“The most effective thing is the thing you’ll actually do” is the lesson I have to keep re-learning in every single domain of my life. Thanks for bringing this up for me again.
If I’d spend have as much time attempting to learn something instead of watching all these vids on how to learn something, I may actually learn something.
I've kind of done a mixture of the two. I've spent some time learning the basics of the English language, and then started immersing myself in the language, mainly by watching videos in English with subtitles on (very useful btw). I would translate the words I didn't understand, so that I knew what they meant the next time I heard them. Eventually I started understanding more and more of the language to the point that I'm now writing a comment in English without the need for a translator app :)
So to recap: Focus more so on input & absorbing the language Focus more on ‘revision’ in the sense of strengthening the connections in your brain of what you already know. Sounds grand. I’m using Duolingo for a while which I find is doing great for me but I don’t want to limit my learning of a language to just that. I’ve started watching videos that are really helpful and trying to find other ways of absorbing the language. Your approach is practical for people with busy lives but what I will say is depending on the language I do think it’s key to learn the basic grammar rules and a bit of vocab first before you start this more passive approach. That way, you have a place to start when listening your target language. Just my 2 cents 🤷♂️
I've started learning Russian this year and granted I'm not as far into it as I could be (not consistent enough) but I feel like I can pick up phrases or read things here and there. I've been doing Duolingo as well as listening/writing with Russian "classes" on UA-cam.
@mordaeu1411 how much time have you spent on learing russian per day?, I am a complete beginner in the russian language and I'm still studying basic russian reading and the Cyrillic alphabet.
i have this approach to learning everything in life. Not just language learning. If you're obsessed with something, you'll get good at it. So it's not a question of whether or not you can learn, it's a question of how much fun you can have. Pass a certain fun threshhold, you develope an obsession, and become good at it without having to "work"
I've studied about 4 languages now including both in a school setting and self study. I definitely think a slow increase in comprehensible input is one of the key factors in language acquisition. The one thing I would say is that certain languages like Japanese do have more difficult grammar, honorifics, and elements like kanji that are really difficult to learn through immersion alone. Consciously working on learning to read native writing systems will be necessary for everything above beginner level so don't skip that part. Also, working on studying vocabulary with a system like Anki even just 30min a day is really helpful for increasing the level of comprehensible input faster. I really recommend the Refold 1000 most common words packs as they are a fantastic way to get a good understanding of the common words and phrases much faster than with just input alone without that much effort.
Thanks for checking out the video. I’m sure you’re right about using the refold deck. Certainly coming from English to Spanish isn’t that bad so I didn’t feel the urge to flashcard but I know they can really help a lot of people so certainly wouldn’t dismiss them as a method. There’s so much content for Spanish now that doing it without flashcards seemed great to me. For Chinese though… it’s a no brainer!
I'm struggling through Japanese and French (and dabbling in Korean, Mandarin and Irish) and I'd generally agree with you in general. Immersion is very difficult with Japanese (for an English speaker) as the written material is so difficult to understand - and there is a chicken and egg problem in that you can't understand the written material without understanding a lot of the language, while you can't learn through immersion without knowing how to read it. And just listening to it is very hard as the entire structure of the language is so different from how your English speaking brain understands how language works. It is far, far, easier to read/listen your way into another European language than it is with something like Japanese, so you definitely need a more focused effort. I'd love to say I've discovered the secret for japanese, but I'm still struggling. If I was starting Japanese again from scratch, I'd recommend a combination of reading quite a lot (not studying, just reading to understand) how the language works, while mixing in a steady mix of learning kanji/kana with lots of watching videos with Japanese subtitles so that your brain can match up the sounds with the written words. I think you have to rely on pure input to learn the vocab as there are just too many similar words (to the English speakers ear) to do much else.
@@philipdavis7521 During my time studying Japanese, I've just been learning common vocab with it's kanji mostly and just scanning through newspapers and anime subtitles to practice reading what I can. The other way is to study kanji by their radical group, but I didn't like that method as it contained too many random words I'd hardly ever see like "輸血" for "blood transfusion". For grammar I've just been reading through Human Japanese which does a decent job explaining the grammar and watching UA-cam videos about it for more examples. Japanese is probably the most memorization heavy language I've studied but also one of the most rewarding.
This was the type of comment I was looking for as I'm pretty much always immersed in Japanese for several hours a day. I don't think simply immersing yourself in it will help you learn it at all, or at least it hasn't for me, it's just too complex. I used to watch things in Japanese all the time and I could never correlate the word with what it was/meant without actually looking it up several times until it was committed to memory. I think with Japanese you have to start by doing the time consuming, boring, often grueling studying/memorizing of katakana and the more commonly used kanji, grammar, sentence structure, even learning what the difference is between the formal/business speak and the casual friend/family speak is, all along with the correct intonation. With an emphasis on the intonation part if you want to sound native. It's a lot. If immersion alone worked I'd be at least at conversational level and I'm nowhere near that lol
Yes, unfortunately the dark secret they never tell you when you start to learn Japanese is that it takes far, far, longer to learn than almost any other major language. And thats not even taking account of all those westerners who claim to be fluent, but are nowhere near.@@shelbyjackson6903
During high school, I found I learned more efficiently by mucking about with children’s songs, stories, and recipes. It helped with learning what worked grammatically, with idioms, and with things that don’t quite translate. Also immersion! I got some index cards and labeled everything in the house
Your final bit about how you're 900 hours in and you're understanding but not speaking honestly makes a ton of sense. I've tried learning languages in the past and they all emphasized speaking WHILE learning to understand. But as a person, I definitely listened and understood English being spoken to me for a long time before really being able to formulate my own thoughts into a sentence that made any sense beyond "See Jane run. This is Jane's ball. The ball is round."
I had a similar experience when I was younger, at 1 point I found out that I didn't need subtitles anymore to be able to understand the things that were being said. I one point I remember a documentary being played it they were using the wrong subtitles, so I started translating everything on the fly for my siblings and parents. It was then that it really clicked to me that I understood the language.
I've followed this approach with more look ups but when I systematically immersed in material about my level until I mastered it, it was the quickest internalization of Spanish compared to anything else. As I'm learning output and my input is approaching only native level material, I've found a method to intensely study that works with immersion. I'll read a page in a book or use an online reader like Lingq. I'll contemplate one sentence at a time until the whole meaning comes to me. When extensively reading I'm unconsciously taking in a lot but it also helps to really sit with a small piece of the language until it clicks. I only do look ups if I absolutely don't know the word or phrase. This has really accelerated my Spanish level.
Thanks David. I’m with you on that. I’m finishing off a couple of graded readers but actually might just dive in to books I want to read in Spanish where my unknown words would be higher. I’m sure I can now follow the story even if some of the vocab I can’t understand yet: like you say I think the gap between my known words and unknown words would massively increase my vocabulary
Top notch. I learned German after about 8 years or so of school, grammar, etc. in contrast, Russian after about 3 years. I studied Russian grammar for an hour or so and that’s it. I then read books for 5 year olds, watched videos geared to the same age. Eventually worked up to Early/ mid teen level material. Hint. Don’t get bogged down trying to write a language!! I’m in the sciences and almost never write anything except in English even though I was raised mostly in French (Canadian).. the couple of times I write a message in German or Russian I just use an on line translator site…better than spending amillion hours toiling learning grammar, verb endings, etc.
Четвёртый язык всегда легче второго. Какова степень сходства между английским и французским? Большое количество французских и латинских слов в английском языке поможет при изучении французского?
This is a super helpful video, man! Like most students, I’ve had years of Spanish and learned very little, so I’m trying to get an actual base. I made the mistake of trying to set up a rigorous schedule where I would target specific things on specific days, and it made it a burden. What I’ve learned is to tack it on to things I enjoy. Reading my favorite books in Spanish, watching English stuff with Spanish subtitles (actually incredibly helpful) along with Spanish with Spanish subtitles (do NOT use subtitles in your native language, you won’t learn anything), and have been using a few apps and vocab drills as an addition. Going much better!
Actually you can learn a lot by using English subtitles if you actually idk... Listen! 🤦🏻♂️ You can learn just as much if not more this way then English with Spanish subs.
I was recently asking myself the very question of "why do we learn languages in a different order to how we acquire them as a child?" I've found that listening to lots of music has been very effective for language learning, and Olly Richard's storybooks are awesome!
I think there's actually some psychological research on how our brains change as we get older, and how our preferred learning styles may also change as a result.
Kids learn faster in part because they're not (nearly as) afraid to make mistakes and embarass themselves (nor is it generally considered embarrassing for children, who are learning, to make mistakes). Kids will happily chatter with incorrect grammar and pronunciation, but over time, it largely sorts itself out through exposure or recasting.
I intuitively got completely fluent in English just this way. I'm a native Russian, and at some point when I had good-enough comprehension of English, I've gone all-in on immersing myself. I've switched all of my devices' system language to English, viewed all my apps and websites in English instead of Russian, started watching English-speaking UA-camrs instead of Russian ones. This was the turning point for me, I've for the first time learned to comprehend English by listening and not only reading this way, learned to form any sentences. But, as for the basics of English which I had to learn before that, I have no idea how I've gone about learning them since that was so long ago, and I was a little kid back then.
watching this video made me realize i've learned english subconsciously, i didnt even set plans to force myself to stop using subtitles. One day i forgot turning on subtitles and i realized that 10 minutes into the video, but honestly i had no idea how to adapt the same technique to my third language because its grammar is more complicated than English but perhaps we have to take kids as an example, and surrender ourselves with the language we are trying to learn. Thank you so much for the video, if you could learn Spanish with this technique i can learn French too hopefully.
It kinda happened the same to me, although I consciously turned them off, but it is only uncomfortable for the fist few hours, then you notice progress and naturally keep it up. This doesn't mean you won't need to look up words and stuff, but it is much more enjoyable like this
I am in similar situation. I just somehow learned English doing things like and then a day I was playing and talking with an Australian man about 30 minutes. But I don't have any ideas of how I will learn Russia it's a complete different grammar(my native language is Portuguese).
Being interested is a must. Understanding patterns is how I am absorbing it. Watching a show, using an app and if possible talk to someone who knows it. I am using a bit of each. Remove the fear of making mistakes as well. One big help is to learn it while you are doing something you hate to do. Get two things done at one time. This is how I am getting there.
Agree with your approach, currently learning korean as my third language and have made the process more fun and enjoyable instead of long hours of boring grammar classes. I myself do a mixture of both(conscious learning + comprehensible input) because I like to increase the pace a bit sometimes because that motivates me to keep learning, however input and focusing on something that is sustainable(and motivating) is the key always.
Im also studying Korean ❤️. I also agree with this guy, picking vocab along the way helps, so I stated using I SPEAK app ❤️. Whats your main source now?
Hi Eudaimonia239, I have been watching Korean movies for the last 60 days and found myself speaking the language without even thinking about transferring English into Koren words. It was opposit. I speck Koren and in my head it is English. So I know what I'm saying. Now I need to learn the English and Koren spelling of the words.
sure, this lazy way may take you a few years. but it is important to remember that the time will pass regardless. it's not about being perfect, it's about doing and enjoying it. that's most of the battle. whatever way you're learning, as long as you're enjoying it and you're finding motivation in that enjoyment, that's the most important thing.
I learnt English by reading toddler books, some of them being the same stories as on TV. The language is simple and supported by lots of pictures. From there I moved on to reading picture books with increasingly complex sentences and with fewer and fewer pictures until I could read without any visual prompt. By that time I had enough vocabulary to understand short articles in newspapers and magazines and figure out the meaning of odd words from the surrounding text. I still think that children's picture books and toddler TV are a great way for a beginner - very low-level material for adults is hard to find. TV ads have also some use, because of the repetition and short and simple content that is often easy to understand with practically no knowledge of the language at all.
I learned English without sit down and study, I was just watching UA-cam videos, sometimes just pause and look on Google Translator, it took me a lot of years to finally understand one entire video Duolingo helped me a lot, not sure why so many people hate this app. Nowadays I am able to have conversations in both English and Italian (and of course my mother tongue which is Portuguese) But I am trying to learn Korean, and daaaamn, is really hard, everything is so different
Same here, bro. I'm Puerto Rican, Spanish is my native language, I learned English through media, tv, video games, etc. Now I'm tackling Korean and I do agree with you, it's no easy task. But with motivation and discipline we got this! Good luck to you on your journey and remember to never give up.
