physics, most people don’t realize how messy physics is. Any attempt at a truly comprehensive grand unified theory has been frustrated
@@McRaylie Agreed. When I wrote "basic physics" I just meant things as basic as conservation of energy or momentum, which appear to be pretty much absolute as far as I know. Once you get past that the world is complicated!
@@keithkannenberg7414 the funny thing is conservation of energy is not an absolute law of the universe and is only true most of the time. The CMB and dark energy explicitly violate it
Comprehensible input worked very well for me for English. I went from 'can roughly communicate on basic topics to 'it often comes easier than my native language'. That was after maybe eight years of school second language English. And I wasn't particularly bad among my classmates. All that was really needed were some books I wanted to read, a kindle's inbuilt dictionary and lots of reading. But I do have adhd and am very bad at remembering disconnected facts. I am miserable at geography.
So after 8 years of studying English... adding comprehensible input brought you to fluency. But why do you assume those eight years of learning in school gave you nothing?
@@alexwitoslawski4557 I'm not saying they gave me nothing. I'm saying that a few years of comprehensive input got me a lot farther than eight years of classroom and that I don't think I would have ever gotten to fluency with just the classroom.
Well, you can estimate the number of hours you studied English in school and compare it to the amount of CCI you got later on. For example: -640 hours in school (2 lessons a week, 40 weeks per year, 8 years total) -2,700 hours of input (90 minutes per day on average, 5 years total) (3 hours a day would get you to 5.4k hours) In that case, classroom learning would have accounted for 20% of your study hours, and classroom learning made it easier to find compelling comprehensible input. Studying + input is the best method imho - not sure what the "right balance" is though, and it probably mostly depends on the learner's preferences, strengths and weaknesses.
As far as facts about first language acquisition, it's what worked for everyone (with or without ADHD). Anecdotally as adults, it worked for me and a number of friends as well (using a resource called Dreaming Spanish for a few years). I'm able to watch, listen to and read native material and converse normally with native speakers and I achieved this without studying,
As far as first language, a lot is going on, like brain development etc, that cannot be reproduced for adult learners. So, what worked for the first language, may not be what works best for an adult working on their 2nd, 3rd...
@@JS-ir7wh sure. As an argument without empirical content your claims are fine. It’s really important to define “best” here (it might even differ for different people). I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to learn a language without exposure to it though, a lot of it being better than a little. Especially if one is interested in understanding the language very well (quickly and accurately). I don’t think anything but input really works for that. I also think that most people would prefer to learn a language without studying as well. Do you have any actual reason to believe this isn’t the best way?
Yes, I’m interested in hearing more about this too. Although I’ve never been tested for either, neurodiversity runs in my family and I totally geeked out on learning Latin and Ancient Greek grammar in college and then coding languages when joining the work force. Learning how things tick, seems to make things stick (for me and probably [many] others).
I think what he talked about ADHD is pure BS. I'm capable and I DO structured lerning for a lot of things but that DEOS NOT WORK WELL for language. Period. My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory. I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it. After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish. So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue. Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands. One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH. I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it. Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did. So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish. Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!
Now, why I say it's different for languages? Because language IS NOT a SUBJECT (only for linguists, so the author here is biased). Language is a MEAN, not and END. I was NOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn ROMAN HISTORY. English was just this annoying little thing in the way. I was NOOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn MUAY THAI. English was just in the way. However, I WAS trig to learn SPANISH. And I had NO INTEREST in Spanish whatsoever. so I've failed. So when I've found abut Krashen and Matt VS Japan and the AJATT i just applied the same principle. I was NOT trying to learn JAPANESE (the closest of it was doing ANKI, but also as a MEAN, not an end). I was trying to understand anime in Japanese. Period. And IT WOKS. It's like the difference between a physicist and a SOCCER PLAYER. A physicist can explain how in hell if the player kicks in one way the ball makes a curve. But he cannot do that! That's the linguist in many cases. A soccer player have NO IDEA what are the physics about him kicking a curved ball. But he can do it EVERY FREAKING TIME he wants to. The so called "academic way" is being a physicist. You DON'T NEED it to speak the language. It's cool, may help. But an illiterate dude can learn how to kick th ball that way without understanding the physics behind it.
@@JohnnyLynnLee understanding physics can help, brother. Look up the skateboarder Rodney Mullen. He is a huge innovator and applied his interests in physics to do innovative things. As for studying a language as a subject linguistically, I found that understanding the nuts and bolts of Latin grammar has allowed me to accurately “acquire” Latin in an efficient way. That is, I believe that having studied Latin as a “subject” in the way a physicist does, I was able to extensively read easy material with accuracy instead of potentially creating misunderstanding of how Latin grammar works if I was to just read a bunch of easy material without having a theoretical overview. Of course, we all operate differently.
@@jrcenina85 And that's to learn at HOME. There are plenty of uneducated people that go to another country to work and get it. "But there's a lot that don't." Yeah, they liv in ghettos. You need to work to survive, you need to understand you coworkers and boss, you need to make friends to be invited to drink after work, you need to go to that kind of bay were you pay "lady drinks" to get some "relaxation". You find that girl in that shop that seems interested in you and you want to call her on a date. You want ALL of those things. You NEED it in that situation, to function as a human being. So you'll get the language. again as a TOOL to get THOSE THNGS, not the language itself. The language itself is basically MEANINGLESS to your primal brain. ?What that language GIVES you is the key.
As someone who got diagnosed autistic last year and has struggled to find a method of language learning to works for me this video EXPLAINS SO MUCH. Would love to hear more about neurodivergence and language development. My own was pretty irregular, which my parents initially chalked up to me also being bilingual. I apparently started speaking late, skipped over the single words phase and went straight to 3 word sentences. Then later when it came to learning to read I was put in remedial classes for half a year. Somehow I came out of those with an appetite for reading that had me reading above my grade level fairly quickly. I still read faster than most people I know.
Yeah. Learning is weird for me (as a neurodivergent too). I learned to walk and talk a year later than most kids are supposed to, but I was speaking with full sentences right out the gate. I don't have any memories of being less than 5, but I remember having a lot of thoughts running around in my head. And those thoughts were always composed of a bunch of complex sentences with lots of ideas linking between them. I also remember having a hard time with math until 4th grade, and then I suddenly leveled up to like 8th grade math. Turns out math is really simple and I just hadn't figured out how to memorize the addition and multiplication table. I was probably just overthinking the task of memorization. It's not like they teach you how to memorize in school. They literally don't, and hardly even can anyways.
Also interested in learning language as a neurodivergent! I usually refer to myself as way too analytical therefore bad at aquiring languages because they are more unconscious/feely. English is the only second language I could get into after years of immersion (without the goal of gettting better).
I (not exactly neurotypical either) like studying grammar as it's nicely defined, but my theory about grammar is that it helps make input more comprehensible, it doesn't directly convert to fluency. Same with learning isolated words in Anki, doesn't tell me how to use them, but I still recognise them later. So at the end I'm again at the comprehensible input hypothesis.
@@Ph34rNoB33r The video is about the idea that comprehensible input is all you need to learn a language. An idea that you'll find all over language UA-cam. It's this input only method that I tried several times and never worked for me. Despite many people swearing by it. Ofc you need input and output to fully acquire a language. You can't just read grammar guides and be fluent. For me though grammar guides AND input are both needed to learn. What's fascinating to me is that the Krashen may have ADHD and the comprehensible input method might work best for people with that kind of neurospiciness. The reasons Jones mentions for why the comprehensible input method would appeal to people with ADHD is exactly why my autistic ass doesn't like the method. The lack of structure and analysis just makes me unhappy.
@@C4s4ndr4 I'm not convinced you NEED both, at least if you know languages with similar grammar. But I think grammar study can greatly help with making input more comprehensible. Kind of a "soft" requirement improving efficiency of the input for learning. Well, and it helps with grammar tests, but those are rare outside school. I tend to performs way better on this kind of standardised test, you can simply watch for keywords and ignore most of the other words.
I have taught Spanish starting 40 years ago....so right when Krashen´s theories were really being put forth for secondary teachers. I have found that comprehensible input is indeed better for that casual learner who wants to "get by". Phrases come out much more naturally using this method so kids can speak and express themselves. However, that grammar component cannot be totally ignored! Interesting that I would often get kids in class whose parents/relatives spoke Spanish at home. Some were super fluent, some less so. Most of them would remark at some point in the year "Now I finally understand what my uncles and aunts are saying at Christmas parties". Or "Wow, now I understand why people say (insert phrase)....I never knew what it meant!" They didn't get that without the grammar component. So somehow, the brain needs the 2 learning methods, it seems.
My son is two and only speaks Chinese. I’ve noticed that he speaks better than most kids his age and almost never makes mistakes. He was mixing up “you” and “I” for a while, but that’s it, and that’s not really even language related. I wonder if this is common for Chinese speakers, since the grammar is much simpler than European languages.
@@artugert Chinese doesn't have inflections, it's pretty straightforward in most cases and you add particles to indicate any grammatical change. Adults struggle mostly with pronunciation, not the grammar in Chinese, so that might be the reason why your son does not make too many mistakes in Chinese.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, I forgot to mention the pronunciation is also much simpler than in English. At two years old, he can already pronounce every possible sound in the language! That can't be said for any two year old speaking English.
This was the best video I've ever seen on this topic, thank you for clearing out a lot of what I've been reading online! This accurately described the work of Krashen and his theory, and helped me understand what exactly it's all about. I would 100% want a video on Universal Grammar, I'm dying to know what it really is! I'm interested in studying Linguistics, and I've seen the concept of Universal Grammar thrown around a lot, as well as... controversies about it? I'd really like to find out what is and isn't known/(un)disputed in the realm of UG, and understand which scientific papers are basing themselves on what, etc. Again, many thanks for the video, it's great to hear an academic linguist discussing these topics in-depth!
It's interesting that when I went to read what Krashen actually wrote, he always seems to point towards that comprehensible input is a big *factor* in acquiring language and that instruction or "learning" almost always helps it along. In the examples he includes it's seems that the learners mindset plays a large role as well, ie. letting yourself make mistakes but not being too loosey goosey with the grammar either. At least that's what I took away from it!
Regardless of the validity of his hypotheses the fact that he has inspired a massive research effort into proving him alone makes him an amazingly important figure in language instruction.
Yes, it seems Krashen's work is actually a guide for teachers to help student acquire the language (with responsible guidance), not a guide for students to go off on their own.
This is eye-opening to me. As someone with AD(H)D, I have always found the input-focused method frustrating because as soon as I find something I don't understand, I become demotivated and go and do something else. Give me a big ol' grammar book any day.
I have similar approach. I am very analytical person, I like to take things apart (not physically, but rather in an abstract way) and figure out stuff. I like grammar because it is given, it doesn't change so quickly and it allows me to establish the way people of another language perceive time and world, subjects etc. Also, I love lists, thus I create lists of words and learn them. It's nice to mark that list with red ticks for "I know this word" :D
Grammar is a lot less useful than people generally think. Grammar is about making the communication more efficient and less taxing on the brain, it's ultimately using the wrong words that are a much bigger issue and that's where the comprehensible input is arguably at it's best. People don't generally decide that they want to speak with a vocabulary of 20-25k and then just go through the dictionary. That corpus will be built up over the course of a couple decades. Personally, I've been a fan of what I like to refer to as comprehensible outputs ever since I live in China. At the time, the resources for reading were pretty limited, we didn't have Pleco that could do OCR or accept our finger tracings of the character to tell us what it meant, for those of us at a very low level, the only confirmation of whether what we said was right or not was what we got in return. I remember asking for what I thought was a receipt, only to learn that a fapiao is a formal receipt related to taxes, not a normal receipt to show what you paid. Two separate things and I figured that out after just one mistake.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Exactly. There's no better feeling than learning a verb conjugation and instantly being able to apply that to anything. Much more satisfying in my eyes than listening to hours and hours of material in a hope that eventually you'll correctly guess the grammar rules.
@@justcomments335 Indeed! Also, it's easier to recognise the pattern you already know than recognising the pattern that you see at random intervals and only after a long exposure the brain goes: aaah... It's a waste of time, in my opinion, especially with languages with complicated grammar structures.
When I talk about grammar avoidance I always specifically mean grammar exercises. Finnish is my Target Language and I learn its grammar by first seeing the breakdown of a new grammar topic, and then reading many example sentenced where the grammar part is the only new thing to me. Combine that with spaced repitition and general reading & listening, and I will naturally run into the same grammar structure many times so that I acquire it. Works really well for B1 level and onwards. I also do something similar for new vocabulary Point being, comprehensible input was a complete game changer for me, but it would never work as efficiently if I didn't combine it with grammar study and spaced repitition.
Thank you for saying what I was thinking. I am always dubious about people who boast about never learning grammar. I think they just define grammar in a different way. I've heard people boast that they've never read a grammar book in their lives. To me that's as daft as saying you've never read a dictionary. These things are reference books not page turning novels. I have also learned Finnish and just as you said I found I needed examples and lots of chances to practise. Unlike you, however, I quite enjoy grammar exercises. I started out by ploughing through the FSI Finnish course and its crazy amount of exercises but it's just a hobby to me and not for everyone. But as a foreign learner whose first language is English I don't know how anyone could learn Finnish without specifically studying the endings. If the average noun and adjective has about 30 possible forms, including plurals, a foreign learner is unlikely to just pick those up by reading a lot. Especially, when the actual grammar explanation makes what seems impossible actually fairly logical.
@@barrysteven5964 Thanks for your reply. I should've also added to my reply that I do plan on doing grammar exercises, or more specifically writing exercises, when I'm happy with my comprehension. Having put so much attention in listening and reading has really paid off, but at the same time things like compound conjugations will still trip me up if I have to form them myself.
Hi. How do you use spaced repetition combined with grammar? I mean what is your process for learn grammar and How do you apply spaced repetition in your learning. I have probably a B1 in comprehension but when it comes to grammar I have troubles learning it. (Sorry if a don't redact well the message, I still have difficulties with writing)
@@miguelangellunapalacios1804 I have a textbook that has a story of a couple of pages and a new grammar topic per chapter. The new grammar is found in the story. So I study the grammar breakdown, seeing how it conveys the meaning, then go back and forth between the story and the grammar a few times. After that I just occasionally come back to the story and that way the grammar is refreshed in my mind. The goal here is comprehension, not replication. Spaced repetition is often seen as "trying to recall a word" but it works with any kind of material that you can study.
I just stumbled onto your video and I was enthralled by it. I am thoroughly bilingual and have taught Spanish for years. What has troubled me has not been Krashen's hypotheses per se, but the wholesale, quasi-religious fervor with which people have latched onto them to the TOTAL exclusion of everything else. Anything other than CI is considered a demotivating waste of time. When I did my Ph.D. in language acquisition, I discovered that my uneasiness was well-founded. Like with most fads in education, it's not the theoretical framework that's the problem, it's the extremist way that novices run wild with it. The thoughts on ADHD/autism were fascinating as well, and I plan to research that more. Thank you for a fascinating new avenue of thought.
Yo dude! First of all, I just wanted to say thank you for your content. From one person who loves languages to another, I love the way you make academic research, practical and accessible to those of us who for whatever reason didn’t want to get a linguistics degree, let alone a PhD. You have no idea how much of a difference that’s made. Second, as someone with ADHD, I can say that implementing some of Krashen’s ideas has helped a ton. I’ve been able to make my language learning a lot more efficient, and managed to learn both American Sign Language, and Spanish with a combo approach. For me, specifically, though, I’ve found that doing both explicit, grammar study and massive amounts of input tends to really speed things up because it allows me to Internalize my understanding of a certain structure in a language much much faster. I usually do this by looking up specific structures or words that I hear as I go along. I have a feeling your “reasons“ are kind of similar to mine. Lol. Again, thank you so much for all the work you do in making this stuff a lot more accessible.
Could you maybe clarify on your learning process with the asl and Spanish because I’m trying to learn both as well and would love something to base my study off of
I've been using comprehensible input for Spanish for four months (I started from scratch, I'm almost at 400 hours) along with Pimsleur and some unstructured grammar study. It's been so amazing and I can understand movies and full conversations and I can spend hours a day in it without feeling tired. Though I've had a few convos, since I love socializing, and I'm very bad at output so far. So thanks for giving me a more detailed rundown of the hypothesis I've been putting blind faith in lol.
What was the first month like for you? I'm just starting on my Spanish comprehensible input journey. I got some Story Learning books for it and have been watching Dreaming in Spanish and Spanish with Alma videos. I also have the beginner Olly Richards course for story learning. I'm not seeing a ton of results yet and that's frustrating but it's strange because my material all gives me something I can understand through context but the words are still all so unfamiliar.
@@dezmodium That seems like a good list of content. In the first month, I kind of jumped around material to find what worked best but my overall routine was Dreaming Spanish, Telenovelas with subtitles (1 per day), and then the Anki most common word deck. I had the same experience where I could understand very little but could follow things pretty well. I think it provided a good foundation and comfort with the sounds. Acquiring vocab has gotten a lot easier in the past two months.
@@blankb.2277 Thank you, that's very encouraging. 4 months and you understand a good bit of the words in normal media? That's fantastic! I'm sure in 4 more months you'll be speaking so much better. Thanks for the reply, I'll trust the process.
@@dezmodium For me, doing comprehensible input practice in combination with Rocket Spanish was the key to faster progress. I was able to "learn" the structure of the language (in still an input-heavy way since they do audio lessons) while also getting plenty of input from Dreaming Spanish. I think you could probably do just Rocket Spanish 1 and 2, and not worry about 3, and be just fine. After about two months I started speaking practice with italki and Tandem (free), and that definitely helped as well.
I have recently started learning Spanish and when I started looking for ideas on UA-cam on how to learn it I noticed a lot of these Polyglots pushing “just do input” or get this app with my discount code in the description and they would proceed to crap talk other language learning apps. I have since been experimenting and have found getting input is fairly useful especially around getting used to hearing how the native speakers speak but it’s only one part of overall language learning process. I find I also need to practice speaking, do exercises and study grammar etc. I had a real aha moment about my suspicion of doing input only when someone in the comments section of a Dreaming Spanish video said they had done 600 hours of input only but then proceeded to ask basic grammar questions why some words end in an A vs an O and what’s difference between a word ending in an S vs not ending in an S.
if someone seriously does not know the a and o and the s and not s after 600 hours, im not sure what to say. Regardless, its obvious that only input by itself is not smart. I think input is very important, and that most stuff will be learnt with input, but you should also learn the grammar but not intensely, and learn the vocab too but not intensely. Input will give real results.