@@브라이안PR Gracias Hermano! Yes, I admit i didn't think it was going to be so hard at the beginning, but after some months of study I am still a beginner, and imo the alphabet is the only easy aspect of the Korean language. What are you struggling? For me the most complicated thing is the particles, hierarchy, the order of the sentence and the 1000 ways to say the same thing. But I am getting there, brick by brick I can form some simple sentences I watched a movie and I was happy to understand one complete sentence "Uri hion odi só" (Where is my brother?)
Nice work. I'm watching Letal Crysis for my input now which is insane considering I've just slowly increased the difficulty of my input. A very enjoyable way to learn a language! Keep going chap!
@@ZFCaio every day is a struggle since I am living here on South Korea, atleast my wife speaks English but aside from that I'm pretty much a new born lol. I do agree with you that Hangul is easy, and a bit of pronunciation. Particles and sentence order are not easy but with time, practice and dedication we got this🤙🏽
Enhorabuena! Hace un par de años tuve que aprender alemán en tres semanas para acceder a un programa de prácticas al extranjero. Combiné lecciones de gramática en youtube con leer historias para principiantes y funcionó maravillosamente. Sobre todo porque me podía pasar el día leyendo historias de forma entretenida mientras mi cerebro iba consolidando poco a poco las palabras que aprendía. Muy buen vídeo!
Thanks mate. Yeah, exactly that. Once my spanish is a bit more advanced I have a massive series of books that I want to start. I think reading about 50 books in Spanish will be insanely powerful
Your main point's valid. However, I highly recommend you start speaking early on. It's incredibly frustrating to be tongue tied in basic conversations. I'd suggest talking to yourself. Repeat some things you heard. If you can, describe what you're doing. Retell past events. Talk about your plans. Opinions. Whatever. I speak as a language teacher with over 20 years of experience, and a language learner of an even longer period (but multiple languages). What sticks most strongly for me is the stuff I actively remembered and rehearsed through this self-talk method. Bottom line: use speaking (output) in tandem with listening/reading (input).
Hi Matthew. Firstly, great name. Under appreciated in my book. I found speaking early didn't work for me but certainly don't have problems with anyone that does. I now prefer to speak later
@@matt_brooks-greenwell I understand but my comprehension is intermediate 3 when it comes to reading and I'm getting better at understanding podcasts in Spanish but I still speak at a beginner level and I'm always translating in my head. I think now that it might be important to speak it a little from the beginning like after a few months in and not wait and hope you become fluent one day. But check back with us in a year and I'd love to hear if you're speaking a lot better by then? If your answer is still no, then I question your learning process, but I do wish you success and you're interesting to listen to.
I am a profi linguist (translator and interpreter) and can speak Czech, English, German, French and quite some Spanish. I always spend quite some time studying the basics, grammar, vocab... and then I start reading books in that particular language, speaking with foreigners and listening to recorded speech (UA-cam is great for that). Learning a foreign language IS a considerable achievement and you just NEED to invest the time to do it. If you dont want to give the effort, you will never learn (I spent 1 year in Finland, but was only able to learn a few words... because I was too lazy to do that). Maybe some exceptionally talented people can learn a language without even really trying, but that is certainly not my case.
@@bohemicus8280Lol, your last answer was funny. But I think the other user was impressed because, let's face it, Czech is no walk in the park. It would be impressive if it were not your mother language. I am a professional translator & interpreter too, been working as one for the past 20 years. What combinations do you work with?
Fair point about time management and language learning. This is what holds people back the most in my opinion. I find drilling vocabulary and verbs incredibly effective - also speaking as early as possible. This is harder and quicker - but takes up time and mental energy which are not always available. Great idea about slowly increasing difficulty level to reproduce the process of learning in childhood.
Understanding what I hear has been my biggest challenge with French. They smoosh their words together so much. It didn't help that most courses teach "proper" French, not spoken French. Even my colleagues with the politest accents don't speak French that way! What turned things round for me was the Pimsleur app. I started from the very beginning to unlearn the rubbish I've been taught. I only do the aural bits as I can already read French. It is a really well designed course and I often say to myself "ah, I see what you're doing!" I supplement that with the Mauril app to help with Canadian accents. My ability to understand spoken French is now at the point where I can follow what's being said on UA-cam videos even if I don't recognize all the words.
Great work. Yeah, I know some people turn their nose up at Pimsleur but humans I know in real life seem to like it so it's definitely one to bear in mind
You are doing the right thing, I’m French Canadian. My advise is don’t get bogged down in noun gender, the complicated verb tenses, learning to speak slang, etc. you can get by fine in French speaking only 1500 words . Thr key is know another 4000 when listening or reading….that’s learned watching kids shows, cartoins, fun stuff. Stories for young teens are excellent for learning ‘real’ conversation.
Great video. I am an English teacher and spanish language learner (acquirer if you like). Regardless of what one thinks or method used, language only enters in one way whether it be the first, second or 10th. Language is acquired implicitly, meaning our brain sub consciously orders and processes the input. No amount of explicit intervention speeds up or skips over stages beyond extending exposure to the language. Motivation is a factor. Grammar and studying can be demotivating for many hence why many give up, especially in educational settings.
Wish I could give you 10 thumbs up! This is what I've been preaching to my friends that struggle to commit to language learning. Consistency is king, be lazy and don't actively study, just let it wash over you, and the human brain *will* begin to absorb meaning over time!
This is how I learned english: - Watching FRIENDS at the time, the TV often missed the subtitles. I realized I did not understood but could kind of infer it and get a few words - I browsed the internet mostly in english. With time I translated and visited forums to check the why and the whats less and less - Eventually I started reading and writing in english (arguing with random internet people its a good motivator to learn how to tell something. Google translate was even shittier at the time so eventually you pick up some stuff) And thats it... consuming at the top, producing content next with theory however this applied specifically to what you want to do. Like learning a song in the guitar instead of doing scales (though in the guitar the scales are important) Regrets? Not speaking... I have a decent level of english, I have worked in copywriting before, but when I speak im at toddler level, so if I did it again, I would speak with natives as much as possible
Great work. Is there anything stopping you from speaking now? If you have that level of comprehension (and perfect writing by the way), speaking just takes practice
OK, how do you determine what is 'comprehensible', and how do you actually come to comprehend it while just listening? Aren't you having to look stuff up?
Hey Matt, thanks for the video. I teach an endangered language that only came into written form in 2008. Up until about 5 years ago, I only taught grammar…and none of my students could hold conversations, even though they knew all the “rules.” I became aware of comprehensible input, and immediately switched my program to that method. Only 6 classes into it, my students could speak, read and write. It was shocking! Now I have taught over 50 groups of students, and all that go through my program, end up speaking, reading and writing in a very short period of time. Everything you said is so true. I have proved it over and over in my live online courses. My students report that between classes, the words and sentences just randomly pop into their minds, without the need to really “study.” It is pretty low effort for them. And fun to watch them grow. 🤩
The method for learning a foreign language is the same as learning your native language. You need more or less constant exposure to it in a big variety of situations. Then it must be followed up with classroom style instruction. Some people are rather gifted, and can learn to read and writing with very little formal instruction, while others are more or less dyslexic in their native language. I'm fluent in one language besides my native language, and I can read and write the language.
I'm not sure about the classroom instruction but certainly some conscious knowledge can be useful to monitor your own speech in order to avoid mistakes
@@matt_brooks-green Granted - NO classroom instruction is actually necessary, but is nevertheless extremely valuable. A deep knowledge of a language cannot be obtained without some reading and writing.
Agree. This is how I appear to be learning. Unfortunately my teachers do not agree, and they insist on giving me lame tests on words and grammar they just taught me... the truth is those words don't stick for me until quite some time after, until I've heard them used many many times out in the wild. Even if i were to memorize the words to pass the tests so what? If I did not learn by acquisition I will likely forget anyway.
Currently learninig a new language, and what i found very helpful, is just learning 1-2 new concepts every day, might be a new grammar, new word or a phrase, it keeps me busy and invested, but rest of the time i just listen and watch target language content, and every time i pick up more stuff not only from context, but an actuall things ive learned, like wow cool that new piece of grammar works like this in a living language etc.
6:14 thats exactly how I learned english lmao. At some point I just decided to only watch english youtube videos, read english wikipedia articles, google almost everything in english, switch the language in all my apps to english, only join english discord servers (which wasn't really a choice tbh, there just aren't many discord servers in my language.) and write comments in english just like this one. And honstly, I didn't actually do that to learn english at first. When I started all I really did was watch a few english youtube videos mixed with videos in my native language. Slowly but surely everything just became more english for me. Mostly because there was a hella lot of english content on the internet. And now I'm here, writing about how I became fluent in english. Its crazy.
I dont know if this will help but actively trying to talk with people in your target language will help your brain acquire it so much quicker and actively recall words, even if that means just texting somebody in the language. I spent 4 months studying, reading, and watching things in russian, but nothing helped me get used to speaking better than an online chatroom did. Even if you need a translator to speak, dont get discouraged because at some point you will need the translator less and less often!!!
hello! i'm learning spanish as my third language (i am bilingual in english and bangla, as i'm of bangladeshi origin and i've grown up in canada and the US), and this video was genuinely very reassuring and motivating to me. i'm only in high school but i've already found that i have a strong passion for linguistics; i adore languages and everything related to them. this may be, in part, due to my exposure to various languages through my cultural background and diverse friends from around the world - i have friends who speak languages varying from hindi and telugu and malayalam to spanish and french and german to yoruba and portugese and korean to mandarin and vietnamese and russian to turkish and tamil and marathi, and more. either way, the point is that i very much want to learn more languages. i know i'm not half bad with picking them up, but i've been struggling with figuring out a way that works for me (i'm very busy in and out of school) - this video has shown me a way that i've considered vaguely before, but it has definitely increased my confidence that i'll be able to achieve success with it. thank you so much!
5:50 yes going at the right level would be ideal but some people get bored reading children’s books and as well it’s hard to find the right level for intermediates if you just do a little study like 5 or 10 words a day then you’ll make major progress until you run out of words for that level
I have "bumbled" myself into speaking pretty decent Japanese in 2.5 years by mainly just dabbling in content like videos, and podcasts on topics I like, and actively searching language exchange partners. So for the vast majority, it was just fun and it never felt like study. However, people tend to think methods are always a bit like religions and need to be followed "purely", but to me, it always makes sense to combine multiple things. In my case, and which I highly recommend, I used a few weeks of diligent "classical" study (maybe 1 month only) followed by a series of very cost-effective online lessons by private tutors which you can find on various sites. This way I built up a basic scaffold of grammar, vocabulary, and some initial speaking experience which then gave me the courage to try language partners as well as bootstrapped the rest of the more effortless learning experience that followed. For reference: I can speak quite "fluently" about most topics that are in my range of interest. I have a pretty good "sense/feel" for the language already, which allows me to quickly shift between casual or Keigo or any mix in between, depending on the demand of the situation. Also, I can use quite natural and casual expressions, speak rather quickly and understand people if they speak very very fast and unclearly. In now probably hundreds of hours of talking Japanese, I can't recall a single instance where my partner had to say that they didn't understand what I was saying or asking. That being said, sometimes I still get flustered and lose my confidence and my speech drops to a more staggered and basic level (especially when I am tired, but it remains still useable). I occasionally have to ask my partners to describe a word that I didn't understand. Reading and writing are still quite basic: I can chit-chat everyday stuff online, but that's already where it stops. If I look at instructions on some bought item or try to read the news I have to guess 70% of it. I grew up bilingually with German/Swiss and Finnish, which always had given me an advantage in language acquisition. During high school, despite being mainly a "math guy" my grades in French were also always maxed out. 99% of my English skills also just stem from UA-cam and trying to speak with people.
@@musicm1rage623 It is really hard. I supervise a part of a biomechanics research group, I run a small biotech business, I teach a few engineering classes at university, I am married, I have hobbies like the fitness, Karate, Golf and hiking, so you can imagine I don't have time to study 27/7 :D. To put the proverbial cherry on the cake, I did the Japanese study in "secret" so that I can prank my wife next time we go to Japan (hopefully end of this year, she still doesn't know!). First of all, I think I am pretty "fluent" but some language extremists who only consider "native level" as fluent might not consider me fluent. But I can certainly speak it pretty well. Also as I indicated, I am pretty efficient at doing things and I am used to cramming in a lot of stuff into my head in a short time. And lastly, i probably have pretty decent talent to acquire languages, so learning them never gave me too much of a headache. Especially since I am not a perfectionist, I can live with making mistakes and learned to manage them in a way that I am sure to still be understood well enough, no matter which language I speak. :) good luck on your studies!
I'm currently polishing up on my French & Swedish and learning Spanish & Russian from scratch. It's not easy at all but I enjoy the process. Duolingo does help but it's not sufficient. UA-cam has a lot of useful material and channels like this help me keep going.
Good on you for having Lazy Chinese in the video at least in the background, her videos are some of the absolute best for acquiring chinese! I bought her 7$ a month subscription to her website for exclusive videos just to support her and there are some pretty good extra videos on there.
I know I learnt English through immersion and I know it worked. I wasn't even actively trying to learn, I just used English internet because I liked the content there more than my native language content. Yet now when I'm trying to learn German the first thing I did was to look up grammar tables. For some reason I didn't even consider trying the same approach that made me learn English until fluency. Though to be fair, it did take around 5 years of me using English internet before I became fluent.
The harder the language (hard being a term used to describe the difference between your NL and TL), the less "lazy" you get to be when starting language acquisition. Comprehensible input is great and it is the only way (before getting into output) through which I picked up Italian (I'm a native English/Spanish speaker)....but for a harder language that alone was not enough (at least for me)...The first language I picked up after my native languages was Japanese. Japanese has wayy too many kanji characters to just learn through input. Not only this, but because Japanese is so widely different from both of my native languages.....I needed some kind of SRS (used anki) to be able to remember vocab and even grammar so that when I hear/see it, it would be easier to recognize and then input would help solidify what I have studied.
Thank you for making this video. It made me realise, that even though I was getting input regularly, I seem to always aim for content much above my level and it makes the entire process way more frustrating than it should be. It makes me dread my daily immersion. I hadn't realised this until today, so for this I thank you 🙏
Hi Carl, so glad I could help. It’s really held me back in the past. Hearing words you already know in new contexts reinforces them. I found it a game changer!
This was surprisingly motivating for me! Small steps matter more than you think 😊 I sometimes struggle to find interesting resources to listen to, I'll try to lower the friction so I can practise more often 😊
This is a great video man. I like the trick of imagining what level you'd have if you did all this stuff that's not realistic, and then imagining what else you'd give up to get to that level.
Thanks man. I think some people worry about optimising their input so much that it creates stress and psychological barriers to progress (ie the fear their not acquiring it fast enough). Lots of input you understand over a long enough period is a solid place to start for most people
I'm a native spanish speaker and this is basically how I end up learning english, watching english content with subtitles and realizing I started torecognize words, then played videogames in english, started watching english speaking youtube channels, etc... Funnily enough I wasn't even trying to learn english to begin with, I just ended up learning due to being constantly exposed to the language (exposition that became even higher during covid) and ended up with me being able to talk and write in english decently well without even being that my objective, I just kept watching media that I like
@@vampirate2347 I think 12? Not sure really, I remember at some point when I was 16 when I realized I was able to understand English decently well (fo someone who wasn't study it formaly) At that point I a passed a few years hearing rock music while using lyrics as help to follow along, even before that I remember finding this cool site as a kid that let me watch the latest adventure time episodes before they were even dubbed So yeah no strategy whatsoever I just exposed myself to the language, tho I could say I started to learn faster after I started to expose actively to it
No study? Lazy? I think "studying" is not only learning words or grammar rules by heart, but also watching videos like this one on UA-cam. I know that I'm not "lazy", but actively studying lots of things when listening to videos like that : vocab, grammar, comprehension, pronunciation, your great accent and so on. If you study with videos, maybe even for hours a day, you're not lazy, you're smart!🙂
@@physicguy92093 yeah probably, but you would know every single rule and even natives don't understand every rule, they just repeat the words they heard when was a baby
I think this is a pretty interesting and often overlooked point about language learning. It is also important to mention that learning can never be left out completely and that the amount of learning is dependent on your current skill level. A complete beginner will need to start out learning basic vocabulary and grammar (depending on the language, also alphabets) simply because without this there is no comprehensible input they can use to acquire a language. I find that at the start working through a good textbook helps a lot. They often combine grammar and vocab learning but also give you comprehensible input to acquire the newly gained knowledge and they give you the chance to practice (and thus solidify the newly gained knowledge) by having you produce output (especially if they have a workbook). After gaining a solid beginner knowledge of the language I think it's very important to find other sourced of comprehensible input. I still wouldn't stop learning because you will always need the learning in order to make new input comprehensible but learning should not be the main thing you are doing. Focusing on learning alone is like trying to learn the piano by only watching instruction videos and never actually playing it. If you don't use the newly learned knowledge your brain will think it's useless and just throw it out again. By the way, this is also one of the many reasons why taking classes is so helpful. In a class environment you can try to use the language in many different contexts, you can work together with other people who are at around the same level as you are, while the teacher acts as a sort of scaffolding to the whole learning process. A good teacher guides you through the work material by giving you additional explanations, they tell you when something you do is incorrect while also helping you to turn the given material of a lesson into comprehensible input.
As for communication skills I learn whole sentences saying them aloud. 5 days - 300 repetitions per day at least. Later I don't need to translate. I know the meaning of words straight away like in my native language. And also I remember the meaning longer than by learning separate words. This method is called: chunking. It was a real game changer in my learning process in English and other languages.😊
Greetings from New Zealand. Gabriel Wyner talks about that in his book Fluent Forever. You may be interested in it. He does use flash cards, but his approach to them is very different from the usual, and he is also a big believer in not spending hours studying in the traditional way. A tip I picked up with watching tv is to watch it with the closed captions (rather than subtitles) on, it helps with understanding how the written words are pronounced. Cheers.
I already knew basic Spanish. I knew my colors, alphabet and numbers. What I’ve done is use several sources in videos. Children’s Spanish. Simple songs, learning the names of things. I listen to it to get the ear for it. I don’t bother to understand at first. Then I try to isolate individual words. Again the meaning doesn’t matter at first. By isolating individual words from each other everything then doesn’t sound run in together in a big mess. Then I learn vocabulary a few words a day and take a few days off to process it in my head. I try not to overload myself. I don’t worry about grammar. But with some words I can now know what the root word is and look it up. I play videos over and over. Once I get everything it sticks and that video is deleted. I learn by listening, watching the words being spelled out, I get used to different accents. I don’t bother to try to translate. It gradually comes. I get the context. I also use an AI language modual. It answers a lot of Spanish questions and sometimes I mix English with Spanish in my question and it gives a whole explanation in Spanish which helps my reading comprehension and not afraid to say in Spanish I don’t understand. I need simple. It tries to write a simpler explanation in Spanish. Half I get half I don’t and then ask the question all in English what was that, what was this and it explains again in English. It only does text. Computer voices doing Spanish rub me the wrong way. I don’t bother with those. I listen to Spanish while falling asleep. Some gets through some doesn’t. But one thing I’ve learned is not to rush. I didn’t learn English in one day not gonna know the whole Spanish language in one day. Two days a couple months. When I do my walks I think in Spanish sentences. I talk to my cats in simple Spanish. I see signs that have numbers I translate those into Spanish. I discovered that cramming doesn’t work. One thing that’s great about using an AI I discovered is that it knows the language, it understands my questions, it’s made me unafraid to even ask questions. I like to tell it what I learned. Sometimes in broken Spanish and it corrects me. If I don’t remember I don’t sweat it. I ask it to quiz me. It’s quite helpful. I have discovered one thing. Stick with Spanish. I get mixed up when I try French because I’m starting to think in Spanish and just can’t convert. So I’m going to stick with one language for now. Grammar is tough because I’m not so great knowing grammar terms in English, so once I understand grammar terms in Spanish, I know what the question is asking me. I’m beginning to dream in Spanish. Words form break apart, sentences form and break apart. I see conversations and I dream with sound which is a little unnerving and one time it gave me a nightmare. I was startled awake and the words in my dream were what was in the video I fell asleep to so it’s reaching me. I have over a hundred different Spanish teaching videos with adult Spanish, children Spanish with simple songs, some with translations some without, looking up words, using the AI, listening to Spanish songs. I like listening to José Feliciano when he sings in Spanish and just letting it all sink in. It was a tangled mess at first. It still is. But I look at Spanish as a marathon not a sprint. I get it when my brain is ready. It manages to untangle a lot of things which is what I mean by processing it. Love of the language also helps. I’m learning it because I love listening to it. I’m not planning a trip, I practice to myself out loud and I’m remembering a lot of Spanish from school those many decades ago so I have some foundation. I took classes when I was out of school years ago with native speakers and discovered with an American Spanish teacher who wondered why I have little to no accent, I learned from dad that mom who spoke two dialects of Spanish, Portuguese, a little German, that my brother and I were totally bi lingual in Spanish which I don’t remember we were so young. It was my first language apparently but mom had to switch. So I learned English from my parents and a lot of TV. I do remember mom teaching me how to count in German and was really picky on pronunciation. Then she stopped. I do remember her when we went to Tijuana mom negotiated a coat for me all in Spanish and I understood every word. She also made these flexible records narrating books in Spanish and Portuguese I listened to as a kid in the 60’s so Spanish was always floating around somewhere. Dad was fluent in French and he used to play his Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I understood nothing but got a listen to French so it wasn’t alien when I learned a little in grade school. My uncle was fluent in Spanish French. Latin and Yiddish. He only spoke Yiddish when he was mad. When someone sneezes I always answer in German as I only learned it in German. Mom’s mom would throw out a couple words of German. Mostly of course I heard just English. But having exposure to some languages growing up even a word or two primed my brain to learn it. So I bid thee buenas noches.
Podcasts are great you can play them over and over also songs are great to learn singing along is both fun and you practising pronunciation without realising it. And I found that listening to interviews on YT gives helpful insights into the everyday language
The moment I saw “effortless”, I thought it should be comprehensible input. I just clicked the video and I saw my own face 😂😂 thank you for spreading the idea! It deserves more attention!
I learned English as a child by watching cartoons (here in the NL we don't dub it in dutch) and playing video games. So, remembering this, I replayed games I'd already played with the language set to Italian, I watched Italian shows with english subs, and later with Italian subs, and it's actually going pretty well! The only thing is that it takes a lot of content input to get to grips with the language, plus I do need to look up or google translate a bunch of things.
Easiest way to learn a language is start at the basics like numbers memorize those then start with basic word (like a baby) also as you get more familiar with it adds more and more I also recommend form day one watch tv shows in that langue with English subtitles and notice the sounds they make although it may seem useless it will come in handy
Very interesting video. I'm learning Thai, it's the first language I've properly attempted learning and I have a tutor. It's so hard to do a level of imersion when you have no clue about the language. Over time it builds up, I pick up words and then start to piece a sentence together as best as I can. Maybe I can't reply a lot of the time but I can definitely get a gauge and understand what the conversation is about. I can speak a very basic level of Thai now in a conversation, introducing myself, ordering food somewhat and saying where something is. It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done, very easy to beat yourself up if you have a few days off from learning or a week but when you get back to it and understand that little bit more is just so fulfilling. Keep up the great content
Thai is probably the language with the most comprehensible input material on UA-cam! The one with the most content is Comprehensible Thai, I think they are at nearly 1000 hours of content, split up into several beginner and intermediate playlists. A lot of the teachers there are former teachers at AUA (where I think ALG was developed). There's also Understand Thai and Riam Thai, excellent resources for Comprehensible Input in Thai. I'm 800 hours into Thai, and I agree with everything you mention in the video, seems like the best way to learn a language. @@matt_brooks-green
Mad good video. Ultimately, 1. Doing something you will ACTUALLY enjoy and 2. Something that you can afford to put time into is the best way to learn. Thank you!
Honestly this is how Spanish has been for me. I’ve stopped being worried about learning a specific thing at a specific time; rather I focus on language learning as a lifelong process
Ive been watching dramas to learn Chinese. I just listen and certain words and phrases get repeated and I can start to make connections. They are useful as the translations are there as well. I also get to understand the appropriate contexts for words and phrase use. Also the use of tones in different situations. It also helps me to familiarize myself with sound of the language. I learn simple vocab on the side as well. Warning, dramas are addictive. Also immersion in the culture, eating and cooking, history helps too. Great advice on this vid, thank you, I am encouraged. I have only spoken very simple things like greetings, numbers, things I like.
Very very concise. You talk about very complex things in simple terms. That shows immense experience and thought before writing this video. Well done Matt. The point I resonate most is: follow the routine that you can stick to. My chalenge is I always want to "do more" to "get there faster" but that leads to weeks and months of no effort because I've developed some sort of resentment towards it. I ahd to realise this after 10 years of dedication to French and stop/start of other languages. How many takes did you do for this video? :)
Learning something starts with connecting what you know with what you don't know. I've recently been into mnemonics and memory palaces, which is amazing, but never connected the "listen to content your interested in" until now. It's not about perking your interest, it's about connecting what you know with what you don't so your brain fills in the gaps (2:51)
For me, speaking my target language is very important because I feel like it cements in my mind the things I've learned. I learn by doing, and I consider speaking one of those things I do to get better at learning the language. I also completely agree that the thing you'll actually do is the most effective way to learn. Very good advice.