Would love to hear more about Chomsky's grammar from a linguistic perspective. I'm a computer scientist and we studied them as far as they helped us create compilers. So we always stopped at regular grammars.
This makes so much sense! Comprehensible input alone has never gotten me very far. The academic approach is much more satisfying to me. I have many other characteristics consistent with autism, so that makes sense. Don't worry, this is not "Jones says I should study grammar because I'm autistic". This is, "someone who studies language suggested that when choosing a language-learning method it might be helpful to consider neuro-divergence, so I'm going to do what seems to work for me even if 'experts' say it's wrong." :)
My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory. I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it. After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish. So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue. Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands. One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH. I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it. Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did. So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish. Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!
language IS NOT a SUBJECT (only for linguists, so the author here is biased). Language is a MEAN, not and END. I was NOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn ROMAN HISTORY. English was just this annoying little thing in the way. I was NOOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn MUAY THAI. English was just in the way. However, I WAS trig to learn SPANISH. And I had NO INTEREST in Spanish whatsoever. so I've failed. So when I've found abut Krashen and Matt VS Japan and the AJATT i just applied the same principle. I was NOT trying to learn JAPANESE (the closest of it was doing ANKI, but also as a MEAN, not an end). I was trying to understand anime in Japanese. Period. And IT WOKS. It's like the difference between a physicist and a SOCCER PLAYER. A physicist can explain how in hell if the player kicks in one way the ball makes a curve. But he cannot do that! That's the linguist in many cases. A soccer player have NO IDEA what are the physics about him kicking a curved ball. But he can do it EVERY FREAKING TIME he wants to. The so called "academic way" is being a physicist. You DON'T NEED it to speak the language. It's cool, may help. But an illiterate dude can learn how to kick th ball that way without understanding the physics behind it.
@@marikothecheetah9342 False. It works for EVRYONE. Because we are HUMANS and that's a basic function of a HUMAN BEING. We are not that different when it comes to basic BIOLOGIVAL needs. You did it wrong. did you use ANKI for instance? Because the hardest part of this of "comprehensible input" that people don't talk as much is the word COMPREHENSIBLE. It's hard to find content that is comprehensible. and even harder to find content that is comprehensible and ENGAGING. Gr5aded readers are BORIG as hell, for instance. So, the challenge is really to make content that is cool, made BY NATIVES FOR NATIVES comprehensible! ANKI, Sentence mining, intensive reading and extensive reading. Many things there to use. And LOTS of pausing and dictionary. Using Lingq and importing content there looking up words, each and every if needed. A good E-reader with pop-up dictionary, or in your PC with copy and paste. But the GOALS is always, as Krashen states, understand WHAT'S being said, no HOW they are saying it. The "how" you acquire in a unconscious manner, mainly. If yo need some explanation, do it when you i find it I TE CONTENT. Then look it up. And move ahead.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Because to simplify it there's only one thing you should really care about: WORD COUNTING and mileage. You need to come across around 30 thousand words and come across them over and over again, understanding them. No secret1 but easier said than done. Then you can understand the language. ad if you can understand it, you can use it. The goal is UNDESTANDING, not speaking. That's a rsult.
Oh, I can already tell you that when I'm stressed or overwhelmed, I code switch a lot more. 😁 It's like some ideas are easier to say in English than in my first language? Interesting video, I was definitely out of the loop on this topic, yours is the most academic linguistics channel I watch. And I have been diagnosed with ADHD recently, and now you got me thinking about the way I learned English versus the way I learned or rather am still learning toki pona. I guess this is as good a place as any to mention that I decided on a whim to go back to university for one semester and take a bunch of linguistics classes, and finding your videos a couple months ago was probably the final push I needed to convince me this was a passion worth investing into. I started my classes yesterday and I'm excited 😁
Fantastic! I will be watching all of your videos and liking them all. I am not sure if you already made a video about Chomsky's UG, but I would definitely like to watch that. Thanks!
I wonder if UA-camrs also love Krashen bc that is basically the only thing UA-cam can give--comprehensible input--it cannot actually in-real-time tell me when I say something wrong, how I said it wrong, etc., etc. (although UA-camrs can promote tutoring websites, etc. that can provide more). Also, a video on what UA-camrs get wrong about Chomsky would be awesome!!!
I've been learning German for over 9 years, probably 5 of those years being semi serious in my pursuit to become better at the language. Memorizing song lyrics has been one of my greatest discoveries towards the advancement of my capabilities. Songs are written generally in the way that people speak. If you're in the car and singing a song that you know every word to, you can easily hear where you pronounce things differently from the artist. This helped my pronunciation so much. In addition to pronunciation help, any word I would learn through memorization of a song stuck in my brain much more than otherwise because of how obsessive I would be with memorizing. Every time I listen to a song I have memorized now, I am reminded of native speaker words/phrases/structures that may have otherwise fallen out of my active recall.
There's a video where Krashen (at a polyglot conference) says that if we find people learning language through skills building, then his theory is in trouble. However, there's another way to provide a counterexample: understand a language but fail to produce it. I'm in that category. This has been my project for nearly four years now. I'm up to at least 1600 hours of input. I can understand and read somewhere between B1 and C1, although it's very difficult to determine the level of comprehension because it varies greatly depending on the content. In cross-talk (conversation where I speak English and my language parent speaks Italian) I can understand 95%+ on a variety of topics when my tutor is speaking at a natural speed. Example video: ua-cam.com/video/LLnrBA6vtCY/v-deo.html This is my level of comprehensible input, near the limit. I will miss chunks because she's speaking so fast, but it's not too bad, maybe 80%. So comprehensible input does work in terms of understanding. I've done no exercises, word lists, grammar study. I can recognize the various tenses now -- I've looked at conjugation tables, but no grammar exercises. BUT despite my ability to understand, I have virtually no ability to speak. I cannot spontaneously produce *idiomatic* Italian. Also, I can barely pass an A2 fill-in-the-blank grammar test. I find this amusing. And when I see people talk about 2 months or 8 months or whatever to fluency (say, going from English to an "easy" romance language) I just think, I have no idea how you are doing it. Krashen is vague about how speaking happens. One might claim that my input is too incomprehensible. But then, how is it that I've acquired the ability to understand? And furthermore, it's impossible to find the perfect "i + 1" material. Also, the input described in Krashen's case studies, and the input described by various people who successfully use the method, is absolutely NOT i + 1. In Krashen's book The Natural Approach he says: "After 100-150 hours of Natural Approach Spanish you will be able to: 'get around' in Spanish; you will be able to communicate with a mono-lingual native speaker of Spanish without difficulty."... LOL!
You have an intriguing House-like quality (one of my favorite TV characters) I think a bit in your facial expression, some of the deep vocal fry, and being Dr. who isn’t shy to dissent. Like if House was a doctor of linguistics 😄
Wow! I just found your channel and you have a new subscriber. I write a lot on nutrition and diet. My theory is there is no one diet that is best for everyone. You are the first linguist I have heard talk about neuro divergent. I think people ignore this at their peril. I never thought of Krashen's theories as being ADHD friendly. I just know I am highly ADHD but I adopted the "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks" approach. I did so many different things and self selected what seemed to work. So keep thinking outside the box. You are onto something by looking at neurology and language learning. I use the "forest and the trees" analogy. We try to prescribe for the forest without considering it is filled with diverse individual trees.
Great video as usual! Very tactful, considering how the language learning community might get worked up over discussions about the effectiveness of Krashen's theory. I learned quite a lot about the "rock star of SLA" in college. What I got is that his ideas are reasonable in principle, but somewhat short-sighted and not really testable in practice. One teacher even went as far as to say that it is a bit academically irresponsible to get his ideas out so effectively without acknowledging the shortcomings of his theory. That, and the affective filter is a bit hard to describe in scientific terms. I've been following your channel for a while (although not interacting much), and I'd love to see a deeper dive into the topic, and basically all the SLA topics you mentioned! I know that field is a bit of its own thing, but I'd love to know your opinion (as somebody who is acquainted with the science in 2024) on topics such as whether there is evidence for an order and sequence of acquisition in L2, that other sequence of acquisition (going from non-verbal responses to single words, single clauses, and then more articulate sentences linking multiple clauses), whether interleaving applies to the study of a language, and how neurodiversity might impact language acquisition. Oh, and I'd love to hear what you thing about the most recent theories for language acquisition competing with UG! In any case, I'll try to watch your streams on how you learn Persian for now.
I have found comprehensible input to be very helpful for me in comprehending input in my target language (Spanish), but I still find myself unable to really participate in normal conversations with native speakers because I cannot produce the language fast enough to say anything relevant before the conversation has moved on. I can sit and listen to the conversations just fine, and I would think that if comprehensible input was all that was necessary, that I'd gradually get better at producing the language by listening, but it doesn't seem to be happening. On a more observational note, my wife learned English largely through comprehensible input but again, when the two of us first started talking, she had difficulty producing the language, to the point where initially she didn't even really act like herself when she was speaking it. As we talked more and more her ability to produce the language improved a lot and now she is at the point where every native speaker who meets her is impressed by her ability to speak the language.
Also, everyone I know is fairly confident that I have undiagnosed ADHD and I do find myself consuming large amounts of caffeine to help myself focus on tasks.
This was pretty informative! I like the emphasis on the premises of comprehensible input and how if those premises are discredited ever, comprehensible input would go down with them. Something I am curious about is that I've heard of comprehensible output and the interaction hypothesis and how that connects to Krashen's work. I think a video along those lines might be interesting.
Anecdotally, I started from zero 5 or 6 years ago and now get mistaken for native speaker more often than not. Admittedly, I started out "studying", i.e., memorized top few thousand words and common "chunks" using Anki over the first couple months, but then discovered Krashen's hypothesis and switch to comprehensible input. I've never studied the grammar or really used resources for languages learners apart from Anki at the very start (and played around with a couple apps just out of curiosity). Progress has always been imperceptible to me which creates the temptation to buy some app or course. Lol. Can't say it would have helped. But comparing myself to me of a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, the progress is insane just from input. If anyone is curious, this is mainly what I did: First couple months: memorized frequent vocabulary list and most common "chunks" of the language. Not sure if I'd do this again, but didn't know what else to do. First year: read very simple books, watched basic shows (often boring, like Pepa Pig), listened to music in language even if I didn't understand it. Second year: began to binge youtubers in the language; interestingly, most were youtubers who weren't native speakers (less slang, simpler vocabulary and patterns), read more complicated books often while also listening to the audiobook version, memorized lots of song lyrics, watched a lot of documentaries and series with subtitles. Third year: same but started to also watch lots of native youtubers and read more complicated books (e.g., read Harry Potter series like everyone, lol, but also my first adult-level books). Able to watch most shows without subtitles and still fully enjoy. Met friends online and began chatting everyday via WhatsApp. Mostly typing but some audios and calls. Fourth year: consuming same content as native speakers: shows, social media, news, books, etc.; began dating a native speaker, living together. Fifth & sixth year: confused for native speaker. Lol. Increasingly comfortable and confident in the language in most contexts. Again, didn't "study" per se, just tried to make the language a habitual part of my life and things progressed naturally. Thanks, Krashen! P.S. During first ~3 years I used my Kindle for "extensive reading", i.e., stopping to look up words or translate sentences I didn't understand, and generally physical books or PDFs for "intensive reading", which I often read while listening to the audiobook version which I found compelled me to not get caught up on things I didn't understand and also helped me develop internal pronunciation. Also played around with an app called LingQ for saving and reading articles & subtitles but definitely wouldn't say it's necessary. Oh, and definitely a ton more intensive than extensive reading.
I would definitely be interested in a video on Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. I stumbled on an old book a long time ago based on Transformational Grammar and I really like it. I’ve looked briefly at Universal Grammar and it seems the trees have gone berserk. I would love to hear your thoughts.
I have ADD and have had great success so far learning Japanese using comprehensible input. Kinda cool to realize I might have stumbled upon a learning style that's tailor made for me. I've never learned a language to a high level using a structured approach, and I've been wondering about a certain aspect of languages that doesn't seem to be taken into account with that approach. There seem to be countless little set phrases and details present in languages which are almost invisible to native speakers until someone makes a mistake with them, at which point it jumps out as sounding weird. Personally I simply come across those details on a daily basis and when I see people discussing them on Reddit I can only say that the correct wording 'feels' correct to me, even though I've never consciously given it thought. It seems to me that using a structured/grammar heavy approach you might be able to produce sentences that are technically grammatically correct, but you'll easily overlook set phrases and details that make your speech sound unnatural or even incomprehensible. How does a structured approach deal with this? To me the amount of information required to speak a language in a natural way simply seems too much to process consciously one by one. If you're looking for examples, I think Matt VS Japan has a video that touches on this problem titled "Language Isn't Math".
I started with slice of life anime to build a basic vocabulary, then transitioned more to audiobooks and podcasts to strengthen my listening skills. I currently just watch and read whatever I feel like since I'm not in a hurry to reach fluency. @@japanese2811
@@japanese2811Started with simple anime, eventually moving on to podcasts and light novels. I currently spend almost all of my time listening to audiobooks, which I mainly focus on just because I like them.
As far as I am aware, I am not neurodivergent but I do think having a basis of grammar and vocab mixed with a large amount of input has been the most effective method yet for learning a language for me. The boost I get from enjoying and wholeheartedly engaging with the input, that input being content that I know I already like like books from genrea I like or games who's base gamplay I already like, cannot be ignored. Not to mention the reduced amount of effort that I need to put into motivating myself to learn means I have more energy to put into actually learning which has made language learning much easier. Some things to note are: 1, Some languages benefit from reading considerably more than others, the reasons can have to do with the script or just to do with the way the language fundamentally works. Japanese benefits a lot from reading past the beginner stage but the reading will be extremely slow because you are not only learning the language but a 3 accompanying scripts as well, this makes reading slow and difficult to start with but once you have a base of kanji and are used to reading the kanas, it will become very easy to find new words as they are combined from other pre-existing kanji. 2, lthe further away the target language is from the language(s) you already know the more you will require input because there are some fundamental speech patterns that will be so alien to you that you will have to have them repeated to you many times before you can naturally start using them, from my experience.
As an ADHDer, the most effective learning method I’ve used has had three aspects. 1) intensive (4 hours a day) group study relying heavily on the communicative approach where some grammar is explained, but not in too much depth, and the rest of the class consisted of various fun activities. Key was that I was slightly better than most of the group, which relieved all of the stress. 2) Getting the accent right to the point of sounding native-like through Pimsleur and songs. Then, outputting actively. Depending on the situation at hand, I would prepare a list of vocab of 20-30 words and expressions and would then activate it in real life to solve real situations. That vocab stayed with me forever. 3) Listening to and watching local content (not so comprehensible input) picking up things here and there even when I did not understand 30 per cent of what was being said. So, in sum, as ADHDers like to talk activating stuff by outputting it (on purpose) was key for acquisition. To reduce stress, in-depth accent and prosody training was key. Real-life content input helped pick up new things
I am very neurodivergent and medicated for ADHD since 2019. Language learning is my special interest on which I used to hyperfocus when I should have been earning money or something. I read a list of rules (inflections, word order, conditions for allophones...), ponder them, and don’t need to hear about them again. I apply them to my production and comprehension of the language. I become more fluent over time as I put the stuff into practice many times and it becomes second nature and I’m not needing to pull the rule out of my mental textbook as much, although I do always do that too, as though a teacher is checking my work over my shoulder. My main problem is getting tongue-tied randomly or around certain combos of sounds (as much in my native English as in other languages, to be honest -- I’m just inherently not very good at speaking) and acquiring vocabulary, since there isn’t really a quick way of learning thousands of words and I get bored very easily. I pass for a native when I speak or write in French, Spanish and Italian (not so well in CA/PT/DE/NL/NB/SV/DA/ZH/JP/EO/LA) but I’ve never read more than a couple of books in any of them. In Italian in particular, I just had the hobby of translating little dialogues back and forth for 15 minutes every day for a year (when I was 16) to learn vocab and generally practice, then didn’t think about Italian again till I went to Milan when I was 23 to teach English, had a social life in Italian for a few months, then fell into a job as an Italian-English translator. I got accreditation by examination as an (EN-FR/ES/IT) interpreter in 2010 and have been doing that ever since, although with my ADHD I always find I need to have several other side-hustles or life is too monotonous. To me, learning a language is like learning to code, or draw, or sculpt, or dance: you must memorise or look up some rules/principles/techniques/moves/structures, then you use this firm theoretical foundation to create your art, which is clumsy at first. When I teach, people find the way I explain things very novel and engaging, but I don’t notice them actually learning particularly well. I’ve decided that this is because my brain works very differently from most people’s, and so when I try to make them learn like me, I’m foolishly attempting to run Linux software on a Windows machine. I should let them just download a native application from a Windows developer.
Sorry, there is simply no way I can understand what you've written here on my Windows brain. We are fundamentally different and the avenues by which we reach understanding have obviously completely diverged. I can imagine it now: fumbling your way through my comment desperately attempting to parse that which shall always and forever remain incomplete - but only for people like you when engaging with people like me. There is obviously no way that you could possibly understand what I might mean by my comment. Neither on this occasion nor on any other.
@@shrill_2165 Haha, bit of an exaggeration. I just think my method isn't optimal for most students and it's a mistake for me to push it. After all, you _can_ run Linux commands on Windows using WSL, but stuff works better on the system it's designed for.
Two years ago, I started learning French under a teacher who subscribed to the theory of Stephen Krashen. I, of course, fell in love with French and carried his method of teaching with me after leaving the class. I learned French in that manner, primarily on UA-cam but also with apps like Tandem, and went to france about 5 months ago in an exchange program. I did very well and had a high level, and I always received compliments on my French from natives, especially considering that I only had two years under my belt at that point. Come to find out, I have ADHD, and it’s interesting that you point out that Krashen’s theory seems tailor-made for those like me. I can definitely agree, as it’s so low-effort to engage in learning that I could basically do it all the time. It worked for me, but I may see if I can incorporate more intentional learning into my future approaches to language learning
as a hopefully polyglot with combined type ADHD (diagnosed by a psychiatrist) this explains so much of why i struggled to stick to and use old-timey, neurotypical methods honestly, Stephen Krashen's ideas and all the methods that sprung up from them have worked wonders for me, I'm working on getting my 6th language to B1 right now.
I'm confused. how does one get diagnosed? you said a psychiatrist did it, which begs my question, what prompted you to see the psychiatrist? is it because you thought you might have it, or that you wanted a diagnosis. in my busy life I cannot fathom how or when I would prioritise going to see a psychiatrist over such a thing. the second question is, now that you have this diagnosis, what do you do with it? is it an advantage or disadvantage? is it a source of pride or shame? I'm honestly confused, but seriously curious too, because all of this jargon started to “suddenly appear” sometime after I was 30yo and I've yet to meet somebody in real life like this.
@@polymath6475 well it started online, I was told I was diagnosed Autism as a child years after the diagnosis, and that got me to do some research, that then just made me want to look more into the topic, and I ended up mostly stumbling across ADHD content (How to ADHD, ADHD_love, etc) and I found that most of what they were saying across tens of videos applied to me then remembered that a psychiatrist had seen ADHD symptoms in my sister, so I asked my mom about it and she told me that she did have ADD (internalized ADHD) so I brought it up with my therapist, who agreed and from there I asked my mom to take me that psychiatrist who thought my sister had it and gave her medication for it keep in mind that all of this took months from I think May of 2023 to December 2023, and I'm working on getting an official diagnosis with that same psychiatrist now and I'm sorry I got you confused, but I said I have a diagnosis for simplicity's sake but I am still sure that i do have ADHD as to whether it has a positive or negative effect on my life I'd say it depends on the context, it makes me good at learning and getting deep into topics fast, tho I do tend to abandon them after a while, in terms of academics it makes them worse because of, forgetfulness (for example for getting there was homework), executive dysfunction (struggling to do what I need to do and breaking down tasks effectively, avoiding overwhelm, procrastination), in terms of social relationships, it would be generally more of an advantage if there wasn't anxiety and masking (hiding one's natural state of being to socially accepted or mirroring other people's behavior or personality to be accepted)
I find the overemphasis on comprehensible input odd myself. I would say that, usually, the best way to learn something, particularly something complex like a language, is to approach it from different angles. The more perspectives and "hooks" one can put into the material, the better one can obtain both an explicit and an intuitive functional knowledge of the material. I sometimes wonder if the seemingly outstanding outcomes that appear from people who claim to use pure comprehensible input, or simply never learned grammar explicitly, are because of the amount of time they spend with the language. Whether one just learns the grammar, does CI, or both, if you don't put in the hours to make the material "part of you", you won't have a good ability in the language. CI can often be more interesting than grammar-translation, leading to it being easier to put in more time. I would expect that lots of time with grammar-translation would help with language acquisition, as you will get lots of exposure to the language anyway. Though, ultimately, to have good abilities in a particular skill, you need to practice that skill. If you only read but never practise speaking, you won't be able to speak well. Maybe, yes, you can speak to an extent, but pronunciation, prosody, register matching, etc. are likely to be off significantly. Adding listening to reading will help, but still would not be enough. Krashen himself does a lot of shadowing, which involves a lot of practice producing the language. Looking from the opposite end, just because someone can have native spoken fluency in a language, does not mean they can write, or even read, it. This was true throughout most of history and is only perceived as odd now because of how much effort society has put in to increase literacy rates. I think a good analogy may be music. Many people listen to music a lot. How many of them, without ever having touched an instrument, can just pick up a guitar and play well?
I agree with a lot of what you wrote but it's the internet so of course I'll poke a little at your final analogy. I think a lot of people can sing a song fairly well after listening to it repeatedly. Input won't help you know where to put your fingers to make those sounds. But one usually has a good idea how to do that with the vocal "instrument". Also, I think people who are very accomplished at playing a musical instrument can often reproduce what they hear on that instrument.
@@keithkannenberg7414 That was why I mentioned a guitar :P Even if the person can sing the song, it doesn't mean they can play the guitar chords that are part of the music; and, this is even if they knew exactly what the chords were. And, yes, if someone is well-accomplished on an instrument, they can probably play by ear. This is like someone who already can speak a language at C1+ just paraphrasing what someone else has said. If someone has never touched that instrument before (i.e. never played it before), they can't, no matter how much they listen to the song, just play it immediately. This would be like trying to paraphrase in the target language what was said in that target language (which they never spoke before). Even knowing the words to say does not mean they can say it. Take Mandarin as an example of this last point: someone may know the written form of the reply but if they can't produce the tones, they can't say the sentence without causing either significant strain to the hearer or complete misunderstanding/lack of understanding. A language you know is like an instrument you know how to use. A language you don't know is like a new instrument (whole new sound system, new ways the muscles in the vocal tract need to move, new set of allowed ways of putting "notes" together, etc.). To extend the analogy to cover what seems like a loophole: a sister language to a language you know would be like an instrument close to what you know how to play (like harpsichord to piano, or from acoustic to electric guitar, etc.); playing it well won't take nearly as long to learn as it took for the first instrument you learned, but you likely won't play well immediately.
CI does not mean it is forbidden to learn vocabulary and grammar. You just don't aim to be perfect in these areas. If you understand the text, it is enough. Of course you should strive to speak as perfectly as possible. But who do I prefer: Speaker A, who speaks perfect German, but speaks very slowly, or speaker B, who speaks in normal speed, but makes many grammatical mistakes? I would prefer speaker B.
@@Hofer2304 "You just don't aim to be perfect in these areas. If you understand the text, it is enough. " - well, isn't that a lazy approach? " speaker B, who speaks in normal speed, but makes many grammatical mistakes? I would prefer speaker B." - I work with four languages on a daily basis and I prefer person A, every single time, because I don't have to make corrections in my mind, guessing what the speaker had in mind and trying to make out his intentions out of grammatical mistakes that lead me nowhere. Auch, glaube, du niemals hast sprechen zu jemand wer viele sich irrt und ihn Grammatik sein sehr schrecklich :P (I speak German quite well, this was just an example of how people can speak by your definition).
I'm following on the Acquisition model using LingQ, and I'm finding that I am making progress. I'm actually remembering and understanding bits of my target language more now than I have on other tries. It's nice actually. I haven't started studying grammar, seriously, but when I have a question about what I'm seeing, I can look it up and it makes sense. It's more connective. I do have ADHD-I though, which kinda negates any Special Interest bonuses I get for being on the spectrum.
I'm convinced that the best way to learn a language depends on the target language. The tricks I used to learn English didn't work for Japanese, because ordering of sentences, concepts didn't match, writing and reading were much harderd. Spanish was extremely close to my first language Portuguese so some of the grammar was natural for me, input was very easy to understand. However for German a deep dive on grammar was necessary, because of cases and conjugation. That's why there's so much discrepancy about tips for learning langugage. I don't believe there's a universal method for learning any langugage. If the one you are trying to learn is too different from the ones you know you'll have to dedicate much more in the process.
Is there any research on different learning approaches and the efficacy or speed at which a learner mentally goes from formulating ideas in their native language to formulating them in their target language? In other words, do different learning approaches influence how long it takes to go from "translating in your head" to "thinking directly".
hay john, i love your channel as someone who's interested in language learinng and linguistic and as a speech therapy your contect is very good. currently i'm learning spanish and i want to learn the accent to the depth not only the /X/ but also the specific diacritics. do you have any experience with using Prat software for analysing accent? and if so can you share it with us?
The way I learn best is by immersing myself fully. I can read something a million times but I’m never gonna get it, I have to be hands on. All I do is just play video games and watch random videos in my target language without studying; It’s like jumping in a pool. I brute force my way through and then iron the kinks out later. In my opinion, a language is more about listening and comprehending, not knowing all the intricate grammar rules.
Great video. I find that learning and acquisition are not at all dichotomous, but instead support each other. Explicit study can help with a huge deal of important vocab and structure knowledge, even though you'll indeed need a great deal of input in order to obtain a high degree of competence.
After 200 hours of pure Dreaming Spanish I have gone from knowing nothing to B1. That's all the proof I need that it works EDIT: I haven't spoken a word out loud yet, and I know it's a different skill, but I can definitely form my own sentences in my head and recognise when Spanish 'doesn't sound right'
same 170 hours and i have progressed so much more. Than ant text book could probably take. Learning new words and also training your ears toi actually pick out the words that is being said. Language is meant for cummincating and you find more meaning in it when eatching and using it
I've 3000 hours of CI received and I can't speak like a native yet. Can't speak at all as I never practiced it. I still think it's the best way to comprehend the language but speaking practice is essential.
Krashen's learning vs acquisition theory matches how I've noticed that I learn best. With any language topic, I like to explicitly learn the grammar first and practice it in an intentional, self-monitoring way. But that's the easy part - once I've learned it this way, it is still cognitively demanding to produce. So then I need to go listen to many many (many) examples of the grammar in context in order to internalize it enough that I can produce it somewhat automatically. And this learning vs acquisition mirrors my experience with theory vs muscle memory as a musician - you can learn a scale, but until you practice it enough to get it into your unconscious muscle memory, you haven't really acquired it. But I guess where I disagree with Krashen is that, since our brains are no longer very plastic as adults, you really do need to explicitly study the grammar in order to prime your acquisition and 'notice' what to listen for. Like a lot of people, I was very impressed by those old videos of Krashen teaching German using only comprehensible input. But the more I watched it, the more I realized that it works so well because he is teaching German to English speakers, and it happens that the sentence structures of these languages map onto each other very well, and also there are many cognates and similar sounding words. If he were teaching Korean, Hungarian, or Welsh, would it work so well?
I have really liked comprehensible input stuff, but I've only ever tried it with languages I've already studied in classroom settings (Spanish, German, and Russian). My already-existing familiarity with either basic or intermediate-level grammar means that comprehensible input has worked pretty well to try acquiring new vocab or refreshing my language skills when I'm about to go traveling. Didn't stop me from buying a Spanish grammar textbook a couple weeks ago, though. I would love to start a new language in the next year or two, but I think I would start out with more intense grammar study before anything else.
This is just my personal experience, so take this with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to say that in my observation, both as a language, tutor, and a student of languages, this is when it works best… When you have a foundational familiarity with the language and are able to Consciously and subconsciously I guess? Map what you already know onto what you’re listening to, and then gradually expand. I think parts of the UA-cam community have kind of distorted his original theory. Turning it into something he probably never intended lol. I hope you’re having a great day and having fun learning languages.
Yeah, I've used Assimil (which is light on grammar) for Japanese before and liked it, but if I hadn't already had a good grasp of the grammar I would have become frustrated. It's hard for me to focus on the message if the basic structures are tripping me up and distracting my focus. Even just having a vague familiarity helps a lot. But I have a low tolerance for ambiguity and Japanese is very different from from English (and a high context language). I'm also apparently one of those weirdos who just loves grammar, so reading tomes on the subject is not dry or boring for me. It's like reading spell formulas that make the language come alive, or like I'm breaking a secret code. To me, words without grammar are boring and inert. I have to actively stop myself from "studying" a language (esp. grammar) too much and force myself to practice/use it.
@@zerosysko I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’m working on Japanese right now and it is very different. Low ambiguity tolerance is definitely difficult. When Japanese is highly context dependent where the context is not always stated. However, liking grammar isn’t all that weird. I actually really like studying grammar, but also have a decent tolerance for ambiguity so the grammar study actually in riches whatever immersion type stuff I’m doing in Japanese. The thing about Japanese grammar is that there’s not always a one-to-one translation for a given structure the way that a lot of textbooks presented versus when you hear it out in the wild. That’s the only thing to keep in mind. But there are definitely ways for you to work through that if that’s something you’re still doing. Best of luck!
@@zerosysko I also wanted to ask you what you might be using now, since you found assimil didn’t really fit with your personal preference for how you learn
So I'm a believer (because I can't do scientific studies on my own) that traditional schooling is failing the entire language learning community. I feel schools, either in language schools or universities, etc, are more worried about behaviour and entertaining rather than actually doing something to make the student improve. I then encountered SK hypothesis and it seemed rather logical to me, an L2 English speaker who learned English by doing UA-cam all day (I was in a bad place). So, I started thinking that the amount of content IS a major variable in language learning/acquisition. However, I always felt SK hypothesis fails or at least lacks in several points. 1. Comprehensible Input is HARD to get not only because there not much available but also because each person is different, have different levels and different interests, objectives, etc. So his comprehensible input is realistically impossible or almost impossible to find and you have to do with what you can find, (e.g. a children's picture dictionary). 2. I love reading, and I also think that's what got me my level when reading subtitles in my target language, but there are two problems, reading without knowing how it is pronounced is fatal. In English is almost suicidal. (That's why I recommend listening and reading in the same language so you can discover the sounds you're missing. But it's difficult in other languages apart from romance langauges) So, yeah, I always felt there was more to the story, and this video helped me realized a bunch of other things. I will say, though, that I practice translation, it's great. But, from Target language to Native/Acquired language. Not a single letter translated from native to target because you don't know how the target language works. It's like creating an opera from just 5 notes. And I hate how the entire language community, schools, etc are focused on producing the language. It's just stupid (IMHO). Sure, you WILL be able to communicate, but you will always have this rules engraved that don't allow you to actually share your thoughts. And I THAT'S where SK got it right, there is something else apart from learning rules. His solution, well, as I said it lacks the answer to how actually learn. So what I do is this, translation Target->Native and grammar allows you to read more and more complex sentences or clauses or whatever you want to call it. Then, with copious amount of language exposition (Audio and reading), you'll understand more until at one point you start first immitating, then finally producing with feedback telling you where are your errors. This last part sounds a lot to what they do in schools but the main difference is that WITHOUT understanding the language almost to the point of advanced level, you can't start producing without thinking in your native language and translating native->target, and thinking in rules. I would, like SK, without prove, hypotethise that one will produce the language "without thinking" as it is intended to happen. Well, that's my 2 cents. Thank you for the video.
Thanks for this video. I was diagnosed with ADD in high school and really struggled with languages throughout high school. My school actually gave me a waiver from having to complete my 3 year language requirement, which was very rare as it was a graduation requirement. Ironically my father spoke fluent Mandarin as a second language, while I remained hopeless throughout adulthood. I've recently started working on Mandarin myself and videos like this are helpful in trying to devise successful strategies that will help me learn and avoid all the frustration I've encountered in the past.
I feel like you're leaving out that pretty much the entire literature at this point agrees in the non efficacy of grammar translation, and that while Krashen's particular model is controversial and unproven in many ways, the importance of input is not controversial. Some people might watch this video and come away thinking that it's not settled whether 'traditional' textbooks/classes are better or worse for acquisition, or that it greatly depends on the student, and that's just not reflected anywhere in the literature. I also think the discussion of ADHD is a bit misleading - while it's true that non engaging content/study is particularly difficult for many people with ADHD, it's not as though it isn't also more difficult for neurotypical people as compared to more engaging content/study. You almost make it sound like the 'ideal' study method for someone with ADHD might be categorically different than for someone without it, and there's just no evidence that's true.
Lol, I was wondering why I was able to stick to this method better than any of the other ones I’ve tried. I barely understand what people are saying in English so not completely understanding everything in my target languages never bothers me as long as it’s fun. I love this way of learning, but completely understand that it’s not for everyone. 😂
What research would you recommend to learn more about what you called the "general learning best practices"(09:26) like active recall and desirable difficulty?
Huge fan (and successful "user") of language learning based on Krashens Language Acquisition Theory (aka using massive amounts of interest based comprehensible input) over here. I also happen to have rampant ADHD which I got (finally) diagnosed with only in April last year (2023). I found this video incredibly interesting and slightly mind-blowing because this makes perfect sense to me. It just fits. The coffee story is indeed textbook ADHD (though we may never know if your suspicion is correct) hahaha I love it. XD Anywho, what you say here fits not only with my personal experiences (I have my own version of using CI that involves mostly ridiculous amounts of listening material rather than reading) but also my "philosophy" of giving language learning advice. I know that the massive CI method works for ME specifically (and since my diagnosis and hyperfocus deep-dive into everything ADHD I also know WHY it works for me) but as much as I'm a fan of "the Krashen way" I've always been of the opinion that each individual language learner needs to go on a journey of self discovery in the sense that they need to figure out what works best for THEM specifically. And I've never fallen into this weirdo camp of people who say "throw all other methods out the window! this is the only way!" because this intuitively just always felt wrong. I know from experience as well as fellow language learning enthusiast anecdotal evidence that different things work better or worse for different people AS WELL as different languages, and, like you said in a different video, different language learning goals (comprehension? conversation? academics?). For example: Firstly, I'm more interested in consuming media in the various languages I study and speaking is secondary for me, so long "silent periods" as it's often called in the CI community, where you mainly work on your comprehension and not on production, is perfectly fine with me. Hence no speaking or writing practice. Secondly, my approach will change depending on the language. In my Korean journey so far I looked at a LOT of grammar because A. I find it fascinating and B. it's so far removed from any of the languages I already speak that it was necessary to get to grips with at least basic grammar first in order to understand even the most basic input. It took me 2 years to get to lower intermediate (ish) comprehension in Korean, and I honestly don't think it's possible to "Acquire" Korean without at least looking up the grammar occasionally, and helping your brain figure out those patterns. I then burned out on Koran a bit and took a break to start Spanish. For Spanish, I never once looked at a grammar explanation (and likely never will) because I'm already fluent in French, so I went straight into massive amounts of input (lots of it translated and dubbed btw so that works JUST fine. I know there's lots of weirdo "purists" out there in the Input learning community who are super against anything translated, which is just stupid in my opinion but whatever) and I reached incredibly high comprehension in only 5 months with literally no other studying of any kind. Only Audiobooks, UA-cam videos and occasional reading or reading along to the audiobook. I still can't speak much (duh) but I can understand native speed youtube videos in a lot of Spanish varieties with no problems, pretty much any audiobook (as long as it's not highly academic, scientific, or otherwise specialised), reading is no problem either and short written conversation (aka twitter) is also no issue. (I'm quite honestly still a little freaked out by how fast that happened. haha) I took a single italkie conversational lesson just to test the "output comes on its own with enough input" theory and though I have an atrocious Spanish and thick accent, I (and my teacher after I told her this was my first time EVER speaking) were surprised by how much (though broken) Spanish I could produce, and how much very specific vocabulary I used, without ever having practiced output AT ALL. So there's sooome truth to this "output will come automatically" thing, but I still think you gotta practice if you want to speak well. (duh) I still believe (with zero scientific evidence but plenty of anecdotal, admittedly potentially biased, evidence) that no matter the "methods" you end up using, massive exposure to/consumption of your TL is a must. It just makes sense, no matter how you look at it. exposing yourself to lots of the language whether that's reading or listening, is natural spaced repetition essentially. I mean even from my (admittedly limited and amateurish) knowledge of cognitive neuroscience it makes sense, given that our brains are basically incredibly sophisticated pattern recognition machines. You gotta give it enough data to work with. Anywho sorry this got a bit rambly and thought-vomity but HO BOI was that interesting! Lots of food for thought :D And you made me see a new connection I never realised! yay! Today I learned. :) Thank you for that. And thank you also, just in general for all your amazing content, I come back every now and then to binge a few videos, especially now that I've also fallen head first into the endless rabbit hole that is Linguistics in general. (What an ADHD thing to do to go from language learning hobbyist to deciding to start a bachelor in Linguistics at the age of 36, with a full time job in a completely unrelated field and no plans whatsoever of making a career switch.... ) Toodles!