Can confirm, just watch/play a shit ton of content in your desired language. I learned most of English through gaming, movies and eventually international communities on for example discord and such. Eventually you will kind of get to the end of natural learning though. To really perfect the grammar and consciously understand how it works, some traditional studying will definitely help.
This is literally how I learned english. I just watched alot of english tv and youtube as a kid and. even when I didn't understand it and after a while you just start understanding it. mind you, you do learn alot faster when you are younger
When i saw the name of the video i thought this makes no sense, but once i watched it i realized i learned english this way lol. I got to some basic level and then started watching english youtube, and 2 years later i'm pretty fluent in it. One huge benefit is it all comes naturally, just like learning your first language and even if your vocabulary is smaller than of some guy who learns 50 new words every month, your understanding and speaking abilities might be way more coherent and strong. So not only this is an easier way to learn a language, but also a better one. Thank you for this video because as ive said until now i didn't realize i learned english this way, and now when im learning french it will be of a great help for me.
For beginners, I find repeatedly listening to children stories to be very effective. It's surprisingly interesting with a good lector. Only important thing, you need to understand the basic outline of the story, you need to roughly understand what is going on. And it must be fun, with emotions. After a while, you will understand almost everything, without checking the meaning of words. Highly recommend this method, children know what they are doing
Finally, I have been waiting for you to make another video. I can't wait to hear you speak Spanish for the first time. I'm currently at 85 hours of input on Dreaming Spanish, and these videos are very motivating for me.
I love that you said, am I going to sit around all day study in Spanish! Because there’s so many videos online that says you can learn Spanish in 60 days and become fully conversational and one of the UA-camrs said he study Spanish for up to eight hours a day for 44 days realistically, no adult have time to do that!
It would be important to point out that there is a huge difference between acquiring that language enough to understand something and acquiring it to the point of carrying a well thought out conversation. Yes, comprehensible input is great, and yes, we do need to expose ourselves to a huge amount of stimuli, but having a conversation in a foreign language and dealing with every day situations is not something every self proclaimed language learner/polyglot can do. So, an advice for anyone here reading and/or feeling like it's not going as it should, most of the people who claim they know a language and put '0' effort into understanding it, make a tremendous amount of mistakes, a lot of which would be easily corrected if they just stopped trying to prove their point so hard. We all make mistakes, both people who enjoy studying and those who don't, there are different ways of learning something, and as long as you have a varied amount of stimuli (video/audio/sound/interaction) you'll do just fine :)
Immersing your self is the key I've remember when i first learnt english it was the traditional way of class rooms and memorizing greetings and so on but when i start following youtubers, memes pages on facebook and the most important is slang i felt like i improved it more ,and also through that you can figure out the keys of lang such as phresal verbs which is the most important thing in english for ex
This is just spot on! Sometimes the most effective method is the one that requires less effort. Take me for instance, when I was avidly learning French attending classes and all that I understood but couldn't do much outside the classroom but by binging Kdramas, listening to Kpop, snooping around K news with Immersive Translate and watching subbed shows. I can even speak. I thought it was crazy but it probably is how the brain works when it feels relaxed it's easier to capture
On the topic of when to focus on output, I heard of a really interesting method recently called ALG that advocates doing little or no output until it feels so natural that it emerges automatically. The idea was that trying to do output too soon causes you to map target language sounds onto your native sound set, which then hampers you perhaps forever. Seems to fit with some of Krashen's ideas. It seems to mostly be an interactive method though so I dunno how much you can do on your own. I think kids' cartoons or something might be a good approach, but I've struggled to find interesting yet comprehensible videos in Chinese so far.
I go to Mexican barber shops, a Mexican church, and Mexican restaurant. I do Anki for 10-15 minutes in morning, then watch one episode of a tv show, intensively pausing when I don’t fully understand something. Then, I listen to random material when working or driving. I rarely learn new words this way, but I believe it helps me solidify the words I have learned.
Great advice! I lived in Mexico for 3 years and it was sink or swim. I've been back in Canada for many years. I don't like listening to music or podcasts except when I'm exercising. So when I exercise I play Spanish-language reggaeton and other music that I like. The lyrics are simple and you hear the songs many times over the months or years. Or I listen to Spanish-language podcasts about topics that interest me (mostly astronomy). Sometimes I follow along to exercise videos in Spanish. You'd be surprised how many there are on UA-cam. Most evenings I watch movies and TV shows in Spanish. I also want to practice speaking. The last place I lived, I started a Spanish conversation group. In my current location, I have one local language partner, and one long-distance language partner I met on Tandem (a language exchange app). I am aware of some grammar gaps, so when I'm in the mood I watch instructional UA-cams appropriate to my level. (There are tests you can do to find your level.) If any of this wasn't fun I wouldn't be doing it.
This is exactly how I learned English as it's not my mother tongue. Many videos I wanted to watch, and stuff I wanted to read on the internet at a very young age were in English. My English learning journey was mostly trying to figure out what some words mean using video, audio, other words in a sentence and sometimes google. At some point, I had developed decent knowledge in English which would allow me to say a thing or two with an English speaker. Then I just signed up to an English class to get a lower and then proficiency certificate so that I would polish my knowledge and have proof that I know what I know and done! Most of the work, I did myself and it was successful
Wish I could give you 10 thumbs up! This is what I've been preaching to my friends that struggle to commit to language learning. Consistency is king, be lazy and don't actively study, just let it wash over you, and the human brain will begin to absorb meaning over time!
I am not a linguist but having observed toddlers acquiring language, if you really think about it toddlers spend a long time taking in a language before doing much producing of a language. As an adult you can probably do it faster but spending a long while absorbing just seems like a very normal part of the process.
Great video and I have to say I agree. Learning a language is all about the long game. Your approach deals with the input side and means that when someone speaks to you, then you’ll understand. But languages are about communication so the key point is the other side: expressing yourself in your target language. For this, you need dialogue if your aim is to speak the language. An interesting intermediate step which combines comprehension and vocalisation is music. As a Eurovision nerd, for the last two years. I have been going to Benidorm fest, the Spanish selection competition. I’ve been coming back with a selection of Spanish songs, which have all increased my level of comprehension and, because I like to sing along, have increased my fluency. It’s also fun to impress Spanish people by singing along to their songs.
Yeah, you've got to speak at some point. Crosstalk and using the occasional word in the TL is baby steps for me before full blow TL conversations. Benidorm fest sounds fun!
This is an incredible video, im trying to finish off what I started in school and actually try to become fluent in French. This is a really great video and it’s corresponded with the experience I’ve already had. Subscribed. ❤
Maaaan, I wish I knew about graded readers sooner. I feel like less experienced learners don't know they exist which is a real shame! Thanks for checking out the channel!
I've been trying to learn Thai and my trip is in 2 months. My Thai is no good. Like you said, we got jobs and stuff. So what I've started to do is identify my surroundings in Thai. Unfortunately it's the yard of a warehouse. More specifically like the trees, cars, food and drinks, etc. Any Thai speakers willing to help are welcome!
quick tip to practice speaking (whatever the language): in the shower/car/bus wherever, by yourself try to to formulate senteces for any given scenario for instance, imagine yourself in a store to buy a candy: now visualize speaking that you would like some candy if you're completely alone, go ahead and do this out loud, if not, then just do it in your mind come up with different scenarios, and practice
10:55 "Apps often try and teach you through testing you but that's not teaching you - that's testing you." Actually, testing has been found to be one of the best ways to learn anything. See the *Testing Effect*. Relying solely on a passive method of learning like 'input' is less efficient than also testing yourself.
It's an interesting one this. Certainly there is a testing effect but many apps in language learning don't then go on to teach you and test you again, it is endless tests with answers. Also, I don't know how much implicit knowledge is gained though testing compared with say, reading, which I suspect would give the learner more subconscious knowledge in the language
This might work for me because an year or two ago. I started watching this historic drama called Omar RA and it was in Arabic. The series was all completed but being shown on TV only once a week and it just showed English subtitles. After watching a few episodes and reading the subtitles I just started understanding some stuff because I was actually enjoying it. Later I went to YT and found the full series but without the subtitles, I eventually had to put the effort in to understand. So because I understood some words I could eventually make out what they were saying though not sure how accurate I was and not always did I manage to make out what they were saying. What also helped me out was that when I was memorising the second chapter of the Holy Qur’an I used a website that showed the translation per word. So over time I’d gotten used to knowing what certain words meant. So I guess that the following: Watching something you enjoy Reading, learning to read the language
I use A2 sized butcher paper to paint my learning of Hindi / Sanskrit in weak acrylics. The whole process is slow so it slows the mind down, which makes it enjoyable in pattern-matching. I have a language partner in India to read and listen too. I dont try to remember anything, that's hard study. So I throw away my "paintings" after a few days. Instead I'm more interested in re-experiencing the newness of uncovering the word, ( hence pattern matching ) and enjoy watching memory grow by itself.
honestly i’m glad i like sitting down and actually actively studying languages; for some facets of certain languages it is an absolute necessity. an example would be chinese; unfortunately there isn’t really a way to more passively learn [to write] characters. languages with difficult grammar rules would be another example although to a lesser extent because we DO naturally pick up on patterns. comprehensible input is such an enjoyable method overall though-it’s fun to listen to/read something you mostly understand because it feels like an achievement + it doesn’t explicitly feel like “work” or “studying”
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“The most effective thing is the thing you’ll actually do” is the lesson I have to keep re-learning in every single domain of my life. Thanks for bringing this up for me again.
Honestly, we overcomplicate everything. There is so much advice out there but if you do none of it, it wont help you at all. Glad it was useful!
@@matt_brooks-green does it work if im learning my 4th language :D
@@clairedelune61 your fourth? Damn here I am struggling with learning Spanish. I’m fluent in sarcasm, does that count as a second language? Lol 😅
Very true
If I’d spend have as much time attempting to learn something instead of watching all these vids on how to learn something, I may actually learn something.
I've kind of done a mixture of the two. I've spent some time learning the basics of the English language, and then started immersing myself in the language, mainly by watching videos in English with subtitles on (very useful btw). I would translate the words I didn't understand, so that I knew what they meant the next time I heard them.
Eventually I started understanding more and more of the language to the point that I'm now writing a comment in English without the need for a translator app :)
Amazing! Great work!
@@davisemgolias what I did (not I made)
You sound just like a native!!🎉
@@afreen62 thanks!
Good job! Your hard work has definitely paid off!
So to recap:
Focus more so on input & absorbing the language
Focus more on ‘revision’ in the sense of strengthening the connections in your brain of what you already know.
Sounds grand.
I’m using Duolingo for a while which I find is doing great for me but I don’t want to limit my learning of a language to just that. I’ve started watching videos that are really helpful and trying to find other ways of absorbing the language.
Your approach is practical for people with busy lives but what I will say is depending on the language I do think it’s key to learn the basic grammar rules and a bit of vocab first before you start this more passive approach. That way, you have a place to start when listening your target language.
Just my 2 cents 🤷♂️
I've started learning Russian this year and granted I'm not as far into it as I could be (not consistent enough) but I feel like I can pick up phrases or read things here and there. I've been doing Duolingo as well as listening/writing with Russian "classes" on UA-cam.
Babel has helped me more than Duolingo
@mordaeu1411 how much time have you spent on learing russian per day?, I am a complete beginner in the russian language and I'm still studying basic russian reading and the Cyrillic alphabet.
i have this approach to learning everything in life. Not just language learning. If you're obsessed with something, you'll get good at it. So it's not a question of whether or not you can learn, it's a question of how much fun you can have. Pass a certain fun threshhold, you develope an obsession, and become good at it without having to "work"
brilliant! Agreed 100%🥳 thank you for sharing this very important universal idea to learn anything.
I've studied about 4 languages now including both in a school setting and self study. I definitely think a slow increase in comprehensible input is one of the key factors in language acquisition. The one thing I would say is that certain languages like Japanese do have more difficult grammar, honorifics, and elements like kanji that are really difficult to learn through immersion alone. Consciously working on learning to read native writing systems will be necessary for everything above beginner level so don't skip that part. Also, working on studying vocabulary with a system like Anki even just 30min a day is really helpful for increasing the level of comprehensible input faster. I really recommend the Refold 1000 most common words packs as they are a fantastic way to get a good understanding of the common words and phrases much faster than with just input alone without that much effort.