Yes, please! Let me know when you have produced the video on natural order of language learning. As a former German and Latin teacher, I have puzzled over the best order for introducing structures of the target language.
First time hearing about language acquisition and ADHDers... I have Inattentive-type ADHD and have acquired levels of fluency in both French and Welsh, mostly from exposure and not so much from structured learning. Thank you for introducing me to this theory, Imma bout ta head down a rabbit hole for sure
Really enjoyed the video! I put the theory into practice in my French and Swedish studies and it was helpful in the sense that it convinced me it was a viable strategy so once I had the permission, so to speak, off to the races it was. I never jibed well with the textbook approach of getting quickly up to speed with tourism interactions. I've always preferred understanding people to bugging them, not out of shyness, just the way I vibe, so getting toast point I could read a novel and listen to radio was hugely motivating. My productive skills stagnated though. The upside of comprehensible input is that a lot of real language isn't in textbooks but through volume you will encounter it. Secondly, you can choose your own content, so you aren't as much at the mercy of the textbook authors. There are methods to strategically to increase comprehensibility, like constrained reading. I read Tove Jansson's Moomin books for Swedish - lots of repetition as it was a single author and single fictional universe - and world politics for French as I was already familiar with the topic and could guess easily. Also it turns out that a lot of vocabulary for international relationships is derived from French. If I did it again I would spend most of my time with comprehensible input, but also go through a textbook at a relaxed pace. Forcing yourself to do recall practice and writing and speaking is pretty neat. Drilling seems to be pretty effective for numbers that don't come up that much in general text.
Also: I like how comprehensible input provides a way to do spaced repetition practice without the administrative burden of Anki and such. Granted it's only one way, but lower frequency words aren't as important to drill both ways.
This makes so much sense actually 🎉 I stumbled upon CI theory last year and my mind was blown 😳 because that theory explained how I learned or at least progressed a lot in languages that I had to learn so far. Few months ago i started teaching and also seeing that it doesn't work for most of my students at all 😅 some just love grammar and thrive on it 😂 But my search this time was "adhd and language learning". My brain only loves grammar and that kind of stuff when i am highly motivated and/or there is something or someone that keeps boosting my dopamine 😅 Thank you for this video. It did unswer my question
I just stumbled onto your video and found it very interesting. I don´t hang out with PhD´s, so I have to admit that a lot went over my head. Something about the history of language learning as a means for survival always comes to my mind. When I think about Europeans´ arrival in the Americas, indigenous peoples were forced to learn new languages. Africans were brought here and forced to learn new languages. These peoples were forbidden to use their native languages, and in the case of Africans and the Afro-descended, teaching literacy was forbidden. Throughout history people have needed to communicate in foreign languages because of conquering armies and peaceful trade, as well. But near-universal literacy is a new phenomenon. Nonetheless, people figured it out because survival depended on it. I really appreciated, though, your discussion of the other four components of Krashen's theory, and I can reflect on how I´ve experienced them in my own language acquisition/learning journey. Thanks
I think lot's of comprehensible input is a huge part of how most of us who grow up here in Norway and other places where we generally use subtitles for all foreign movies pick up English. I do vaguely remember a time before I knew English in kindergarten; and I do remember getting taught English in school at age 8 (or something) and finding it really boring (I have ADHD, btw) but also very easy. But I had probably started acquiring English through watching subtitled English that my parents were watching. And after all, quite a lot of basic grammar and vocabulary is closely related and similar to Norwegian; so even without any preparation any Norwegian speaker will understand a bit of English through pure similarity. And once you can read subtitles you understand what is being said through the subtitles, and after a while you stop reading everything and only look at the subtitles when it's a new word (or today; mostly when the audio is terribly mixed and the actors are mumbling as apparently is the fashion these days).
I think this was an important video I’ve been learning German for about a year now and I’ve used a combination of Duolingo and UA-cam for my learning (ik Duolingo but it helps me stay on track) And I would absolutely love to hear more about Chomsky’s work in Linguistics and other prominent figures in linguistics and research about it Because it’s pretty important
I find Duolingo to be a great supplemental tool to conveniently get in a few quick exercises each day plus best of all it’s free. All the other mobile apps cost money and don’t really do much of a better job than Duolingo I have found. The only ones worth paying for are the ones that give you a 1 on 1 live chat with a native speaker or a professional language tutor.
It seems like some people have some slightly different ideas of what comprehensible input is judging from some of the replies I skimmed here. Anyhow, no need to get into that too much... If I describe it instead as input activities where I am actively engaged with target-language material (audio or written) or spoken language with other people, then I would say that spending a lot of time on practicing understanding that is crucial for me. Will I do other things, too? Yes? Do I think that speaking helps? Yes. But if I don't put in a lot of time trying to understand material or spoken language as often as possible, I'll stagnate. A lot of Krashen's theories seem to me still as quite solid but there were always details here and there that bothered me. For example, I never liked the wording of learning versus acquiring. I think acquiring language is learning. Would we say, "No. You didn't learn to ride a bike. That isn't conscious recall of rules. You acquired it." It always seemed like unnecessary hairsplitting. I was most interested in your video when you started discussing neurological differences with regards to this topic. I don't have an opinion on this at the moment but this was an intriguing topic. I am late-diagnosed ADHD. Although ADHD some say is on a spectrum of it's own, and there can be a great deal of difference in how this condition/neurological difference can manifest from one individual to another, some of your ideas did ring true for me. I was always interested in language learning but struggled in school as taught. I can enjoy discussions about differences between the grammar of different languages, or short bits of 'pop-up' grammar for a language I'm learning, but I simply can't focus on 'typical' grammar exercises. I've been able to use flashcards in short doses, but soon I simply can't stand them anymore. Input activities, that is if...if I can keep them interesting... These are things under my control that I can turn into a daily habit. I love to talk to people when I get a chance, but interesting input is something I can do for its own sake, and it keeps the habit going with minimal organization. You can always do it with fewer things to overcome to get started. And whether it's the most efficient thing or not (even though it seems to be what works for me as a main activity), keeping a habit going like that is so important for me. Still it seems like an interesting idea that maybe... Maybe comprehensible input activities might tend to be even more important for those of us with ADHD...? I have no idea but it's an interesting idea.
"Throw away your grammar books" I don't enjoy memorizing grammatical structures, but consulting a grammar book every once in a while can really clear up confusions and supercharge comprehension.
On my third language, and I know everyone is different, but all I did was pimsleur and clozemaster, and then time spent with native speakers. Literally just those three. No journaling or books or movies or podcasts etc.
@@languagejones6784 I kind of agree with you here, CM was very random at times. It really helped me with the grammar and the explanations of words helped so much in the beginning. Being around a lot of different language speakers has helped too, I know many people don't have access to native speakers of their target languages that are their close friends
Antonio and I argued a lot. I was training him to take over my position of head baker. It was agreed that Spanish was going to be the language of instruction even though I could not speak it. We were surrounded by concrete context, everything completely comprehensible. The entire focus for both of us was the bread, certainly not language. I didn’t care about grammar or word order or being correct. I had to make sure Antonio didn’t screw up. We talked and argued about water temperature and mixing times, about 14:04 . I told him where the “cold” spots were in the oven; to put the Ciabatta in deck #4 because it was the hottest and would get the most spring. In the end we had a great time together and laughed a lot. The point is, if you want to learn a language you must not think about it. It was an honor to acquire Spanish. Antonio was 14:04 my best teacher all because there was little or no affective filter to interfere.
I tend to find myself moving back and forth between wide comprehensible and compelling input, then falling back to studying structure and memorizing more difficult vocabulary, then back to the comprehensible input. I do think the general idea of Krashen's hypotheses are spot on in that they are necessary and sufficient conditions, *but*, I think that on their own they can actually take awhile to set in. Grammar study and vocabulary memorization, along with practice producing output and especially speech, can speed up language acquisition by a lot. And of course, you do have to practice what you want to get better at.
Exactly. And it can depend on the language too---for instance, one of the languages I'm working on is Ancient Greek, and I have to focus on grammar because it's very different from English and not knowing the different grammar means not understanding. With Italian I could move on quickly to listening and reading, but part of that was that the grammar was already very close to English. And also, there's a difference between a dead language that you want to read philosophy or theology in, and a currently-spoken one that you want to have everyday conversations in.
I'd love to see more on Chomsky. This video (on Krashen) is excellent. When I see too many true believers I get skeptical. There are so many ideas here worthy of their own video.
I did read some of his stuff maybe 20 years ago, but probably not in great quantity or with full attention. Basically I've always related this concept to how the acquisition of language, whether within 'learning' or 'studying' or 'teaching' or not, occurs when there's a kind of pure fusion between the meaning and the language (in all senses, lexis, structure, variability thereof, whatever), i.e. that comprehension, or expression of what the speaker comprehends and is directly expressing, has to be happening as directly and fully as possible for it to occur, an within the real-time context of actual language use. A kind of 'distanced' engagement, e.g. translation or analysis or something, is away from that an ineffective, so 'comprehensible input' needs to occur at some point for the language to be acquired to then again be directly comprehended next time and also to be there directly connected with meaning to arise in speech or writing when expressing oneself. That doesn't mean that only listening/reading comprehesible input is the way to develop all areas of language use (particularly it's not going to spontaneously create good speaking skills), nor does it mean that some other engagement on the path to that comprehension is invalidated. It does mean though, that the quicker you can get to the point of something being quickly and as directly comprehended then the more efficiently you can get to that acquisition. If a gradual process of graded input is available, that's the best way, but if it's not so available or smooth, then looking stuff up, translation, reading grammar explanations, etc., is a valid part of that path. The key thing is that you return as much as possible to the situation of a direct evocation of the actual meaning from the actual real use of the language. That's the point of 'acquistion' which isn't just knowledge or even understanding. And the claim never was that this would give perfect grammar on its own, or, again, that it would learn to spontaneous correct speech without moving onto a period of serious trial and error with that skill too. But the direct language-meaning process had to 'acquire' the language first. It's kind of obvious, but constantly missed. The more 'magical' thinking is the belief that translating and/or explaining meaning will spontaneously lead to language acquisition; it has to happen in a situation of directly deriving meaning from the language, where they are merely two sides of the same coin, happening simulataneously. Speech is then turning that around when that is acquired and practising making the words come out spontaneously in response to the desire to convey the ideas, but it doesn't just happen from the receptive stage of it.
Those are interesting points of view! Btw, there's an 'article' Krashen has published where he talks about the use of first language in the foreign language classroom: International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 2(1): 9. 2006. Contrary to semi-popular opinion, the Comprehension Hypothesis does not forbid the use of the first language in the second language classroom. It does, however, provide guidelines. It predicts that the use of the first language will help second language development if it results in more comprehensible input, and will hurt second language development when it results in less comprehensible input.
I don't know much about languages, so I can only speak from my own experience, but... Rote learning verb conjugations does not seem to make them available to me when I listen or speak, and not available fast enough when I read Listening to them a lot, and then practicing saying them does. Nouns seen to me to be easier to remember from an audio + video context than in any other way. Exceptions to the rules also seem to become part of my language knowledge without even realising that they are exceptions when I learn through input, rather than lists of exceptions. Listening a lot before speaking definitely gave me a feel for when I was saying something natural and thus probably correct. So I can see why people believe in CI even if the evidence for the hypothesis itself isn't strong. It might be that some teaching method is more effective, and the theory is wrong. It might also be the case that if you're learning without a dedicated teacher it's reasonably effective even if the reasoning behind it is bunk.
I would love to hear about competing theories (non-Chomskian theories, in particular) of second-language learning. Is there any reliable evidence and if yes, what does it actually say?
I’ve felt I should read his theory with all the hype it would be good to know from the horse’s mouth what’s up. My first foreign language I learned was German around age 21. I learned mostly from reading books and listening to a radio channel on the internet. I had a small grammar book I flipped through once in a while and found this helpful but mostly I did immersion. No flash cards although I wrote down words in a notebook for a couple years without studying them at all. I think that experience matched theory well? I didn’t get native speech or pronunciation but I was very happy with my German for someone who never lived in Germany and had no German friends. Are 34 I started learning Japanese. This hodgepodge of reading listening and skimming a grammar book didn’t work. I had to take formal classes. I used tons of flash cards and Anki. After six years or so I think I was ok at speaking. It took a lot of awkward conversations to get there and moving to Japan. I have no idea how his theories applied to my Japanese learning experience.
The US state department trains diplomats for 900 hours in german but 2200 hours in japanese so if anything it would be surprising if you experienced any other outcomes. Japanese is just very difficult for english speakers
@@bobboberson8297 It used to be 750 hours, I wonder why German got "promoted". I'm also surprised that Romanian and Portuguese are apparently easier than Spanish: www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ At any rate, as a German teacher and Japanese learner, I can confirm that learning Japanese (including reading and writing) takes *much* longer.
My experience with language learning has nothing to do with comprehensible jnput. When youtube teachers start down that road I change the channel because I know I am about to be bored with very unchallenging input. I have some exposure to three languages besides my native language but I only consider myself fluent in one. That said I always feel the need to know how a language works and that requires some knowledge of grammar and vocabulary as well as exposure to the target language. If I stumble upon a new word I want to know its several meanings as well as how to spell it, write it and speak it. I like reading difficult books even if that means I have to read and reread some paragraphs. Sometimes I read pages I don’t really understand before the story coalesces and when that happens I skim back over what was opaque. I am extremely dubious about self- proclaimed polyglots. One that galls me the most claims to be fluent in 20 languages. Yet he has said he doesn’t learn grammar and has never learned to write in any language other than his own. That’s not fluency. It’s more like a trick. As Dr Johnson said upon watching a dancing bear “ the wonder is not that he does it well but that he does it at all.”
I have a master's degree in applied linguistics and am about to start a PhD in linguistics, and if I had a nickel for every time random UA-cam commenters repeated anecdotal beliefs about language learning, I'd be Jeff bezos
Super interesting, as I'm trying to figure out why I've never been able to learn a foreign language even after living in a target language country for 23 years. Interestingly, I moved when i had just turned 26. I also got diagnosed with ADD last week, so that might have something to do with it. 😅
I’ve never met a single person who spoke a language well without having spent an inordinate amount of time reading/listening to that language. On the other hand I’ve met tons of people who had bachelor’s and master’s in X languages and could barely speak them.
In the early 2000s, I had a roommate who studied English. He sometimes came to me with some random word of Greek or Latin origin and asked me what I thought it meant. And frequently enough it was some random word I had learnt from reading Harry Potter in English.
So... At least anecdotally that seems true.
I haven't met many people with a bachelor's or master's but I have had roughly 150 classmates at different schools. English (as a foreign language) is a mandatory subject for about 8 years (varies depending on school type). I could probably count the people who achieved a good level of English on one hand. Each and every one of them had contact with the language outside of school. Some had been abroad for a student exchange, some would travel a lot, and some would simply watch TV/read etc.
When I was growing up, we had a pretty crappy internet connection, so I didn't have access to a lot of English media. I would simply rewatch a couple of DVDs over and over, and while that certainly helped - I distinctly remember seeing a "new" word on the vocab list which I had already subconsciously learned through input - a couple films can only take you so far. But when we finally got a decent internet connection (must've been 5 years into learning English at school), my English skyrocketed because I was no longer limited by which DVDs I had at home
true enough but that doesn't mean studying grammar is useless. For me at least it really fast-tracks the process of acquisition. I think input is necessary for learning but, at least for some of us, not good on its own
Sure bro, I'm in Uni and what u said is almost definitely bullshit, if u have any evidence that isn't anecdotal, i will definitely concede.
😨@@KBN97848
Comprehensible input -> Me -> Inconprehensible output
I definitely debated an "incomprehensible output" joke when writing the script lol
@@languagejones6784 I would have laughed!
My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory.
I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it.
After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish.
So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue.
Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands.
One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH.
I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it.
Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did.
So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish.
Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!
@@JohnnyLynnLeeVery interesting!
Lol
Now into my fifth decade of language learning, and currently starting a new language, I'll put my money on A + B + C + D, and not A or B or C or D alone. In other words, combining Comprehensible Input with Structured Analysis of Grammar, combined with Recall Speaking and Translating practice like Pimsleur, combined with working one-on-one with a tutor like on iTalki, is way better than any single method alone. Have fun, everyone!
100% agree with you. Are textbooks boring? Yeah, they’re not the most fun. However, 30 minutes to an hour a day + tons of comprehensible input and seeing a tutor will go miles. It’ll also help someone learn a language grammatically correct, which I believe is the main issue with a pure comprehensible input only approach. Grammar is annoying but it has to be drilled in 😭
It depends on your objective. For me the point is not simply to master a language. I can always consciously do that if necessary. It’s to learn a language with minimal effort because oftentimes I don’t have to learn a language and putting too much effort will just make it not worth it. If your objective is just to be effective in learning a language I think your summary is perfect
@@ariellev9185 even in our native languages we only started to learn our OWN grammar once we spoke it fluently.
But why?
People love the idea of universal theories like "everyone learns in such and such way" or "X is the best method of doing Y". In my experience once you get out of the realm of basic physics the world isn't that black and white. I personally find comprehensible input to be a great method for language learning but I also find intensive study to be boring and demotivating in pretty much everything I've studied, not just languages. But I find that short bursts of grammar exploration or looking up specific words and phrases that I haven't deciphered yet from input greatly helps the process of "acquisition" (learning). From exposure to how friends learn things differently than me (in school or otherwise) I am pretty comfortable in thinking that not everyone learns/acquires/studies in exactly the same way. There may be universal principles that apply to everyone but in different degrees depending on one's personality and other experiences.
Etymologies do it for me. A lot of the time, if I look up the etymology, the story of the word helps me remember both the word itself and what it means now.
@@languagejones6784 this is one of my favorite things to do, not only for language learning but just in general. Some of my earliest language related memories were of browsing wiktionary on the family computer looking up any word or phrase that came to mind. etymology and cognates were also a huge focus of my latin classes in middle school (thinking back thats probably how the district justified keeping latin in a non-catholic school lol)
This definitely also applies to Physics, most people don’t realize how messy physics is. Any attempt at a truly comprehensive grand unified theory has been frustrated
@@McRaylie Agreed. When I wrote "basic physics" I just meant things as basic as conservation of energy or momentum, which appear to be pretty much absolute as far as I know. Once you get past that the world is complicated!
@@keithkannenberg7414 the funny thing is conservation of energy is not an absolute law of the universe and is only true most of the time. The CMB and dark energy explicitly violate it
Comprehensible input worked very well for me for English. I went from 'can roughly communicate on basic topics
to 'it often comes easier than my native language'. That was after maybe eight years of school second language English. And I wasn't particularly bad among my classmates. All that was really needed were some books I wanted to read, a kindle's inbuilt dictionary and lots of reading. But I do have adhd and am very bad at remembering disconnected facts. I am miserable at geography.
So after 8 years of studying English... adding comprehensible input brought you to fluency. But why do you assume those eight years of learning in school gave you nothing?
@@alexwitoslawski4557 I'm not saying they gave me nothing. I'm saying that a few years of comprehensive input got me a lot farther than eight years of classroom and that I don't think I would have ever gotten to fluency with just the classroom.
Well, you can estimate the number of hours you studied English in school and compare it to the amount of CCI you got later on.
For example:
-640 hours in school (2 lessons a week, 40 weeks per year, 8 years total)
-2,700 hours of input (90 minutes per day on average, 5 years total)
(3 hours a day would get you to 5.4k hours)
In that case, classroom learning would have accounted for 20% of your study hours, and classroom learning made it easier to find compelling comprehensible input.
Studying + input is the best method imho - not sure what the "right balance" is though, and it probably mostly depends on the learner's preferences, strengths and weaknesses.
I'd love to see that video on first language acquisition! Edit: Also the one(s) on universal grammar!
I'll definitely be making both soon!
As far as facts about first language acquisition, it's what worked for everyone (with or without ADHD). Anecdotally as adults, it worked for me and a number of friends as well (using a resource called Dreaming Spanish for a few years). I'm able to watch, listen to and read native material and converse normally with native speakers and I achieved this without studying,
As far as first language, a lot is going on, like brain development etc, that cannot be reproduced for adult learners. So, what worked for the first language, may not be what works best for an adult working on their 2nd, 3rd...
@@JS-ir7wh that’s fine except it has worked for me and many others as adults.
What is your native language, if you don’t mind me asking?
@@reggietkatter Just because it worked, doesn't mean it is best. Just because it worked for some, doesn't mean it is best for all.
@@JS-ir7wh sure. As an argument without empirical content your claims are fine. It’s really important to define “best” here (it might even differ for different people). I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to learn a language without exposure to it though, a lot of it being better than a little. Especially if one is interested in understanding the language very well (quickly and accurately). I don’t think anything but input really works for that. I also think that most people would prefer to learn a language without studying as well. Do you have any actual reason to believe this isn’t the best way?
As an autistic/ADHD linguistics student, I would love if you could talk more about how neurodivergence relates to linguistics
Yes, I’m interested in hearing more about this too.
Although I’ve never been tested for either, neurodiversity runs in my family and I totally geeked out on learning Latin and Ancient Greek grammar in college and then coding languages when joining the work force.
Learning how things tick, seems to make things stick (for me and probably [many] others).
I think what he talked about ADHD is pure BS. I'm capable and I DO structured lerning for a lot of things but that DEOS NOT WORK WELL for language. Period.
My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory.
I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it.
After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish.
So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue.
Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands.
One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH.
I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it.
Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did.
So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish.
Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!
Now, why I say it's different for languages? Because language IS NOT a SUBJECT (only for linguists, so the author here is biased). Language is a MEAN, not and END. I was NOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn ROMAN HISTORY. English was just this annoying little thing in the way. I was NOOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn MUAY THAI. English was just in the way. However, I WAS trig to learn SPANISH. And I had NO INTEREST in Spanish whatsoever. so I've failed. So when I've found abut Krashen and Matt VS Japan and the AJATT i just applied the same principle. I was NOT trying to learn JAPANESE (the closest of it was doing ANKI, but also as a MEAN, not an end). I was trying to understand anime in Japanese. Period. And IT WOKS. It's like the difference between a physicist and a SOCCER PLAYER. A physicist can explain how in hell if the player kicks in one way the ball makes a curve. But he cannot do that! That's the linguist in many cases. A soccer player have NO IDEA what are the physics about him kicking a curved ball. But he can do it EVERY FREAKING TIME he wants to. The so called "academic way" is being a physicist. You DON'T NEED it to speak the language. It's cool, may help. But an illiterate dude can learn how to kick th ball that way without understanding the physics behind it.
@@JohnnyLynnLee understanding physics can help, brother.
Look up the skateboarder Rodney Mullen. He is a huge innovator and applied his interests in physics to do innovative things.
As for studying a language as a subject linguistically, I found that understanding the nuts and bolts of Latin grammar has allowed me to accurately “acquire” Latin in an efficient way. That is, I believe that having studied Latin as a “subject” in the way a physicist does, I was able to extensively read easy material with accuracy instead of potentially creating misunderstanding of how Latin grammar works if I was to just read a bunch of easy material without having a theoretical overview.
Of course, we all operate differently.
@@jrcenina85 And that's to learn at HOME. There are plenty of uneducated people that go to another country to work and get it. "But there's a lot that don't." Yeah, they liv in ghettos. You need to work to survive, you need to understand you coworkers and boss, you need to make friends to be invited to drink after work, you need to go to that kind of bay were you pay "lady drinks" to get some "relaxation". You find that girl in that shop that seems interested in you and you want to call her on a date. You want ALL of those things. You NEED it in that situation, to function as a human being. So you'll get the language. again as a TOOL to get THOSE THNGS, not the language itself. The language itself is basically MEANINGLESS to your primal brain. ?What that language GIVES you is the key.
As someone who got diagnosed autistic last year and has struggled to find a method of language learning to works for me this video EXPLAINS SO MUCH. Would love to hear more about neurodivergence and language development. My own was pretty irregular, which my parents initially chalked up to me also being bilingual. I apparently started speaking late, skipped over the single words phase and went straight to 3 word sentences. Then later when it came to learning to read I was put in remedial classes for half a year. Somehow I came out of those with an appetite for reading that had me reading above my grade level fairly quickly. I still read faster than most people I know.
Yeah. Learning is weird for me (as a neurodivergent too). I learned to walk and talk a year later than most kids are supposed to, but I was speaking with full sentences right out the gate. I don't have any memories of being less than 5, but I remember having a lot of thoughts running around in my head. And those thoughts were always composed of a bunch of complex sentences with lots of ideas linking between them. I also remember having a hard time with math until 4th grade, and then I suddenly leveled up to like 8th grade math. Turns out math is really simple and I just hadn't figured out how to memorize the addition and multiplication table. I was probably just overthinking the task of memorization. It's not like they teach you how to memorize in school. They literally don't, and hardly even can anyways.
Also interested in learning language as a neurodivergent!
I usually refer to myself as way too analytical therefore bad at aquiring languages because they are more unconscious/feely. English is the only second language I could get into after years of immersion (without the goal of gettting better).
I (not exactly neurotypical either) like studying grammar as it's nicely defined, but my theory about grammar is that it helps make input more comprehensible, it doesn't directly convert to fluency. Same with learning isolated words in Anki, doesn't tell me how to use them, but I still recognise them later.
So at the end I'm again at the comprehensible input hypothesis.
@@Ph34rNoB33r The video is about the idea that comprehensible input is all you need to learn a language. An idea that you'll find all over language UA-cam. It's this input only method that I tried several times and never worked for me. Despite many people swearing by it.
Ofc you need input and output to fully acquire a language. You can't just read grammar guides and be fluent. For me though grammar guides AND input are both needed to learn.
What's fascinating to me is that the Krashen may have ADHD and the comprehensible input method might work best for people with that kind of neurospiciness. The reasons Jones mentions for why the comprehensible input method would appeal to people with ADHD is exactly why my autistic ass doesn't like the method. The lack of structure and analysis just makes me unhappy.
@@C4s4ndr4 I'm not convinced you NEED both, at least if you know languages with similar grammar. But I think grammar study can greatly help with making input more comprehensible. Kind of a "soft" requirement improving efficiency of the input for learning.
Well, and it helps with grammar tests, but those are rare outside school. I tend to performs way better on this kind of standardised test, you can simply watch for keywords and ignore most of the other words.
I have taught Spanish starting 40 years ago....so right when Krashen´s theories were really being put forth for secondary teachers. I have found that comprehensible input is indeed better for that casual learner who wants to "get by". Phrases come out much more naturally using this method so kids can speak and express themselves. However, that grammar component cannot be totally ignored! Interesting that I would often get kids in class whose parents/relatives spoke Spanish at home. Some were super fluent, some less so. Most of them would remark at some point in the year "Now I finally understand what my uncles and aunts are saying at Christmas parties". Or "Wow, now I understand why people say (insert phrase)....I never knew what it meant!" They didn't get that without the grammar component. So somehow, the brain needs the 2 learning methods, it seems.
5:40 Would be very interested to see a video on errors children make when acquiring languages and how they compare across languages.
My son is two and only speaks Chinese. I’ve noticed that he speaks better than most kids his age and almost never makes mistakes. He was mixing up “you” and “I” for a while, but that’s it, and that’s not really even language related. I wonder if this is common for Chinese speakers, since the grammar is much simpler than European languages.
@@artugert Chinese doesn't have inflections, it's pretty straightforward in most cases and you add particles to indicate any grammatical change. Adults struggle mostly with pronunciation, not the grammar in Chinese, so that might be the reason why your son does not make too many mistakes in Chinese.
this is on wikipedia! they make mistakes that don’t work in either language!
@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, I forgot to mention the pronunciation is also much simpler than in English. At two years old, he can already pronounce every possible sound in the language! That can't be said for any two year old speaking English.
@@artugert Nor barely for any adult learning Chinese either, lol, those sounds are hard for us English speakers...
This was the best video I've ever seen on this topic, thank you for clearing out a lot of what I've been reading online! This accurately described the work of Krashen and his theory, and helped me understand what exactly it's all about.
I would 100% want a video on Universal Grammar, I'm dying to know what it really is! I'm interested in studying Linguistics, and I've seen the concept of Universal Grammar thrown around a lot, as well as... controversies about it? I'd really like to find out what is and isn't known/(un)disputed in the realm of UG, and understand which scientific papers are basing themselves on what, etc.
Again, many thanks for the video, it's great to hear an academic linguist discussing these topics in-depth!
+1 for any kind of coverage of UG - it's a massive topic and I feel so intimidated by its complexity that I've never dabbled. Make it a series!
It's interesting that when I went to read what Krashen actually wrote, he always seems to point towards that comprehensible input is a big *factor* in acquiring language and that instruction or "learning" almost always helps it along. In the examples he includes it's seems that the learners mindset plays a large role as well, ie. letting yourself make mistakes but not being too loosey goosey with the grammar either. At least that's what I took away from it!
Regardless of the validity of his hypotheses the fact that he has inspired a massive research effort into proving him alone makes him an amazingly important figure in language instruction.
Yes, it seems Krashen's work is actually a guide for teachers to help student acquire the language (with responsible guidance), not a guide for students to go off on their own.
Oh boy this is gonna be a spicy one
My channel should be sponsored by Tums at this point.
it wasn't just spicy, it was NEUROSPICY
Not really. Almost everyone who follows this channel are grammar nerds who agree with Language Jones.
This is eye-opening to me. As someone with AD(H)D, I have always found the input-focused method frustrating because as soon as I find something I don't understand, I become demotivated and go and do something else.
Give me a big ol' grammar book any day.
I have similar approach. I am very analytical person, I like to take things apart (not physically, but rather in an abstract way) and figure out stuff. I like grammar because it is given, it doesn't change so quickly and it allows me to establish the way people of another language perceive time and world, subjects etc. Also, I love lists, thus I create lists of words and learn them. It's nice to mark that list with red ticks for "I know this word" :D
Grammar is a lot less useful than people generally think. Grammar is about making the communication more efficient and less taxing on the brain, it's ultimately using the wrong words that are a much bigger issue and that's where the comprehensible input is arguably at it's best. People don't generally decide that they want to speak with a vocabulary of 20-25k and then just go through the dictionary. That corpus will be built up over the course of a couple decades.
Personally, I've been a fan of what I like to refer to as comprehensible outputs ever since I live in China. At the time, the resources for reading were pretty limited, we didn't have Pleco that could do OCR or accept our finger tracings of the character to tell us what it meant, for those of us at a very low level, the only confirmation of whether what we said was right or not was what we got in return. I remember asking for what I thought was a receipt, only to learn that a fapiao is a formal receipt related to taxes, not a normal receipt to show what you paid. Two separate things and I figured that out after just one mistake.
But you are supposed to understand it. It is called comprehensible input.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Exactly. There's no better feeling than learning a verb conjugation and instantly being able to apply that to anything. Much more satisfying in my eyes than listening to hours and hours of material in a hope that eventually you'll correctly guess the grammar rules.
@@justcomments335 Indeed! Also, it's easier to recognise the pattern you already know than recognising the pattern that you see at random intervals and only after a long exposure the brain goes: aaah... It's a waste of time, in my opinion, especially with languages with complicated grammar structures.
When I talk about grammar avoidance I always specifically mean grammar exercises. Finnish is my Target Language and I learn its grammar by first seeing the breakdown of a new grammar topic, and then reading many example sentenced where the grammar part is the only new thing to me. Combine that with spaced repitition and general reading & listening, and I will naturally run into the same grammar structure many times so that I acquire it. Works really well for B1 level and onwards. I also do something similar for new vocabulary
Point being, comprehensible input was a complete game changer for me, but it would never work as efficiently if I didn't combine it with grammar study and spaced repitition.
Thank you for saying what I was thinking. I am always dubious about people who boast about never learning grammar. I think they just define grammar in a different way. I've heard people boast that they've never read a grammar book in their lives. To me that's as daft as saying you've never read a dictionary. These things are reference books not page turning novels. I have also learned Finnish and just as you said I found I needed examples and lots of chances to practise. Unlike you, however, I quite enjoy grammar exercises. I started out by ploughing through the FSI Finnish course and its crazy amount of exercises but it's just a hobby to me and not for everyone. But as a foreign learner whose first language is English I don't know how anyone could learn Finnish without specifically studying the endings. If the average noun and adjective has about 30 possible forms, including plurals, a foreign learner is unlikely to just pick those up by reading a lot. Especially, when the actual grammar explanation makes what seems impossible actually fairly logical.
@@barrysteven5964 Thanks for your reply. I should've also added to my reply that I do plan on doing grammar exercises, or more specifically writing exercises, when I'm happy with my comprehension.
Having put so much attention in listening and reading has really paid off, but at the same time things like compound conjugations will still trip me up if I have to form them myself.
Hi. How do you use spaced repetition combined with grammar? I mean what is your process for learn grammar and How do you apply spaced repetition in your learning. I have probably a B1 in comprehension but when it comes to grammar I have troubles learning it. (Sorry if a don't redact well the message, I still have difficulties with writing)
@@miguelangellunapalacios1804 I have a textbook that has a story of a couple of pages and a new grammar topic per chapter. The new grammar is found in the story. So I study the grammar breakdown, seeing how it conveys the meaning, then go back and forth between the story and the grammar a few times. After that I just occasionally come back to the story and that way the grammar is refreshed in my mind. The goal here is comprehension, not replication.
Spaced repetition is often seen as "trying to recall a word" but it works with any kind of material that you can study.
I just stumbled onto your video and I was enthralled by it. I am thoroughly bilingual and have taught Spanish for years. What has troubled me has not been Krashen's hypotheses per se, but the wholesale, quasi-religious fervor with which people have latched onto them to the TOTAL exclusion of everything else. Anything other than CI is considered a demotivating waste of time. When I did my Ph.D. in language acquisition, I discovered that my uneasiness was well-founded. Like with most fads in education, it's not the theoretical framework that's the problem, it's the extremist way that novices run wild with it. The thoughts on ADHD/autism were fascinating as well, and I plan to research that more. Thank you for a fascinating new avenue of thought.
Yo dude! First of all, I just wanted to say thank you for your content. From one person who loves languages to another, I love the way you make academic research, practical and accessible to those of us who for whatever reason didn’t want to get a linguistics degree, let alone a PhD. You have no idea how much of a difference that’s made.
Second, as someone with ADHD, I can say that implementing some of Krashen’s ideas has helped a ton. I’ve been able to make my language learning a lot more efficient, and managed to learn both American Sign Language, and Spanish with a combo approach. For me, specifically, though, I’ve found that doing both explicit, grammar study and massive amounts of input tends to really speed things up because it allows me to Internalize my understanding of a certain structure in a language much much faster. I usually do this by looking up specific structures or words that I hear as I go along.
I have a feeling your “reasons“ are kind of similar to mine. Lol. Again, thank you so much for all the work you do in making this stuff a lot more accessible.
Could you maybe clarify on your learning process with the asl and Spanish because I’m trying to learn both as well and would love something to base my study off of
I've been using comprehensible input for Spanish for four months (I started from scratch, I'm almost at 400 hours) along with Pimsleur and some unstructured grammar study. It's been so amazing and I can understand movies and full conversations and I can spend hours a day in it without feeling tired. Though I've had a few convos, since I love socializing, and I'm very bad at output so far. So thanks for giving me a more detailed rundown of the hypothesis I've been putting blind faith in lol.
What was the first month like for you? I'm just starting on my Spanish comprehensible input journey. I got some Story Learning books for it and have been watching Dreaming in Spanish and Spanish with Alma videos. I also have the beginner Olly Richards course for story learning. I'm not seeing a ton of results yet and that's frustrating but it's strange because my material all gives me something I can understand through context but the words are still all so unfamiliar.
@@dezmodium That seems like a good list of content. In the first month, I kind of jumped around material to find what worked best but my overall routine was Dreaming Spanish, Telenovelas with subtitles (1 per day), and then the Anki most common word deck. I had the same experience where I could understand very little but could follow things pretty well. I think it provided a good foundation and comfort with the sounds. Acquiring vocab has gotten a lot easier in the past two months.
@@blankb.2277 Thank you, that's very encouraging. 4 months and you understand a good bit of the words in normal media? That's fantastic! I'm sure in 4 more months you'll be speaking so much better. Thanks for the reply, I'll trust the process.
@@dezmodium For me, doing comprehensible input practice in combination with Rocket Spanish was the key to faster progress. I was able to "learn" the structure of the language (in still an input-heavy way since they do audio lessons) while also getting plenty of input from Dreaming Spanish. I think you could probably do just Rocket Spanish 1 and 2, and not worry about 3, and be just fine. After about two months I started speaking practice with italki and Tandem (free), and that definitely helped as well.