Thanks for checking out the video. I’m sure you’re right about using the refold deck. Certainly coming from English to Spanish isn’t that bad so I didn’t feel the urge to flashcard but I know they can really help a lot of people so certainly wouldn’t dismiss them as a method. There’s so much content for Spanish now that doing it without flashcards seemed great to me. For Chinese though… it’s a no brainer!
I'm struggling through Japanese and French (and dabbling in Korean, Mandarin and Irish) and I'd generally agree with you in general. Immersion is very difficult with Japanese (for an English speaker) as the written material is so difficult to understand - and there is a chicken and egg problem in that you can't understand the written material without understanding a lot of the language, while you can't learn through immersion without knowing how to read it. And just listening to it is very hard as the entire structure of the language is so different from how your English speaking brain understands how language works. It is far, far, easier to read/listen your way into another European language than it is with something like Japanese, so you definitely need a more focused effort. I'd love to say I've discovered the secret for japanese, but I'm still struggling.
If I was starting Japanese again from scratch, I'd recommend a combination of reading quite a lot (not studying, just reading to understand) how the language works, while mixing in a steady mix of learning kanji/kana with lots of watching videos with Japanese subtitles so that your brain can match up the sounds with the written words. I think you have to rely on pure input to learn the vocab as there are just too many similar words (to the English speakers ear) to do much else.
@@philipdavis7521 During my time studying Japanese, I've just been learning common vocab with it's kanji mostly and just scanning through newspapers and anime subtitles to practice reading what I can. The other way is to study kanji by their radical group, but I didn't like that method as it contained too many random words I'd hardly ever see like "輸血" for "blood transfusion". For grammar I've just been reading through Human Japanese which does a decent job explaining the grammar and watching UA-cam videos about it for more examples. Japanese is probably the most memorization heavy language I've studied but also one of the most rewarding.
This was the type of comment I was looking for as I'm pretty much always immersed in Japanese for several hours a day. I don't think simply immersing yourself in it will help you learn it at all, or at least it hasn't for me, it's just too complex. I used to watch things in Japanese all the time and I could never correlate the word with what it was/meant without actually looking it up several times until it was committed to memory. I think with Japanese you have to start by doing the time consuming, boring, often grueling studying/memorizing of katakana and the more commonly used kanji, grammar, sentence structure, even learning what the difference is between the formal/business speak and the casual friend/family speak is, all along with the correct intonation. With an emphasis on the intonation part if you want to sound native. It's a lot. If immersion alone worked I'd be at least at conversational level and I'm nowhere near that lol
Yes, unfortunately the dark secret they never tell you when you start to learn Japanese is that it takes far, far, longer to learn than almost any other major language. And thats not even taking account of all those westerners who claim to be fluent, but are nowhere near.@@shelbyjackson6903
During high school, I found I learned more efficiently by mucking about with children’s songs, stories, and recipes. It helped with learning what worked grammatically, with idioms, and with things that don’t quite translate.
Also immersion! I got some index cards and labeled everything in the house
Great idea! I'll see if the dog will stay still long enough to get this post-it note on him! 🤣
Wait that's genius, I live alone and there's no one to stop me from covering my house in sticky notes... THANK YOU
HOLY SHIT LABELLING EVERYTHING IN YOUR HOUSE IS GENIUS
Your final bit about how you're 900 hours in and you're understanding but not speaking honestly makes a ton of sense. I've tried learning languages in the past and they all emphasized speaking WHILE learning to understand. But as a person, I definitely listened and understood English being spoken to me for a long time before really being able to formulate my own thoughts into a sentence that made any sense beyond "See Jane run. This is Jane's ball. The ball is round."
I had a similar experience when I was younger, at 1 point I found out that I didn't need subtitles anymore to be able to understand the things that were being said. I one point I remember a documentary being played it they were using the wrong subtitles, so I started translating everything on the fly for my siblings and parents. It was then that it really clicked to me that I understood the language.
Going from understanding a language to actually speaking it is a whole different ballgame for sure!
But after 900 hours would that not be really demotivating not being able to speak the language?
@@EnglishCassettesTaking into account sleeping, that's really only 56 and a half days.
900 hours is a ton of time. That's 2 1/2 hours every day for a year.
I've followed this approach with more look ups but when I systematically immersed in material about my level until I mastered it, it was the quickest internalization of Spanish compared to anything else.
As I'm learning output and my input is approaching only native level material, I've found a method to intensely study that works with immersion. I'll read a page in a book or use an online reader like Lingq. I'll contemplate one sentence at a time until the whole meaning comes to me. When extensively reading I'm unconsciously taking in a lot but it also helps to really sit with a small piece of the language until it clicks. I only do look ups if I absolutely don't know the word or phrase.
This has really accelerated my Spanish level.
Thanks David. I’m with you on that. I’m finishing off a couple of graded readers but actually might just dive in to books I want to read in Spanish where my unknown words would be higher. I’m sure I can now follow the story even if some of the vocab I can’t understand yet: like you say I think the gap between my known words and unknown words would massively increase my vocabulary
But can you speak it very well?
@@LindaVanGalder-jt6yf I consider myself fluent just not yet proficient with output. I just don't do it enough.
Top notch. I learned German after about 8 years or so of school, grammar, etc. in contrast, Russian after about 3 years. I studied Russian grammar for an hour or so and that’s it. I then read books for 5 year olds, watched videos geared to the same age. Eventually worked up to Early/ mid teen level material. Hint. Don’t get bogged down trying to write a language!! I’m in the sciences and almost never write anything except in English even though I was raised mostly in French (Canadian).. the couple of times I write a message in German or Russian I just use an on line translator site…better than spending amillion hours toiling learning grammar, verb endings, etc.
Четвёртый язык всегда легче второго. Какова степень сходства между английским и французским? Большое количество французских и латинских слов в английском языке поможет при изучении французского?
I get your point but dude, you haven't learned a language if you cannot write and speak in it.
This is a super helpful video, man! Like most students, I’ve had years of Spanish and learned very little, so I’m trying to get an actual base. I made the mistake of trying to set up a rigorous schedule where I would target specific things on specific days, and it made it a burden. What I’ve learned is to tack it on to things I enjoy. Reading my favorite books in Spanish, watching English stuff with Spanish subtitles (actually incredibly helpful) along with Spanish with Spanish subtitles (do NOT use subtitles in your native language, you won’t learn anything), and have been using a few apps and vocab drills as an addition. Going much better!
Actually you can learn a lot by using English subtitles if you actually idk... Listen! 🤦🏻♂️ You can learn just as much if not more this way then English with Spanish subs.
I was recently asking myself the very question of "why do we learn languages in a different order to how we acquire them as a child?" I've found that listening to lots of music has been very effective for language learning, and Olly Richard's storybooks are awesome!
I listen to symphonies by Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven, but I haven’t learned a bit of Mandarin
I think there's actually some psychological research on how our brains change as we get older, and how our preferred learning styles may also change as a result.
LingQ is really amazing as well!!
The theory people went by was that kids are faster learners
Kids learn faster in part because they're not (nearly as) afraid to make mistakes and embarass themselves (nor is it generally considered embarrassing for children, who are learning, to make mistakes). Kids will happily chatter with incorrect grammar and pronunciation, but over time, it largely sorts itself out through exposure or recasting.
I intuitively got completely fluent in English just this way. I'm a native Russian, and at some point when I had good-enough comprehension of English, I've gone all-in on immersing myself. I've switched all of my devices' system language to English, viewed all my apps and websites in English instead of Russian, started watching English-speaking UA-camrs instead of Russian ones. This was the turning point for me, I've for the first time learned to comprehend English by listening and not only reading this way, learned to form any sentences.
But, as for the basics of English which I had to learn before that, I have no idea how I've gone about learning them since that was so long ago, and I was a little kid back then.
watching this video made me realize i've learned english subconsciously, i didnt even set plans to force myself to stop using subtitles. One day i forgot turning on subtitles and i realized that 10 minutes into the video, but honestly i had no idea how to adapt the same technique to my third language because its grammar is more complicated than English but perhaps we have to take kids as an example, and surrender ourselves with the language we are trying to learn. Thank you so much for the video, if you could learn Spanish with this technique i can learn French too hopefully.
That's so cool. Thanks for sharing 😊
Same!
It kinda happened the same to me, although I consciously turned them off, but it is only uncomfortable for the fist few hours, then you notice progress and naturally keep it up.
This doesn't mean you won't need to look up words and stuff, but it is much more enjoyable like this
I think the comment means surround not surrender btw
I am in similar situation. I just somehow learned English doing things like and then a day I was playing and talking with an Australian man about 30 minutes. But I don't have any ideas of how I will learn Russia it's a complete different grammar(my native language is Portuguese).
Being interested is a must. Understanding patterns is how I am absorbing it. Watching a show, using an app and if possible talk to someone who knows it. I am using a bit of each. Remove the fear of making mistakes as well. One big help is to learn it while you are doing something you hate to do. Get two things done at one time. This is how I am getting there.
Agree with your approach, currently learning korean as my third language and have made the process more fun and enjoyable instead of long hours of boring grammar classes. I myself do a mixture of both(conscious learning + comprehensible input) because I like to increase the pace a bit sometimes because that motivates me to keep learning, however input and focusing on something that is sustainable(and motivating) is the key always.
Im also studying Korean ❤️. I also agree with this guy, picking vocab along the way helps, so I stated using I SPEAK app ❤️. Whats your main source now?
@@alliswell44596 what do you use that app for? sounds interesting
Hi Eudaimonia239, I have been watching Korean movies for the last 60 days and found myself speaking the language without even thinking about transferring English into Koren words. It was opposit. I speck Koren and in my head it is English. So I know what I'm saying. Now I need to learn the English and Koren spelling of the words.
sure, this lazy way may take you a few years. but it is important to remember that the time will pass regardless. it's not about being perfect, it's about doing and enjoying it. that's most of the battle. whatever way you're learning, as long as you're enjoying it and you're finding motivation in that enjoyment, that's the most important thing.
Also important to remember that 0-4 year olds are lazy too. Takes them years to put a decent sentence together lmao
I learnt English by reading toddler books, some of them being the same stories as on TV. The language is simple and supported by lots of pictures. From there I moved on to reading picture books with increasingly complex sentences and with fewer and fewer pictures until I could read without any visual prompt. By that time I had enough vocabulary to understand short articles in newspapers and magazines and figure out the meaning of odd words from the surrounding text. I still think that children's picture books and toddler TV are a great way for a beginner - very low-level material for adults is hard to find.
TV ads have also some use, because of the repetition and short and simple content that is often easy to understand with practically no knowledge of the language at all.
I learned English without sit down and study, I was just watching UA-cam videos, sometimes just pause and look on Google Translator, it took me a lot of years to finally understand one entire video
Duolingo helped me a lot, not sure why so many people hate this app.
Nowadays I am able to have conversations in both English and Italian (and of course my mother tongue which is Portuguese)
But I am trying to learn Korean, and daaaamn, is really hard, everything is so different
Same here, bro. I'm Puerto Rican, Spanish is my native language, I learned English through media, tv, video games, etc. Now I'm tackling Korean and I do agree with you, it's no easy task. But with motivation and discipline we got this! Good luck to you on your journey and remember to never give up.
@@브라이안PR Gracias Hermano! Yes, I admit i didn't think it was going to be so hard at the beginning, but after some months of study I am still a beginner, and imo the alphabet is the only easy aspect of the Korean language. What are you struggling? For me the most complicated thing is the particles, hierarchy, the order of the sentence and the 1000 ways to say the same thing.
But I am getting there, brick by brick
I can form some simple sentences
I watched a movie and I was happy to understand one complete sentence "Uri hion odi só" (Where is my brother?)
Nice work. I'm watching Letal Crysis for my input now which is insane considering I've just slowly increased the difficulty of my input. A very enjoyable way to learn a language! Keep going chap!
@@matt_brooks-green i like to watch trasmuro, a Mexican channel about Tiny Houses (Similar to the famous New Zealand channel)
@@ZFCaio every day is a struggle since I am living here on South Korea, atleast my wife speaks English but aside from that I'm pretty much a new born lol. I do agree with you that Hangul is easy, and a bit of pronunciation. Particles and sentence order are not easy but with time, practice and dedication we got this🤙🏽
Enhorabuena! Hace un par de años tuve que aprender alemán en tres semanas para acceder a un programa de prácticas al extranjero. Combiné lecciones de gramática en youtube con leer historias para principiantes y funcionó maravillosamente. Sobre todo porque me podía pasar el día leyendo historias de forma entretenida mientras mi cerebro iba consolidando poco a poco las palabras que aprendía. Muy buen vídeo!