I have recently started learning Spanish and when I started looking for ideas on UA-cam on how to learn it I noticed a lot of these Polyglots pushing “just do input” or get this app with my discount code in the description and they would proceed to crap talk other language learning apps. I have since been experimenting and have found getting input is fairly useful especially around getting used to hearing how the native speakers speak but it’s only one part of overall language learning process.
I find I also need to practice speaking, do exercises and study grammar etc. I had a real aha moment about my suspicion of doing input only when someone in the comments section of a Dreaming Spanish video said they had done 600 hours of input only but then proceeded to ask basic grammar questions why some words end in an A vs an O and what’s difference between a word ending in an S vs not ending in an S.
if someone seriously does not know the a and o and the s and not s after 600 hours, im not sure what to say. Regardless, its obvious that only input by itself is not smart. I think input is very important, and that most stuff will be learnt with input, but you should also learn the grammar but not intensely, and learn the vocab too but not intensely. Input will give real results.
looking forward to your upcoming videos.
Would love to hear more about Chomsky's grammar from a linguistic perspective. I'm a computer scientist and we studied them as far as they helped us create compilers. So we always stopped at regular grammars.
I would love to hear more about Noam Chomsky's theories!
This makes so much sense! Comprehensible input alone has never gotten me very far. The academic approach is much more satisfying to me. I have many other characteristics consistent with autism, so that makes sense. Don't worry, this is not "Jones says I should study grammar because I'm autistic". This is, "someone who studies language suggested that when choosing a language-learning method it might be helpful to consider neuro-divergence, so I'm going to do what seems to work for me even if 'experts' say it's wrong." :)
My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory.
I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it.
After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish.
So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue.
Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands.
One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH.
I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it.
Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did.
So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish.
Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!
language IS NOT a SUBJECT (only for linguists, so the author here is biased). Language is a MEAN, not and END. I was NOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn ROMAN HISTORY. English was just this annoying little thing in the way. I was NOOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn MUAY THAI. English was just in the way. However, I WAS trig to learn SPANISH. And I had NO INTEREST in Spanish whatsoever. so I've failed. So when I've found abut Krashen and Matt VS Japan and the AJATT i just applied the same principle. I was NOT trying to learn JAPANESE (the closest of it was doing ANKI, but also as a MEAN, not an end). I was trying to understand anime in Japanese. Period. And IT WOKS. It's like the difference between a physicist and a SOCCER PLAYER. A physicist can explain how in hell if the player kicks in one way the ball makes a curve. But he cannot do that! That's the linguist in many cases. A soccer player have NO IDEA what are the physics about him kicking a curved ball. But he can do it EVERY FREAKING TIME he wants to. The so called "academic way" is being a physicist. You DON'T NEED it to speak the language. It's cool, may help. But an illiterate dude can learn how to kick th ball that way without understanding the physics behind it.
@@JohnnyLynnLee Tried it - doesn't work for me.
@@marikothecheetah9342 False. It works for EVRYONE. Because we are HUMANS and that's a basic function of a HUMAN BEING. We are not that different when it comes to basic BIOLOGIVAL needs. You did it wrong. did you use ANKI for instance? Because the hardest part of this of "comprehensible input" that people don't talk as much is the word COMPREHENSIBLE. It's hard to find content that is comprehensible. and even harder to find content that is comprehensible and ENGAGING. Gr5aded readers are BORIG as hell, for instance. So, the challenge is really to make content that is cool, made BY NATIVES FOR NATIVES comprehensible! ANKI, Sentence mining, intensive reading and extensive reading. Many things there to use. And LOTS of pausing and dictionary. Using Lingq and importing content there looking up words, each and every if needed. A good E-reader with pop-up dictionary, or in your PC with copy and paste. But the GOALS is always, as Krashen states, understand WHAT'S being said, no HOW they are saying it. The "how" you acquire in a unconscious manner, mainly. If yo need some explanation, do it when you i find it I TE CONTENT. Then look it up. And move ahead.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Because to simplify it there's only one thing you should really care about: WORD COUNTING and mileage. You need to come across around 30 thousand words and come across them over and over again, understanding them. No secret1 but easier said than done. Then you can understand the language. ad if you can understand it, you can use it. The goal is UNDESTANDING, not speaking. That's a rsult.
Oh, I can already tell you that when I'm stressed or overwhelmed, I code switch a lot more. 😁 It's like some ideas are easier to say in English than in my first language?
Interesting video, I was definitely out of the loop on this topic, yours is the most academic linguistics channel I watch. And I have been diagnosed with ADHD recently, and now you got me thinking about the way I learned English versus the way I learned or rather am still learning toki pona.
I guess this is as good a place as any to mention that I decided on a whim to go back to university for one semester and take a bunch of linguistics classes, and finding your videos a couple months ago was probably the final push I needed to convince me this was a passion worth investing into. I started my classes yesterday and I'm excited 😁
Fantastic! I will be watching all of your videos and liking them all. I am not sure if you already made a video about Chomsky's UG, but I would definitely like to watch that. Thanks!
I wonder if UA-camrs also love Krashen bc that is basically the only thing UA-cam can give--comprehensible input--it cannot actually in-real-time tell me when I say something wrong, how I said it wrong, etc., etc. (although UA-camrs can promote tutoring websites, etc. that can provide more). Also, a video on what UA-camrs get wrong about Chomsky would be awesome!!!
There are a ton of UA-cam channels that teach grammar though, and that doesn't mesh with Krashen's hypotheses.
True! Hence, those channels don't usually promote comprehensible input like the other channels@@alexwitoslawski4557
the main problem with comprehensible input is that it's hard to monetize.
@@Alesti5 doesn’t stop people from trying. Like Story Learning, for example
@@languagejones6784 Aah. Story Learning. The Turkish course is the perfect antidote to insomnia.
I've been learning German for over 9 years, probably 5 of those years being semi serious in my pursuit to become better at the language. Memorizing song lyrics has been one of my greatest discoveries towards the advancement of my capabilities. Songs are written generally in the way that people speak. If you're in the car and singing a song that you know every word to, you can easily hear where you pronounce things differently from the artist. This helped my pronunciation so much. In addition to pronunciation help, any word I would learn through memorization of a song stuck in my brain much more than otherwise because of how obsessive I would be with memorizing. Every time I listen to a song I have memorized now, I am reminded of native speaker words/phrases/structures that may have otherwise fallen out of my active recall.
There's a video where Krashen (at a polyglot conference) says that if we find people learning language through skills building, then his theory is in trouble. However, there's another way to provide a counterexample: understand a language but fail to produce it. I'm in that category. This has been my project for nearly four years now. I'm up to at least 1600 hours of input. I can understand and read somewhere between B1 and C1, although it's very difficult to determine the level of comprehension because it varies greatly depending on the content. In cross-talk (conversation where I speak English and my language parent speaks Italian) I can understand 95%+ on a variety of topics when my tutor is speaking at a natural speed. Example video: ua-cam.com/video/LLnrBA6vtCY/v-deo.html This is my level of comprehensible input, near the limit. I will miss chunks because she's speaking so fast, but it's not too bad, maybe 80%. So comprehensible input does work in terms of understanding. I've done no exercises, word lists, grammar study. I can recognize the various tenses now -- I've looked at conjugation tables, but no grammar exercises. BUT despite my ability to understand, I have virtually no ability to speak. I cannot spontaneously produce *idiomatic* Italian. Also, I can barely pass an A2 fill-in-the-blank grammar test. I find this amusing. And when I see people talk about 2 months or 8 months or whatever to fluency (say, going from English to an "easy" romance language) I just think, I have no idea how you are doing it. Krashen is vague about how speaking happens. One might claim that my input is too incomprehensible. But then, how is it that I've acquired the ability to understand? And furthermore, it's impossible to find the perfect "i + 1" material. Also, the input described in Krashen's case studies, and the input described by various people who successfully use the method, is absolutely NOT i + 1. In Krashen's book The Natural Approach he says: "After 100-150 hours of Natural Approach Spanish you will be able to: 'get around' in Spanish; you will be able to communicate with a mono-lingual native speaker of Spanish without difficulty."... LOL!
'Krashen is vague about how speaking happens. '
Not at all. You simply haven't done enough comprehensible input.
You have an intriguing House-like quality (one of my favorite TV characters) I think a bit in your facial expression, some of the deep vocal fry, and being Dr. who isn’t shy to dissent. Like if House was a doctor of linguistics 😄
I want all new video concepts. Simply cannot get enough
Wow! I just found your channel and you have a new subscriber. I write a lot on nutrition and diet. My theory is there is no one diet that is best for everyone.
You are the first linguist I have heard talk about neuro divergent. I think people ignore this at their peril. I never thought of Krashen's theories as being ADHD friendly. I just know I am highly ADHD but I adopted the "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks" approach. I did so many different things and self selected what seemed to work.
So keep thinking outside the box. You are onto something by looking at neurology and language learning. I use the "forest and the trees" analogy. We try to prescribe for the forest without considering it is filled with diverse individual trees.
Great video as usual! Very tactful, considering how the language learning community might get worked up over discussions about the effectiveness of Krashen's theory. I learned quite a lot about the "rock star of SLA" in college. What I got is that his ideas are reasonable in principle, but somewhat short-sighted and not really testable in practice. One teacher even went as far as to say that it is a bit academically irresponsible to get his ideas out so effectively without acknowledging the shortcomings of his theory. That, and the affective filter is a bit hard to describe in scientific terms.
I've been following your channel for a while (although not interacting much), and I'd love to see a deeper dive into the topic, and basically all the SLA topics you mentioned! I know that field is a bit of its own thing, but I'd love to know your opinion (as somebody who is acquainted with the science in 2024) on topics such as whether there is evidence for an order and sequence of acquisition in L2, that other sequence of acquisition (going from non-verbal responses to single words, single clauses, and then more articulate sentences linking multiple clauses), whether interleaving applies to the study of a language, and how neurodiversity might impact language acquisition.
Oh, and I'd love to hear what you thing about the most recent theories for language acquisition competing with UG!
In any case, I'll try to watch your streams on how you learn Persian for now.
Thank you very much for this analysis. Glad I stumbled upon it.
I have found comprehensible input to be very helpful for me in comprehending input in my target language (Spanish), but I still find myself unable to really participate in normal conversations with native speakers because I cannot produce the language fast enough to say anything relevant before the conversation has moved on. I can sit and listen to the conversations just fine, and I would think that if comprehensible input was all that was necessary, that I'd gradually get better at producing the language by listening, but it doesn't seem to be happening.
On a more observational note, my wife learned English largely through comprehensible input but again, when the two of us first started talking, she had difficulty producing the language, to the point where initially she didn't even really act like herself when she was speaking it. As we talked more and more her ability to produce the language improved a lot and now she is at the point where every native speaker who meets her is impressed by her ability to speak the language.
Also, everyone I know is fairly confident that I have undiagnosed ADHD and I do find myself consuming large amounts of caffeine to help myself focus on tasks.
This was pretty informative! I like the emphasis on the premises of comprehensible input and how if those premises are discredited ever, comprehensible input would go down with them. Something I am curious about is that I've heard of comprehensible output and the interaction hypothesis and how that connects to Krashen's work. I think a video along those lines might be interesting.
Anecdotally, I started from zero 5 or 6 years ago and now get mistaken for native speaker more often than not. Admittedly, I started out "studying", i.e., memorized top few thousand words and common "chunks" using Anki over the first couple months, but then discovered Krashen's hypothesis and switch to comprehensible input. I've never studied the grammar or really used resources for languages learners apart from Anki at the very start (and played around with a couple apps just out of curiosity). Progress has always been imperceptible to me which creates the temptation to buy some app or course. Lol. Can't say it would have helped. But comparing myself to me of a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, the progress is insane just from input.
If anyone is curious, this is mainly what I did:
First couple months: memorized frequent vocabulary list and most common "chunks" of the language. Not sure if I'd do this again, but didn't know what else to do.
First year: read very simple books, watched basic shows (often boring, like Pepa Pig), listened to music in language even if I didn't understand it.
Second year: began to binge youtubers in the language; interestingly, most were youtubers who weren't native speakers (less slang, simpler vocabulary and patterns), read more complicated books often while also listening to the audiobook version, memorized lots of song lyrics, watched a lot of documentaries and series with subtitles.
Third year: same but started to also watch lots of native youtubers and read more complicated books (e.g., read Harry Potter series like everyone, lol, but also my first adult-level books). Able to watch most shows without subtitles and still fully enjoy. Met friends online and began chatting everyday via WhatsApp. Mostly typing but some audios and calls.
Fourth year: consuming same content as native speakers: shows, social media, news, books, etc.; began dating a native speaker, living together.
Fifth & sixth year: confused for native speaker. Lol. Increasingly comfortable and confident in the language in most contexts.
Again, didn't "study" per se, just tried to make the language a habitual part of my life and things progressed naturally. Thanks, Krashen!
P.S. During first ~3 years I used my Kindle for "extensive reading", i.e., stopping to look up words or translate sentences I didn't understand, and generally physical books or PDFs for "intensive reading", which I often read while listening to the audiobook version which I found compelled me to not get caught up on things I didn't understand and also helped me develop internal pronunciation. Also played around with an app called LingQ for saving and reading articles & subtitles but definitely wouldn't say it's necessary. Oh, and definitely a ton more intensive than extensive reading.
I would definitely be interested in a video on Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. I stumbled on an old book a long time ago based on Transformational Grammar and I really like it. I’ve looked briefly at Universal Grammar and it seems the trees have gone berserk. I would love to hear your thoughts.
I have ADD and have had great success so far learning Japanese using comprehensible input. Kinda cool to realize I might have stumbled upon a learning style that's tailor made for me. I've never learned a language to a high level using a structured approach, and I've been wondering about a certain aspect of languages that doesn't seem to be taken into account with that approach. There seem to be countless little set phrases and details present in languages which are almost invisible to native speakers until someone makes a mistake with them, at which point it jumps out as sounding weird. Personally I simply come across those details on a daily basis and when I see people discussing them on Reddit I can only say that the correct wording 'feels' correct to me, even though I've never consciously given it thought. It seems to me that using a structured/grammar heavy approach you might be able to produce sentences that are technically grammatically correct, but you'll easily overlook set phrases and details that make your speech sound unnatural or even incomprehensible. How does a structured approach deal with this? To me the amount of information required to speak a language in a natural way simply seems too much to process consciously one by one.
If you're looking for examples, I think Matt VS Japan has a video that touches on this problem titled "Language Isn't Math".
What comprehensible input do you use for Japanese, if I may ask?
I started with slice of life anime to build a basic vocabulary, then transitioned more to audiobooks and podcasts to strengthen my listening skills. I currently just watch and read whatever I feel like since I'm not in a hurry to reach fluency. @@japanese2811
Hard language to learn ,all the best in your Japanese learning journey 👍👍👍
@@japanese2811Started with simple anime, eventually moving on to podcasts and light novels. I currently spend almost all of my time listening to audiobooks, which I mainly focus on just because I like them.
@@captainpugwash2317Thanks!
As far as I am aware, I am not neurodivergent but I do think having a basis of grammar and vocab mixed with a large amount of input has been the most effective method yet for learning a language for me. The boost I get from enjoying and wholeheartedly engaging with the input, that input being content that I know I already like like books from genrea I like or games who's base gamplay I already like, cannot be ignored. Not to mention the reduced amount of effort that I need to put into motivating myself to learn means I have more energy to put into actually learning which has made language learning much easier. Some things to note are: 1, Some languages benefit from reading considerably more than others, the reasons can have to do with the script or just to do with the way the language fundamentally works. Japanese benefits a lot from reading past the beginner stage but the reading will be extremely slow because you are not only learning the language but a 3 accompanying scripts as well, this makes reading slow and difficult to start with but once you have a base of kanji and are used to reading the kanas, it will become very easy to find new words as they are combined from other pre-existing kanji. 2, lthe further away the target language is from the language(s) you already know the more you will require input because there are some fundamental speech patterns that will be so alien to you that you will have to have them repeated to you many times before you can naturally start using them, from my experience.
An episode about dyslexia and language acquisition would be appreciated at least on my end
As an ADHDer, the most effective learning method I’ve used has had three aspects. 1) intensive (4 hours a day) group study relying heavily on the communicative approach where some grammar is explained, but not in too much depth, and the rest of the class consisted of various fun activities. Key was that I was slightly better than most of the group, which relieved all of the stress. 2) Getting the accent right to the point of sounding native-like through Pimsleur and songs. Then, outputting actively. Depending on the situation at hand, I would prepare a list of vocab of 20-30 words and expressions and would then activate it in real life to solve real situations. That vocab stayed with me forever. 3) Listening to and watching local content (not so comprehensible input) picking up things here and there even when I did not understand 30 per cent of what was being said. So, in sum, as ADHDers like to talk activating stuff by outputting it (on purpose) was key for acquisition. To reduce stress, in-depth accent and prosody training was key. Real-life content input helped pick up new things
I am very neurodivergent and medicated for ADHD since 2019. Language learning is my special interest on which I used to hyperfocus when I should have been earning money or something. I read a list of rules (inflections, word order, conditions for allophones...), ponder them, and don’t need to hear about them again. I apply them to my production and comprehension of the language. I become more fluent over time as I put the stuff into practice many times and it becomes second nature and I’m not needing to pull the rule out of my mental textbook as much, although I do always do that too, as though a teacher is checking my work over my shoulder. My main problem is getting tongue-tied randomly or around certain combos of sounds (as much in my native English as in other languages, to be honest -- I’m just inherently not very good at speaking) and acquiring vocabulary, since there isn’t really a quick way of learning thousands of words and I get bored very easily.
I pass for a native when I speak or write in French, Spanish and Italian (not so well in CA/PT/DE/NL/NB/SV/DA/ZH/JP/EO/LA) but I’ve never read more than a couple of books in any of them. In Italian in particular, I just had the hobby of translating little dialogues back and forth for 15 minutes every day for a year (when I was 16) to learn vocab and generally practice, then didn’t think about Italian again till I went to Milan when I was 23 to teach English, had a social life in Italian for a few months, then fell into a job as an Italian-English translator. I got accreditation by examination as an (EN-FR/ES/IT) interpreter in 2010 and have been doing that ever since, although with my ADHD I always find I need to have several other side-hustles or life is too monotonous.