Thanks mate. Yeah, exactly that. Once my spanish is a bit more advanced I have a massive series of books that I want to start. I think reading about 50 books in Spanish will be insanely powerful
Your main point's valid.
However, I highly recommend you start speaking early on.
It's incredibly frustrating to be tongue tied in basic conversations.
I'd suggest talking to yourself. Repeat some things you heard. If you can, describe what you're doing. Retell past events. Talk about your plans. Opinions. Whatever.
I speak as a language teacher with over 20 years of experience, and a language learner of an even longer period (but multiple languages). What sticks most strongly for me is the stuff I actively remembered and rehearsed through this self-talk method.
Bottom line: use speaking (output) in tandem with listening/reading (input).
Hi Matthew. Firstly, great name. Under appreciated in my book. I found speaking early didn't work for me but certainly don't have problems with anyone that does. I now prefer to speak later
Singing in the shower or car helps me.
@@matt_brooks-greenwell I understand but my comprehension is intermediate 3 when it comes to reading and I'm getting better at understanding podcasts in Spanish but I still speak at a beginner level and I'm always translating in my head. I think now that it might be important to speak it a little from the beginning like after a few months in and not wait and hope you become fluent one day. But check back with us in a year and I'd love to hear if you're speaking a lot better by then? If your answer is still no, then I question your learning process, but I do wish you success and you're interesting to listen to.
How delightful to see you posted right as I opened the app after work 😊
Great! Hope work was okay! 👌
I am a profi linguist (translator and interpreter) and can speak Czech, English, German, French and quite some Spanish. I always spend quite some time studying the basics, grammar, vocab... and then I start reading books in that particular language, speaking with foreigners and listening to recorded speech (UA-cam is great for that). Learning a foreign language IS a considerable achievement and you just NEED to invest the time to do it. If you dont want to give the effort, you will never learn (I spent 1 year in Finland, but was only able to learn a few words... because I was too lazy to do that). Maybe some exceptionally talented people can learn a language without even really trying, but that is certainly not my case.
cZECH?? :O
@@TheoSur Yes, Czech. I am Czech, so I can speak Czech. What's so funny?
@@bohemicus8280Lol, your last answer was funny. But I think the other user was impressed because, let's face it, Czech is no walk in the park. It would be impressive if it were not your mother language. I am a professional translator & interpreter too, been working as one for the past 20 years. What combinations do you work with?
@@HaggenKennedyWell, I work with English, German, and French into Czech :D
Czech is actually very easy... once you know another Slavic language :)
Je ne peut parle français. Je suis apprendre français. Mon langue de premier est anglais. Mon grammiere est pas bien. Tu comprendre moi, correcté?
Fair point about time management and language learning. This is what holds people back the most in my opinion.
I find drilling vocabulary and verbs incredibly effective - also speaking as early as possible. This is harder and quicker - but takes up time and mental energy which are not always available.
Great idea about slowly increasing difficulty level to reproduce the process of learning in childhood.
Understanding what I hear has been my biggest challenge with French. They smoosh their words together so much. It didn't help that most courses teach "proper" French, not spoken French. Even my colleagues with the politest accents don't speak French that way!
What turned things round for me was the Pimsleur app. I started from the very beginning to unlearn the rubbish I've been taught. I only do the aural bits as I can already read French. It is a really well designed course and I often say to myself "ah, I see what you're doing!" I supplement that with the Mauril app to help with Canadian accents. My ability to understand spoken French is now at the point where I can follow what's being said on UA-cam videos even if I don't recognize all the words.
Great work. Yeah, I know some people turn their nose up at Pimsleur but humans I know in real life seem to like it so it's definitely one to bear in mind
You are doing the right thing, I’m French Canadian. My advise is don’t get bogged down in noun gender, the complicated verb tenses, learning to speak slang, etc. you can get by fine in French speaking only 1500 words . Thr key is know another 4000 when listening or reading….that’s learned watching kids shows, cartoins, fun stuff. Stories for young teens are excellent for learning ‘real’ conversation.
Dude I just downloaded Pimsleur. Such a good app
Great video. I am an English teacher and spanish language learner (acquirer if you like). Regardless of what one thinks or method used, language only enters in one way whether it be the first, second or 10th. Language is acquired implicitly, meaning our brain sub consciously orders and processes the input. No amount of explicit intervention speeds up or skips over stages beyond extending exposure to the language. Motivation is a factor. Grammar and studying can be demotivating for many hence why many give up, especially in educational settings.
Wish I could give you 10 thumbs up! This is what I've been preaching to my friends that struggle to commit to language learning. Consistency is king, be lazy and don't actively study, just let it wash over you, and the human brain *will* begin to absorb meaning over time!
It really doesn't have to be complicated! Thank you for checking out the video!
This is how I learned english:
- Watching FRIENDS at the time, the TV often missed the subtitles. I realized I did not understood but could kind of infer it and get a few words
- I browsed the internet mostly in english. With time I translated and visited forums to check the why and the whats less and less
- Eventually I started reading and writing in english (arguing with random internet people its a good motivator to learn how to tell something. Google translate was even shittier at the time so eventually you pick up some stuff)
And thats it... consuming at the top, producing content next with theory however this applied specifically to what you want to do. Like learning a song in the guitar instead of doing scales (though in the guitar the scales are important)
Regrets? Not speaking... I have a decent level of english, I have worked in copywriting before, but when I speak im at toddler level, so if I did it again, I would speak with natives as much as possible
Great work. Is there anything stopping you from speaking now? If you have that level of comprehension (and perfect writing by the way), speaking just takes practice
There he is!!! Great to see a new upload from you, keep it up 🙌🏾
Jajajajaja! Thanks man 🙏
OK, how do you determine what is 'comprehensible', and how do you actually come to comprehend it while just listening? Aren't you having to look stuff up?
Hey Matt, thanks for the video. I teach an endangered language that only came into written form in 2008. Up until about 5 years ago, I only taught grammar…and none of my students could hold conversations, even though they knew all the “rules.” I became aware of comprehensible input, and immediately switched my program to that method. Only 6 classes into it, my students could speak, read and write. It was shocking! Now I have taught over 50 groups of students, and all that go through my program, end up speaking, reading and writing in a very short period of time. Everything you said is so true. I have proved it over and over in my live online courses. My students report that between classes, the words and sentences just randomly pop into their minds, without the need to really “study.” It is pretty low effort for them. And fun to watch them grow. 🤩
That's so cool! Well done
The method for learning a foreign language is the same as learning your native language. You need more or less constant exposure to it in a big variety of situations. Then it must be followed up with classroom style instruction.
Some people are rather gifted, and can learn to read and writing with very little formal instruction, while others are more or less dyslexic in their native language. I'm fluent in one language besides my native language, and I can read and write the language.
I'm not sure about the classroom instruction but certainly some conscious knowledge can be useful to monitor your own speech in order to avoid mistakes
@@matt_brooks-green Granted - NO classroom instruction is actually necessary, but is nevertheless extremely valuable. A deep knowledge of a language cannot be obtained without some reading and writing.
Agree. This is how I appear to be learning.
Unfortunately my teachers do not agree, and they insist on giving me lame tests on words and grammar they just taught me... the truth is those words don't stick for me until quite some time after, until I've heard them used many many times out in the wild.
Even if i were to memorize the words to pass the tests so what? If I did not learn by acquisition I will likely forget anyway.
Exactly this. I've searched for tutors that I just get on with and have interesting conversations with. Makes acquiring the language so pleasurable!
Currently learninig a new language, and what i found very helpful, is just learning 1-2 new concepts every day, might be a new grammar, new word or a phrase, it keeps me busy and invested, but rest of the time i just listen and watch target language content, and every time i pick up more stuff not only from context, but an actuall things ive learned, like wow cool that new piece of grammar works like this in a living language etc.
6:14 thats exactly how I learned english lmao. At some point I just decided to only watch english youtube videos, read english wikipedia articles, google almost everything in english, switch the language in all my apps to english, only join english discord servers (which wasn't really a choice tbh, there just aren't many discord servers in my language.) and write comments in english just like this one. And honstly, I didn't actually do that to learn english at first. When I started all I really did was watch a few english youtube videos mixed with videos in my native language. Slowly but surely everything just became more english for me. Mostly because there was a hella lot of english content on the internet. And now I'm here, writing about how I became fluent in english. Its crazy.
What’s your native and how long did it take you?
Typing [the language you want to learn] + comprehensible input sounds like a godd idea!
I've recommended your videos to a ton of people! At some stage down the line I'll start French and look forward to learning about Tin Tin!
Great video! I am close to 700 hours learning Spanish with Comprehensible Input. I am still not speaking yet. We got this!
Great work! Keep going!
I dont know if this will help but actively trying to talk with people in your target language will help your brain acquire it so much quicker and actively recall words, even if that means just texting somebody in the language. I spent 4 months studying, reading, and watching things in russian, but nothing helped me get used to speaking better than an online chatroom did. Even if you need a translator to speak, dont get discouraged because at some point you will need the translator less and less often!!!
hello! i'm learning spanish as my third language (i am bilingual in english and bangla, as i'm of bangladeshi origin and i've grown up in canada and the US), and this video was genuinely very reassuring and motivating to me. i'm only in high school but i've already found that i have a strong passion for linguistics; i adore languages and everything related to them. this may be, in part, due to my exposure to various languages through my cultural background and diverse friends from around the world - i have friends who speak languages varying from hindi and telugu and malayalam to spanish and french and german to yoruba and portugese and korean to mandarin and vietnamese and russian to turkish and tamil and marathi, and more. either way, the point is that i very much want to learn more languages. i know i'm not half bad with picking them up, but i've been struggling with figuring out a way that works for me (i'm very busy in and out of school) - this video has shown me a way that i've considered vaguely before, but it has definitely increased my confidence that i'll be able to achieve success with it. thank you so much!
5:50 yes going at the right level would be ideal but some people get bored reading children’s books and as well it’s hard to find the right level for intermediates if you just do a little study like 5 or 10 words a day then you’ll make major progress until you run out of words for that level
I have "bumbled" myself into speaking pretty decent Japanese in 2.5 years by mainly just dabbling in content like videos, and podcasts on topics I like, and actively searching language exchange partners. So for the vast majority, it was just fun and it never felt like study. However, people tend to think methods are always a bit like religions and need to be followed "purely", but to me, it always makes sense to combine multiple things. In my case, and which I highly recommend, I used a few weeks of diligent "classical" study (maybe 1 month only) followed by a series of very cost-effective online lessons by private tutors which you can find on various sites. This way I built up a basic scaffold of grammar, vocabulary, and some initial speaking experience which then gave me the courage to try language partners as well as bootstrapped the rest of the more effortless learning experience that followed.
For reference: I can speak quite "fluently" about most topics that are in my range of interest. I have a pretty good "sense/feel" for the language already, which allows me to quickly shift between casual or Keigo or any mix in between, depending on the demand of the situation. Also, I can use quite natural and casual expressions, speak rather quickly and understand people if they speak very very fast and unclearly. In now probably hundreds of hours of talking Japanese, I can't recall a single instance where my partner had to say that they didn't understand what I was saying or asking. That being said, sometimes I still get flustered and lose my confidence and my speech drops to a more staggered and basic level (especially when I am tired, but it remains still useable). I occasionally have to ask my partners to describe a word that I didn't understand. Reading and writing are still quite basic: I can chit-chat everyday stuff online, but that's already where it stops. If I look at instructions on some bought item or try to read the news I have to guess 70% of it. I grew up bilingually with German/Swiss and Finnish, which always had given me an advantage in language acquisition. During high school, despite being mainly a "math guy" my grades in French were also always maxed out. 99% of my English skills also just stem from UA-cam and trying to speak with people.
dude that’s sick, do you have an instagram? i want to talk and get some help with speaking haha
That’s cool. But I believe that it’s hard to be almost fluent in Japanese in 2.5 years. Of course if only you weren’t studying 24/7 lol
I'm learning Japanese right now, could you recommend certain youtube or podcast channels?
@@musicm1rage623 It is really hard. I supervise a part of a biomechanics research group, I run a small biotech business, I teach a few engineering classes at university, I am married, I have hobbies like the fitness, Karate, Golf and hiking, so you can imagine I don't have time to study 27/7 :D. To put the proverbial cherry on the cake, I did the Japanese study in "secret" so that I can prank my wife next time we go to Japan (hopefully end of this year, she still doesn't know!). First of all, I think I am pretty "fluent" but some language extremists who only consider "native level" as fluent might not consider me fluent. But I can certainly speak it pretty well. Also as I indicated, I am pretty efficient at doing things and I am used to cramming in a lot of stuff into my head in a short time. And lastly, i probably have pretty decent talent to acquire languages, so learning them never gave me too much of a headache. Especially since I am not a perfectionist, I can live with making mistakes and learned to manage them in a way that I am sure to still be understood well enough, no matter which language I speak. :) good luck on your studies!
Wow, I was surprised art the end to see you're not a native English speaker. All around impressive. Finnish oof
I'm currently polishing up on my French & Swedish and learning Spanish & Russian from scratch. It's not easy at all but I enjoy the process. Duolingo does help but it's not sufficient. UA-cam has a lot of useful material and channels like this help me keep going.
Good on you for having Lazy Chinese in the video at least in the background, her videos are some of the absolute best for acquiring chinese! I bought her 7$ a month subscription to her website for exclusive videos just to support her and there are some pretty good extra videos on there.
I know I learnt English through immersion and I know it worked. I wasn't even actively trying to learn, I just used English internet because I liked the content there more than my native language content. Yet now when I'm trying to learn German the first thing I did was to look up grammar tables. For some reason I didn't even consider trying the same approach that made me learn English until fluency. Though to be fair, it did take around 5 years of me using English internet before I became fluent.
The harder the language (hard being a term used to describe the difference between your NL and TL), the less "lazy" you get to be when starting language acquisition.
Comprehensible input is great and it is the only way (before getting into output) through which I picked up Italian (I'm a native English/Spanish speaker)....but for a harder language that alone was not enough (at least for me)...The first language I picked up after my native languages was Japanese. Japanese has wayy too many kanji characters to just learn through input. Not only this, but because Japanese is so widely different from both of my native languages.....I needed some kind of SRS (used anki) to be able to remember vocab and even grammar so that when I hear/see it, it would be easier to recognize and then input would help solidify what I have studied.
Thank you for making this video. It made me realise, that even though I was getting input regularly, I seem to always aim for content much above my level and it makes the entire process way more frustrating than it should be. It makes me dread my daily immersion. I hadn't realised this until today, so for this I thank you 🙏
Hi Carl, so glad I could help. It’s really held me back in the past. Hearing words you already know in new contexts reinforces them. I found it a game changer!
This was surprisingly motivating for me! Small steps matter more than you think 😊
I sometimes struggle to find interesting resources to listen to, I'll try to lower the friction so I can practise more often 😊
Honestly, it seems like such a small thing but it helps you stay consistent and that is the most important thing in my opinion
This is a great video man.
I like the trick of imagining what level you'd have if you did all this stuff that's not realistic, and then imagining what else you'd give up to get to that level.
Thanks man. I think some people worry about optimising their input so much that it creates stress and psychological barriers to progress (ie the fear their not acquiring it fast enough). Lots of input you understand over a long enough period is a solid place to start for most people
I'm a native spanish speaker and this is basically how I end up learning english, watching english content with subtitles and realizing I started torecognize words, then played videogames in english, started watching english speaking youtube channels, etc...
Funnily enough I wasn't even trying to learn english to begin with, I just ended up learning due to being constantly exposed to the language (exposition that became even higher during covid) and ended up with me being able to talk and write in english decently well without even being that my objective, I just kept watching media that I like
Same lol but how old were u?? When u first started
@@vampirate2347 I think 12? Not sure really, I remember at some point when I was 16 when I realized I was able to understand English decently well (fo someone who wasn't study it formaly)
At that point I a passed a few years hearing rock music while using lyrics as help to follow along, even before that I remember finding this cool site as a kid that let me watch the latest adventure time episodes before they were even dubbed
So yeah no strategy whatsoever I just exposed myself to the language, tho I could say I started to learn faster after I started to expose actively to it
No study? Lazy? I think "studying" is not only learning words or grammar rules by heart, but also watching videos like this one on UA-cam. I know that I'm not "lazy", but actively studying lots of things when listening to videos like that : vocab, grammar, comprehension, pronunciation, your great accent and so on. If you study with videos, maybe even for hours a day, you're not lazy, you're smart!🙂
LOL mate, you are delusional! Studying is studying, learning is learning. Two different things!
Will i learn close to fluently, understand about life and things if i studied german for 13 years ONLY by languange app. (Duolingo etc)
Will i learn close to fluently, understand about life and things if i studied german for 13 years ONLY by languange app. (Duolingo etc)
yeah dude, im trying to learn deutsch every day, i rlly love this languague
@@physicguy92093 yeah probably, but you would know every single rule and even natives don't understand every rule, they just repeat the words they heard when was a baby
I think this is a pretty interesting and often overlooked point about language learning. It is also important to mention that learning can never be left out completely and that the amount of learning is dependent on your current skill level. A complete beginner will need to start out learning basic vocabulary and grammar (depending on the language, also alphabets) simply because without this there is no comprehensible input they can use to acquire a language. I find that at the start working through a good textbook helps a lot. They often combine grammar and vocab learning but also give you comprehensible input to acquire the newly gained knowledge and they give you the chance to practice (and thus solidify the newly gained knowledge) by having you produce output (especially if they have a workbook).
After gaining a solid beginner knowledge of the language I think it's very important to find other sourced of comprehensible input. I still wouldn't stop learning because you will always need the learning in order to make new input comprehensible but learning should not be the main thing you are doing. Focusing on learning alone is like trying to learn the piano by only watching instruction videos and never actually playing it. If you don't use the newly learned knowledge your brain will think it's useless and just throw it out again.
By the way, this is also one of the many reasons why taking classes is so helpful. In a class environment you can try to use the language in many different contexts, you can work together with other people who are at around the same level as you are, while the teacher acts as a sort of scaffolding to the whole learning process. A good teacher guides you through the work material by giving you additional explanations, they tell you when something you do is incorrect while also helping you to turn the given material of a lesson into comprehensible input.
As for communication skills I learn whole sentences saying them aloud. 5 days - 300 repetitions per day at least. Later I don't need to translate. I know the meaning of words straight away like in my native language. And also I remember the meaning longer than by learning separate words. This method is called: chunking. It was a real game changer in my learning process in English and other languages.😊
Greetings from New Zealand. Gabriel Wyner talks about that in his book Fluent Forever. You may be interested in it. He does use flash cards, but his approach to them is very different from the usual, and he is also a big believer in not spending hours studying in the traditional way.
A tip I picked up with watching tv is to watch it with the closed captions (rather than subtitles) on, it helps with understanding how the written words are pronounced. Cheers.
Awesome video, contains all of it! Mad respect for how fast you've build up your channel too.
I already knew basic Spanish. I knew my colors, alphabet and numbers. What I’ve done is use several sources in videos. Children’s Spanish. Simple songs, learning the names of things. I listen to it to get the ear for it. I don’t bother to understand at first. Then I try to isolate individual words. Again the meaning doesn’t matter at first. By isolating individual words from each other everything then doesn’t sound run in together in a big mess. Then I learn vocabulary a few words a day and take a few days off to process it in my head. I try not to overload myself. I don’t worry about grammar. But with some words I can now know what the root word is and look it up. I play videos over and over. Once I get everything it sticks and that video is deleted. I learn by listening, watching the words being spelled out, I get used to different accents. I don’t bother to try to translate. It gradually comes. I get the context. I also use an AI language modual. It answers a lot of Spanish questions and sometimes I mix English with Spanish in my question and it gives a whole explanation in Spanish which helps my reading comprehension and not afraid to say in Spanish I don’t understand. I need simple. It tries to write a simpler explanation in Spanish. Half I get half I don’t and then ask the question all in English what was that, what was this and it explains again in English. It only does text. Computer voices doing Spanish rub me the wrong way. I don’t bother with those. I listen to Spanish while falling asleep. Some gets through some doesn’t. But one thing I’ve learned is not to rush. I didn’t learn English in one day not gonna know the whole Spanish language in one day. Two days a couple months. When I do my walks I think in Spanish sentences. I talk to my cats in simple Spanish. I see signs that have numbers I translate those into Spanish. I discovered that cramming doesn’t work. One thing that’s great about using an AI I discovered is that it knows the language, it understands my questions, it’s made me unafraid to even ask questions. I like to tell it what I learned. Sometimes in broken Spanish and it corrects me. If I don’t remember I don’t sweat it. I ask it to quiz me. It’s quite helpful. I have discovered one thing. Stick with Spanish. I get mixed up when I try French because I’m starting to think in Spanish and just can’t convert. So I’m going to stick with one language for now. Grammar is tough because I’m not so great knowing grammar terms in English, so once I understand grammar terms in Spanish, I know what the question is asking me. I’m beginning to dream in Spanish. Words form break apart, sentences form and break apart. I see conversations and I dream with sound which is a little unnerving and one time it gave me a nightmare. I was startled awake and the words in my dream were what was in the video I fell asleep to so it’s reaching me. I have over a hundred different Spanish teaching videos with adult Spanish, children Spanish with simple songs, some with translations some without, looking up words, using the AI, listening to Spanish songs. I like listening to José Feliciano when he sings in Spanish and just letting it all sink in. It was a tangled mess at first. It still is. But I look at Spanish as a marathon not a sprint. I get it when my brain is ready. It manages to untangle a lot of things which is what I mean by processing it. Love of the language also helps. I’m learning it because I love listening to it. I’m not planning a trip, I practice to myself out loud and I’m remembering a lot of Spanish from school those many decades ago so I have some foundation. I took classes when I was out of school years ago with native speakers and discovered with an American Spanish teacher who wondered why I have little to no accent, I learned from dad that mom who spoke two dialects of Spanish, Portuguese, a little German, that my brother and I were totally bi lingual in Spanish which I don’t remember we were so young. It was my first language apparently but mom had to switch. So I learned English from my parents and a lot of TV. I do remember mom teaching me how to count in German and was really picky on pronunciation. Then she stopped. I do remember her when we went to Tijuana mom negotiated a coat for me all in Spanish and I understood every word. She also made these flexible records narrating books in Spanish and Portuguese I listened to as a kid in the 60’s so Spanish was always floating around somewhere. Dad was fluent in French and he used to play his Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I understood nothing but got a listen to French so it wasn’t alien when I learned a little in grade school. My uncle was fluent in Spanish French. Latin and Yiddish. He only spoke Yiddish when he was mad. When someone sneezes I always answer in German as I only learned it in German. Mom’s mom would throw out a couple words of German. Mostly of course I heard just English. But having exposure to some languages growing up even a word or two primed my brain to learn it. So I bid thee buenas noches.
Podcasts are great you can play them over and over also songs are great to learn singing along is both fun and you practising pronunciation without realising it. And I found that listening to interviews on YT gives helpful insights into the everyday language
The moment I saw “effortless”, I thought it should be comprehensible input. I just clicked the video and I saw my own face 😂😂 thank you for spreading the idea! It deserves more attention!
Your videos are great! Thank you so much for all you’re doing for language learners! 🙏🙏🙏
@@matt_brooks-green 也谢谢你！
I learned English as a child by watching cartoons (here in the NL we don't dub it in dutch) and playing video games. So, remembering this, I replayed games I'd already played with the language set to Italian, I watched Italian shows with english subs, and later with Italian subs, and it's actually going pretty well! The only thing is that it takes a lot of content input to get to grips with the language, plus I do need to look up or google translate a bunch of things.
Easiest way to learn a language is start at the basics like numbers memorize those then start with basic word (like a baby) also as you get more familiar with it adds more and more I also recommend form day one watch tv shows in that langue with English subtitles and notice the sounds they make although it may seem useless it will come in handy
Very interesting video. I'm learning Thai, it's the first language I've properly attempted learning and I have a tutor. It's so hard to do a level of imersion when you have no clue about the language.
Over time it builds up, I pick up words and then start to piece a sentence together as best as I can. Maybe I can't reply a lot of the time but I can definitely get a gauge and understand what the conversation is about.
I can speak a very basic level of Thai now in a conversation, introducing myself, ordering food somewhat and saying where something is. It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done, very easy to beat yourself up if you have a few days off from learning or a week but when you get back to it and understand that little bit more is just so fulfilling.
Keep up the great content
Cheers dude! Thailand kind of has the home of the ALG method. Not sure how much content is online for it but probably worth a look!