To me, learning a language is like learning to code, or draw, or sculpt, or dance: you must memorise or look up some rules/principles/techniques/moves/structures, then you use this firm theoretical foundation to create your art, which is clumsy at first.
When I teach, people find the way I explain things very novel and engaging, but I don’t notice them actually learning particularly well. I’ve decided that this is because my brain works very differently from most people’s, and so when I try to make them learn like me, I’m foolishly attempting to run Linux software on a Windows machine. I should let them just download a native application from a Windows developer.
Sorry, there is simply no way I can understand what you've written here on my Windows brain. We are fundamentally different and the avenues by which we reach understanding have obviously completely diverged. I can imagine it now: fumbling your way through my comment desperately attempting to parse that which shall always and forever remain incomplete - but only for people like you when engaging with people like me. There is obviously no way that you could possibly understand what I might mean by my comment. Neither on this occasion nor on any other.
@@shrill_2165 Haha, bit of an exaggeration. I just think my method isn't optimal for most students and it's a mistake for me to push it.
After all, you _can_ run Linux commands on Windows using WSL, but stuff works better on the system it's designed for.
Two years ago, I started learning French under a teacher who subscribed to the theory of Stephen Krashen. I, of course, fell in love with French and carried his method of teaching with me after leaving the class. I learned French in that manner, primarily on UA-cam but also with apps like Tandem, and went to france about 5 months ago in an exchange program. I did very well and had a high level, and I always received compliments on my French from natives, especially considering that I only had two years under my belt at that point. Come to find out, I have ADHD, and it’s interesting that you point out that Krashen’s theory seems tailor-made for those like me. I can definitely agree, as it’s so low-effort to engage in learning that I could basically do it all the time. It worked for me, but I may see if I can incorporate more intentional learning into my future approaches to language learning
I'm excited for the video about cross-linguistic patterns of childhood language acquisition!
as a hopefully polyglot with combined type ADHD (diagnosed by a psychiatrist) this explains so much of why i struggled to stick to and use old-timey, neurotypical methods
honestly, Stephen Krashen's ideas and all the methods that sprung up from them have worked wonders for me, I'm working on getting my 6th language to B1 right now.
I'm confused. how does one get diagnosed? you said a psychiatrist did it, which begs my question, what prompted you to see the psychiatrist? is it because you thought you might have it, or that you wanted a diagnosis. in my busy life I cannot fathom how or when I would prioritise going to see a psychiatrist over such a thing. the second question is, now that you have this diagnosis, what do you do with it? is it an advantage or disadvantage? is it a source of pride or shame? I'm honestly confused, but seriously curious too, because all of this jargon started to “suddenly appear” sometime after I was 30yo and I've yet to meet somebody in real life like this.
@@polymath6475 well it started online, I was told I was diagnosed Autism as a child years after the diagnosis, and that got me to do some research, that then just made me want to look more into the topic, and I ended up mostly stumbling across ADHD content (How to ADHD, ADHD_love, etc) and I found that most of what they were saying across tens of videos applied to me then remembered that a psychiatrist had seen ADHD symptoms in my sister, so I asked my mom about it and she told me that she did have ADD (internalized ADHD) so I brought it up with my therapist, who agreed and from there I asked my mom to take me that psychiatrist who thought my sister had it and gave her medication for it
keep in mind that all of this took months from I think May of 2023 to December 2023, and I'm working on getting an official diagnosis with that same psychiatrist now and I'm sorry I got you confused, but I said I have a diagnosis for simplicity's sake but I am still sure that i do have ADHD
as to whether it has a positive or negative effect on my life I'd say it depends on the context, it makes me good at learning and getting deep into topics fast, tho I do tend to abandon them after a while, in terms of academics it makes them worse because of, forgetfulness (for example for getting there was homework), executive dysfunction (struggling to do what I need to do and breaking down tasks effectively, avoiding overwhelm, procrastination), in terms of social relationships, it would be generally more of an advantage if there wasn't anxiety and masking (hiding one's natural state of being to socially accepted or mirroring other people's behavior or personality to be accepted)
There are lots of videos on UA-cam about ADHD, eg How to ADHD. How you get diagnosed depends a lot on what country you're in
We definitely want that Universal Grammar video.
I find the overemphasis on comprehensible input odd myself. I would say that, usually, the best way to learn something, particularly something complex like a language, is to approach it from different angles. The more perspectives and "hooks" one can put into the material, the better one can obtain both an explicit and an intuitive functional knowledge of the material.
I sometimes wonder if the seemingly outstanding outcomes that appear from people who claim to use pure comprehensible input, or simply never learned grammar explicitly, are because of the amount of time they spend with the language. Whether one just learns the grammar, does CI, or both, if you don't put in the hours to make the material "part of you", you won't have a good ability in the language. CI can often be more interesting than grammar-translation, leading to it being easier to put in more time. I would expect that lots of time with grammar-translation would help with language acquisition, as you will get lots of exposure to the language anyway.
Though, ultimately, to have good abilities in a particular skill, you need to practice that skill. If you only read but never practise speaking, you won't be able to speak well. Maybe, yes, you can speak to an extent, but pronunciation, prosody, register matching, etc. are likely to be off significantly. Adding listening to reading will help, but still would not be enough. Krashen himself does a lot of shadowing, which involves a lot of practice producing the language.
Looking from the opposite end, just because someone can have native spoken fluency in a language, does not mean they can write, or even read, it. This was true throughout most of history and is only perceived as odd now because of how much effort society has put in to increase literacy rates.
I think a good analogy may be music. Many people listen to music a lot. How many of them, without ever having touched an instrument, can just pick up a guitar and play well?
I agree with a lot of what you wrote but it's the internet so of course I'll poke a little at your final analogy. I think a lot of people can sing a song fairly well after listening to it repeatedly. Input won't help you know where to put your fingers to make those sounds. But one usually has a good idea how to do that with the vocal "instrument". Also, I think people who are very accomplished at playing a musical instrument can often reproduce what they hear on that instrument.
@@keithkannenberg7414 That was why I mentioned a guitar :P Even if the person can sing the song, it doesn't mean they can play the guitar chords that are part of the music; and, this is even if they knew exactly what the chords were.
And, yes, if someone is well-accomplished on an instrument, they can probably play by ear. This is like someone who already can speak a language at C1+ just paraphrasing what someone else has said. If someone has never touched that instrument before (i.e. never played it before), they can't, no matter how much they listen to the song, just play it immediately. This would be like trying to paraphrase in the target language what was said in that target language (which they never spoke before). Even knowing the words to say does not mean they can say it. Take Mandarin as an example of this last point: someone may know the written form of the reply but if they can't produce the tones, they can't say the sentence without causing either significant strain to the hearer or complete misunderstanding/lack of understanding.
A language you know is like an instrument you know how to use. A language you don't know is like a new instrument (whole new sound system, new ways the muscles in the vocal tract need to move, new set of allowed ways of putting "notes" together, etc.). To extend the analogy to cover what seems like a loophole: a sister language to a language you know would be like an instrument close to what you know how to play (like harpsichord to piano, or from acoustic to electric guitar, etc.); playing it well won't take nearly as long to learn as it took for the first instrument you learned, but you likely won't play well immediately.
CI does not mean it is forbidden to learn vocabulary and grammar. You just don't aim to be perfect in these areas. If you understand the text, it is enough. Of course you should strive to speak as perfectly as possible. But who do I prefer: Speaker A, who speaks perfect German, but speaks very slowly, or speaker B, who speaks in normal speed, but makes many grammatical mistakes? I would prefer speaker B.
@@joshuacantin514 I see what you're getting at now. Your analogy works pretty well.
@@Hofer2304 "You just don't aim to be perfect in these areas. If you understand the text, it is enough. " - well, isn't that a lazy approach? " speaker B, who speaks in normal speed, but makes many grammatical mistakes? I would prefer speaker B." - I work with four languages on a daily basis and I prefer person A, every single time, because I don't have to make corrections in my mind, guessing what the speaker had in mind and trying to make out his intentions out of grammatical mistakes that lead me nowhere.
Auch, glaube, du niemals hast sprechen zu jemand wer viele sich irrt und ihn Grammatik sein sehr schrecklich :P (I speak German quite well, this was just an example of how people can speak by your definition).
I'm following on the Acquisition model using LingQ, and I'm finding that I am making progress. I'm actually remembering and understanding bits of my target language more now than I have on other tries. It's nice actually. I haven't started studying grammar, seriously, but when I have a question about what I'm seeing, I can look it up and it makes sense. It's more connective. I do have ADHD-I though, which kinda negates any Special Interest bonuses I get for being on the spectrum.
I'm convinced that the best way to learn a language depends on the target language. The tricks I used to learn English didn't work for Japanese, because ordering of sentences, concepts didn't match, writing and reading were much harderd. Spanish was extremely close to my first language Portuguese so some of the grammar was natural for me, input was very easy to understand. However for German a deep dive on grammar was necessary, because of cases and conjugation. That's why there's so much discrepancy about tips for learning langugage. I don't believe there's a universal method for learning any langugage. If the one you are trying to learn is too different from the ones you know you'll have to dedicate much more in the process.
Is there any research on different learning approaches and the efficacy or speed at which a learner mentally goes from formulating ideas in their native language to formulating them in their target language? In other words, do different learning approaches influence how long it takes to go from "translating in your head" to "thinking directly".
hay john, i love your channel as someone who's interested in language learinng and linguistic and as a speech therapy your contect is very good.
currently i'm learning spanish and i want to learn the accent to the depth not only the /X/ but also the specific diacritics.
do you have any experience with using Prat software for analysing accent? and if so can you share it with us?
The way I learn best is by immersing myself fully. I can read something a million times but I’m never gonna get it, I have to be hands on.
All I do is just play video games and watch random videos in my target language without studying; It’s like jumping in a pool. I brute force my way through and then iron the kinks out later.
In my opinion, a language is more about listening and comprehending, not knowing all the intricate grammar rules.
very interesting ideas. thank you for the video!
Great video. I find that learning and acquisition are not at all dichotomous, but instead support each other. Explicit study can help with a huge deal of important vocab and structure knowledge, even though you'll indeed need a great deal of input in order to obtain a high degree of competence.
After 200 hours of pure Dreaming Spanish I have gone from knowing nothing to B1. That's all the proof I need that it works
EDIT: I haven't spoken a word out loud yet, and I know it's a different skill, but I can definitely form my own sentences in my head and recognise when Spanish 'doesn't sound right'
same 170 hours and i have progressed so much more. Than ant text book could probably take. Learning new words and also training your ears toi actually pick out the words that is being said. Language is meant for cummincating and you find more meaning in it when eatching and using it
Hasta que no empieces a hablar, no puedes opinar. Poder entender si te hablan como si fueras un niño no es el gran logro que piensas.
@@fhornet3123 of course I can. I can do what I like. Cope
@@fhornet3123 clown response.
I've 3000 hours of CI received and I can't speak like a native yet. Can't speak at all as I never practiced it. I still think it's the best way to comprehend the language but speaking practice is essential.
Krashen's learning vs acquisition theory matches how I've noticed that I learn best. With any language topic, I like to explicitly learn the grammar first and practice it in an intentional, self-monitoring way. But that's the easy part - once I've learned it this way, it is still cognitively demanding to produce. So then I need to go listen to many many (many) examples of the grammar in context in order to internalize it enough that I can produce it somewhat automatically.
And this learning vs acquisition mirrors my experience with theory vs muscle memory as a musician - you can learn a scale, but until you practice it enough to get it into your unconscious muscle memory, you haven't really acquired it.
But I guess where I disagree with Krashen is that, since our brains are no longer very plastic as adults, you really do need to explicitly study the grammar in order to prime your acquisition and 'notice' what to listen for. Like a lot of people, I was very impressed by those old videos of Krashen teaching German using only comprehensible input. But the more I watched it, the more I realized that it works so well because he is teaching German to English speakers, and it happens that the sentence structures of these languages map onto each other very well, and also there are many cognates and similar sounding words. If he were teaching Korean, Hungarian, or Welsh, would it work so well?
I have really liked comprehensible input stuff, but I've only ever tried it with languages I've already studied in classroom settings (Spanish, German, and Russian). My already-existing familiarity with either basic or intermediate-level grammar means that comprehensible input has worked pretty well to try acquiring new vocab or refreshing my language skills when I'm about to go traveling. Didn't stop me from buying a Spanish grammar textbook a couple weeks ago, though. I would love to start a new language in the next year or two, but I think I would start out with more intense grammar study before anything else.
This is just my personal experience, so take this with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to say that in my observation, both as a language, tutor, and a student of languages, this is when it works best… When you have a foundational familiarity with the language and are able to Consciously and subconsciously I guess? Map what you already know onto what you’re listening to, and then gradually expand. I think parts of the UA-cam community have kind of distorted his original theory. Turning it into something he probably never intended lol. I hope you’re having a great day and having fun learning languages.
Yeah, I've used Assimil (which is light on grammar) for Japanese before and liked it, but if I hadn't already had a good grasp of the grammar I would have become frustrated. It's hard for me to focus on the message if the basic structures are tripping me up and distracting my focus. Even just having a vague familiarity helps a lot. But I have a low tolerance for ambiguity and Japanese is very different from from English (and a high context language). I'm also apparently one of those weirdos who just loves grammar, so reading tomes on the subject is not dry or boring for me. It's like reading spell formulas that make the language come alive, or like I'm breaking a secret code. To me, words without grammar are boring and inert. I have to actively stop myself from "studying" a language (esp. grammar) too much and force myself to practice/use it.
@@zerosysko I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’m working on Japanese right now and it is very different. Low ambiguity tolerance is definitely difficult. When Japanese is highly context dependent where the context is not always stated. However, liking grammar isn’t all that weird. I actually really like studying grammar, but also have a decent tolerance for ambiguity so the grammar study actually in riches whatever immersion type stuff I’m doing in Japanese. The thing about Japanese grammar is that there’s not always a one-to-one translation for a given structure the way that a lot of textbooks presented versus when you hear it out in the wild. That’s the only thing to keep in mind. But there are definitely ways for you to work through that if that’s something you’re still doing. Best of luck!
@@zerosysko I also wanted to ask you what you might be using now, since you found assimil didn’t really fit with your personal preference for how you learn
I learned a lot watching this. Thank you!
So I'm a believer (because I can't do scientific studies on my own) that traditional schooling is failing the entire language learning community. I feel schools, either in language schools or universities, etc, are more worried about behaviour and entertaining rather than actually doing something to make the student improve. I then encountered SK hypothesis and it seemed rather logical to me, an L2 English speaker who learned English by doing UA-cam all day (I was in a bad place). So, I started thinking that the amount of content IS a major variable in language learning/acquisition. However, I always felt SK hypothesis fails or at least lacks in several points. 1. Comprehensible Input is HARD to get not only because there not much available but also because each person is different, have different levels and different interests, objectives, etc. So his comprehensible input is realistically impossible or almost impossible to find and you have to do with what you can find, (e.g. a children's picture dictionary). 2. I love reading, and I also think that's what got me my level when reading subtitles in my target language, but there are two problems, reading without knowing how it is pronounced is fatal. In English is almost suicidal. (That's why I recommend listening and reading in the same language so you can discover the sounds you're missing. But it's difficult in other languages apart from romance langauges)
So, yeah, I always felt there was more to the story, and this video helped me realized a bunch of other things.
I will say, though, that I practice translation, it's great. But, from Target language to Native/Acquired language. Not a single letter translated from native to target because you don't know how the target language works. It's like creating an opera from just 5 notes. And I hate how the entire language community, schools, etc are focused on producing the language. It's just stupid (IMHO). Sure, you WILL be able to communicate, but you will always have this rules engraved that don't allow you to actually share your thoughts. And I THAT'S where SK got it right, there is something else apart from learning rules. His solution, well, as I said it lacks the answer to how actually learn.
So what I do is this, translation Target->Native and grammar allows you to read more and more complex sentences or clauses or whatever you want to call it. Then, with copious amount of language exposition (Audio and reading), you'll understand more until at one point you start first immitating, then finally producing with feedback telling you where are your errors. This last part sounds a lot to what they do in schools but the main difference is that WITHOUT understanding the language almost to the point of advanced level, you can't start producing without thinking in your native language and translating native->target, and thinking in rules. I would, like SK, without prove, hypotethise that one will produce the language "without thinking" as it is intended to happen.
Well, that's my 2 cents. Thank you for the video.
Great video, Language Zaddy! This has given me a lot to think about as I'm learning Mandarin.
Thanks for this video. I was diagnosed with ADD in high school and really struggled with languages throughout high school. My school actually gave me a waiver from having to complete my 3 year language requirement, which was very rare as it was a graduation requirement. Ironically my father spoke fluent Mandarin as a second language, while I remained hopeless throughout adulthood. I've recently started working on Mandarin myself and videos like this are helpful in trying to devise successful strategies that will help me learn and avoid all the frustration I've encountered in the past.
I feel like you're leaving out that pretty much the entire literature at this point agrees in the non efficacy of grammar translation, and that while Krashen's particular model is controversial and unproven in many ways, the importance of input is not controversial. Some people might watch this video and come away thinking that it's not settled whether 'traditional' textbooks/classes are better or worse for acquisition, or that it greatly depends on the student, and that's just not reflected anywhere in the literature. I also think the discussion of ADHD is a bit misleading - while it's true that non engaging content/study is particularly difficult for many people with ADHD, it's not as though it isn't also more difficult for neurotypical people as compared to more engaging content/study. You almost make it sound like the 'ideal' study method for someone with ADHD might be categorically different than for someone without it, and there's just no evidence that's true.
Lol, I was wondering why I was able to stick to this method better than any of the other ones I’ve tried.
I barely understand what people are saying in English so not completely understanding everything in my target languages never bothers me as long as it’s fun. I love this way of learning, but completely understand that it’s not for everyone. 😂
What research would you recommend to learn more about what you called the "general learning best practices"(09:26) like active recall and desirable difficulty?
Huge fan (and successful "user") of language learning based on Krashens Language Acquisition Theory (aka using massive amounts of interest based comprehensible input) over here. I also happen to have rampant ADHD which I got (finally) diagnosed with only in April last year (2023).
I found this video incredibly interesting and slightly mind-blowing because this makes perfect sense to me. It just fits. The coffee story is indeed textbook ADHD (though we may never know if your suspicion is correct) hahaha I love it. XD
Anywho, what you say here fits not only with my personal experiences (I have my own version of using CI that involves mostly ridiculous amounts of listening material rather than reading) but also my "philosophy" of giving language learning advice. I know that the massive CI method works for ME specifically (and since my diagnosis and hyperfocus deep-dive into everything ADHD I also know WHY it works for me) but as much as I'm a fan of "the Krashen way" I've always been of the opinion that each individual language learner needs to go on a journey of self discovery in the sense that they need to figure out what works best for THEM specifically. And I've never fallen into this weirdo camp of people who say "throw all other methods out the window! this is the only way!" because this intuitively just always felt wrong.