Thai is probably the language with the most comprehensible input material on UA-cam! The one with the most content is Comprehensible Thai, I think they are at nearly 1000 hours of content, split up into several beginner and intermediate playlists. A lot of the teachers there are former teachers at AUA (where I think ALG was developed). There's also Understand Thai and Riam Thai, excellent resources for Comprehensible Input in Thai. I'm 800 hours into Thai, and I agree with everything you mention in the video, seems like the best way to learn a language. @@matt_brooks-green
Mad good video. Ultimately,
1. Doing something you will ACTUALLY enjoy
and 2. Something that you can afford to put time into is the best way to learn.
Thank you!
Honestly this is how Spanish has been for me. I’ve stopped being worried about learning a specific thing at a specific time; rather I focus on language learning as a lifelong process
Ive been watching dramas to learn Chinese. I just listen and certain words and phrases get repeated and I can start to make connections. They are useful as the translations are there as well.
I also get to understand the appropriate contexts for words and phrase use. Also the use of tones in different situations. It also helps me to familiarize myself with sound of the language.
I learn simple vocab on the side as well.
Warning, dramas are addictive.
Also immersion in the culture, eating and cooking, history helps too.
Great advice on this vid, thank you, I am encouraged.
I have only spoken very simple things like greetings, numbers, things I like.
oh I love the spatula you use instead of a pointer! 😀
Very very concise. You talk about very complex things in simple terms. That shows immense experience and thought before writing this video. Well done Matt. The point I resonate most is: follow the routine that you can stick to. My chalenge is I always want to "do more" to "get there faster" but that leads to weeks and months of no effort because I've developed some sort of resentment towards it. I ahd to realise this after 10 years of dedication to French and stop/start of other languages.
How many takes did you do for this video? :)
Learning something starts with connecting what you know with what you don't know. I've recently been into mnemonics and memory palaces, which is amazing, but never connected the "listen to content your interested in" until now. It's not about perking your interest, it's about connecting what you know with what you don't so your brain fills in the gaps (2:51)
For me, speaking my target language is very important because I feel like it cements in my mind the things I've learned. I learn by doing, and I consider speaking one of those things I do to get better at learning the language.
I also completely agree that the thing you'll actually do is the most effective way to learn. Very good advice.
Do what you can with what you have in the time you have. That's how I learned and continue to learn Spanish.
Can confirm, just watch/play a shit ton of content in your desired language. I learned most of English through gaming, movies and eventually international communities on for example discord and such.
Eventually you will kind of get to the end of natural learning though. To really perfect the grammar and consciously understand how it works, some traditional studying will definitely help.
This is literally how I learned english. I just watched alot of english tv and youtube as a kid and. even when I didn't understand it and after a while you just start understanding it. mind you, you do learn alot faster when you are younger
When i saw the name of the video i thought this makes no sense, but once i watched it i realized i learned english this way lol. I got to some basic level and then started watching english youtube, and 2 years later i'm pretty fluent in it. One huge benefit is it all comes naturally, just like learning your first language and even if your vocabulary is smaller than of some guy who learns 50 new words every month, your understanding and speaking abilities might be way more coherent and strong. So not only this is an easier way to learn a language, but also a better one.
Thank you for this video because as ive said until now i didn't realize i learned english this way, and now when im learning french it will be of a great help for me.
For beginners, I find repeatedly listening to children stories to be very effective. It's surprisingly interesting with a good lector. Only important thing, you need to understand the basic outline of the story, you need to roughly understand what is going on. And it must be fun, with emotions. After a while, you will understand almost everything, without checking the meaning of words. Highly recommend this method, children know what they are doing
Awesome, bro!
🙏 Thank you!
Finally, I have been waiting for you to make another video. I can't wait to hear you speak Spanish for the first time. I'm currently at 85 hours of input on Dreaming Spanish, and these videos are very motivating for me.
Thanks William. I’m going to document the whole thing so watch this space!
I love that you said, am I going to sit around all day study in Spanish! Because there’s so many videos online that says you can learn Spanish in 60 days and become fully conversational and one of the UA-camrs said he study Spanish for up to eight hours a day for 44 days realistically, no adult have time to do that!
It would be important to point out that there is a huge difference between acquiring that language enough to understand something and acquiring it to the point of carrying a well thought out conversation. Yes, comprehensible input is great, and yes, we do need to expose ourselves to a huge amount of stimuli, but having a conversation in a foreign language and dealing with every day situations is not something every self proclaimed language learner/polyglot can do. So, an advice for anyone here reading and/or feeling like it's not going as it should, most of the people who claim they know a language and put '0' effort into understanding it, make a tremendous amount of mistakes, a lot of which would be easily corrected if they just stopped trying to prove their point so hard. We all make mistakes, both people who enjoy studying and those who don't, there are different ways of learning something, and as long as you have a varied amount of stimuli (video/audio/sound/interaction) you'll do just fine :)
Immersing your self is the key
I've remember when i first learnt english it was the traditional way of class rooms and memorizing greetings and so on but when i start following youtubers, memes pages on facebook and the most important is slang i felt like i improved it more ,and also through that you can figure out the keys of lang such as phresal verbs which is the most important thing in english for ex
This is just spot on! Sometimes the most effective method is the one that requires less effort. Take me for instance, when I was avidly learning French attending classes and all that I understood but couldn't do much outside the classroom but by binging Kdramas, listening to Kpop, snooping around K news with Immersive Translate and watching subbed shows. I can even speak. I thought it was crazy but it probably is how the brain works when it feels relaxed it's easier to capture
I'm currently learning Italian.
They have about 6 ways of saying "The".
I'm enjoying it though its such a passionate language.
On the topic of when to focus on output, I heard of a really interesting method recently called ALG that advocates doing little or no output until it feels so natural that it emerges automatically. The idea was that trying to do output too soon causes you to map target language sounds onto your native sound set, which then hampers you perhaps forever. Seems to fit with some of Krashen's ideas. It seems to mostly be an interactive method though so I dunno how much you can do on your own. I think kids' cartoons or something might be a good approach, but I've struggled to find interesting yet comprehensible videos in Chinese so far.
I go to Mexican barber shops, a Mexican church, and Mexican restaurant.
I do Anki for 10-15 minutes in morning, then watch one episode of a tv show, intensively pausing when I don’t fully understand something.
Then, I listen to random material when working or driving. I rarely learn new words this way, but I believe it helps me solidify the words I have learned.
Great advice! I lived in Mexico for 3 years and it was sink or swim.
I've been back in Canada for many years. I don't like listening to music or podcasts except when I'm exercising. So when I exercise I play Spanish-language reggaeton and other music that I like. The lyrics are simple and you hear the songs many times over the months or years.
Or I listen to Spanish-language podcasts about topics that interest me (mostly astronomy). Sometimes I follow along to exercise videos in Spanish. You'd be surprised how many there are on UA-cam.
Most evenings I watch movies and TV shows in Spanish.
I also want to practice speaking. The last place I lived, I started a Spanish conversation group. In my current location, I have one local language partner, and one long-distance language partner I met on Tandem (a language exchange app).
I am aware of some grammar gaps, so when I'm in the mood I watch instructional UA-cams appropriate to my level. (There are tests you can do to find your level.)
If any of this wasn't fun I wouldn't be doing it.
Amazing video. When you are advanced in a language, you learn the tongue in the ''automatic pilot''.
This is exactly how I learned English as it's not my mother tongue.
Many videos I wanted to watch, and stuff I wanted to read on the internet at a very young age were in English.
My English learning journey was mostly trying to figure out what some words mean using video, audio, other words in a sentence and sometimes google.
At some point, I had developed decent knowledge in English which would allow me to say a thing or two with an English speaker.
Then I just signed up to an English class to get a lower and then proficiency certificate so that I would polish my knowledge and have proof that I know what I know and done! Most of the work, I did myself and it was successful
That is so cool and very encouraging to hear. Thanks for sharing!
Wish I could give you 10 thumbs up! This is what I've been preaching to my friends that struggle to commit to language learning. Consistency is king, be lazy and don't actively study, just let it wash over you, and the human brain will begin to absorb meaning over time!
I'm starting to learn Spanish from today. Wish me luck! Thank you for explanation about Spanish for us!
mee too
Saw that snippet of Dreaming Spanish. Such a great channel
Love this idea. You just earned yourself a subscriber!
I am not a linguist but having observed toddlers acquiring language, if you really think about it toddlers spend a long time taking in a language before doing much producing of a language. As an adult you can probably do it faster but spending a long while absorbing just seems like a very normal part of the process.
Great video and I have to say I agree. Learning a language is all about the long game. Your approach deals with the input side and means that when someone speaks to you, then you’ll understand. But languages are about communication so the key point is the other side: expressing yourself in your target language. For this, you need dialogue if your aim is to speak the language. An interesting intermediate step which combines comprehension and vocalisation is music. As a Eurovision nerd, for the last two years. I have been going to Benidorm fest, the Spanish selection competition. I’ve been coming back with a selection of Spanish songs, which have all increased my level of comprehension and, because I like to sing along, have increased my fluency. It’s also fun to impress Spanish people by singing along to their songs.
Yeah, you've got to speak at some point. Crosstalk and using the occasional word in the TL is baby steps for me before full blow TL conversations. Benidorm fest sounds fun!
Very good approach for a new language, I will give it a try!
This is an incredible video, im trying to finish off what I started in school and actually try to become fluent in French. This is a really great video and it’s corresponded with the experience I’ve already had. Subscribed. ❤
Thanks David. Try French Comprehensible Input on YT - good luck!
Thanks for the graded reader tip! It was a revelation! They are on UA-cam too! Thanks!!!
Maaaan, I wish I knew about graded readers sooner. I feel like less experienced learners don't know they exist which is a real shame! Thanks for checking out the channel!
I've been trying to learn Thai and my trip is in 2 months. My Thai is no good. Like you said, we got jobs and stuff. So what I've started to do is identify my surroundings in Thai. Unfortunately it's the yard of a warehouse. More specifically like the trees, cars, food and drinks, etc. Any Thai speakers willing to help are welcome!
quick tip to practice speaking (whatever the language): in the shower/car/bus wherever, by yourself try to to formulate senteces for any given scenario
for instance, imagine yourself in a store to buy a candy: now visualize speaking that you would like some candy
if you're completely alone, go ahead and do this out loud, if not, then just do it in your mind
come up with different scenarios, and practice
sentence mining really works well with understanding and expanding my knowledge of grammar and vocabulary..
Que gran video, gracias!😍
10:55 "Apps often try and teach you through testing you but that's not teaching you - that's testing you."
Actually, testing has been found to be one of the best ways to learn anything. See the *Testing Effect*. Relying solely on a passive method of learning like 'input' is less efficient than also testing yourself.
It's an interesting one this. Certainly there is a testing effect but many apps in language learning don't then go on to teach you and test you again, it is endless tests with answers. Also, I don't know how much implicit knowledge is gained though testing compared with say, reading, which I suspect would give the learner more subconscious knowledge in the language
This might work for me because an year or two ago. I started watching this historic drama called Omar RA and it was in Arabic. The series was all completed but being shown on TV only once a week and it just showed English subtitles. After watching a few episodes and reading the subtitles I just started understanding some stuff because I was actually enjoying it. Later I went to YT and found the full series but without the subtitles, I eventually had to put the effort in to understand. So because I understood some words I could eventually make out what they were saying though not sure how accurate I was and not always did I manage to make out what they were saying. What also helped me out was that when I was memorising the second chapter of the Holy Qur’an I used a website that showed the translation per word. So over time I’d gotten used to knowing what certain words meant.
So I guess that the following:
Watching something you enjoy
Reading, learning to read the language
I use A2 sized butcher paper to paint my learning of Hindi / Sanskrit in weak acrylics. The whole process is slow so it slows the mind down, which makes it enjoyable in pattern-matching. I have a language partner in India to read and listen too. I dont try to remember anything, that's hard study. So I throw away my "paintings" after a few days. Instead I'm more interested in re-experiencing the newness of uncovering the word, ( hence pattern matching ) and enjoy watching memory grow by itself.
Love it Matt!
Cheer dude!
honestly i’m glad i like sitting down and actually actively studying languages; for some facets of certain languages it is an absolute necessity. an example would be chinese; unfortunately there isn’t really a way to more passively learn [to write] characters. languages with difficult grammar rules would be another example although to a lesser extent because we DO naturally pick up on patterns. comprehensible input is such an enjoyable method overall though-it’s fun to listen to/read something you mostly understand because it feels like an achievement + it doesn’t explicitly feel like “work” or “studying”