I know from experience as well as fellow language learning enthusiast anecdotal evidence that different things work better or worse for different people AS WELL as different languages, and, like you said in a different video, different language learning goals (comprehension? conversation? academics?).
For example: Firstly, I'm more interested in consuming media in the various languages I study and speaking is secondary for me, so long "silent periods" as it's often called in the CI community, where you mainly work on your comprehension and not on production, is perfectly fine with me. Hence no speaking or writing practice.
Secondly, my approach will change depending on the language. In my Korean journey so far I looked at a LOT of grammar because A. I find it fascinating and B. it's so far removed from any of the languages I already speak that it was necessary to get to grips with at least basic grammar first in order to understand even the most basic input. It took me 2 years to get to lower intermediate (ish) comprehension in Korean, and I honestly don't think it's possible to "Acquire" Korean without at least looking up the grammar occasionally, and helping your brain figure out those patterns.
I then burned out on Koran a bit and took a break to start Spanish. For Spanish, I never once looked at a grammar explanation (and likely never will) because I'm already fluent in French, so I went straight into massive amounts of input (lots of it translated and dubbed btw so that works JUST fine. I know there's lots of weirdo "purists" out there in the Input learning community who are super against anything translated, which is just stupid in my opinion but whatever) and I reached incredibly high comprehension in only 5 months with literally no other studying of any kind. Only Audiobooks, UA-cam videos and occasional reading or reading along to the audiobook. I still can't speak much (duh) but I can understand native speed youtube videos in a lot of Spanish varieties with no problems, pretty much any audiobook (as long as it's not highly academic, scientific, or otherwise specialised), reading is no problem either and short written conversation (aka twitter) is also no issue. (I'm quite honestly still a little freaked out by how fast that happened. haha) I took a single italkie conversational lesson just to test the "output comes on its own with enough input" theory and though I have an atrocious Spanish and thick accent, I (and my teacher after I told her this was my first time EVER speaking) were surprised by how much (though broken) Spanish I could produce, and how much very specific vocabulary I used, without ever having practiced output AT ALL. So there's sooome truth to this "output will come automatically" thing, but I still think you gotta practice if you want to speak well. (duh)
I still believe (with zero scientific evidence but plenty of anecdotal, admittedly potentially biased, evidence) that no matter the "methods" you end up using, massive exposure to/consumption of your TL is a must. It just makes sense, no matter how you look at it. exposing yourself to lots of the language whether that's reading or listening, is natural spaced repetition essentially. I mean even from my (admittedly limited and amateurish) knowledge of cognitive neuroscience it makes sense, given that our brains are basically incredibly sophisticated pattern recognition machines. You gotta give it enough data to work with.
Anywho sorry this got a bit rambly and thought-vomity but HO BOI was that interesting! Lots of food for thought :D And you made me see a new connection I never realised! yay! Today I learned. :) Thank you for that.
And thank you also, just in general for all your amazing content, I come back every now and then to binge a few videos, especially now that I've also fallen head first into the endless rabbit hole that is Linguistics in general.
(What an ADHD thing to do to go from language learning hobbyist to deciding to start a bachelor in Linguistics at the age of 36, with a full time job in a completely unrelated field and no plans whatsoever of making a career switch.... )
Toodles!
Yes, please! Let me know when you have produced the video on natural order of language learning. As a former German and Latin teacher, I have puzzled over the best order for introducing structures of the target language.
Do you have any recommended resources to learn about the current academic consensus regarding input learning and its alternatives?
First time hearing about language acquisition and ADHDers... I have Inattentive-type ADHD and have acquired levels of fluency in both French and Welsh, mostly from exposure and not so much from structured learning. Thank you for introducing me to this theory, Imma bout ta head down a rabbit hole for sure
Really enjoyed the video! I put the theory into practice in my French and Swedish studies and it was helpful in the sense that it convinced me it was a viable strategy so once I had the permission, so to speak, off to the races it was. I never jibed well with the textbook approach of getting quickly up to speed with tourism interactions. I've always preferred understanding people to bugging them, not out of shyness, just the way I vibe, so getting toast point I could read a novel and listen to radio was hugely motivating. My productive skills stagnated though.
The upside of comprehensible input is that a lot of real language isn't in textbooks but through volume you will encounter it. Secondly, you can choose your own content, so you aren't as much at the mercy of the textbook authors. There are methods to strategically to increase comprehensibility, like constrained reading. I read Tove Jansson's Moomin books for Swedish - lots of repetition as it was a single author and single fictional universe - and world politics for French as I was already familiar with the topic and could guess easily. Also it turns out that a lot of vocabulary for international relationships is derived from French.
If I did it again I would spend most of my time with comprehensible input, but also go through a textbook at a relaxed pace. Forcing yourself to do recall practice and writing and speaking is pretty neat. Drilling seems to be pretty effective for numbers that don't come up that much in general text.
Also: I like how comprehensible input provides a way to do spaced repetition practice without the administrative burden of Anki and such. Granted it's only one way, but lower frequency words aren't as important to drill both ways.
I would love to hear your thoughts on Michael Tomosello’s Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition vs Chomsky’s universal grammar.
This makes so much sense actually 🎉
I stumbled upon CI theory last year and my mind was blown 😳 because that theory explained how I learned or at least progressed a lot in languages that I had to learn so far.
Few months ago i started teaching and also seeing that it doesn't work for most of my students at all 😅 some just love grammar and thrive on it 😂
But my search this time was "adhd and language learning". My brain only loves grammar and that kind of stuff when i am highly motivated and/or there is something or someone that keeps boosting my dopamine 😅
Thank you for this video. It did unswer my question
I just stumbled onto your video and found it very interesting. I don´t hang out with PhD´s, so I have to admit that a lot went over my head. Something about the history of language learning as a means for survival always comes to my mind. When I think about Europeans´ arrival in the Americas, indigenous peoples were forced to learn new languages. Africans were brought here and forced to learn new languages. These peoples were forbidden to use their native languages, and in the case of Africans and the Afro-descended, teaching literacy was forbidden.
Throughout history people have needed to communicate in foreign languages because of conquering armies and peaceful trade, as well. But near-universal literacy is a new phenomenon. Nonetheless, people figured it out because survival depended on it.
I really appreciated, though, your discussion of the other four components of Krashen's theory, and I can reflect on how I´ve experienced them in my own language acquisition/learning journey. Thanks
Could you do a large video on language and neurodivergence?
I think lot's of comprehensible input is a huge part of how most of us who grow up here in Norway and other places where we generally use subtitles for all foreign movies pick up English. I do vaguely remember a time before I knew English in kindergarten; and I do remember getting taught English in school at age 8 (or something) and finding it really boring (I have ADHD, btw) but also very easy. But I had probably started acquiring English through watching subtitled English that my parents were watching. And after all, quite a lot of basic grammar and vocabulary is closely related and similar to Norwegian; so even without any preparation any Norwegian speaker will understand a bit of English through pure similarity. And once you can read subtitles you understand what is being said through the subtitles, and after a while you stop reading everything and only look at the subtitles when it's a new word (or today; mostly when the audio is terribly mixed and the actors are mumbling as apparently is the fashion these days).
I think this was an important video
I’ve been learning German for about a year now and I’ve used a combination of Duolingo and UA-cam for my learning (ik Duolingo but it helps me stay on track)
And I would absolutely love to hear more about Chomsky’s work in Linguistics and other prominent figures in linguistics and research about it
Because it’s pretty important
I find Duolingo to be a great supplemental tool to conveniently get in a few quick exercises each day plus best of all it’s free. All the other mobile apps cost money and don’t really do much of a better job than Duolingo I have found. The only ones worth paying for are the ones that give you a 1 on 1 live chat with a native speaker or a professional language tutor.
It seems like some people have some slightly different ideas of what comprehensible input is judging from some of the replies I skimmed here. Anyhow, no need to get into that too much...
If I describe it instead as input activities where I am actively engaged with target-language material (audio or written) or spoken language with other people, then I would say that spending a lot of time on practicing understanding that is crucial for me. Will I do other things, too? Yes? Do I think that speaking helps? Yes. But if I don't put in a lot of time trying to understand material or spoken language as often as possible, I'll stagnate.
A lot of Krashen's theories seem to me still as quite solid but there were always details here and there that bothered me. For example, I never liked the wording of learning versus acquiring. I think acquiring language is learning. Would we say, "No. You didn't learn to ride a bike. That isn't conscious recall of rules. You acquired it."
It always seemed like unnecessary hairsplitting.
I was most interested in your video when you started discussing neurological differences with regards to this topic. I don't have an opinion on this at the moment but this was an intriguing topic.
I am late-diagnosed ADHD. Although ADHD some say is on a spectrum of it's own, and there can be a great deal of difference in how this condition/neurological difference can manifest from one individual to another, some of your ideas did ring true for me.
I was always interested in language learning but struggled in school as taught. I can enjoy discussions about differences between the grammar of different languages, or short bits of 'pop-up' grammar for a language I'm learning, but I simply can't focus on 'typical' grammar exercises. I've been able to use flashcards in short doses, but soon I simply can't stand them anymore.
Input activities, that is if...if I can keep them interesting... These are things under my control that I can turn into a daily habit. I love to talk to people when I get a chance, but interesting input is something I can do for its own sake, and it keeps the habit going with minimal organization. You can always do it with fewer things to overcome to get started. And whether it's the most efficient thing or not (even though it seems to be what works for me as a main activity), keeping a habit going like that is so important for me.
Still it seems like an interesting idea that maybe... Maybe comprehensible input activities might tend to be even more important for those of us with ADHD...? I have no idea but it's an interesting idea.
"Throw away your grammar books"
I don't enjoy memorizing grammatical structures, but consulting a grammar book every once in a while can really clear up confusions and supercharge comprehension.
On my third language, and I know everyone is different, but all I did was pimsleur and clozemaster, and then time spent with native speakers. Literally just those three. No journaling or books or movies or podcasts etc.
I can see that working. Personally, clozemaster makes me want to pull my hair out, because of the complete randomness of it.
@@languagejones6784 I kind of agree with you here, CM was very random at times. It really helped me with the grammar and the explanations of words helped so much in the beginning. Being around a lot of different language speakers has helped too, I know many people don't have access to native speakers of their target languages that are their close friends
Which language was that? I just tried Mandarin and it isn't working for me - I started trying to phonetically write down the words to remember (!).
Antonio and I argued a lot. I was training him to take over my position of head baker. It was agreed that Spanish was going to be the language of instruction even though I could not speak it. We were surrounded by concrete context, everything completely comprehensible. The entire focus for both of us was the bread, certainly not language. I didn’t care about grammar or word order or being correct. I had to make sure Antonio didn’t screw up. We talked and argued about water temperature and mixing times, about 14:04 . I told him where the “cold” spots were in the oven; to put the Ciabatta in deck #4 because it was the hottest and would get the most spring.
In the end we had a great time together and laughed a lot.
The point is, if you want to learn a language you must not think about it.
It was an honor to acquire Spanish. Antonio was 14:04 my best teacher all because there was little or no affective filter to interfere.
UG is definitely a heavy topic, but I hope we can see you cover it more in future videos.
I tend to find myself moving back and forth between wide comprehensible and compelling input, then falling back to studying structure and memorizing more difficult vocabulary, then back to the comprehensible input. I do think the general idea of Krashen's hypotheses are spot on in that they are necessary and sufficient conditions, *but*, I think that on their own they can actually take awhile to set in.
Grammar study and vocabulary memorization, along with practice producing output and especially speech, can speed up language acquisition by a lot. And of course, you do have to practice what you want to get better at.
Exactly. And it can depend on the language too---for instance, one of the languages I'm working on is Ancient Greek, and I have to focus on grammar because it's very different from English and not knowing the different grammar means not understanding. With Italian I could move on quickly to listening and reading, but part of that was that the grammar was already very close to English. And also, there's a difference between a dead language that you want to read philosophy or theology in, and a currently-spoken one that you want to have everyday conversations in.
I'd love to see more on Chomsky. This video (on Krashen) is excellent. When I see too many true believers I get skeptical. There are so many ideas here worthy of their own video.
I would like a whole series on chomskean linguistics plz 👍
i have a very good question, is that hat cgi or it just looks like that normally?
Really fascinating and nuanced discussion of Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis.
I'd love to hear more about order of acquisition.
I did read some of his stuff maybe 20 years ago, but probably not in great quantity or with full attention. Basically I've always related this concept to how the acquisition of language, whether within 'learning' or 'studying' or 'teaching' or not, occurs when there's a kind of pure fusion between the meaning and the language (in all senses, lexis, structure, variability thereof, whatever), i.e. that comprehension, or expression of what the speaker comprehends and is directly expressing, has to be happening as directly and fully as possible for it to occur, an within the real-time context of actual language use. A kind of 'distanced' engagement, e.g. translation or analysis or something, is away from that an ineffective, so 'comprehensible input' needs to occur at some point for the language to be acquired to then again be directly comprehended next time and also to be there directly connected with meaning to arise in speech or writing when expressing oneself. That doesn't mean that only listening/reading comprehesible input is the way to develop all areas of language use (particularly it's not going to spontaneously create good speaking skills), nor does it mean that some other engagement on the path to that comprehension is invalidated. It does mean though, that the quicker you can get to the point of something being quickly and as directly comprehended then the more efficiently you can get to that acquisition. If a gradual process of graded input is available, that's the best way, but if it's not so available or smooth, then looking stuff up, translation, reading grammar explanations, etc., is a valid part of that path. The key thing is that you return as much as possible to the situation of a direct evocation of the actual meaning from the actual real use of the language. That's the point of 'acquistion' which isn't just knowledge or even understanding. And the claim never was that this would give perfect grammar on its own, or, again, that it would learn to spontaneous correct speech without moving onto a period of serious trial and error with that skill too. But the direct language-meaning process had to 'acquire' the language first. It's kind of obvious, but constantly missed. The more 'magical' thinking is the belief that translating and/or explaining meaning will spontaneously lead to language acquisition; it has to happen in a situation of directly deriving meaning from the language, where they are merely two sides of the same coin, happening simulataneously. Speech is then turning that around when that is acquired and practising making the words come out spontaneously in response to the desire to convey the ideas, but it doesn't just happen from the receptive stage of it.
Those are interesting points of view!
Btw, there's an 'article' Krashen has published where he talks about the use of first language in the foreign language classroom:
International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 2(1): 9. 2006.
Contrary to semi-popular opinion, the Comprehension Hypothesis does not forbid the use
of the first language in the second language classroom. It does, however, provide
guidelines. It predicts that the use of the first language will help second language
development if it results in more comprehensible input, and will hurt second language
development when it results in less comprehensible input.
I want to see the videos on first-language acquisition and on universal grammar!
I don't know much about languages, so I can only speak from my own experience, but...
Rote learning verb conjugations does not seem to make them available to me when I listen or speak, and not available fast enough when I read Listening to them a lot, and then practicing saying them does.
Nouns seen to me to be easier to remember from an audio + video context than in any other way.
Exceptions to the rules also seem to become part of my language knowledge without even realising that they are exceptions when I learn through input, rather than lists of exceptions.
Listening a lot before speaking definitely gave me a feel for when I was saying something natural and thus probably correct.
So I can see why people believe in CI even if the evidence for the hypothesis itself isn't strong. It might be that some teaching method is more effective, and the theory is wrong. It might also be the case that if you're learning without a dedicated teacher it's reasonably effective even if the reasoning behind it is bunk.
I would love to hear about competing theories (non-Chomskian theories, in particular) of second-language learning. Is there any reliable evidence and if yes, what does it actually say?
I’ve felt I should read his theory with all the hype it would be good to know from the horse’s mouth what’s up. My first foreign language I learned was German around age 21. I learned mostly from reading books and listening to a radio channel on the internet. I had a small grammar book I flipped through once in a while and found this helpful but mostly I did immersion. No flash cards although I wrote down words in a notebook for a couple years without studying them at all.
I think that experience matched theory well? I didn’t get native speech or pronunciation but I was very happy with my German for someone who never lived in Germany and had no German friends.
Are 34 I started learning Japanese. This hodgepodge of reading listening and skimming a grammar book didn’t work. I had to take formal classes. I used tons of flash cards and Anki. After six years or so I think I was ok at speaking. It took a lot of awkward conversations to get there and moving to Japan. I have no idea how his theories applied to my Japanese learning experience.
The US state department trains diplomats for 900 hours in german but 2200 hours in japanese so if anything it would be surprising if you experienced any other outcomes. Japanese is just very difficult for english speakers
@@bobboberson8297 It used to be 750 hours, I wonder why German got "promoted".
I'm also surprised that Romanian and Portuguese are apparently easier than Spanish: www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
At any rate, as a German teacher and Japanese learner, I can confirm that learning Japanese (including reading and writing) takes *much* longer.
My experience with language learning has nothing to do with comprehensible jnput. When youtube teachers start down that road I change the channel because I know I am about to be bored with very unchallenging input. I have some exposure to three languages besides my native language but I only consider myself fluent in one. That said I always feel the need to know how a language works and that requires some knowledge of grammar and vocabulary as well as exposure to the target language. If I stumble upon a new word I want to know its several meanings as well as how to spell it, write it and speak it. I like reading difficult books even if that means I have to read and reread some paragraphs. Sometimes I read pages I don’t really understand before the story coalesces and when that happens I skim back over what was opaque. I am extremely dubious about self- proclaimed polyglots. One that galls me the most claims to be fluent in 20 languages. Yet he has said he doesn’t learn grammar and has never learned to write in any language other than his own. That’s not fluency. It’s more like a trick. As Dr Johnson said upon watching a dancing bear “ the wonder is not that he does it well but that he does it at all.”
I have a master's degree in applied linguistics and am about to start a PhD in linguistics, and if I had a nickel for every time random UA-cam commenters repeated anecdotal beliefs about language learning, I'd be Jeff bezos
Super interesting, as I'm trying to figure out why I've never been able to learn a foreign language even after living in a target language country for 23 years. Interestingly, I moved when i had just turned 26.
I also got diagnosed with ADD last week, so that might have something to do with it. 😅
Thanks for the absolute phenomenal content. Also, I'd love to see my boy Chomsky get some love over here!
2:00 how have I not been following this page? How have I not seen your videos?
I’d like to know your thoughts on Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis.