Where can I find comprehensible input(like in Dreaming Spanish) for Japanese? Dreaming Japanese! ^^^ Would love to learn Japanese for one year without studying Hiragana etc.....
Agreed. I realised we spent a lot of time watching sesame street. Etc. Also my first Spanish words were from watching Dora the explorer with my daughter. I never could grasp anything while learning. Because we presume we can just jump straight to an adult level comprehension. So I started how I learned in native English by kids tv
I speak Finnish and English as both my first languages. My father and his mother are finnish immigrants in America. My step daughter who I've raised since she was one had learned more Finnish from me rewatching moomins with me than I probably ever did by teaching her " hei means hello" or" Mita kulu means what do you hear or how we say in English how are you?" If her mother spoke finnish she would have picked it up through us but I have no one to converse in Finnish with since my grandmother's passing and my father moving out of state a few years before she was born. I absolutely agree with this statement. She is very proficient in Finnish to the point it annoys her mother when we have entire conversations in a foreign language
Yes! And children's books! And in fact, children's books are a good way to learn something in your native language that is unfamiliar to you. There's nothing wrong with them.
00:02 Focus on acquisition, not commercial programs, for language learning. 02:16 Language acquisition through understanding 04:32 Look for language materials that provide rich and comprehensible language rather than just focusing on memorization 06:55 Focus on meaning over form while learning languages. 09:03 Focus on acquiring language rather than monitoring it 11:06 Focus on understanding 95% for effective language acquisition 13:03 Vocabulary is acquired through comprehensible messages and understanding the language. 15:19 Vocabulary is acquired incrementally through repeated exposure to words. 17:13 Memorizing vocabulary explicitly is not very useful in language learning. 19:15 Shift from memorized words to rich instruction for efficient language learning 21:05 Lower your expectations and enjoy the learning process. 22:51 Language acquisition takes time, be realistic in your expectations Crafted by Merlin AI.
I'm not trying to memorise your list, but just subconsciously absorb its message and acquire its syntax and vocabulary. Or, just click on the very useful time links.
There is really excellent advice in this video. I'm a native English speaker. I am fluent (C2) in Italian and almost fluent (C1 on a good day, B2 on a bad one) in French. I learnt both languages as an adult. The following are really notes for myself. The idea in this video is to focus on acquisition and meaning. The essential "incremental" part comes when you encounter the same word in a variety of contexts. Inevitably you will come across a more unusual word and you will look it up then imediately forget it - even if you carefully write it down and try to memorise it. However, if you keep coming across a word in different contexts you are much more likely to remember it, and, for that, you need to concentrate on *acquisition*. The more you read and the more you listen, the more likely it is you will come across the same words in different contexts. (Note to self) Incremental acquisition is also key to being able to recognise what is common and what isn't. For example "pigro" and "indolente" both mean "lazy" in Italian, but you will almost never hear an Italian saying "indolente". Read and listen *a lot*, to understand which of these two Italian words (and there are of course others which mean "lazy") would be most appropriate to describe "lazy" in a given context. Get there by continually bashing your head against the wall (reading and listening, reading and listening, reading and listening). The word enters your brain in the end and, slowly but surely, the word "pigro" starts to sound right when you see a teenager lounging on a sofa, but "indolente" doesn't. I would add that everyone makes mistakes, even in their native language. It's absolutely fine to make mistakes in a foreign language - it's almost expected of you. If people want to speak to you they will, even if you don't conjugate your verbs properly. However, if you haven't done any practice with *acquistion* and don't understand anything people say to you, the conversation will end rather quickly. Comprehension is key. EDIT: to add to above, in case I gave the impression that you can learn a language by just reading and listening. You should have at least a basic idea of the grammar of your target language. You should understand the basic concepts of classes of words: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. This will make life *much* easier for you. Verbs are quite complex in French and Italian, and in many other languages too. At the very least, if you don't know what a verb is, then brush up on your grammar before trying to learn another language.
Very good summary. I wish I had known that when I was younger because I lost hundreds of hours learning vocabulary lists and doing grammar exercices instead of reading books and listening to audiobooks 😢
Well said! Very good explanations and reminders. For us adult language learners the focus needs to be on communicating v. Being grammatically correct and being able to elegantly speak. We need to allow ourselves the grace and space to be beginners.
Totally agree, as I've discovered the same thing! I'm learning German and learned many words and phrases in different contexts which helped me remember and use them too. I especially discovered this whenever I've been watching German TV -- listening to their newscasts, documentaries, talk shows, etc..
But in English many of us were not taught English in verbs, nouns, adjectives any formal grammar really. We just know in English what sounds right or wrong, or in writing. I don't see how knowing what a verb is will help. I still have a mental block about that in English even at my old age
I used to be a tutor, and the most frustrating thing was when I'd assess a new student, give them resources, and encourage them to start acquiring language outside the comfort of a textbook. Sadly, adult students often refused to put on a podcast in the background or read one news article a week, instead asking for adapted materials and grammar exercises. Children are easier in this regard because they don't know how much they don't know. I now want to focus on expanding my own knowledge. I'd love to acquire a new language.
Maybe you should keep teaching but only children. They are like a spunge. I wish my parent's who are Hungarian would have spoken more with me in their language. But by age 4 they stopped. My other relatives (cousins, etc) who were born in America were taught by their Hungarian parents & can still speak Hungarian. I've tried to learn Hungarian but I'm going with Spanish because as an adult I have a background in Spanish from highschool.
@@jugglerj0e it’s always makes me sad when immigrant parents don’t teach their children their language. If nothing else, it’s cognitively beneficial for the child.
Reading is very important, as you indicate. When people read in their own languages it is usually possible to get them to read in English. It is vanishingly rare to find someone who doesn't read in their native language who is willing to do so in a new language.
It would be rather frustrating to see that. If only they would put podcasts on or read news articles. The progress they would make would really shock them. So many are led to believe that if they just do the grammar, they'll automatically start speaking and understanding. Sadly, it's not the case.
@@Luka-cu8ep Children speak the language of other children. They'll only speak to their parents in their native language if the parents can't understand the language of the host country. This causes most parents to give up speaking to their children in their native language. It is not necessary for the children to speak the language to learn it and when grandma visits they will speak to her in in the native language in about a week to 10 days. However, it's worth noting that it takes effort to switch languages and it's pretty normal for immigrants to speak to other members of their community in the language of the host country.
Being frustrated about the lockdowns I started learning Japanese to entertain myself. Also I wanna prank my wife next week in Japan on holiday (she has no idea). I really just used videos on TH-cam, free materials, podcasts etc. I am a math guy, dunno much about languages, but how hard can it be? Started by memorizing the 1000 most frequent words and all the basic grammar that makes the core structure of the language to build a scaffold that would help bootstrap the acquisition process. From then on I just listened to material, read stuff, met tandem partners and occasionally took a lesson on italki to get a "review" on my progress and pressure test my skills on difficult topics. I reached the point now that I understand almost everything even when people talk very unclearly and quickly and I can talk about most topics without too many issues, even things like politics and science. Let's see how my wife reacts next week when I dash out rapid Japanese somewhere in a small village in Gifu 😂
@@stevencarr4002 Thats why I spelled it out. I think he is wrong to some extend and the truth is never black and white. As a starting scaffold it works beautifully. I spent maybe one week memorizing and 2.5 years "acquiring". Looking at it like that I could indeed say "I only learned by acquisition and immersion etc" as it was such a tiny proportion of the time, but I argue that one week in the start was crucial. It's what made all the rest 100x faster. These researchers never really look at the full picture, from "zero to hero".
@@amarug Have you considered that you're the one ignoring the big picture? Not Krashen/Mcquillan? The "jumpstart" you got is something you felt, but there's nothing to indicate you acquired any faster because of it. For all we know, you wasted your time on one week memorizing and it STILL would have taken you 2.5 years acquiring Japanese without it.
There's no evidence that doing acquisition/immersion learning from day1 is faster. I bet noone of you that criticize the method of memorising the first thousand words or so never learned an east asian language like Japanese.
@@Sendobren Thanks for the backup! Doing pure immersion only from day one is a waste of time in my opinion, indeed with a language as foreign as Japanese or Chinese, you really DO need a bit of a foundation to be able to get anything out of immersion. Otherwise you might as well listen to whales singing 😅
@@HoraryHellfire I al not sure of many things in life, but this one I guarantee. As I said, if you just start immersing without any foundational structures it can stick to, you are most certainly just wasting time. I know because once I started immersing, I would be able to pick up words, grammar structures and assign meaning to it. Comprehensible input is the key to acquiring, otherwise indeed you can just listen to ocean waves... try it.
The most important part of this interview comes right at the very end. Adults must learn to be patient. Certainly in the West, adults are in a rush. Language acquisition, however, is a tortoise vs. hare situation. Slow and steady wins the race. I saw an ad headline many many years ago which read: GET RICH SLOW. Really grabbed my attention and stuck with me. Same could be said of language acquisition: LEARN RUSSIAN SLOW. Or LEARN JAPANESE SLOW. Give the brain oceans and oceans of content. Oceans. Your brain will figure it out in time and learn to swim. The only thing we as adults need to do is (a) show up everyday and (b) find enjoyable content that's at our level, or very slightly above our level. Then give the process TIME.
"Give the brain oceans and oceans of content. Oceans. Your brain will figure it out in time and learn to swim." Some of the wisest words I've read about language learning in particular - and about learning in general - anywhere. My sincere thanks to you!!!
But here's the thing...there is no guarantee that the brain will acquire it. Japanese immersion has worked for people outside of Japan who have absolutely no idea how racist the Japanese are. For people living in Japan, I believe it has only worked for people who lie to themselves about the Japanese. Anyone who has spent a good amount of time around Japanese know that they absolutely HATE foreigners who attempt their language, especially when it is at a legitimate level. They feel that the world is their oyster...that they have the right to go to any country and learn any language but don't allow non-Japanese to do the same. A few days ago, I was talking in front of a group of Japanese the other day and got into a technical topic for a bit. One of the women started clapping when I used a few difficult terms as I explained something. Imagine if a White American clapped if a non-native English speak used a difficult vocabulary word. They would be charged with a hate crime! Over the decades, I have experienced it all. The SAME Japanese that will butter you up and make you feel like a God will absolutely destroy your soul if you attempt to speak Japanese in front of them. How does acquisition occur under such conditions? Check Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis.
@@TheRealDyscyples Thanks for pointing out the obvious! We all know certain people have to learn languages fast for work, etc. My comments were directed to hobbyists.
“You should be focusing on acquisition” Well yes….but for certain languages there can be no hope of acquiring if there is no conscious learning first (or at least in parallel). What I know about Italian (being both an English and Spanish native) I learned from just exposure to the language. What I know about Japanese couldn’t have been possible without first learning the ins and outs of the language…I was exposing to it while at the same time making a conscious effort to learn (since I was learning vocabulary, Kanji and grammar at the same time as I was doing immersion)…same thing for Korean. Learning a language is not the same process for any language….there will always be things that work for one and not the other…for example, for Japanese, I was so obsessed from day 1 that I could immerse in native level content from like 2 months into learning because I would not mind looking at the same sentence for 20 minutes…fast forward 4 years later and I can now understand everything at a very high level almost without having to stop to look up things…In contrast, with Korean, I just cant do it…I can’t do immersion (even aimed at language learners) until I have the basics down because I get overwhelmed so quickly its not even funny…. So yes…I agree that acquisition is the way to learn, but sometimes there just can’t be any unconscious learning without some deliberate learning…sometimes they can happen at the same time, other times one has to happen before the other can take place
Agreed. I speak Swahili, and the entire structure is so different from Indo-European languages that I don't know you'd have learned with just gestures and the like. You'd be completely lost in understanding the structure.
This is how I did Italian and French. Though flash cards and grammar are supplemental. So take assimil to start, then read books and watch Netflix films without subtitles. Read ease stuff and build up. Watch interesting films, have fun. After 2 years, get one on one speaking training. Avoid grammar exercises. Have fun. You will be fluent.
@@RogerRamos1993 often people end up reading the subtitles and dont take in the language. but ofc if it works for you then go ahead. But its very helpful if youre pausing the videoo when some interesting vocab comes up and writing it down
@@disobeats Reading the subtitles is taking in the language. I mean subtitles in the same language of the movie you're watching. I never write down an unknown word. When I keep hearing the same word, while not actually understanding it, it comes to point in which I feel compelled to look it up.
Hmm I want to learn about 5 other languages. Do you recommend getting a girlfriend for each one? Or maybe 3 that speak 1 or 2 if those target languages
Had two excellent women professionals English teachers, one young playing role with me as “Flirting” with me, my brain as man learnt recording in the best part of my brain, the 2nd teacher played as “my grandma”, so they engraved the basics in my mind matching emphatic relation just during class. The key point is try to learn with roles, nowadays I am using ChatGPT in that way with a good prompt.
You can mock flashcards all you like but they have been essential to me for one thing - MEMORY. The latter was my biggest frustration in learning French when I started 10 years ago. I use Anki flashcards, (as do most medical students!), because you can listen to 1,000 podcasts in French and still have little recall of good vocabulary and expressions when you need it - I know because I tried. Of course, my flashcards are entirely based around sentences that put everything in context, along with useful definitions and synonyms. Don't ignore BASIC LEARNING like these "experts" suggest.
I agree. Especially in cases where you need to gain basic usage of the language fast. The acquisition method is a valid one, but the conditions and time frame are not always available. I’m always surprised at how much meaning I can pull from a sentence knowing only vocabulary and little to no understanding of verb tenses.
As a secondary school teacher I totally agree. Rote learning through tried and tested techniques will lay the foundation. My mum, also a teacher, used flash cards on me when i was 3-4 years old and it worked brilliantly in improving my vocabulary and sentence structure/recognition and recall.
I agree you with 100%! I speak 4 languages very well and one on a basic level. Now I started learning Russian, a hard nut! But I write flashcards by hand and I also use the goldlist method, which is an experiment, I don't know yet if that will be successful for me. I notice that despite my age, I am over 60, I have a very good memory, much better than others around me, and I think that is due to always learning new things, not only languages. Flashcards are THE method for me to learn vocabulary, and after I have aquired about 5000 words, I can start reading books, and yes, I DO look up words I do not understand a 100%. I am confident that I can keep up this method for myself and I enjoy it a LOT, I think that this is also very important. If you do not enjoy learning a new language every method is going to be a drag. For all languages I speak very well now, I started to learn vocabulary first, then I started to read books, then I started to listen to native speakers, and after that, I started speaking myself.
4 languages, that's impressive! I'm 73 myself and really feel that daily flashcard work has sharpened my brain a lot. I retired 10 years ago and missed the constant stimulation that professional work provided. A side benefit of flashcards is that I have to be totally focused when using them, which distracts my brain from rumination etc. Various French teachers have actually commented favourably on my wide vocabulary. Bon continuation!!
@@paulmcguinness1072 The benefit of speaking some languages is that you have access to a lot of information, without being dependent on translations. Some books have simply not been translated. This is one of the reasons why I decided to learn russian. There is a lot of scientific material that is only available in russian, it bothers me...I am 62, so I do hope that I will manage russian before it is too late :-// Good luck to you too!
Comprehensible input is vital, but it's not the only factor in language learning. Learners also need feedback and motivation to improve their speaking skills and accuracy. While comprehensible input helps with understanding, it may not guarantee grammatical correctness or mastery of language details. Feedback from native speakers and consistent practice are essential for learners to develop fluency and confidence in speaking
Not all can get to a native speaker and have them offer help. For example, I used to ask my mom for help to improve my Spanish. Because she knew what I was saying when I would ask”how do you say this word?” She would just say “uh-huh”. I would ask her a few times before she would get flustered and answer. More than one person has done that to people. I’m not the only one. You need people to talk to. Even if it’s not perfect, as you are with people more and more, your brain makes connections on how to use them and in which tense , etc. but, it takes years and these people that say it will take 60 days or whatever, are just a big hoax.
The latter are just part and parcel of spoken and written communication with native speakers. No serious proponent of comprehensible input would say that you could ever achieve real fluency without ever practicing producing the language. And the most effective comprehensible input for intermediate and advanced learners occurs in real, reciprocal communication.
Games are a good medium to Kickstart learning a language. You're right that you need a community or at least a few people using that language to quickly pinpoint mistakes and fix them. Games also provide the "reward" and "motivation" part to keep coming back to it day after day.
I actually need inspiration rather than motivation. Keeping my “Big Why” front and center for each new language (Spanish, Swahili and now Czech) that I acquire is the key for me. (And it varies with each language, by the way. ) It sustains me in finding interesting, fun and effective ways to keep building momentum. This has also allowed me to find incredible language exchange partners on 6 continents!
I’ve watch hundreds of people talk about there methods of learning a language and one says you must ready more others say you must be in survival mode, others say get a teacher or buy my program . But out of all them I’ve found one thing in comen. they never stoped practicing the language or gave up they either did a little at a time or some crammed for hours but in the end it always comes down to who keeps at it chipping away at the mountain.
@MHaas-ms2ds your making some valid and good points. I’m 100 plus days into my journey of Spanish. I don’t have much motivation left , which is fine with me . I’m getting to a stage where I’m more disciplined I try to do some work on it at least 1 hr a day if I feel motivated I do more if not then I just keep it simple. No point in making my self feel guilty or sad for not doing more or forgetting what I learned . I just remind my self chip away at it a little at a time before you know it one year while have come and gone
Krashen has been saying this stuff for decades now, and my own experience with comprehensible input tells me that it’s extremely effective. But I totally disagree about grammar. Adults’ brains are not nearly as plastic as young children, so the learning rate is slower, and the amount of input needed to acquire a language is much, much higher. Learning the grammar is an excellent way to speed up the acquisition process by helping your brain notice the salient features in the input and extrapolate it to new situations when the time comes for output. Sometimes I feel that there’s a bit of a straw man here - of course it’s not enough to just read a grammar book, of course you have to practice the grammar copiously after you study it, just as a musician has to acquire the muscle memory after she learns the theory.
Agreed. There's no reason not to learn the rules for the easy parts of grammar. Gender, present tense, word order, etc. depending on what's easy for the language. It saves a lot of time.
MY contention about adult learning is all ego based. The longer you live doing familiar things correctly the less apt you are to allow chances of failures when trying new things. This wall inhibits people all over and everywhere in their lives. Many of us are immediately shut down when asked to do a new job task at a place we have done the same work for years. Let your ego go, and the joy will flow.
About the amount of input needed - I wondered about this recently. If we were given 3-4 years to do _nothing_ just being fed and taken care of while people talk to us in a language to learn, as adults, would we not acquire that language fully? So are we not just missing the point on the sheer hours a baby/toddler is exposed to language? Like how many thousands of hours is that. I thought about it when I was thinking of learning by immersing. Then I realized, okay, but can I be immersed for tens of hours per week, someone talking to me on 'my level'? So it might be that adult learning is actually more efficient after all? I wondered. Now I will need to research this.
@@martin-b-b It's about frequent repetition for babies and children - they understand a lot as babies its just the brain is learning to speak it later on. Adult language learners need to do frequent repetition. Soap operas, Rom Coms, radio all use the same 500 words repetitively.
this professor has well articulated precisely what i have been experiencing and wanting to express for the longest time. i learned english purely by acquisition and without learning a single grammar rule, i’m level c1 now. i’m learning german now using the learning method and i’m failing by my unconscious mind slipping wrong things for not having time to stop and think before speaking.
@@EnglishCassettes of course! watching movies and series with my native language translation and learning song lyrics. songs build up a hunch for grammar, movies let you use the visuals like the professor have mentioned, making you learn expressions and picking up repeated patterns. you wouldn’t even know from where you learned the word, it just gets acquired and becomes part of your brain.
There is definitely truth to it. I've also noticed in myself and others that you can speak, write, and understand your native language to a very good degree, but be incapable of being able to describe even relatively basic grammar unless you're explicitly taught to. While I'm sure there's some differences since you're not a child anymore, I still don't see why we should try to learn our second language in the opposite way to how we learned our first
@@bird.9346 Because the first method take way longer time to develop. As kids our brains are receptive at a certain age we can learn 10 languages if we tried, but past that time we lose elasticity and have our minds more oriented to learn diffrent skills, so langague will require more input and time to be developped, like i learned english at 16 and it took me two or three years of movies and songs to reach a c1 level, had i been a baby i would've picked it up in six months. My nephews learned english and german and french by age 4 for having parents speaking them.
I’m so happy I randomly watched your video. I have always said that acquisition is the way to go, from experience, (not knowing anything about scientific studies on the subject) but have always come across so many people against my theory. I grew up bilingual, speaking Italian & English, and was lucky enough to start learning French in an experimental class at primary school in the UK where all we did was roleplays - no reading or writing (and certainly no grammar). So at secondary school I started from scratch with traditional methods but had already acquired a good feel for the language. I also studied German there with traditional methods but it was only when we moved to Germany that I got a feel for the language and improved my pronunciation and grammar without too much effort, due to exposure. As an adult I unexpectedly found myself having to learn Spanish and had no time for formal lessons so started using audio-cassettes in the car, language videos and children’s books to acquire the language. As I started travelling regularly to Spain I picked up a lot just paying attention to what I heard, saw and read, using a dictionary only when really necessary. During my holidays I did do a few grammar exercises just to improve but I had mostly acquired the structures subconsciously again from exposure. The result was that within a year I was able to make phone calls to offices (the hardest because there are no facial expressions nor gestures to emphasise meaning) and make myself understood despite making many mistakes. My comprehension of full-speed spoken Spanish is now 95%, yet my own spoken Spanish is probably upper A2 - lower B1 level. This is the reason why it’s difficult to say what level students are - the level may not be uniform. In any case I’m delighted to know that my experience ‘acquiring’ languages rather than formally studying them is backed by science and that I can be more confident that my teaching methodology is on the right track. Thank you very much!!
I've been learning Japanese thru acquisition and while it has helped me to learn a bunch of stuff, pulling back and spending a few hours to learn about Japanese verb conjugation helped me immensely. My acquisition was based on formal Japanese and the verbs had already been changed and I didn't understand AT ALL how the dictionary verb connected to the polite Japanese use of it AT ALL. Now that I have learned verb conjugation, I can understand the same verb in so many different ways. When I start hearing and acquiring them it's going to make so much more sense now
The way I see it, actively studying grammar is a bit like reading a map before going into a forest. If you go in without reading the map, you'll probably still get to the other side - although it may take a while. If you read the map beforehand, you'll have at least some idea of where to go, and will most likely spend less time getting lost in the middle. SRS apps, flashcards and grammar textbooks work great as a map. They help break down rules and syntax that might be incredibly hard to understand solely through immersion and relying on your brain's pattern recognition ability. You could try to figure it out on your own, but a little help goes a long way in speeding up the process.
@@1august12 Totally agreed. In my opinion, grammar rules are like shortcuts to patterns our brains would take much longer to "acquire" or notice, I don't know why it is so underrated
+1 for @1august12. There's nothing wrong with reading a grammar or other theory material. Do it before you start consuming material, or during, whenever it's comfortable. Especially if you're an analytic kind of person who likes to understand how things work; it can be very helpful to have seen the rules explained once. (I really love the forest map metaphor.) But I think the key takeaway of the video is not so much to do with theory material, but memorization. If you spend X hours with Anki or Duolingo or Babel, vs. the same X hours with comprehensible material at whatever threshold is comfortable for you (he says 90-something but I seem to be ok with 80ish), you'll get a lot more long-term vocab from the latter, plus grammar, idioms, etc. Our brains store information by association, and more importantly retrieve it by association. Memorization enthusiasts (I was deeply in that camp at one point) end up with clever but ultimately awkward tricks like the Fluent Forever method of creating images with personal association. That does help storing, but does it help retrieval? Will you actually remember the word when you need it, or only when you see the image in question? If we instead acquire the language from (a) actual, real-world usage and (b) very importantly, a broad variety of different contexts, we are forming more different associations, and so we're cementing it more strongly, plus making it more likely it will come up when needed.
Where can I find comprehensible input(like in Dreaming Spanish) for Japanese? Dreaming Japanese! ^^^ Would love to learn Japanese for one year without studying Hiragana etc.....
his emphasis on language acquisition through comprehensible input is a game-changer for adult learners. It's a reminder that immersion and meaningful interaction, rather than rote memorization, are key to truly mastering a new language. 🧠
You're right EcomCarl. It's sometimes difficult to get this point across to some that think it's the Grammar that does the magic. If only this was true. Comprehensible input is the game-changer.
Steven Krashen 'invented' the theory of comprehensible input long ago. If it was actually the best way to become fluent and accurate in a few years, then we would have seen the results by now.
I have started listening to French "stories" for beginners, although I took French in grade school and college years ago. I never learned how to understand a native speaker by listening. These programs are truly great, and it is true, learning within the context of a story, which I suppose is by acquisition is so much better than grammar exercises. Of course I used to learn grammar years ago, so it is relatively easy to read and hopefully understand by listening on a fast track.
@@lydiabell6218 You are on the right track. If your level of listening comprehension is at beginner level then listening at A1 - A2 is good for you. After some time challenge yourself and listen at a level B1. If it's too difficult, drop back down to level A2 for more time. The key is comprehensible input where you should understand around 70-95% When listening, try to listen to chunks and the overall context. Don't try to listen to word for word. I read your point on doing quite well with grammar and reading. It just shows that doing grammar can't be transfered into speaking and understanding. Listen as much as you can and also practice speaking. You will progress.
I’m absolutely loving these series of interviews, Matt! As a first time, second language learner (3 years with Italian) I’m a disciple of ‘Comprehensible Input’ as a means of acquiring language. I was lurking on a Duolingo for Italian language learners page and someone posted “Good news bad news... I finished Duolingo, still can't understand an Italian speaker”. Which is explicit language learning in a nutshell, really. I applaud anyone who learns a language, no matter what means they choose, because language learning is so beneficial in so many aspects of our lives! But getting to a point now where I can read a book or watch a video in Italian and understand almost of all of it, and reflect back on how not so many years ago I thought language learning was impossible unless you were a child in a bilingual household or ridiculously smart (I.e. not me) I can’t help but marvel at how effective and simple it is all thanks to comprehensible input ! It requires lots of input and lots of time with that input, but it works. And what a wonderful thing it is. Thanks again for a great video!
Ha I learned English n German by talking to myself and my wall covered in posters, but of course I spent considerable time in listening, took me three summer holidays in my bedroom though
@@giuseppeagresta1425 Grazie! È sempre stata una cosa che ho voluto fare. Quindi, durante il lockdown, ho deciso di iniziare seriamente, e dopo un mese sono diventata ossessionata dalla cultura italiana e dalla bellezza della lingua. Ho origini italiane, quindi l'italiano sembrava la scelta giusta. I miei nonni paterni sono venuti in Australia 70 anni fa e parlavano solo il dialetto. Io non potevo parlare o capire l'italiano (o in realtà il dialetto) per nulla, ma sentivo comunque un legame con il paese dei miei nonni e la cultura che era rimasta cristallizzata nel piccolo paesino da cui provenivano 70 anni fa. Mi sentivo imbarazzata per non essere in grado di comunicare con i miei parenti. C'era sempre qualcosa che mancava nella mia vita. Ora che sto studiando la lingua, ho imparato molto di più sugli italiani in un modo meno superficiale e ciò ha portato tanta gioia inaspettata nella mia vita. So che la lingua farà parte della mia quotidianità per sempre.
@@mmaxine1331 what is the best way to learn german someone says grammar is important very much learning german ,now i only focus on listening part youtube video?
I apply the tools promoted here like this: My approaches are Pimsleur, evesdropping, TV and machine translations. 5:50 , *visual/slowly-clearly:* - Pimsleur's `Hearing and responding` (call and response) helps me in two ways: It can be done while engaged in another task like driving, exercising, simple chores, and it helps spoken delivery (people comment positively about my accent. I think forming the words involves training the muscles of speech in the throat, lips, sinuses, cheeks, etc.) 8:40 , *Monitoring grammar:* repetitious use of grammar helps, totally agree about grammar learned out of context. 15:00 , *Vocabulary /flash cards* - The only use for flash cards I have now is to check words, to see what I know, what I recognize but don't know and completely new words. *Translation using apps:* I think of English phrases and translate them, and end up learning a word. It's good to copy and paste the English and language phrases and review them. _Drawbacks:_ The grammar may be totally out of whack and you better make sure the word actually fits the English meaning! The way I use Pimsleur is modified from how it's presented on CD or streaming. When I started I used the stock CD method but I would repeat the response phrase over and over in the long silence provided before it's spoken by the actor - That was to get my mouth forming the words properly, the acquisition was pretty rapid compared to building speech patterns. Pretty soon it was obvious I needed less time between "call and response." I ended up using software to modify the CD by truncating the silence to the point where I could barely respond with the phrase before the next "call." I think rapid-fire helps with the mental agility needed to converse with people. An interesting side-effect is the 30 minute lessons are whittled down to 19 or 20 minutes.
Man, I absolutely LOVE Dr. Jeff McQuillan and Dr. Lucy Tse. I started listening to their podcast about 10 years ago, and it was the very first time I really improved my listening and speaking skills. They are the best, period! I don't have words to express how much they mean to me... I know this might sound like an awkward comment, but I had to say it!
The best video ever on TH-cam that explains the distinctions between Learning and Acquisition of a language. Dr Jeff McQuillan is really a Myth breaker of language learning. As an adult struggling to learn foreign language I feel so inspired and empowered by him! GOOOD JOB!!!!
Well don't feel too empowered because it's VERY difficult to come across content that is truly i+1. I was already aware of it 15 years ago while in Japan. Hopefully AI will be able to find where we are at in terms of level and then provide us with customized comprehensible input. But always remember that comprehensible input doesn't guarantee that something will be acquired. You might need to be exposed to the same or similar comprehensible message several times before it becomes "a part of you."
I’ve been doing this on my own and didn’t realize it. My two hobbies are yoga and cooking. So I did a yoga class in French and followed a recipe in French. It’s fun and I totally learn through the visuals and context clues. Definitely a less frustrating way to learn a language. Only thing is this works for comprehension but not speaking. Speaking the language is a whole different part of the brain. Would love a video from this guy on that.
Thank you both for this interview. It is a spot on summary of all that I've experienced as a teacher and learner of languages (30 years). Best explanations of all the bits & pieces that make up language learning when all we want to do is find "the one" method that will give us the target language on a platter.
Language is about memory and sound/muscle memory (actually knowing the correct sounds and experimenting until you can make them, though sometimes even native speakers need speech intervention to get all the sounds correct or they are considered to have a speech impediment). You have to build a lot of memories and this takes a lot of time. What's funny is that this is treated as a "mystery" that needs to be investigated by university researchers when in reality every international school in the world solved this problem quite a long time ago and they all get consistent results. They throw students in a classroom with native speaker teachers and they are taught all the subjects in the target language for years. There are support classes for those who join at later ages to help them out, but this is how it works, and wealthy people spend a lot of money on this. Mostly this is done with English, but I have seen it done with Spanish in America and French in Canada. However, I suppose there is room for research on how to actually teach someone a language in two 30 minute sessions a week/quickly because most people don't want to invest the time in language learning, so the idea of the quick fix is being chased much like the idea of the fountain of youth here. Adults rarely learn languages well because adults are not placed in environments where languages are taught in a patient and normal way, nor do they have time to be in those environments long enough if they have other serious commitments, which they usually do.
Precisely because adults usually don't have the time for years of 12/24 immersion, memorizing a lot of vocabulary in the beginning is a shortcut (and a scaffold for implicit learning of even more words and idioms and getting used to the grammar), as is getting some grammar info in those languages that are so different in structure that it might take you too long to ever figure it out by yourself/learn it implicitly. Moving from English to French or Spanish, you don't need to consciously learn grammar, but when you learn Japanese, you do, because it would hold you back too much and for too long if you didn't.
@@hezarfen777 Thanks for writing! True, but few people are actually willing to do this, and this is why we look for easier ways constantly even though we know the immersion method works, because we know it is resource heavy we look for other methods, and the method you mentioned works (though often produces less fluent speakers with unclear pronunciation), but it is monotonous/ boring and requires huge amounts of self motivation. I'd say while your mentioned method is low on the resource cost, it is highly likely to fail, whereas I can take a person with a very low level of motivation and place them in an international school and get them to speak the language. Researchers are looking for a "middle path" here and so far have come up with little. Perhaps we can say they have come up with ways to make the method you mentioned less painful/more interesting or engaging... But that's about it. It's almost like if you can't afford to own a horse but want to be great at horse riding. It can happen (mucking stables/paying out money to ride someone else's horses for a few hours), but is very unlikely to happen. I tutor English students right now, and I provide students with a "sample" of what it's like to be immersed for 1-3 hours a week usually. And students come back because they gain from this, but this is obviously going to be much slower than 30-40 hours a week. In fact, many students are trying to learn English to the point where they can place themselves in the position where they can work in English full time because they know, that's where the progress really starts to happen. So self study and using tutors is really about getting to that spot for a lot of them. I accept the fact that I'm part of the next best alternative to having grown up in an international school. In China there was the idea that getting English tutoring for your children a few hours a week was a sign of being middle class, and I can assume having your kid at an international school is a sign of upper middle class/upper class background. As a side note, I have been told by Chinese students that some jobs in China require a high English level even though no English is spoken at their work at all, based on this, it is my opinion that the high English level requirement could serve simply as a way to discriminate against someone who is not from a wealthier family... Back to the main point, sometimes I get students from international schools who haven't spoken English in a while and want to brush up on it/restore their confidence, however they quickly get up to speed and don't take lessons long. But having listened to them talking about their background, I feel like language learning is a bit of a rigged game and the most important part of this process is whether or not your parents invest the time/money in making it happen for you. Sure, there are exceptions to the rules, especially for people in border towns or with multilingual families, but this international school phenomenon seems the way of it by and large, at least for English. Also, these students at these schools KNOW they are different/special and are destined for greater things, because otherwise it's very odd to learn all your school subjects in a language that isn't normally spoken by people in your country in daily life. Most people searching on TH-cam don't have this background, so we have all these self help/self study materials for them to look at and the teachers who say they have done it on their own using these methods are popular. However, I feel if students knew the truth about how most people end up being bilingual without family connections, it would be very discouraging. Once you know the truth, you quickly know why very few Americans speak a second language, for example. And the truth becomes even more apparent by looking at the few Americans (without family connections) who successfully speak Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. These subjects are often focused on with the proper amount of attention to gain some fluency at elite schools only, schools that tend to have students study abroad with partnerships etc. Meeting an American who speaks Mandarin Chinese without family connections shocks people to such an extent that people have made TH-cam careers out of such feats. Xiaomannyc for example, also look at his background, attending the private school, the University of Chicago, with a year long study abroad program in China... This doesn't seem to be a coincidence. I don't want to discourage anyone reading this, but if you fail to learn a language/ quit learning a language from self study, you are normal and not a failure/weak. It would be very unusual for you to learn a language successfully from self study. In my own experience, I only started learning Spanish successfully when I started paying Spanish tutors to help me. Even self study programs like Busuu (I used to work for them) include tutoring services along side the self study program. My advice, go straight to the tutors if you are serious about learning a language and are not an Olympic style super self motivated person. Beware of more and more expensive self study programs from language learning "gurus/masters." The missing ingredient is usually hardcore self discipline/motivation in all of their programs and they will often tell you this. For example, ask yourself if you are really going to consistently long term review an Anki deck/flash cards in your free time? I reckon maybe 1/1,000 people will do this. Is it possible, yes! But, it's also possible to win 10,000 dollars on a 10 dollar scratch off ticket. Always think about what possible means here.
Hi there In your first sentence you have an practically Amazing insight no one talks about anywhere: Muscle memory: In French and latin and greek based languages ,there is no word for language , it's called tongue as in english mother tongue. Maybe ,just maybe , they understood that oral language is a muscular activity ( the tongue contains 17 muscles What about the inside ear : it' s full of physical tools like eardrum anvil , cochlea (snails shell ) , outside ear looks like a loudspeaker , vibrating hairs. Just imagine how powefull your insight of 'musculary memory ' really is . Thank's for that nugget , I'll bé grratefull to pass it on. Christian
@@songandwind72I am a member of the professionals Mr. Kruger. I teach English full-time and have done so for the past 4 years. I'm not really sure what you mean here, please let me know.
It’s great to have an experienced educator like Dr Jeff McQuillan talk about this topic. I have studied several languages. I think you’re simply going to get several opinions on this if you ask several people. I find there’s a benefit from studying grammar so that I can edit myself. I might just say the sentence using my subconscious knowledge but reflect back on it later using my grammar knowledge and if it doesn’t match up I can go double check to see if I’m saying it wrong (probably I am) and try to fix my bad habits. And especially when reading, knowing the grammar helps me understand complex sentences. It’s very helpful. Obviously you cant skip acquisition just studying textbooks or grammar and vocabulary and expect to be able speak naturally. You need to go read, listen, speak lots and lots so that it’s just habit and you don’t think about it. But I think I’ll try to prioritize acquired knowledge over learned knowledge. It’s hard to find the right balance. I don’t think 100% acquired knowledge is the sweet spot for me though.
This is probably the best video I've ever watched on the topic. Everything the professor said made sense for the 3 languages I learned (including my native one!) and too for the other languages I study.
I recently moved to France with my five year old son and he is learning french faster than me by far. This video has made me understand why! He's learning through acquisition while I'm making so much conscious effort to learn the language! In less than three months he has such a wide range of vocabulary it's incredible! I'm so glad to have found this interview here. Thanks❤
@@stevencarr4002 It is clearly stated that understanding the words comes from them being delivered in a manner that makes their meaning clear. Which is how children acquire their first language. The difference between children and adults learning a new language is that other children probably take more time to be clear with the child that is trying to acquire the language and the child learning spends more time learning along with being more willing to make mistakes.
Curious here - you say he's learning faster, but my assumption would be that is because he's getting much more french language input than you - is that correct?
Curious here - you say he's learning faster, but my assumption would be that is because he's getting much more french language input than you - is that correct?
For me, this has also been a matter of lowering expectations. I have learned to switch my brain off and allow myself to be entertained by material that I would never consume in my native language. For example: kids cartoons, crappy sitcoms, video game commentary, whatever.
if you look up "comprehensible Input (insert language)" or "natural" or "TPRS" and insert language you can find channels for the largest 10-15 languages. Not as fun as a show but more fun than an app
A good TPRS video will make itself engaging no matter how boring the underlying concept is. They time themselves perfectly, repeat themselves so it feels like you're figuring something out every few seconds, and ask questions such that you can respond in complete sentences in minutes. Run a search to see if your language has that kind of thing
@@andrewrobinson2985 first time I'm hearing the term "tprs" most people talk about broad concepts like "immersion" and "graded readers" without saying much substance. I even expected this video was going to be like that but its not. Looking TPRS up it looks really useful, thanks.
Fascinating interview. I'm particularly interested in what he had to say about Anki as even lots of input oriented sources (such as Matt v. Japan and Refold) are very pro-Anki. The problem of course is getting the 'right' input for most languages. Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago in the Guardian there was a lovely article written by a Chinese woman living in Germany about her problems with learning German. There were over 1000 comments under it - I didn't read them all, but in searching through nearly every single one (most by people writing about their own L2 struggles) was focused on traditional skill based learning or output learning (the usual 'oh, I just threw myself in and started talking' advice). Not one single person mentioned the importance of input or the issues with 'learning' or early output. Its both fascinating and depressing that the simple evidence backed arguments of people like Krashen have failed to penetrate the vast lingo-educational complex. I guess that will continue until someone works out a way to make lots of money from it.
It's incredible to me how we have gotten so many things wrong in society, and how long it takes for these collective assumptions to be corrected. Language learning is just one of them. I think you hit the nail on the head...there is no money to be made from comprehensible input but there is boatloads of money in traditional education. So most of language academia and industry will resist comprehensible input since they (correctly) perceive it as an existential threat.
I’m a Chinese immigrant myself living in Canada. I’ve seen a lot of my fellow Chinese who came here and continued to immerse in Chinese (thanks to the internet) instead of English. As a result, their English won’t improve much after years living here. In the meantime, government is throwing money into all kinds of English classes, LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada), ESL (English As a Second Language), you name it, to no avail.
@@mydadletsmeshootatcats6754 yup! There’s less money to be made in CI (Dreaming Spanish might be one of the few good examples). At the same time, we see guys like Ikenna raising (scamming) $1.2 million to build yet another gamified app for language learning.
@@SimplyChinese I've seen exactly that myself with some Chinese friends here in Ireland. My friend looks after some school kids from Shanghai here and some have terrible English despite living here for several years - its easy to see why when you hang out with them - they have their heads all the time in Chinese social media. The ones who just engage with local media (tv/internet) are far more confident in English. Its a pity, because they will suffer socially and academically in the longer term.
@@mydadletsmeshootatcats6754 I think the problem with being able to make money from producing CI is because the content has to have broad interest, otherwise it's become boring and tedious pretty quickly. This is the problem that I have with most content for young children -- it simply isn't interesting to me as an adult. Adults have so much variance in their interests that it's hard to appeal to enough people to justify the production investment. "Traditional education" only pays because almost all of its consumers are a captive audience. If it's the required price of admission to something else, then you're stuck.
Thank you for the video! As a professional teacher of English and Russian as a foreign language and a University teacher, as well as a language learner who is learning Chinese (as I am living and teaching university students in China now) and German and planning to learn French, I can say that ALL factors are important in learning languages: both conscious learning and subconscious, memorising and acquiring, studying textbooks and reading fiction books, noticing and just looking around, spaced repitition and repetition in context, talking to native speakers and talking to a teacher, even memorising dialogues are important (it does serve you good) - all the nuances are worth taking into account. Even flashcards are important. The idea is THE MORE TIME YOU SPEND ON INPUT AND OUTPUT, THE MORE PROFICIENT YOU BECOME. I agree that learning vocabulary as isolated words is not worth it but we always learn it in a chain: a word - a phrase - a sentence - an extract - a text or a dialogue - similar dialogue - real life talk and exposure. It is impossible to acquire a language just by listening or living in the country unless you make real efforts. It is time-consuming, that is why we have to be patient and consistent in how we learn it. "Systematically" - that is what important, as in any other business or area. I have a question: who in the mordern world just memorises words without a context? All students whom I teach, they use flashcards only for reviewing. All is important. Every single detail. For one person, talking to a foreigner is enough to improve. For another, they should sit and write and read and learn and repeat. We are all so different. There are many cases described in the "SLA" theory showing that some people acquire languages easier than others. Brain and our psyche are very complicated areas. Good luck to us all.
Glad to read your comment. I agree with you whole heartedly. I am fluent in four languages and I have a master's degree in linguistics with focus on language acquisition. It is definitely essential to bathe in a language. But I find that people plateau early if they never look at rules. I personally had my break through in my language acquisition process once I learned about syntax in all its nitty grittiness. All of a sudden those ominous tenses and prepositions and what not ... they all started to make sense.
I appreciate you doing this interview, Matt! It was interesting to listen to. I do wish you two had explored how you get to the level where comprehensible input exists without memorizing any vocabulary or why you wouldn't just memorize some common words and phrases that will help you find more content that is 90-95% comprehensible. I also wish Dr. McQuillan had talked about memorization through systems like flashcards in a more balanced way. I used flashcards to help me learn my first 2,000 or so collocations in Levantine Arabic. But I didn't put individual words on them, but rather useful word chunks or sentences that exemplified a grammar point I wanted to remember. The cards also served as pronunciation practice for me, as I vocalized my answers and got lots of practice making sound combinations that were very new to me. I also didn't choose these words outside of a context. Most of my cards came from my iTalki lessons, where I had practiced expressing ideas with my tutor and gotten her feedback on the correct/most natural ways to express them. The spaced repetition of Anki flashcards also really helped me drill important vocab into my brain from a language with very few cognates from English; I really had to learn almost every single word. If someone is learning a language related to their native language (such as Spanish for a native English speaker), they will be able to learn new vocab with a lot less repetition and effort... The conversation also seemed based on the assumption that there is SO MUCH comprehensible input out there for every language. This is simply not the case. There is very little material written in Levantine Arabic for beginners because the version of Arabic that is used in articles, books, and even as subtitles in movies is Modern Standard Arabic, which is essentially a different (but related) language.
@l.h.308 I appreciate your comment and agree that this is a great idea for people learning many languages. But in Arabic, you have a phenomenon called diglossia, where the written language is completely different from the spoken language. So early readers for children would always be in Modern Standard Arabic, never in the spoken form of the language. And, unfortunately, even readers created for Arabic dialect learners are often at a low intermediate level, even when they're marketed as for beginners.
I have had the same issue of trying to find comprehensible input while learning Persian. There are a few apps/ websites / podcasts for learning Persian but it took me a while to find them and it is difficult to find beginner friendly books. I eventually found Televika to be able to watch Persian movies / TV with subtitles but again that took a long time searching and asking my Persian partner for advice on where to get resources. I am nowhere near the level I would like to be at but I found doing flashcards regularly did help to at least learn some vocabulary so that I could gradually pick up bits and pieces from reading or watching TV. Since the alphabet is also different from English I found that flashcards at least exposed me to the opportunity to try and read individual words or phrases.
Really true! Learning languages through vocabulary and grammar is like learning to walk with crutches. It will never be perfect and will not work in practice to master a language fluently
You have to start somewhere though. I have studied languages throught both intuitive methods like assimil and more old fashioned ways of studying vocabulary + grammar and then reading. I end up preferring the old fashioned methods, especially for synthetic languages like ancient greek. It's just frustrating to practice something you haven't first learned to understand. When you learn words and grammar.first and then practice, it is just easier. What people get wrong, is they mistake knowledge acquisition for learning to use the language, so they think: How am I getting this wrong if I know the rule? Vocabulary and grammar are an essential, but not sufficient part of learning a language. And taking time apart just to focus on grammar and words without context is just more efficient, is my experience
@@olaf2627 I agree with you. Just listening or watching/listening to a new language (e.g., Pimsleur - just oral, no reading/grammar) seems like a very slow way to learn a language. Especially in the beginning, everything is incomprehensible. There is no ‘comprehensible input.’ Eventually, you might get the patterns, but some grammar/vocabulary just smooths the way. This is especially true if you’re learning a language with a different alphabet and grammar than your native language - or some other language you know well.
@@olaf2627 You're implying that one has to "start somewhere" and by "starting somewhere" that means through grammar and study. And the answer is conclusively: No, you do not need to start with learning grammar just because you're new to a language. There does exist input for absolute beginners to understand even without knowing any words. Comprehensible Input is to understand what a word means _before_ you know it. By the way, Assimil isn't that "intuitive". Yeah, it's good that it gives you a lot of native input, but that's about it. It relies on translation to make the input comprehensible, and the listening itself isn't that comprehensible for a beginner without accompanying videos.
@@HoraryHellfire The original commenter made a comparison with crutches. But if you break your legs as an adult and have to learn how to walk again, you will use crutches. Learning languages is just not the same for adults as it is for children. So yes, I do think adult language learning is made easier with grammar. I have enough personal experience to be able to say that it works for me. You still need a ton of practice anyway, but yes the first steps are easier with the crutches of grammar. I have used pimsleur as well, not just assimil, and it went super slow, I invested for more time for a smaller effect than I got by simply learning words
I've been learning French for a couple of years, using Duolingo, Hello Talk, researching grammar rules, memorising conjugation rules, watching shows in french with english subtitles and a tutor for the last few months. I've heard this comprehensible input/learning via story praised as the golden method for learning a language by multiple different educators and I totally agree it's a completely necessary tool as I can read, write and speak fairly well in French, but am utterly useless at comprehending whilst listening. What I have an issue with however, is the overlooking of the challenges with this method. His example of 'I have two hands' in Spanish was great, but in reality where am I suppose to get this content? Especially if I have zero comprehension of a language in the first place. Surely conscious learning is completely necessary and very effective at least when a complete beginner? I'm at a point where I can have pretty good conversations on Hello Talk (using translate every now and then for some words and phrases) and can almost watch French shows with French subtitles, but it's consistent conscious learning that has got me to this point where I'm almost ready for comprehensible input to be the most effective aspect of my learning.
You are absolutely right. And Jeff admitted in another interview that it's VERY hard to find i+1 content (in other words, content that is almost "custom crafted" based on your level to provide comprehensible input.). But you have to remember that just because it is difficult to set up conditions that provide you with comprehensible input doesn't make learning a good choice. It's virtually impossible to use conscious knowledge for language. Rather than "acquiring" the ability to ride a bike by allowing the body to handle all the complex processes involved, you are taking the approach of consciously manipulating the parts. Sounds like something that Larry, Moe, and Curly might do together...should be an episode.
30 years of adult ESL / ESOL under the belt, and I couldn't agree more! Isn't that how children also learn? Anyone noticed we begin studying grammar in school when we have already acquired our first language!!
Yes, but it is done in that order because children need at least one language in order to have grammar explained to them. Additionally children's brains are too simple to understand grammar rules. So while it may or may not be true that acquisition is the most efficient way for adults to learn a new language it does not inherently follow from that being the way children learn their first language.
I recommend watching Spanish language news cast such as UniVision Primer Impacto. The news presenters speak very clearly and their are also visual cues through the video segments.
The best way to learn a language is listen, watch and repeat what you heard. Writing notes/letters in the target language is extremely helpful (writing by hand works better than typing). Watch the News: first in a language you understand, so that you know what is going on, and then in your target language. Watch movies that come with subtitles in a language you understand. In Sweden, pretty much everyone speaks English fluently, and a good number of people can communicate in three, four or even more languages. Why? Because everybody watches TV and no movie shown by a Swedish TV station has ever been translated into Swedish. Movies are always shown in their original language with subtitles. At first, you need those to be able to follow what is going on. Gradually, you'll notice that you rely on them less and less until one day you find that you watched the whole movie without ever even looking at the subtitles. It may not be the fastest way to learn a language but it's definitely one of the best.
La mano mia or, better mi mano, not mano mio. I learned Spanish as my 4th. foreign language in Mexico when I was 28 years old. Learned it in 3 months. Procedure: get a girlfriend, buy a newspaper every day, watch local TV and avoid foreigners. That's full time exposure, just like children learn their mother language. Learning how to write Spanish is very easy. There are no superfluous letters, only very few "special" ones e.g. ll and ñ.
When I had to learn English in elementary school, I was the bottom of my class. It annoyed the hell out of me, because English was probably the subject in school where I could visualize it being useful, and it mattered a lot to me to be understood and for me to articulate pov and points clearly. So one summer holiday (7 weeks), I dug in intensively. We don’t dub in my country, but instead of my native language as subs, I used English subs, I listened to English music all the time, every time there wasn’t a word I didn’t understand I translated it, and then I applied it in video games, especially in World of Warcraft, so I also played it in. I read a lot of English - and once I returned back from holiday, I was the best in class. Actually my teacher once said, I may be the best student she’d ever had. Something that I noticed was, we’ve in my language a section of our dictionary called “foreign dictionary”, and words like “melancholy”, has a close similarity to my native language, so I just start to incorporate those words into my speech and my writing and voila! Turns out, I actually don’t learn as much, whenever I use the method in the educational institutions. I have to do it my way, and then it gets in.
I was trying this method with learning Italian for a few months. I'm a native English speaker and took Spanish in Jr High and High School and French in college. A lot of words seemed familiar, but they weren't sticking very well. I decided to try Babbel and am learning much faster and things are sticking better. It does take more active time, however. The exercises are diverse and help me to distinguish between words and then they stick in my brain better. There's some repetition, but they throw a lot of variety into the sentences so it's not as repetitive as many language exercises. I also LOVE their podcasts! Some of the best conversational listening I've heard. I think the podcasts are available for free. In Italian they have "Voices of Belle'Italia" for beginners and then "La bottega di Babbel" for beginner to intermediate and "Oggi nella storia" for intermediate. I'm sure they have them available for other languages. They're very well done with very natural sounding clear speaking and background sounds added in to make it feel more real. Great sound quality!!
You must have learnt for sure but how accurate and fluent can you speak the languages you wrote I learn. Learning and using what you get as a skill is different from each other.
Low-key sent the link to this video to my group of friends taking a Spanish class at uni. They might not be thrilled since they’ve already paid for the semester…
If you can have language lessons, that's great. In most of Europe and USA, they are quite cheap. You still do most of the learning by yourself, but the lessons give you a nice sense of improvement, you get to talk to your classmates on a variety of topics, you do some homework, which you might not do on your own, you learn with the mistakes of others, they learn with yours, and so on, it's good as a starting point, an ice breaker, and your beginning in the new language is not alone. With time, as you improve more and more, only purely conversational lessons would make sense, and they'd help you to keep your speaking abilities.
Great video thank you. I was a believer in flash cards and similar tools, but for some reason I was learning much more from short stories (especially if I had both audio and written), news, and other shows that interested me. This explains that. I will not stop beating myself up an keep going.
This discussion is the total opposite of how they teach languages in school. The more I look back at my experience in language learning in different schools, the more I see how colossally inefficient it was.
Thanks for such a valuable video, I have been learning German for a while and I started getting frustrated due to my slow progress, but the advices and techniques mentioned here gave me more energy to continue my learning journey
Agreed. This professor is by far giving the best insights about language learning. I've watched and into it for a long time. You'd have to ask this question and he presented the answer right in front of you, that nobody else has ever able to. Impressive.
Awesome video!!!! I haven't even finished watching it and I am already here commenting. Thanks for clearing up a concept (acquisition) that as a teacher I knew, but couldn't verbalize it satisfactorily.
I am currently acquiring Thai and Japanese at the same time. This video is absolutely spot on! I have never studied grammar or flash cards and acquired English Chinese and German to native level over 50 years.
did you learn everything by purely watching? or did you have to learn some words to start watching. For example i want to learn japanese, but i know nothing about it. Should i still watch videos only without understanding anything?
This makes perfect sense. I have been learning / teaching languages for a long time. I applied similar ideas to learning martial arts. And now, music - guitar. I love learning !
I am a musician and linguist too. I speak 3 foreign languages, Studied German at university. The approach for studying languages and music ( I play , guitar, sax, bass , drums and I am learning keys) is very similar. Music has its own grammar ….Theory…Scales, arpeggios…modes…..You will advance much quicker once you have musical grammar under your belt. And to play with other musicians, it is essential.
For Spanish, I took it for 5 yrs in high school but I learned the rules or structure of the language. I found it easier to know that before trying to speak the language.
Matt.....thanks for this. As I "trudge along" in my language journey this definitely reinforces my motivation in the process. Please keep up the good work in videos like this. Muchas gracias😃
ESL Podcast was my companion for a long time when I started to listen English podcasts. Thank you very much to Dr Jeff McQuillan for the many hours of learning.
Practice , practice , practice. It also helps massively to think in the language you’re trying to learn. EVERYDAY ! I’m learning Brazilian Portuguese it also helps to have someone to practice with. Failing that, have a conversation with yourself.
Just be careful - like the professor states, Comprehensible Input needs to be mostly comprehensible. There are a lot of videos that claim to be but don't do anything besides talk. That may be comprehensible to an advanced learner, but for a beginner it's almost useless. Now, subtitles can help with that, but it's not as effective as if you don't need them. A lot of comprehensible input people are against subtitles altogether, but I find they really help keep my interest sometimes.
I've come across that with Mandarin Chinese. The video claims to be comprehensible input, but whilst the person is talking they are often giving only vague clues as to what they are talking about, or no clue at all. And when they do give a clue, it can often be interpreted a couple of different ways. It's not comprehensible input to those that need it to be.
@@lindenh2014 I'm also struggling to find good beginner and intermediate comprehensible input for chinese. When I was learning spanish it was so easy to find good quality youtube channels. Have you found anything for chinese? I am using Chinese Pod and Chill Chat Chinese Podcasts which are ok but ideally looking for videos that have visual aids.
1. A relative came at age 18 from rural Sicily. A 5 year old walked him around town for days on end. He speaks perfect English. A girlfriend came from France. She watched I Love Lucy reruns. Nearly perfect English. Worked international cargo for a Mexican airline. Speaks perfect Spanish. 2. One day, a retired specialist in linguistics came and listened to a class of adult French speakers. He wanted to try pronunciation. He did not speak French, never had a class. He repeated perfectly whatever was said. You could swear he was a native French speaker. He had no idea what he was repeating. 3. Find a topic of interest. Find a movie in a language of your choice. Watch it. You will associate the body language and the situation with the spoken language.
I love that last bit of advice at the end about being realistic! Somehow I find that too often, adults make the all too easy excuse of children learning faster
He is completely wrong about flashcards and Anki. Acquiring words via input may work ok if you are learning a language similar to your own (e.g. English & Spanish that share a lot of vocabulary), but try to memorize Japanese words, which have zero commonalities with European languages (not to mention memorizing kanjis kanjis) by just consuming input. That may work for extremely common words, but once you get into more advanced vocabulary, their frequency in input drops considerably and it makes really hard to remember them. From my personal experience of regularly using Anki, I do all my daily reviews in 25-30 minutes with 10 new words every day, and let me tell you, there is no freakin way I'd be able to learn 10 new words every day by doing 30 minutes of comprehensible input. The numbers just don't add up: Anki shows you only the words that you want to learn, while for CI to work properly well over 90% of the words you encounter are supposed to be words that you already know. This sounds like a massive waste of time, and there's no way you can cram enough repetitions into such a short interval to make the words stick when most of the words you encounter are not your target words. Another benefit of Anki (particularly with the latest FSRS algorithm) is that it tracks exactly your performance for every single card and can figure out when to show it before you are likely to forget it (so it will show you more frequently words you struggle with and less frequently words that are easier). This is an extremely efficient use of your study time: it's impossible to implement a similar tracking algorithm by just watching videos or reading CI materials. In addition, he is wrong to suggest that it's been empirically prove that tje CI method for learning vocabulary in context is the most time-efficient; the evidence is very thin and inconclusive and in fact there's evidence to the contrary. Paul Nation, an expert on vocabulary acquisition, cites in his works many studies that show that there is no real benefit of learning words "in context" as opposed to more traditional methods, while there's ample evidence that spaced repetition (i.e. flashcards) is extremely effective for long term retention and in fact that most efficient memorization method known. Finally, and this is the thing that I hate the most about all these comprehensible input gurus, is that they make this into an exclusive choice - you either study through comprehensible input, or you waste your time with traditional methods. The truth is that it's never been controversial that input is absolutely essential for mastering a language, no one has ever became fluent by just reading textbooks or sitting in a calssroom. You need absolutely massive amounts of exposure to the language in its natural form (either spoken or written) to internalize it to the level of reaching any kind of fluency. But that being said, it doesn't follow that input alone is enough, or that it is the most efficient study method, and as I indicated there's really very little evidence that this is the case. My position is that input is essential for reinforcing and solidifying what you've already learned by deliberate means (such as grammar and vocabulary study), and it's actually not very effective or efficient if you try to completely replace deliberate study with CI (unless your target language is already pretty close to other language/s you already speak). There's no question that it is possible to learn solely through comprehensible input, that's true (this is indeed how children learn, and some adults, say as immigrants). But the question is whether this is the most effective and time efficient method that an adult language learner can use to teach himself a language - and the answer to that is pretty conclusively a no.
"Finally, and this is the thing that I hate the most about all these comprehensible input gurus, is that they make this into an exclusive choice - you either study through comprehensible input, or you waste your time with traditional methods." Couldn't agree more. This binariy thinking of it's either my method or it won't work at all of these people is driving me crazy. Anyone who has studied languages seriously (as an adult) knows you need a variety of methods to make progress. There is no one simple solution that fits all.
This is the correct response. Even someone who thinks 100% CI is the best method for learning must see that spending even 20% of that time with intentional study of grammar/vocab will make a ton more input more comprehensible more quickly. In other words, the most efficient way to practice CI is something along the lines of 80/20 split using SRS. Adults don't have to handicap themselves. We don't have to be at the level of a 5-year-old after 5 years of full-time study.
@@wardm4 That's exactly right, and it's also been my experience. Been doing Anki for under half a year (usually under 30 min a day) and my comprehension of input has skyrocketed. This proves that what the professor said is wrong - the vocabulary you learn with spaced repetition is undoubtedly retained and you can absolutely recall it in real time when listening without any trouble (of course you may struggle to remember some words, but the same is true for CI which only works with sufficient repetition). Another thing that irks me about CI is the insistence on not using the language/s you know as a crutch for learning. First of all, as you said, adults have a huge advantage over children - they already know at least one language, and it's insane not to use this knowledge to help learn the target language. The idea that it's better to try and guess what new words mean from context rather than relying on bilingual translations just doesn't make sense to me. It makes things very slow and inefficient. I've watched plenty of CI materials that try to teach new words by means of gestures and pictures and so on, and I didn't find any of these methods remotely as effective for long term retention compared to memorizing word with their English definitions via Anki. You can of course learn this way, but is it the most efficient use of one's time? Most probably not.
The rationale and success behind Spaced Repetition learning is consistent with the research from Cognitive Psychology - experts in learning, (and associative learning)and cognition.
I used the immersion method described as a student at school. In my first year of french using that method I learned one word: 'Je'. My parents then switched me out of that school to another school where I was taught grammar tables and rote learning. By the end of the second year using the grammar and rote learning method I could form sentences in 3 tenses and had a vocabulary of about 1,000 words which enabled me to have a basic conversation and translate a passage from either language.
I was taught French in school in the 7th and 8th grades. I learned nothing. I was then taught Spanish in school in the 9th and 10th grade. I learned nothing. Then I settled in Germany, and learned to speak near-fluent German in less than a year. And since living in Europe, I've also learned to speak Swedish, Dutch and Italian, and I'm now learning French (the right way). Therefore, my tip: If you really want to learn a language, go live where it's spoken.
There's some stuff in here that I disagree with. Those languages where I haven't consciously studied grammar I tend to have fossilized errors, little issues with conjunctions and the like where I keep making the same mistakes again and again and again. And you can meet Chinese-speaking natives who have lived abroad many years and can speak English at a rapid pace and understand nearly everything, yet speak 100% in present tense because they never studied the way that Indo-European languages handle verb tenses.
This is simply untrue. It's obvious to anyone who has ever spoken to or taught one of those Chinese people that they have studied tenses extensively, and that studying the grammar explicitly did nothing.
@@uchuuseijin So why, then, having spoken the language for decades and being fluent enough with what they do know, is the CI method unable to teach them how to properly conjugate their verbs. Why is the guy who has been serving English natives for 15 years still saying, "You want dumpling or you want noodle?" I think it's because he came with some basics and then never tried to figure out the grammar. To be clear, this is not all Chinese people--some of whom speak great English--nor is it *only* Chinese people. I've known Russians who never learn how to use articles because they don't exist in their language and they never figured it out in spite of thousands of hours of contact with the language.
@MrLilwallace Because language learning takes a lot of effort - exposure to a huge amount of comprehensible input and caring enough about getting it right to listen closely and repeat. Many adults stop at good enough for their life situation. They don't emerse in enough variety or repetition of comprehensible input and don't try to get it right. It's easier to get the exposure as a kid. Native speakers don't learn tenses etc through grammar - they learn through example sentences. The brain is wired to learn like this. Same for second languages
@@MrLilwallace first of all, CI is not a method, a grammar book contains comprehensible input. It is literally impossible to do anything resembling language study without putting language in your head (input), and useless to do anything that you don't comprehend. Every method contains CI. Second, these people are very often people who have studied English in classrooms for years on end. They've done nothing *but* grammar study. I have taught adults who make these kinds of mistakes and, most of the time, if you prompt them to correct themselves, they can. But, as the video says, they continue to make the mistake anyway. That's precisely what fossilization is- knowing what is correct and continuing to be wrong. It is almost certainly *because* they studied grammar in a classroom setting, and only had other people correcting/teaching them their grammar, that they never developed the skills they'd need to notice and correct their own mistakes in real time. Long and Swain both note that linguistic features need to be explicitly noticed- in other words, explicit grammar instruction, in which grammar is noticed for the student by someone else, can have the opposite effect and cause the student to tune the grammar features in their input out. They may even be deliberately trying to *avoid* noticing their own grammar mistakes, as they're forcing themselves to speak as fast as they can, so as to do their jobs. Third, you're neglecting to mention the examples you've doubtlessly seen where explicit grammar instruction *caused* students to make mistakes. People saying things like "noodles shop" because there's more than one noodle there and their teacher drilled it into their heads that "multiple=plural". Or when students say something like "I met the him" because they were corrected every time they forgot to say "the" when they should have, and so now they overcorrect themselves. In fact, this also pretty easily explains the avoidance in the "you want noodle" example as well- they were probably tired of putting the s in the wrong place and getting yelled at, and so developed a habit of avoiding it altogether. In general, "X doesn't work because people make mistakes" is a pretty specious argument because most people try a lot of different things and imperfection is the norm.
very useful and realistic information, i always get stuck in reading flash cards over and over again just because i want to proceed faster, but at the end i always find myself forgetting those words, it's indeed hard to trust my brain and letting it slowly learn those words and phrases, but having someone who has dedicated their life to this matter saying it so confidently makes it easier to trust my brain. thank you.
Sorry for your inability to understand the video. This video worths more than 99% of the videos about language on YT. Your I.q for sure are less than 70pts
Dr. McQuillan is parroting Krashen's input hypotheses, and for all of his scholarly-sounding confidence, I am flatly unconvinced. I admire the work of Dr. Krashen and CERTAINLY see the benefit of comprehensible input, but I simply cringe when I hear someone say that explicit learning is "a waste of time". In the first place, if comprehensible input were all that was necessary, then there would be no such thing as receptive bilinguals (people who can understand a language, but who cannot speak it), nor would there be SO VERY MANY people who have acquired comprehension skills, but who cannot speak in a grammatically correct way or with anything approaching a decent accent---yet, we all know that that is not the case. Even before acquiring my Ph.D., I never could get past that. I've had classes of kids who had two to three years of heavy comprehensible input in Spanish who still could not correctly use the present tense--only to be told that it doesn't matter--they'll get it with more input. Supposedly, what was important was that they were "communicating" and "having fun using the language". Hogwash. Secondly, I have never seen any substantial evidence supporting this big dichotomy between "learning" and "acquisition"---as a fluent Spanish interpreter who didn't start learning Spanish till I was 13, I strongly and stridently disagree with the notion that explicitly studying vocabulary or grammar is a waste of time. We can front-load our learning through direct, explicit study, THEN we can put it into practice and use it to the point of automaticity. This has worked very well for me, and I've seen it work for others as well. On the other hand, SHOW ME THE STUDENTS who have "acquired" language skills through comprehensible input to the point of being able to read and understand their L2 on a functional level, speak and write in a grammatically correct way, and have a decent accent. I'm asking this sincerely---I've seen SO MUCH PROMOTION of these hypotheses, and I just don't see the results. ON THE OTHER HAND, combining explicit learning (I'll use the word) with large amounts of comprehensible input and reading and conversation practice DOES yield results, and I'm living proof. No, grammar and memorized vocabulary alone do not result in L2 skills...but neither does comprehensible input.
Wow, this is the first time I've heard the term "receptive bilingual", that's what I am, I can understand my mother's language but can't speak it. I feel like I have a mental block between hearing the words, understanding them and speaking them. Do you have any tips for breaking out of that block?
@@fruitytarian This phenomenon is INCREDIBLY common--much more than most people imagine--and it is often seen among the children/grandchildren of immigrants. When parents/grandparents speak your heritage language but allow you to answer in English, they are setting you up for this to happen. I knew one woman who had such a bad case of it that she couldn't even speak up and defend herself when people were talking about HER! She'd sit there and listen to adults say, "Well, how come she can't speak Spanish if she's Mexican?!?!?!"--and she'd understand everything. While the language is the same and there is crossover between functions, to a great degree, language reception and language production are processed in different parts of our brains. You've actually already got the hardest part done---if you can understand your heritage language, then the language has already been frontloaded into your brain. I've known people in your situation who largely get hung up on the different ways sentences are structured grammatically between the two languages---they just don't know how to reframe the thought in a different way other than what they're used to saying it in English. Here are a couple of things to do: Get reading material in your mother's language. You'll run into vocabulary that you don't know (just because it was never used at home), but that's not a bad thing--read things one paragraph at a time and start making lists. If your heritage language is written with the Latin alphabet, you'll probably be surprised at how easily you'll be able to pick up on reading. Pinpoint things that are said differently, and back-translate them. Think: "Hmmm....now how do we say that in English?" and just passively recognize those differences. This will help you to begin to recognize and think about how the two languages are structured differently when you're not under pressure to perform and you have time to analyze the structure. Finally, you're going to have to just jump into the deep end and start speaking---even if it's not right at first, and even if it sounds strange or takes time to crank it out. People learn to speak by speaking (and don't let anybody ever tell you anything different). Give your friends/family members permission to gently correct you. It won't take long. Start with simple things, then get into more complex sentences as you go along. As soon as possible, find a grammar of your heritage language that explains what you're saying in English. That will help you to categorize the different elements and give you a name for them. This will make it tremendously easier as you go along. Best wishes!
Bravo! Finally someone says it. And as a native Spanish speaker and because of my own experience as a teacher of Spanish language, what the man in this video says it's not always true
@@TroyLFullerton thank you! This is so helpful, and fascinating. I think my problem is I "know" I sound "silly"/ have the wrong accent when speaking my mother language. English was my first language, and as you mentioned, my parents spoke to me and with extended family around me in their language but never insisted I responded in the language. When I tried to speak as a child my words sound odd to my ears, not like how my parents spoke, and I didn't like that so I stopped speaking. In highschool I became exposed to the lingua Franca in my country and had the same problem, I hated the way I sounded so I never spoke it. But once I started working I had no choice, everyone spoke it and so I had to too. There were a few years of anxiety and discomfort any time I was forced to speak but now 12 years later I'm fluent in it. I've recently started teaching myself Russian and I have no problem speaking words because I don't "know" how "bad" I sound. There's no voice in my brain comparing what I know the word should sound like to what comes out of my mouth, saying "what was that? That did not sound like what you thought it did.." since Russian has not been frontloaded in my brain... Quite fascinating, I look forward to trying out your suggestions to finally get speaking my native language. thank you again 🤓
To me, one of the important functions of input is to make me go "huh, what's that" about a thing in a piece of content, and then check what the word/grammar point was. That way I have a connection to it in existing material so it's not some disembodied fact in a conjugation table but I also get an explicit explanation as to what it is. Then seeing it again in your input content helps solidify then new thing you just learned. Being input heavy and checking interesting things is more or less how I ended up learning English to fluency. Speaking definitely also needs practice by itself, even if you've done a good regimen of heavy input. It shouldn't need too much practice if your comprehension is good, but needs some, and that part definitely benefits from corrections - hell, kids get corrected all the time when learning their native language and when they happen to say something wrong. Teachers focusing on "Supposedly, what was important was that they were 'communicating' and 'having fun using the language' " sound like they have brainworms and want to feel warm and fuzzy rather than really build good skills for their students.
I think this approach is the best way to learn. In fact, all teachers should be teaching this way, but when a student needs to improve pronunciation, its important to make him or her aware of the specific things to improve, because pronunciation is not going to get better just by listening.
A weird thing that has happened is that people are being referred to as objects rather than as people. Instead of using the word “that” when referring to the professor, I suggest using the word “who.”
Native speakers' knowledge of English is declining. "Whom" is almost extinct, and "who" is being replaced by "that". People don't know the difference between "affect" and "effect", so they replaced both with "impact": "How will the tax increase impact people?" -- instead of "How will the tax increase affect people?" People don't use the subjunctive and replace it with the conditional: "If I would have known that they were out of that item, I wouldn't have driven all that way to the store." -- instead of "If I had known ... ". People use the singular "There is" (There exists) even when a plural follows: "There is people who can't eat that." -- instead of "There are people ... ". The list goes on.
Wow, this guy makes the most sense of anyone I've ever listened to talking about learning a new language. The problem for learners is finding those reading/listening materials that hit that sweet spot of 90+% of words that you know and comprehend so that your brain can begin to absorb the other 10%. It can be very time consuming to find them. I have been using LingQ for this and it is somewhat helpful with this but I still struggle to find texts at just the right level. Most are too hard and so I tend to opt for those that are too easy because I have already worked out that the impost important part of reading and listening in Spanish is understanding (and enjoying) the content. What is missing for me from this very interesting presentation is discussion about the most effective route to language production in the target language. I get the importance of immersion through reading and listening but am still left wondering how to we cross that huge chasm between understanding (recepetive language) and speaking and writing (productive language). My ability to understand in Spanish is so much better than my ability to express myself in Spanish. I wish he had gotten on to talking about this in this interview. Can you please get hm back to talk more about this? Thanks for a wonderful video!
I am a Portuguese Native speaker, and as a English and Chinese learner, I can totally agree with Jeff! Actually Dr Jeff´s podcast helped me learning English! Greetings from Brazil.
English is my third language, and I'm really not familiar with the grammar rules at all. I can't articulate the reasons behind using "a" or "an," but I have a good sense of when to use each.
The thing is that there's basic concepts and Actual Grammar rules, Learning a/an, ei after c, or etc are pointless. But, verb tenses, verb conjugations, word orders are undoubtedly essentialls of the language.
I have tried comprehensible input for Polish and found that new vocabulary does not stick unless I made flashcards, and grammar did not stick until I started making flashcards based on exercises from grammar books. I enjoy listening and reading and I get better at it by doing it, but it doesn't help me on the production end at all.
It might seem that way as a very early absolute beginner, but I suspect that by the time you get past that stage heading towards intermediate where you start to understand some real conversation, you'll have long since changed that opinion drastically... 🙂 In my experience, flash cards can have a usefulness if and ONLY if you have a firm real life context for every flashcard word - it should either come from a story that you know well or (and much better, actually) from a real life situation or person or thing that you attribute it to. If it doesn't, you'll be learning that card over and over and over again, without ever really acquiring it. I started like that - just learning words from text books, and I too, for a while, thought flashcards were working. It didn't work, and it's only after the acquisition really does start to work that you understand deeply why it didn't work before when you thought it was working - because you were only learning word meanings, not acquiring it to use. I used flashcards (Anki wrongly for years learning Korean before I realised). I still use flashcards, but I use them to remind me of words I have already acquired, NOT to learn them. If you've acquired the words, you can go through hundreds flashcards in half and hour and still feel mentally brain fresh. If you haven't acquired them, you're brain will fry after about 50 words in about half an hour. Learning is a LOT harder than acquiring, but acquiring is a very slow boil - like watching an Olympic swimming pool fill via a thin hose - it seems fast at first watching the first water spurt, but fills VERY slowly. One of the most important traits you need for language acquisition is patience!! The thing that makes learning seem faster than acquisition is that it seems easier initially (ONLY initially) and you can see the list of words you have 'learned' and you feel accomplished. Acquisition is slooooow, and happens when you aren't watching. The guy in this video and Krashen - look him up because he's saying exactly the same thing and his books and research is freely available on the internet - are correct. You can also search for him on TH-cam. Another person you might look up is Steve Kaufmann - a very experienced language learner who has learned 20 languages - including most of the difficult ones. He has great advice.
@@fransmith3255 I'm at the intermediate stage and it still doesn't work. I've tried it again for Polish the last few months and am going back to creating flashcards. Making flashcards is a pain but they work.
@@fransmith3255 My vocabulary flashcards are mostly within sentences, so I get context. If it's a concrete noun that I can use a picture for I just do that without the sentence. And yes, it would be wonderful if I could acquire the words first, but that's easier said than done. For example, I just finished a conversation session in Polish with my teacher. I got these new words, among others: bruised rib, sprained ankle, eclipse, in the back, golf course, related, and diploma. There's nothing I can read or listen to that will have all those words. If I don't do something most of them will be gone for good. I'll recognize them fine but won't be able to produce them again, except for maybe diploma (dyplom). During the discussion I had occasion to use a word from my flashcards, the word for "injury". It's not a common word but I knew that I had learned it. I got the last letter wrong and got corrected (I said "uranium" instead of "injury"). Not a good testimonial for flashcards, but having done it in flashcards gave me some context and now it will stick better. If I hadn't made a flashcard for it I would have nothing. I have a pretty high tolerance for flashcards. Today I had 107 vocabulary cards. More than I'd like but doable. I've seen Krashen and Kaufmann around for years. I would really like their methods to work for me but they just don't.
That's interesting because Polish is so complicated that I wouldn't even know how to go about it if I wanted to learn grammar intentionally. For Polish I would just stick to comprehensible input + learning fixed phrases by heart. English is much easier when it comes to grammar. It's almost mathematical. Anyway, powodzenia! Mam nadzieję, że się nie zrazisz, chociaż moim zdaniem nauka języka polskiego ma mało sensu, chyba że chcesz rozmawiać z członkiem rodziny, który nie mówi po angielsku.
I have taught English one to one for 20 years. This is excellent advice. I also teach English like a mother teaches her children. I look (and am) delighted when they get something right. I later go back and correct mistakes . I find out their interests and tell them to read, watch what they would read inFrench and NEVER to read anything boring. We can do that together andI complain about the Baccelaureat text as much as they do. We study art together . Results - mostly distinction....
I think both are important, aquisition and grammar/syntax. Grammar can explain concepts that you otherwise don't know at the beginning, maybe would confuse you and that sometimes would take ages to extract from casual aquisition. I'm currently learning my third foreign language and english is one of them. After aquiring some stuff, grammar can sometimes help you advance.
I mostly agree, but there are a few practical issues with the "95% comprehensible input" advice. That "perfect input" just doesn't exist for everyone at all levels on their language learning journey. The best strategy I've come across to bridge that gap between incomprehensible to compensable input is to use the "n+1" approach to make spaces repetition sentence cards from native level material. It can be done by hand, but I use the Migaku plug-in for Japanese specifically to automatically analyze subtitles and text files/website pages for good sentences to aquire words from. That way, I can use native level material I only comprehend some of, but still aquire words the same way I would with 95% comprehension. I would also say that not all words have to be aquired from input to fully understand them. I learned what the Japanese words like 曲 or 誘う meant from from anki card long before I had seen it in input material. Simple nouns and verbs can be learned with more traditional methods as their meaning is not as dependent on context. For brand new beginners taking time to learning basic vocabulary before starting to learn from acquisition makes the process feel a bit less overwhelming.
@@YogaBlissDance Yeah, learning languages like Japanese or Chinese need a bit more dedicated study to learn. The Chinese characters used in both languages are pretty difficult to "just acquire" even for native speakers. With no obvious pronunciation guide, they require the reader to already be entirely familiar with each character to understand each word. Schools spend a lot of time teaching children how to read and write them. Adults can learn them faster than children, but it's still going to take a lot of dedication.
Great video. But, there are other professors who have given different advice, aren't there? I was just browsing Paul Nation's ebook 'What do you need to know to learn a foreign language', where he advocates memorizing vocabulary and even studying some grammar (in addition to other things). Apparently, it's all backed by a lot of research, too.
As I understand it, there are multiple intellectual camps in this line of research and both have bodies of papers that support their own position. I don’t know if one faction has conclusively “won” over the other. It seems that the vocab/grammar camp is still dominant in schools and the immersion camp is dominant on the internet.
Paul Nation is great. He doesn’t disagree with the approach taught here, but he shows that comprehensible input isn’t the whole story. Ultimately he advocates an approach called the 4 strands, which offers a balance of opportunities to practice meaning-focused (ie compressible) input, meaning-focused output (ie communicative events, without regard to correctness), language focused learning (ie deliberate study of vocab and grammar), and fluency
@@admasnd Just because there's an alternative to traditional language doesn't mean it's some infallible method. It's what I like to call the DeFacto well-wishing program of what you want to hear vs the real give and take of true learning. Everything can't be fun, even fun can turn into boring and repetitive, you can and will plateau with just about every avenue you take. You learn the most in the beginning and it takes more brain power to compile the information as you go up in levels. There's' too assumptions of memorizing vocab and grammar being bad, and acquisition, ci and immersion being the only way. Just like this loaded statement, "learn with context," yeah sometimes, because you can't always have the right answer even with context. The acquisition, ci and immersion camps have turned everything into just as dogmatic practice as traditional school-based methods. Melding things and knowing you can delve into a lot of things to keep learning is better than holding everything to steadfast rules. Everything in moderation even moderation. Playing the drinking game of learn like a child, natural way, context, ci, acquisition and immersion and whatever else tends to leave as many gaping holes as everything else. Do everything sometimes, sometimes on a large scale sometimes on a small scale.
Paul nation has previously stated his own failure in learning languages. I know what this video is saying is true because it's how I've learnt languages.
I HAVE BEEN AN EFL TEACHER FOR 20 YEARS.AT UNIVERSITY I USED TO TAKE PART IN DEBATES ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF GRAMMAR.NOWADAYS, MY CONCLUSION IS:IT DOES NOT REALLY MATTER THE APPROACH BEING USED IF THE LEARNER IS NOT WILLING TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS.
True. People must take ownership for their own learning. Nobody else can do the work for them. But I think sometimes when people sign up for classes, especially group classes, they expect the teacher to do most of the work and they take more of a passive role in the process.
Yes, I’m a firm believer in working only as hard as the students work. That said , it’s difficult to apply that model if you’re teaching a class of 50 students.
I agree with everything! I really suggest the interviewer and/or the professor to take contact with Professor Krashen or Steve Kauffman and have a another useful video on this same topic
Journaling is key though. Journaling in whatever language you use is always going to increase your ability to communicate and connect with your the spirits inside of you. I love doing my Chinese journaling. It helps me to keep my new vocabulary.
Raise a child and you will see CI is not how they only learn. They are trying to speak straight away, and you spend years correcting them, explaining why you say X a certain way etc. You learn a language largely from interaction as your input
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Where can I find comprehensible input(like in Dreaming Spanish) for Japanese?
Dreaming Japanese! ^^^
Would love to learn Japanese for one year without studying Hiragana etc.....
Hey MATT >>> WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR STOCK VIDEO FOOTAGE? The extra videos of people in the video? The ones at 5:51 6:62
I found that watching childrens tv shows in the language i was studying was a huge help
Thanks for advice
Agreed. I realised we spent a lot of time watching sesame street. Etc.
Also my first Spanish words were from watching Dora the explorer with my daughter. I never could grasp anything while learning. Because we presume we can just jump straight to an adult level comprehension. So I started how I learned in native English by kids tv
I speak Finnish and English as both my first languages. My father and his mother are finnish immigrants in America. My step daughter who I've raised since she was one had learned more Finnish from me rewatching moomins with me than I probably ever did by teaching her " hei means hello" or" Mita kulu means what do you hear or how we say in English how are you?" If her mother spoke finnish she would have picked it up through us but I have no one to converse in Finnish with since my grandmother's passing and my father moving out of state a few years before she was born. I absolutely agree with this statement. She is very proficient in Finnish to the point it annoys her mother when we have entire conversations in a foreign language
Yes! And children's books! And in fact, children's books are a good way to learn something in your native language that is unfamiliar to you. There's nothing wrong with them.
@@kristinharley3544 That can work for languages with an alphabet that you can sound out via phonics. It won't work at all for Chinese!
00:02 Focus on acquisition, not commercial programs, for language learning.
02:16 Language acquisition through understanding
04:32 Look for language materials that provide rich and comprehensible language rather than just focusing on memorization
06:55 Focus on meaning over form while learning languages.
09:03 Focus on acquiring language rather than monitoring it
11:06 Focus on understanding 95% for effective language acquisition
13:03 Vocabulary is acquired through comprehensible messages and understanding the language.
15:19 Vocabulary is acquired incrementally through repeated exposure to words.
17:13 Memorizing vocabulary explicitly is not very useful in language learning.
19:15 Shift from memorized words to rich instruction for efficient language learning
21:05 Lower your expectations and enjoy the learning process.
22:51 Language acquisition takes time, be realistic in your expectations
Crafted by Merlin AI.
I'm not trying to memorise your list, but just subconsciously absorb its message and acquire its syntax and vocabulary.
Or, just click on the very useful time links.
@@digitalchris6681 :))
There is really excellent advice in this video.
I'm a native English speaker. I am fluent (C2) in Italian and almost fluent (C1 on a good day, B2 on a bad one) in French.
I learnt both languages as an adult.
The following are really notes for myself.
The idea in this video is to focus on acquisition and meaning. The essential "incremental" part comes when you encounter the same word in a variety of contexts.
Inevitably you will come across a more unusual word and you will look it up then imediately forget it - even if you carefully write it down and try to memorise it. However, if you keep coming across a word in different contexts you are much more likely to remember it, and, for that, you need to concentrate on *acquisition*.
The more you read and the more you listen, the more likely it is you will come across the same words in different contexts. (Note to self) Incremental acquisition is also key to being able to recognise what is common and what isn't. For example "pigro" and "indolente" both mean "lazy" in Italian, but you will almost never hear an Italian saying "indolente".
Read and listen *a lot*, to understand which of these two Italian words (and there are of course others which mean "lazy") would be most appropriate to describe "lazy" in a given context. Get there by continually bashing your head against the wall (reading and listening, reading and listening, reading and listening). The word enters your brain in the end and, slowly but surely, the word "pigro" starts to sound right when you see a teenager lounging on a sofa, but "indolente" doesn't.
I would add that everyone makes mistakes, even in their native language. It's absolutely fine to make mistakes in a foreign language - it's almost expected of you. If people want to speak to you they will, even if you don't conjugate your verbs properly. However, if you haven't done any practice with *acquistion* and don't understand anything people say to you, the conversation will end rather quickly.
Comprehension is key.
EDIT: to add to above, in case I gave the impression that you can learn a language by just reading and listening. You should have at least a basic idea of the grammar of your target language. You should understand the basic concepts of classes of words: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. This will make life *much* easier for you.
Verbs are quite complex in French and Italian, and in many other languages too. At the very least, if you don't know what a verb is, then brush up on your grammar before trying to learn another language.
Thank you for this, absolutely and in 100% agree.
Very good summary.
I wish I had known that when I was younger because I lost hundreds of hours learning vocabulary lists and doing grammar exercices instead of reading books and listening to audiobooks 😢
Well said! Very good explanations and reminders. For us adult language learners the focus needs to be on communicating v. Being grammatically correct and being able to elegantly speak. We need to allow ourselves the grace and space to be beginners.
Totally agree, as I've discovered the same thing! I'm learning German and learned many words and phrases in different contexts which helped me remember and use them too. I especially discovered this whenever I've been watching German TV -- listening to their newscasts, documentaries, talk shows, etc..
But in English many of us were not taught English in verbs, nouns, adjectives any formal grammar really. We just know in English what sounds right or wrong, or in writing. I don't see how knowing what a verb is will help. I still have a mental block about that in English even at my old age
I used to be a tutor, and the most frustrating thing was when I'd assess a new student, give them resources, and encourage them to start acquiring language outside the comfort of a textbook. Sadly, adult students often refused to put on a podcast in the background or read one news article a week, instead asking for adapted materials and grammar exercises. Children are easier in this regard because they don't know how much they don't know. I now want to focus on expanding my own knowledge. I'd love to acquire a new language.
Maybe you should keep teaching but only children. They are like a spunge. I wish my parent's who are Hungarian would have spoken more with me in their language. But by age 4 they stopped. My other relatives (cousins, etc) who were born in America were taught by their Hungarian parents & can still speak Hungarian. I've tried to learn Hungarian but I'm going with Spanish because as an adult I have a background in Spanish from highschool.
@@jugglerj0e it’s always makes me sad when immigrant parents don’t teach their children their language. If nothing else, it’s cognitively beneficial for the child.
Reading is very important, as you indicate. When people read in their own languages it is usually possible to get them to read in English. It is vanishingly rare to find someone who doesn't read in their native language who is willing to do so in a new language.
It would be rather frustrating to see that. If only they would put podcasts on or read news articles. The progress they would make would really shock them. So many are led to believe that if they just do the grammar, they'll automatically start speaking and understanding. Sadly, it's not the case.
@@Luka-cu8ep Children speak the language of other children. They'll only speak to their parents in their native language if the parents can't understand the language of the host country. This causes most parents to give up speaking to their children in their native language. It is not necessary for the children to speak the language to learn it and when grandma visits they will speak to her in in the native language in about a week to 10 days.
However, it's worth noting that it takes effort to switch languages and it's pretty normal for immigrants to speak to other members of their community in the language of the host country.
Being frustrated about the lockdowns I started learning Japanese to entertain myself. Also I wanna prank my wife next week in Japan on holiday (she has no idea). I really just used videos on TH-cam, free materials, podcasts etc. I am a math guy, dunno much about languages, but how hard can it be? Started by memorizing the 1000 most frequent words and all the basic grammar that makes the core structure of the language to build a scaffold that would help bootstrap the acquisition process. From then on I just listened to material, read stuff, met tandem partners and occasionally took a lesson on italki to get a "review" on my progress and pressure test my skills on difficult topics. I reached the point now that I understand almost everything even when people talk very unclearly and quickly and I can talk about most topics without too many issues, even things like politics and science. Let's see how my wife reacts next week when I dash out rapid Japanese somewhere in a small village in Gifu 😂
@@stevencarr4002 Thats why I spelled it out. I think he is wrong to some extend and the truth is never black and white. As a starting scaffold it works beautifully. I spent maybe one week memorizing and 2.5 years "acquiring". Looking at it like that I could indeed say "I only learned by acquisition and immersion etc" as it was such a tiny proportion of the time, but I argue that one week in the start was crucial. It's what made all the rest 100x faster. These researchers never really look at the full picture, from "zero to hero".
@@amarug Have you considered that you're the one ignoring the big picture? Not Krashen/Mcquillan? The "jumpstart" you got is something you felt, but there's nothing to indicate you acquired any faster because of it. For all we know, you wasted your time on one week memorizing and it STILL would have taken you 2.5 years acquiring Japanese without it.
There's no evidence that doing acquisition/immersion learning from day1 is faster.
I bet noone of you that criticize the method of memorising the first thousand words or so never learned an east asian language like Japanese.
@@Sendobren Thanks for the backup! Doing pure immersion only from day one is a waste of time in my opinion, indeed with a language as foreign as Japanese or Chinese, you really DO need a bit of a foundation to be able to get anything out of immersion. Otherwise you might as well listen to whales singing 😅
@@HoraryHellfire I al not sure of many things in life, but this one I guarantee. As I said, if you just start immersing without any foundational structures it can stick to, you are most certainly just wasting time. I know because once I started immersing, I would be able to pick up words, grammar structures and assign meaning to it. Comprehensible input is the key to acquiring, otherwise indeed you can just listen to ocean waves... try it.
The most important part of this interview comes right at the very end. Adults must learn to be patient. Certainly in the West, adults are in a rush. Language acquisition, however, is a tortoise vs. hare situation. Slow and steady wins the race. I saw an ad headline many many years ago which read: GET RICH SLOW. Really grabbed my attention and stuck with me. Same could be said of language acquisition: LEARN RUSSIAN SLOW. Or LEARN JAPANESE SLOW. Give the brain oceans and oceans of content. Oceans. Your brain will figure it out in time and learn to swim. The only thing we as adults need to do is (a) show up everyday and (b) find enjoyable content that's at our level, or very slightly above our level. Then give the process TIME.
"Give the brain oceans and oceans of content. Oceans. Your brain will figure it out in time and learn to swim." Some of the wisest words I've read about language learning in particular - and about learning in general - anywhere. My sincere thanks to you!!!
The biggest lie ever told. German learned easy!
But here's the thing...there is no guarantee that the brain will acquire it.
Japanese immersion has worked for people outside of Japan who have absolutely no idea how racist the Japanese are. For people living in Japan, I believe it has only worked for people who lie to themselves about the Japanese. Anyone who has spent a good amount of time around Japanese know that they absolutely HATE foreigners who attempt their language, especially when it is at a legitimate level. They feel that the world is their oyster...that they have the right to go to any country and learn any language but don't allow non-Japanese to do the same.
A few days ago, I was talking in front of a group of Japanese the other day and got into a technical topic for a bit. One of the women started clapping when I used a few difficult terms as I explained something. Imagine if a White American clapped if a non-native English speak used a difficult vocabulary word. They would be charged with a hate crime! Over the decades, I have experienced it all. The SAME Japanese that will butter you up and make you feel like a God will absolutely destroy your soul if you attempt to speak Japanese in front of them. How does acquisition occur under such conditions? Check Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis.
That’s funny. Language learners in the military have to acquire the language as fast as possible, so do Mormons.
@@TheRealDyscyples Thanks for pointing out the obvious! We all know certain people have to learn languages fast for work, etc. My comments were directed to hobbyists.
“You should be focusing on acquisition”
Well yes….but for certain languages there can be no hope of acquiring if there is no conscious learning first (or at least in parallel). What I know about Italian (being both an English and Spanish native) I learned from just exposure to the language. What I know about Japanese couldn’t have been possible without first learning the ins and outs of the language…I was exposing to it while at the same time making a conscious effort to learn (since I was learning vocabulary, Kanji and grammar at the same time as I was doing immersion)…same thing for Korean.
Learning a language is not the same process for any language….there will always be things that work for one and not the other…for example, for Japanese, I was so obsessed from day 1 that I could immerse in native level content from like 2 months into learning because I would not mind looking at the same sentence for 20 minutes…fast forward 4 years later and I can now understand everything at a very high level almost without having to stop to look up things…In contrast, with Korean, I just cant do it…I can’t do immersion (even aimed at language learners) until I have the basics down because I get overwhelmed so quickly its not even funny….
So yes…I agree that acquisition is the way to learn, but sometimes there just can’t be any unconscious learning without some deliberate learning…sometimes they can happen at the same time, other times one has to happen before the other can take place
Lol you and me have the same exact situation with Japanese and Korean ahahahahah
@@baronmeduse whatever you say buddy. Not going to defend myself for something I’ve known my whole life, but to each their own 😉
Agreed. I speak Swahili, and the entire structure is so different from Indo-European languages that I don't know you'd have learned with just gestures and the like. You'd be completely lost in understanding the structure.
@@baronmeduse You can, double native is not fiction.
@@trylingual5347 It is fiction.
This is how I did Italian and French. Though flash cards and grammar are supplemental. So take assimil to start, then read books and watch Netflix films without subtitles. Read ease stuff and build up. Watch interesting films, have fun. After 2 years, get one on one speaking training. Avoid grammar exercises. Have fun. You will be fluent.
Good method. I'd just rather watch movies and series with subtitles.
@@RogerRamos1993 often people end up reading the subtitles and dont take in the language. but ofc if it works for you then go ahead. But its very helpful if youre pausing the videoo when some interesting vocab comes up and writing it down
@@disobeats Reading the subtitles is taking in the language. I mean subtitles in the same language of the movie you're watching. I never write down an unknown word. When I keep hearing the same word, while not actually understanding it, it comes to point in which I feel compelled to look it up.
@@RogerRamos1993 ah yes yes i totally agree. I wasnt sure if you meant in the original language or in your own.
I love grammar, it’s one of the most interesting things in the world
This is so good. A lot of this stuff I always intuitively knew but it is nice for someone to spell it out for you.
It is scientifically proven that the most effective way to learn a language is - a girlfriend
Hmm I want to learn about 5 other languages. Do you recommend getting a girlfriend for each one? Or maybe 3 that speak 1 or 2 if those target languages
@@TimLimDimSimsGirlfriend means Girlfriend (Not Wife).
@@Simon-sr1gygirl that is a friend ahahhahahaha
@@Simon-sr1gy Very well I'm gonna date 5 latinas from different Latin American at once so I can make sure I learn every accent of spanish
Had two excellent women professionals English teachers, one young playing role with me as “Flirting” with me, my brain as man learnt recording in the best part of my brain, the 2nd teacher played as “my grandma”, so they engraved the basics in my mind matching emphatic relation just during class. The key point is try to learn with roles, nowadays I am using ChatGPT in that way with a good prompt.
You can mock flashcards all you like but they have been essential to me for one thing - MEMORY. The latter was my biggest frustration in learning French when I started 10 years ago. I use Anki flashcards, (as do most medical students!), because you can listen to 1,000 podcasts in French and still have little recall of good vocabulary and expressions when you need it - I know because I tried. Of course, my flashcards are entirely based around sentences that put everything in context, along with useful definitions and synonyms. Don't ignore BASIC LEARNING like these "experts" suggest.
I agree. Especially in cases where you need to gain basic usage of the language fast. The acquisition method is a valid one, but the conditions and time frame are not always available.
I’m always surprised at how much meaning I can pull from a sentence knowing only vocabulary and little to no understanding of verb tenses.
As a secondary school teacher I totally agree.
Rote learning through tried and tested techniques will lay the foundation.
My mum, also a teacher, used flash cards on me when i was 3-4 years old and it worked brilliantly in improving my vocabulary and sentence structure/recognition and recall.
I agree you with 100%! I speak 4 languages very well and one on a basic level. Now I started learning Russian, a hard nut! But I write flashcards by hand and I also use the goldlist method, which is an experiment, I don't know yet if that will be successful for me. I notice that despite my age, I am over 60, I have a very good memory, much better than others around me, and I think that is due to always learning new things, not only languages. Flashcards are THE method for me to learn vocabulary, and after I have aquired about 5000 words, I can start reading books, and yes, I DO look up words I do not understand a 100%. I am confident that I can keep up this method for myself and I enjoy it a LOT, I think that this is also very important. If you do not enjoy learning a new language every method is going to be a drag. For all languages I speak very well now, I started to learn vocabulary first, then I started to read books, then I started to listen to native speakers, and after that, I started speaking myself.
4 languages, that's impressive! I'm 73 myself and really feel that daily flashcard work has sharpened my brain a lot. I retired 10 years ago and missed the constant stimulation that professional work provided. A side benefit of flashcards is that I have to be totally focused when using them, which distracts my brain from rumination etc.
Various French teachers have actually commented favourably on my wide vocabulary.
Bon continuation!!
@@paulmcguinness1072 The benefit of speaking some languages is that you have access to a lot of information, without being dependent on translations. Some books have simply not been translated. This is one of the reasons why I decided to learn russian. There is a lot of scientific material that is only available in russian, it bothers me...I am 62, so I do hope that I will manage russian before it is too late :-// Good luck to you too!
Comprehensible input is vital, but it's not the only factor in language learning. Learners also need feedback and motivation to improve their speaking skills and accuracy. While comprehensible input helps with understanding, it may not guarantee grammatical correctness or mastery of language details. Feedback from native speakers and consistent practice are essential for learners to develop fluency and confidence in speaking
Not all can get to a native speaker and have them offer help. For example, I used to ask my mom for help to improve my Spanish. Because she knew what I was saying when I would ask”how do you say this word?” She would just say “uh-huh”. I would ask her a few times before she would get flustered and answer. More than one person has done that to people. I’m not the only one. You need people to talk to. Even if it’s not perfect, as you are with people more and more, your brain makes connections on how to use them and in which tense , etc. but, it takes years and these people that say it will take 60 days or whatever, are just a big hoax.
The latter are just part and parcel of spoken and written communication with native speakers. No serious proponent of comprehensible input would say that you could ever achieve real fluency without ever practicing producing the language. And the most effective comprehensible input for intermediate and advanced learners occurs in real, reciprocal communication.
Games are a good medium to Kickstart learning a language. You're right that you need a community or at least a few people using that language to quickly pinpoint mistakes and fix them. Games also provide the "reward" and "motivation" part to keep coming back to it day after day.
I actually need inspiration rather than motivation. Keeping my “Big Why” front and center for each new language (Spanish, Swahili and now Czech) that I acquire is the key for me. (And it varies with each language, by the way. ) It sustains me in finding interesting, fun and effective ways to keep building momentum. This has also allowed me to find incredible language exchange partners on 6 continents!
I’ve watch hundreds of people talk about there methods of learning a language and one says you must ready more others say you must be in survival mode, others say get a teacher or buy my program . But out of all them I’ve found one thing in comen. they never stoped practicing the language or gave up they either did a little at a time or some crammed for hours but in the end it always comes down to who keeps at it chipping away at the mountain.
Little and often is key ro learning a language.
@MHaas-ms2ds your making some valid and good points. I’m 100 plus days into my journey of Spanish. I don’t have much motivation left , which is fine with me . I’m getting to a stage where I’m more disciplined I try to do some work on it at least 1 hr a day if I feel motivated I do more if not then I just keep it simple. No point in making my self feel guilty or sad for not doing more or forgetting what I learned . I just remind my self chip away at it a little at a time before you know it one year while have come and gone
@MHaas-ms2ds excel. I will
@MHaas-ms2ds I think it time I use italki or one of the 1on1 Spanish apps that lets you talk with a person one on one.
Think of it as a life long process and every new word is a plus is my motto with French and Arabic as my choice of languages.
I’m lucky that I found Dreaming Spanish. We need Dreaming for all languages.
I don't sense the presence of language in my dreams at all...
@@АклызМелкенды more input is always the answer
I'd love to follow a channel dreaming english haha
@@АклызМелкенды it's a website to help you learn Spanish. Google dreaming Spanish and it will pop up.
Comprehensible Japanese is one I like.
Krashen has been saying this stuff for decades now, and my own experience with comprehensible input tells me that it’s extremely effective. But I totally disagree about grammar. Adults’ brains are not nearly as plastic as young children, so the learning rate is slower, and the amount of input needed to acquire a language is much, much higher. Learning the grammar is an excellent way to speed up the acquisition process by helping your brain notice the salient features in the input and extrapolate it to new situations when the time comes for output.
Sometimes I feel that there’s a bit of a straw man here - of course it’s not enough to just read a grammar book, of course you have to practice the grammar copiously after you study it, just as a musician has to acquire the muscle memory after she learns the theory.
Agreed. There's no reason not to learn the rules for the easy parts of grammar. Gender, present tense, word order, etc. depending on what's easy for the language. It saves a lot of time.
MY contention about adult learning is all ego based. The longer you live doing familiar things correctly the less apt you are to allow chances of failures when trying new things. This wall inhibits people all over and everywhere in their lives. Many of us are immediately shut down when asked to do a new job task at a place we have done the same work for years. Let your ego go, and the joy will flow.
@@yaketythack
"Let your ego go..."
Right. That takes 30 years of meditation practice...
About the amount of input needed - I wondered about this recently. If we were given 3-4 years to do _nothing_ just being fed and taken care of while people talk to us in a language to learn, as adults, would we not acquire that language fully? So are we not just missing the point on the sheer hours a baby/toddler is exposed to language? Like how many thousands of hours is that.
I thought about it when I was thinking of learning by immersing. Then I realized, okay, but can I be immersed for tens of hours per week, someone talking to me on 'my level'? So it might be that adult learning is actually more efficient after all? I wondered. Now I will need to research this.
@@martin-b-b It's about frequent repetition for babies and children - they understand a lot as babies its just the brain is learning to speak it later on. Adult language learners need to do frequent repetition. Soap operas, Rom Coms, radio all use the same 500 words repetitively.
this professor has well articulated precisely what i have been experiencing and wanting to express for the longest time. i learned english purely by acquisition and without learning a single grammar rule, i’m level c1 now. i’m learning german now using the learning method and i’m failing by my unconscious mind slipping wrong things for not having time to stop and think before speaking.
Can you share what you did to learn or acquire it? Thanks
@@EnglishCassettes of course! watching movies and series with my native language translation and learning song lyrics. songs build up a hunch for grammar, movies let you use the visuals like the professor have mentioned, making you learn expressions and picking up repeated patterns. you wouldn’t even know from where you learned the word, it just gets acquired and becomes part of your brain.
There is definitely truth to it. I've also noticed in myself and others that you can speak, write, and understand your native language to a very good degree, but be incapable of being able to describe even relatively basic grammar unless you're explicitly taught to. While I'm sure there's some differences since you're not a child anymore, I still don't see why we should try to learn our second language in the opposite way to how we learned our first
@@bird.9346 Because the first method take way longer time to develop. As kids our brains are receptive at a certain age we can learn 10 languages if we tried, but past that time we lose elasticity and have our minds more oriented to learn diffrent skills, so langague will require more input and time to be developped, like i learned english at 16 and it took me two or three years of movies and songs to reach a c1 level, had i been a baby i would've picked it up in six months. My nephews learned english and german and french by age 4 for having parents speaking them.
Unfortunately, you are breaking a number of grammatical rules in this comment.
The most important point : DO YOU LIKE THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE STUDYING ?
I dont like it I love it
Absolutely. The two languages I study are ones that I absolutely love the sound of.
Yes, but I don't like the people who created it. LOL
@@songandwind72 yes, there is also this paradox...
@@davideselmin8018 Yes. I speak the language of an ethnic group that would honestly be happier if I were six feet under.
I’m so happy I randomly watched your video. I have always said that acquisition is the way to go, from experience, (not knowing anything about scientific studies on the subject) but have always come across so many people against my theory. I grew up bilingual, speaking Italian & English, and was lucky enough to start learning French in an experimental class at primary school in the UK where all we did was roleplays - no reading or writing (and certainly no grammar). So at secondary school I started from scratch with traditional methods but had already acquired a good feel for the language. I also studied German there with traditional methods but it was only when we moved to Germany that I got a feel for the language and improved my pronunciation and grammar without too much effort, due to exposure. As an adult I unexpectedly found myself having to learn Spanish and had no time for formal lessons so started using audio-cassettes in the car, language videos and children’s books to acquire the language. As I started travelling regularly to Spain I picked up a lot just paying attention to what I heard, saw and read, using a dictionary only when really necessary. During my holidays I did do a few grammar exercises just to improve but I had mostly acquired the structures subconsciously again from exposure. The result was that within a year I was able to make phone calls to offices (the hardest because there are no facial expressions nor gestures to emphasise meaning) and make myself understood despite making many mistakes. My comprehension of full-speed spoken Spanish is now 95%, yet my own spoken Spanish is probably upper A2 - lower B1 level. This is the reason why it’s difficult to say what level students are - the level may not be uniform. In any case I’m delighted to know that my experience ‘acquiring’ languages rather than formally studying them is backed by science and that I can be more confident that my teaching methodology is on the right track. Thank you very much!!
I've been learning Japanese thru acquisition and while it has helped me to learn a bunch of stuff, pulling back and spending a few hours to learn about Japanese verb conjugation helped me immensely. My acquisition was based on formal Japanese and the verbs had already been changed and I didn't understand AT ALL how the dictionary verb connected to the polite Japanese use of it AT ALL. Now that I have learned verb conjugation, I can understand the same verb in so many different ways. When I start hearing and acquiring them it's going to make so much more sense now
The way I see it, actively studying grammar is a bit like reading a map before going into a forest.
If you go in without reading the map, you'll probably still get to the other side - although it may take a while.
If you read the map beforehand, you'll have at least some idea of where to go, and will most likely spend less time getting lost in the middle.
SRS apps, flashcards and grammar textbooks work great as a map. They help break down rules and syntax that might be incredibly hard to understand solely through immersion and relying on your brain's pattern recognition ability. You could try to figure it out on your own, but a little help goes a long way in speeding up the process.
@@1august12 Totally agreed. In my opinion, grammar rules are like shortcuts to patterns our brains would take much longer to "acquire" or notice, I don't know why it is so underrated
+1 for @1august12.
There's nothing wrong with reading a grammar or other theory material. Do it before you start consuming material, or during, whenever it's comfortable. Especially if you're an analytic kind of person who likes to understand how things work; it can be very helpful to have seen the rules explained once.
(I really love the forest map metaphor.)
But I think the key takeaway of the video is not so much to do with theory material, but memorization. If you spend X hours with Anki or Duolingo or Babel, vs. the same X hours with comprehensible material at whatever threshold is comfortable for you (he says 90-something but I seem to be ok with 80ish), you'll get a lot more long-term vocab from the latter, plus grammar, idioms, etc.
Our brains store information by association, and more importantly retrieve it by association. Memorization enthusiasts (I was deeply in that camp at one point) end up with clever but ultimately awkward tricks like the Fluent Forever method of creating images with personal association. That does help storing, but does it help retrieval? Will you actually remember the word when you need it, or only when you see the image in question?
If we instead acquire the language from (a) actual, real-world usage and (b) very importantly, a broad variety of different contexts, we are forming more different associations, and so we're cementing it more strongly, plus making it more likely it will come up when needed.
Where can I find comprehensible input(like in Dreaming Spanish) for Japanese?
Dreaming Japanese! ^^^
Would love to learn Japanese for one year without studying Hiragana etc.....
@@OxysLokiMoros anime. TH-cam. I especially recommend Hololive. There are tons of clips with translation.
I believe this is one of the most helpful youtube video for language learners. What Dr Jeff McQuillan told is truly enlightening!
NB! "one of the most helpful youtube videoS". Plural needed here!
his emphasis on language acquisition through comprehensible input is a game-changer for adult learners. It's a reminder that immersion and meaningful interaction, rather than rote memorization, are key to truly mastering a new language. 🧠
You're right EcomCarl. It's sometimes difficult to get this point across to some that think it's the Grammar that does the magic. If only this was true. Comprehensible input is the game-changer.
Steven Krashen 'invented' the theory of comprehensible input long ago. If it was actually the best way to become fluent and accurate in a few years, then we would have seen the results by now.
I have started listening to French "stories" for beginners, although I took French in grade school and college years ago. I never learned how to understand a native speaker by listening. These programs are truly great, and it is true, learning within the context of a story, which I suppose is by acquisition is so much better than grammar exercises. Of course I used to learn grammar years ago, so it is relatively easy to read and hopefully understand by listening on a fast track.
@@EvaBogardFlorida Results?
@@lydiabell6218 You are on the right track. If your level of listening comprehension is at beginner level then listening at A1 - A2 is good for you. After some time challenge yourself and listen at a level B1. If it's too difficult, drop back down to level A2 for more time. The key is comprehensible input where you should understand around 70-95% When listening, try to listen to chunks and the overall context. Don't try to listen to word for word.
I read your point on doing quite well with grammar and reading. It just shows that doing grammar can't be transfered into speaking and understanding. Listen as much as you can and also practice speaking. You will progress.
I’m absolutely loving these series of interviews, Matt!
As a first time, second language learner (3 years with Italian) I’m a disciple of ‘Comprehensible Input’ as a means of acquiring language.
I was lurking on a Duolingo for Italian language learners page and someone posted “Good news bad news...
I finished Duolingo, still can't understand an Italian speaker”. Which is explicit language learning in a nutshell, really.
I applaud anyone who learns a language, no matter what means they choose, because language learning is so beneficial in so many aspects of our lives! But getting to a point now where I can read a book or watch a video in Italian and understand almost of all of it, and reflect back on how not so many years ago I thought language learning was impossible unless you were a child in a bilingual household or ridiculously smart (I.e. not me) I can’t help but marvel at how effective and simple it is all thanks to comprehensible input ! It requires lots of input and lots of time with that input, but it works. And what a wonderful thing it is.
Thanks again for a great video!
Vvvb
Buona fortuna con lo studio :)
Spero mi perdonerai per la mia curiosità, ma come mai hai iniziato a imparare la lingua?
Ha I learned English n German by talking to myself and my wall covered in posters, but of course I spent considerable time in listening, took me three summer holidays in my bedroom though
@@giuseppeagresta1425 Grazie! È sempre stata una cosa che ho voluto fare. Quindi, durante il lockdown, ho deciso di iniziare seriamente, e dopo un mese sono diventata ossessionata dalla cultura italiana e dalla bellezza della lingua.
Ho origini italiane, quindi l'italiano sembrava la scelta giusta.
I miei nonni paterni sono venuti in Australia 70 anni fa e parlavano solo il dialetto. Io non potevo parlare o capire l'italiano (o in realtà il dialetto) per nulla, ma sentivo comunque un legame con il paese dei miei nonni e la cultura che era rimasta cristallizzata nel piccolo paesino da cui provenivano 70 anni fa.
Mi sentivo imbarazzata per non essere in grado di comunicare con i miei parenti. C'era sempre qualcosa che mancava nella mia vita. Ora che sto studiando la lingua, ho imparato molto di più sugli italiani in un modo meno superficiale e ciò ha portato tanta gioia inaspettata nella mia vita. So che la lingua farà parte della mia quotidianità per sempre.
@@mmaxine1331 what is the best way to learn german someone says grammar is important very much learning german ,now i only focus on listening part youtube video?
I apply the tools promoted here like this: My approaches are Pimsleur, evesdropping, TV and machine translations. 5:50 , *visual/slowly-clearly:* - Pimsleur's `Hearing and responding` (call and response) helps me in two ways: It can be done while engaged in another task like driving, exercising, simple chores, and it helps spoken delivery (people comment positively about my accent. I think forming the words involves training the muscles of speech in the throat, lips, sinuses, cheeks, etc.) 8:40 , *Monitoring grammar:* repetitious use of grammar helps, totally agree about grammar learned out of context. 15:00 , *Vocabulary /flash cards* - The only use for flash cards I have now is to check words, to see what I know, what I recognize but don't know and completely new words. *Translation using apps:* I think of English phrases and translate them, and end up learning a word. It's good to copy and paste the English and language phrases and review them. _Drawbacks:_ The grammar may be totally out of whack and you better make sure the word actually fits the English meaning!
The way I use Pimsleur is modified from how it's presented on CD or streaming. When I started I used the stock CD method but I would repeat the response phrase over and over in the long silence provided before it's spoken by the actor - That was to get my mouth forming the words properly, the acquisition was pretty rapid compared to building speech patterns. Pretty soon it was obvious I needed less time between "call and response." I ended up using software to modify the CD by truncating the silence to the point where I could barely respond with the phrase before the next "call." I think rapid-fire helps with the mental agility needed to converse with people. An interesting side-effect is the 30 minute lessons are whittled down to 19 or 20 minutes.
Did you get your approaches from the Chinese linguist Sum Ting Wong?
@@songandwind72 Something wrong with that?
@@franksizzllemann5628 No, sir. There are many things wrong with it.
@@songandwind72 Post a couple of examples then.
@@franksizzllemann5628 I think you are really not in the position to be calling the shots.
Man, I absolutely LOVE Dr. Jeff McQuillan and Dr. Lucy Tse. I started listening to their podcast about 10 years ago, and it was the very first time I really improved my listening and speaking skills. They are the best, period!
I don't have words to express how much they mean to me... I know this might sound like an awkward comment, but I had to say it!
haha same here bro. they are the best and the funniest
The best video ever on TH-cam that explains the distinctions between Learning and Acquisition of a language. Dr Jeff McQuillan is really a Myth breaker of language learning. As an adult struggling to learn foreign language I feel so inspired and empowered by him! GOOOD JOB!!!!
Well don't feel too empowered because it's VERY difficult to come across content that is truly i+1. I was already aware of it 15 years ago while in Japan. Hopefully AI will be able to find where we are at in terms of level and then provide us with customized comprehensible input. But always remember that comprehensible input doesn't guarantee that something will be acquired. You might need to be exposed to the same or similar comprehensible message several times before it becomes "a part of you."
I’ve been doing this on my own and didn’t realize it. My two hobbies are yoga and cooking. So I did a yoga class in French and followed a recipe in French. It’s fun and I totally learn through the visuals and context clues. Definitely a less frustrating way to learn a language. Only thing is this works for comprehension but not speaking. Speaking the language is a whole different part of the brain. Would love a video from this guy on that.
Thank you both for this interview. It is a spot on summary of all that I've experienced as a teacher and learner of languages (30 years). Best explanations of all the bits & pieces that make up language learning when all we want to do is find "the one" method that will give us the target language on a platter.
Language is about memory and sound/muscle memory (actually knowing the correct sounds and experimenting until you can make them, though sometimes even native speakers need speech intervention to get all the sounds correct or they are considered to have a speech impediment). You have to build a lot of memories and this takes a lot of time. What's funny is that this is treated as a "mystery" that needs to be investigated by university researchers when in reality every international school in the world solved this problem quite a long time ago and they all get consistent results. They throw students in a classroom with native speaker teachers and they are taught all the subjects in the target language for years. There are support classes for those who join at later ages to help them out, but this is how it works, and wealthy people spend a lot of money on this. Mostly this is done with English, but I have seen it done with Spanish in America and French in Canada. However, I suppose there is room for research on how to actually teach someone a language in two 30 minute sessions a week/quickly because most people don't want to invest the time in language learning, so the idea of the quick fix is being chased much like the idea of the fountain of youth here. Adults rarely learn languages well because adults are not placed in environments where languages are taught in a patient and normal way, nor do they have time to be in those environments long enough if they have other serious commitments, which they usually do.
Precisely because adults usually don't have the time for years of 12/24 immersion, memorizing a lot of vocabulary in the beginning is a shortcut (and a scaffold for implicit learning of even more words and idioms and getting used to the grammar), as is getting some grammar info in those languages that are so different in structure that it might take you too long to ever figure it out by yourself/learn it implicitly. Moving from English to French or Spanish, you don't need to consciously learn grammar, but when you learn Japanese, you do, because it would hold you back too much and for too long if you didn't.
@@hezarfen777 Thanks for writing! True, but few people are actually willing to do this, and this is why we look for easier ways constantly even though we know the immersion method works, because we know it is resource heavy we look for other methods, and the method you mentioned works (though often produces less fluent speakers with unclear pronunciation), but it is monotonous/ boring and requires huge amounts of self motivation.
I'd say while your mentioned method is low on the resource cost, it is highly likely to fail, whereas I can take a person with a very low level of motivation and place them in an international school and get them to speak the language. Researchers are looking for a "middle path" here and so far have come up with little. Perhaps we can say they have come up with ways to make the method you mentioned less painful/more interesting or engaging... But that's about it.
It's almost like if you can't afford to own a horse but want to be great at horse riding. It can happen (mucking stables/paying out money to ride someone else's horses for a few hours), but is very unlikely to happen. I tutor English students right now, and I provide students with a "sample" of what it's like to be immersed for 1-3 hours a week usually. And students come back because they gain from this, but this is obviously going to be much slower than 30-40 hours a week. In fact, many students are trying to learn English to the point where they can place themselves in the position where they can work in English full time because they know, that's where the progress really starts to happen.
So self study and using tutors is really about getting to that spot for a lot of them. I accept the fact that I'm part of the next best alternative to having grown up in an international school. In China there was the idea that getting English tutoring for your children a few hours a week was a sign of being middle class, and I can assume having your kid at an international school is a sign of upper middle class/upper class background. As a side note, I have been told by Chinese students that some jobs in China require a high English level even though no English is spoken at their work at all, based on this, it is my opinion that the high English level requirement could serve simply as a way to discriminate against someone who is not from a wealthier family...
Back to the main point, sometimes I get students from international schools who haven't spoken English in a while and want to brush up on it/restore their confidence, however they quickly get up to speed and don't take lessons long. But having listened to them talking about their background, I feel like language learning is a bit of a rigged game and the most important part of this process is whether or not your parents invest the time/money in making it happen for you. Sure, there are exceptions to the rules, especially for people in border towns or with multilingual families, but this international school phenomenon seems the way of it by and large, at least for English. Also, these students at these schools KNOW they are different/special and are destined for greater things, because otherwise it's very odd to learn all your school subjects in a language that isn't normally spoken by people in your country in daily life.
Most people searching on TH-cam don't have this background, so we have all these self help/self study materials for them to look at and the teachers who say they have done it on their own using these methods are popular. However, I feel if students knew the truth about how most people end up being bilingual without family connections, it would be very discouraging. Once you know the truth, you quickly know why very few Americans speak a second language, for example. And the truth becomes even more apparent by looking at the few Americans (without family connections) who successfully speak Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. These subjects are often focused on with the proper amount of attention to gain some fluency at elite schools only, schools that tend to have students study abroad with partnerships etc.
Meeting an American who speaks Mandarin Chinese without family connections shocks people to such an extent that people have made TH-cam careers out of such feats. Xiaomannyc for example, also look at his background, attending the private school, the University of Chicago, with a year long study abroad program in China... This doesn't seem to be a coincidence.
I don't want to discourage anyone reading this, but if you fail to learn a language/ quit learning a language from self study, you are normal and not a failure/weak. It would be very unusual for you to learn a language successfully from self study. In my own experience, I only started learning Spanish successfully when I started paying Spanish tutors to help me. Even self study programs like Busuu (I used to work for them) include tutoring services along side the self study program.
My advice, go straight to the tutors if you are serious about learning a language and are not an Olympic style super self motivated person. Beware of more and more expensive self study programs from language learning "gurus/masters." The missing ingredient is usually hardcore self discipline/motivation in all of their programs and they will often tell you this.
For example, ask yourself if you are really going to consistently long term review an Anki deck/flash cards in your free time? I reckon maybe 1/1,000 people will do this. Is it possible, yes! But, it's also possible to win 10,000 dollars on a 10 dollar scratch off ticket. Always think about what possible means here.
Hi there
In your first sentence you have an practically Amazing insight no one talks about anywhere:
Muscle memory:
In French and latin and greek based languages ,there is no word for language , it's called tongue as in english mother tongue.
Maybe ,just maybe , they understood that oral language is a muscular activity ( the tongue contains 17 muscles
What about the inside ear : it' s full of physical tools like eardrum anvil , cochlea (snails shell ) , outside ear looks like a loudspeaker , vibrating hairs.
Just imagine how powefull your insight of
'musculary memory ' really is .
Thank's for that nugget , I'll bé grratefull to pass it on.
Christian
@@songandwind72I am a member of the professionals Mr. Kruger. I teach English full-time and have done so for the past 4 years. I'm not really sure what you mean here, please let me know.
It’s great to have an experienced educator like Dr Jeff McQuillan talk about this topic. I have studied several languages. I think you’re simply going to get several opinions on this if you ask several people. I find there’s a benefit from studying grammar so that I can edit myself. I might just say the sentence using my subconscious knowledge but reflect back on it later using my grammar knowledge and if it doesn’t match up I can go double check to see if I’m saying it wrong (probably I am) and try to fix my bad habits. And especially when reading, knowing the grammar helps me understand complex sentences. It’s very helpful.
Obviously you cant skip acquisition just studying textbooks or grammar and vocabulary and expect to be able speak naturally. You need to go read, listen, speak lots and lots so that it’s just habit and you don’t think about it.
But I think I’ll try to prioritize acquired knowledge over learned knowledge. It’s hard to find the right balance. I don’t think 100% acquired knowledge is the sweet spot for me though.
This is probably the best video I've ever watched on the topic. Everything the professor said made sense for the 3 languages I learned (including my native one!) and too for the other languages I study.
I recently moved to France with my five year old son and he is learning french faster than me by far. This video has made me understand why! He's learning through acquisition while I'm making so much conscious effort to learn the language! In less than three months he has such a wide range of vocabulary it's incredible! I'm so glad to have found this interview here. Thanks❤
@@stevencarr4002 It is clearly stated that understanding the words comes from them being delivered in a manner that makes their meaning clear. Which is how children acquire their first language. The difference between children and adults learning a new language is that other children probably take more time to be clear with the child that is trying to acquire the language and the child learning spends more time learning along with being more willing to make mistakes.
Curious here - you say he's learning faster, but my assumption would be that is because he's getting much more french language input than you - is that correct?
Curious here - you say he's learning faster, but my assumption would be that is because he's getting much more french language input than you - is that correct?
and thats the issue really, finding comprehensible input that can engage me is just so hard.
I've been using rosetta stone for Chinese. It's great. People say it's horrible, but they're wrong. Just pay attention and be patient
For me, this has also been a matter of lowering expectations.
I have learned to switch my brain off and allow myself to be entertained by material that I would never consume in my native language.
For example: kids cartoons, crappy sitcoms, video game commentary, whatever.
if you look up "comprehensible Input (insert language)" or "natural" or "TPRS" and insert language you can find channels for the largest 10-15 languages. Not as fun as a show but more fun than an app
A good TPRS video will make itself engaging no matter how boring the underlying concept is. They time themselves perfectly, repeat themselves so it feels like you're figuring something out every few seconds, and ask questions such that you can respond in complete sentences in minutes. Run a search to see if your language has that kind of thing
@@andrewrobinson2985 first time I'm hearing the term "tprs" most people talk about broad concepts like "immersion" and "graded readers" without saying much substance. I even expected this video was going to be like that but its not. Looking TPRS up it looks really useful, thanks.
Fascinating interview. I'm particularly interested in what he had to say about Anki as even lots of input oriented sources (such as Matt v. Japan and Refold) are very pro-Anki. The problem of course is getting the 'right' input for most languages.
Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago in the Guardian there was a lovely article written by a Chinese woman living in Germany about her problems with learning German. There were over 1000 comments under it - I didn't read them all, but in searching through nearly every single one (most by people writing about their own L2 struggles) was focused on traditional skill based learning or output learning (the usual 'oh, I just threw myself in and started talking' advice). Not one single person mentioned the importance of input or the issues with 'learning' or early output. Its both fascinating and depressing that the simple evidence backed arguments of people like Krashen have failed to penetrate the vast lingo-educational complex. I guess that will continue until someone works out a way to make lots of money from it.
It's incredible to me how we have gotten so many things wrong in society, and how long it takes for these collective assumptions to be corrected.
Language learning is just one of them.
I think you hit the nail on the head...there is no money to be made from comprehensible input but there is boatloads of money in traditional education. So most of language academia and industry will resist comprehensible input since they (correctly) perceive it as an existential threat.
I’m a Chinese immigrant myself living in Canada. I’ve seen a lot of my fellow Chinese who came here and continued to immerse in Chinese (thanks to the internet) instead of English. As a result, their English won’t improve much after years living here.
In the meantime, government is throwing money into all kinds of English classes, LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada), ESL (English As a Second Language), you name it, to no avail.
@@mydadletsmeshootatcats6754 yup! There’s less money to be made in CI (Dreaming Spanish might be one of the few good examples). At the same time, we see guys like Ikenna raising (scamming) $1.2 million to build yet another gamified app for language learning.
@@SimplyChinese I've seen exactly that myself with some Chinese friends here in Ireland. My friend looks after some school kids from Shanghai here and some have terrible English despite living here for several years - its easy to see why when you hang out with them - they have their heads all the time in Chinese social media. The ones who just engage with local media (tv/internet) are far more confident in English. Its a pity, because they will suffer socially and academically in the longer term.
@@mydadletsmeshootatcats6754 I think the problem with being able to make money from producing CI is because the content has to have broad interest, otherwise it's become boring and tedious pretty quickly. This is the problem that I have with most content for young children -- it simply isn't interesting to me as an adult. Adults have so much variance in their interests that it's hard to appeal to enough people to justify the production investment. "Traditional education" only pays because almost all of its consumers are a captive audience. If it's the required price of admission to something else, then you're stuck.
Thank you for the video!
As a professional teacher of English and Russian as a foreign language and a University teacher, as well as a language learner who is learning Chinese (as I am living and teaching university students in China now) and German and planning to learn French, I can say that ALL factors are important in learning languages: both conscious learning and subconscious, memorising and acquiring, studying textbooks and reading fiction books, noticing and just looking around, spaced repitition and repetition in context, talking to native speakers and talking to a teacher, even memorising dialogues are important (it does serve you good) - all the nuances are worth taking into account. Even flashcards are important. The idea is THE MORE TIME YOU SPEND ON INPUT AND OUTPUT, THE MORE PROFICIENT YOU BECOME. I agree that learning vocabulary as isolated words is not worth it but we always learn it in a chain: a word - a phrase - a sentence - an extract - a text or a dialogue - similar dialogue - real life talk and exposure.
It is impossible to acquire a language just by listening or living in the country unless you make real efforts. It is time-consuming, that is why we have to be patient and consistent in how we learn it. "Systematically" - that is what important, as in any other business or area.
I have a question: who in the mordern world just memorises words without a context? All students whom I teach, they use flashcards only for reviewing. All is important. Every single detail. For one person, talking to a foreigner is enough to improve. For another, they should sit and write and read and learn and repeat. We are all so different. There are many cases described in the "SLA" theory showing that some people acquire languages easier than others. Brain and our psyche are very complicated areas. Good luck to us all.
Glad to read your comment. I agree with you whole heartedly. I am fluent in four languages and I have a master's degree in linguistics with focus on language acquisition. It is definitely essential to bathe in a language. But I find that people plateau early if they never look at rules. I personally had my break through in my language acquisition process once I learned about syntax in all its nitty grittiness. All of a sudden those ominous tenses and prepositions and what not ... they all started to make sense.
I appreciate you doing this interview, Matt! It was interesting to listen to. I do wish you two had explored how you get to the level where comprehensible input exists without memorizing any vocabulary or why you wouldn't just memorize some common words and phrases that will help you find more content that is 90-95% comprehensible. I also wish Dr. McQuillan had talked about memorization through systems like flashcards in a more balanced way. I used flashcards to help me learn my first 2,000 or so collocations in Levantine Arabic. But I didn't put individual words on them, but rather useful word chunks or sentences that exemplified a grammar point I wanted to remember. The cards also served as pronunciation practice for me, as I vocalized my answers and got lots of practice making sound combinations that were very new to me. I also didn't choose these words outside of a context. Most of my cards came from my iTalki lessons, where I had practiced expressing ideas with my tutor and gotten her feedback on the correct/most natural ways to express them. The spaced repetition of Anki flashcards also really helped me drill important vocab into my brain from a language with very few cognates from English; I really had to learn almost every single word. If someone is learning a language related to their native language (such as Spanish for a native English speaker), they will be able to learn new vocab with a lot less repetition and effort...
The conversation also seemed based on the assumption that there is SO MUCH comprehensible input out there for every language. This is simply not the case. There is very little material written in Levantine Arabic for beginners because the version of Arabic that is used in articles, books, and even as subtitles in movies is Modern Standard Arabic, which is essentially a different (but related) language.
Perhaps books for children who are just beginning to read, with much visual stuff, is a good thing to start with.
@l.h.308 I appreciate your comment and agree that this is a great idea for people learning many languages. But in Arabic, you have a phenomenon called diglossia, where the written language is completely different from the spoken language. So early readers for children would always be in Modern Standard Arabic, never in the spoken form of the language. And, unfortunately, even readers created for Arabic dialect learners are often at a low intermediate level, even when they're marketed as for beginners.
I have had the same issue of trying to find comprehensible input while learning Persian. There are a few apps/ websites / podcasts for learning Persian but it took me a while to find them and it is difficult to find beginner friendly books. I eventually found Televika to be able to watch Persian movies / TV with subtitles but again that took a long time searching and asking my Persian partner for advice on where to get resources. I am nowhere near the level I would like to be at but I found doing flashcards regularly did help to at least learn some vocabulary so that I could gradually pick up bits and pieces from reading or watching TV. Since the alphabet is also different from English I found that flashcards at least exposed me to the opportunity to try and read individual words or phrases.
Really true! Learning languages through vocabulary and grammar is like learning to walk with crutches. It will never be perfect and will not work in practice to master a language fluently
You have to start somewhere though. I have studied languages throught both intuitive methods like assimil and more old fashioned ways of studying vocabulary + grammar and then reading. I end up preferring the old fashioned methods, especially for synthetic languages like ancient greek. It's just frustrating to practice something you haven't first learned to understand. When you learn words and grammar.first and then practice, it is just easier. What people get wrong, is they mistake knowledge acquisition for learning to use the language, so they think: How am I getting this wrong if I know the rule? Vocabulary and grammar are an essential, but not sufficient part of learning a language. And taking time apart just to focus on grammar and words without context is just more efficient, is my experience
@@olaf2627 I agree with you. Just listening or watching/listening to a new language (e.g., Pimsleur - just oral, no reading/grammar) seems like a very slow way to learn a language. Especially in the beginning, everything is incomprehensible. There is no ‘comprehensible input.’ Eventually, you might get the patterns, but some grammar/vocabulary just smooths the way. This is especially true if you’re learning a language with a different alphabet and grammar than your native language - or some other language you know well.
@@olaf2627 You're implying that one has to "start somewhere" and by "starting somewhere" that means through grammar and study. And the answer is conclusively: No, you do not need to start with learning grammar just because you're new to a language. There does exist input for absolute beginners to understand even without knowing any words. Comprehensible Input is to understand what a word means _before_ you know it.
By the way, Assimil isn't that "intuitive". Yeah, it's good that it gives you a lot of native input, but that's about it. It relies on translation to make the input comprehensible, and the listening itself isn't that comprehensible for a beginner without accompanying videos.
@@HoraryHellfire The original commenter made a comparison with crutches. But if you break your legs as an adult and have to learn how to walk again, you will use crutches. Learning languages is just not the same for adults as it is for children. So yes, I do think adult language learning is made easier with grammar. I have enough personal experience to be able to say that it works for me. You still need a ton of practice anyway, but yes the first steps are easier with the crutches of grammar. I have used pimsleur as well, not just assimil, and it went super slow, I invested for more time for a smaller effect than I got by simply learning words
I've been learning French for a couple of years, using Duolingo, Hello Talk, researching grammar rules, memorising conjugation rules, watching shows in french with english subtitles and a tutor for the last few months. I've heard this comprehensible input/learning via story praised as the golden method for learning a language by multiple different educators and I totally agree it's a completely necessary tool as I can read, write and speak fairly well in French, but am utterly useless at comprehending whilst listening.
What I have an issue with however, is the overlooking of the challenges with this method. His example of 'I have two hands' in Spanish was great, but in reality where am I suppose to get this content? Especially if I have zero comprehension of a language in the first place. Surely conscious learning is completely necessary and very effective at least when a complete beginner?
I'm at a point where I can have pretty good conversations on Hello Talk (using translate every now and then for some words and phrases) and can almost watch French shows with French subtitles, but it's consistent conscious learning that has got me to this point where I'm almost ready for comprehensible input to be the most effective aspect of my learning.
You are absolutely right. And Jeff admitted in another interview that it's VERY hard to find i+1 content (in other words, content that is almost "custom crafted" based on your level to provide comprehensible input.). But you have to remember that just because it is difficult to set up conditions that provide you with comprehensible input doesn't make learning a good choice. It's virtually impossible to use conscious knowledge for language. Rather than "acquiring" the ability to ride a bike by allowing the body to handle all the complex processes involved, you are taking the approach of consciously manipulating the parts. Sounds like something that Larry, Moe, and Curly might do together...should be an episode.
30 years of adult ESL / ESOL under the belt, and I couldn't agree more! Isn't that how children also learn? Anyone noticed we begin studying grammar in school when we have already acquired our first language!!
Yes, but it is done in that order because children need at least one language in order to have grammar explained to them. Additionally children's brains are too simple to understand grammar rules. So while it may or may not be true that acquisition is the most efficient way for adults to learn a new language it does not inherently follow from that being the way children learn their first language.
I recommend watching Spanish language news cast such as UniVision Primer Impacto. The news presenters speak very clearly and their are also visual cues through the video segments.
This interview is so valuable! All language teachers should watch to reflect upon their practice! I am doing this right now! Amazing! Thanks!
The best way to learn a language is listen, watch and repeat what you heard. Writing notes/letters in the target language is extremely helpful (writing by hand works better than typing). Watch the News: first in a language you understand, so that you know what is going on, and then in your target language. Watch movies that come with subtitles in a language you understand.
In Sweden, pretty much everyone speaks English fluently, and a good number of people can communicate in three, four or even more languages. Why? Because everybody watches TV and no movie shown by a Swedish TV station has ever been translated into Swedish. Movies are always shown in their original language with subtitles. At first, you need those to be able to follow what is going on. Gradually, you'll notice that you rely on them less and less until one day you find that you watched the whole movie without ever even looking at the subtitles. It may not be the fastest way to learn a language but it's definitely one of the best.
La mano mia or, better mi mano, not mano mio. I learned Spanish as my 4th. foreign language in Mexico when I was 28 years old. Learned it in 3 months. Procedure: get a girlfriend, buy a newspaper every day, watch local TV and avoid foreigners. That's full time exposure, just like children learn their mother language. Learning how to write Spanish is very easy. There are no superfluous letters, only very few "special" ones e.g. ll and ñ.
💯full life immersion!
True, but getting the girlfriend might be harder than learning the language!
I'm curious how did you flirt with the girl how did you make a joke?Communication is the most important thing in a relationship.
I like the spanish speaking girlfriend idea ,I must look around for a young one about 60,
When I had to learn English in elementary school, I was the bottom of my class. It annoyed the hell out of me, because English was probably the subject in school where I could visualize it being useful, and it mattered a lot to me to be understood and for me to articulate pov and points clearly. So one summer holiday (7 weeks), I dug in intensively. We don’t dub in my country, but instead of my native language as subs, I used English subs, I listened to English music all the time, every time there wasn’t a word I didn’t understand I translated it, and then I applied it in video games, especially in World of Warcraft, so I also played it in. I read a lot of English - and once I returned back from holiday, I was the best in class. Actually my teacher once said, I may be the best student she’d ever had. Something that I noticed was, we’ve in my language a section of our dictionary called “foreign dictionary”, and words like “melancholy”, has a close similarity to my native language, so I just start to incorporate those words into my speech and my writing and voila! Turns out, I actually don’t learn as much, whenever I use the method in the educational institutions. I have to do it my way, and then it gets in.
I was trying this method with learning Italian for a few months. I'm a native English speaker and took Spanish in Jr High and High School and French in college.
A lot of words seemed familiar, but they weren't sticking very well. I decided to try Babbel and am learning much faster and things are sticking better. It does take more active time, however.
The exercises are diverse and help me to distinguish between words and then they stick in my brain better. There's some repetition, but they throw a lot of variety into the sentences so it's not as repetitive as many language exercises.
I also LOVE their podcasts! Some of the best conversational listening I've heard. I think the podcasts are available for free. In Italian they have "Voices of Belle'Italia" for beginners and then "La bottega di Babbel" for beginner to intermediate and "Oggi nella storia" for intermediate. I'm sure they have them available for other languages. They're very well done with very natural sounding clear speaking and background sounds added in to make it feel more real. Great sound quality!!
Thank you for this extremely enlightening discussion on language learning - and on learning in general!
I've learnt languages the traditional way using grammar exercises, and it has worked splendidly for me.
You must have learnt for sure but how accurate and fluent can you speak the languages you wrote I learn. Learning and using what you get as a skill is different from each other.
Low-key sent the link to this video to my group of friends taking a Spanish class at uni. They might not be thrilled since they’ve already paid for the semester…
If you can have language lessons, that's great. In most of Europe and USA, they are quite cheap. You still do most of the learning by yourself, but the lessons give you a nice sense of improvement, you get to talk to your classmates on a variety of topics, you do some homework, which you might not do on your own, you learn with the mistakes of others, they learn with yours, and so on, it's good as a starting point, an ice breaker, and your beginning in the new language is not alone. With time, as you improve more and more, only purely conversational lessons would make sense, and they'd help you to keep your speaking abilities.
There methods??? You mean "their methods", right?
Great video thank you. I was a believer in flash cards and similar tools, but for some reason I was learning much more from short stories (especially if I had both audio and written), news, and other shows that interested me. This explains that. I will not stop beating myself up an keep going.
Planet Saturn cultists are everywhere. 🎉🎉🎉🎉😮😮😮
This discussion is the total opposite of how they teach languages in school. The more I look back at my experience in language learning in different schools, the more I see how colossally inefficient it was.
Thanks for such a valuable video, I have been learning German for a while and I started getting frustrated due to my slow progress, but the advices and techniques mentioned here gave me more energy to continue my learning journey
Good. It will work IF you receive comprehensible input.
i wanna thank you for this piece of gold
Yes It has changed my Life and nobody days that on youtube
Agreed. This professor is by far giving the best insights about language learning. I've watched and into it for a long time. You'd have to ask this question and he presented the answer right in front of you, that nobody else has ever able to. Impressive.
Awesome video!!!!
I haven't even finished watching it and I am already here commenting.
Thanks for clearing up a concept (acquisition) that as a teacher I knew, but couldn't verbalize it satisfactorily.
He said don't learn words, then he said you must know 98 percent of the text.
Yes. And there's no contradiction at all in that.
You should learn phrases(at least 2 words)
I am currently acquiring Thai and Japanese at the same time. This video is absolutely spot on! I have never studied grammar or flash cards and acquired English Chinese and German to native level over 50 years.
did you learn everything by purely watching? or did you have to learn some words to start watching. For example i want to learn japanese, but i know nothing about it. Should i still watch videos only without understanding anything?
@@iodza-wo3dh fc not, that would be massive uncomprehensible input. you need vocab and grammar first. dont belive this video.
I love Dr Jeff McQuillan and I’m a long time follower of his work, since the ESLpod was free. His work is marvelous!!
Fantastic interview. Rich with information.
This makes perfect sense. I have been learning / teaching languages for a long time. I applied similar ideas to learning martial arts. And now, music - guitar. I love learning !
I am a musician and linguist too. I speak 3 foreign languages, Studied German at university. The approach for studying languages and music ( I play , guitar, sax, bass , drums and I am learning keys) is very similar. Music has its own grammar ….Theory…Scales, arpeggios…modes…..You will advance much quicker once you have musical grammar under your belt. And to play with other musicians, it is essential.
I love grammar. It's like an intriguing puzzle.
Languages with weird and lots of exceptions in grammar be like : are you sure about that?
Me too!! I love studying grammar
yea, until you learn thousands of them and sick with the exception and forgetting
If grammar is taught properly for the right reason it’s a huge help to acquisition. Could not be making the progress with Russian I am now without it.
Have you ever considered psychotherapy ?
The best advice this far, to extent I think I have started using the technic of acquiring without knowing it, thank you
For Spanish, I took it for 5 yrs in high school but I learned the rules or structure of the language. I found it easier to know that before trying to speak the language.
Amazing video I agree with him I'm best example of what he said I'm from Morocco and I learned English through watching and listening only thanks ❤️😊
Use what works for you best! There is no one best way to learn a language!
That's correct. Learning is not an exact science. There is not specific right way to learn a language.
@@ijansk No, learning is an exact science.. that is just an excuse for people who are too lazy
TH-cam commenter vs linguistics professional...
Matt.....thanks for this. As I "trudge along" in my language journey this definitely reinforces my motivation in the process. Please keep up the good work in videos like this. Muchas gracias😃
ESL Podcast was my companion for a long time when I started to listen English podcasts.
Thank you very much to Dr Jeff McQuillan for the many hours of learning.
Practice , practice , practice. It also helps massively to think in the language you’re trying to learn. EVERYDAY ! I’m learning Brazilian Portuguese it also helps to have someone to practice with. Failing that, have a conversation with yourself.
Just be careful - like the professor states, Comprehensible Input needs to be mostly comprehensible. There are a lot of videos that claim to be but don't do anything besides talk. That may be comprehensible to an advanced learner, but for a beginner it's almost useless. Now, subtitles can help with that, but it's not as effective as if you don't need them. A lot of comprehensible input people are against subtitles altogether, but I find they really help keep my interest sometimes.
I've come across that with Mandarin Chinese. The video claims to be comprehensible input, but whilst the person is talking they are often giving only vague clues as to what they are talking about, or no clue at all. And when they do give a clue, it can often be interpreted a couple of different ways.
It's not comprehensible input to those that need it to be.
@@lindenh2014 I'm also struggling to find good beginner and intermediate comprehensible input for chinese. When I was learning spanish it was so easy to find good quality youtube channels.
Have you found anything for chinese? I am using Chinese Pod and Chill Chat Chinese Podcasts which are ok but ideally looking for videos that have visual aids.
1. A relative came at age 18 from rural Sicily. A 5 year old walked him around town for days on end. He speaks perfect English.
A girlfriend came from France. She watched I Love Lucy reruns. Nearly perfect English. Worked international cargo for a Mexican airline. Speaks perfect Spanish.
2. One day, a retired specialist in linguistics came and listened to a class of adult French speakers. He wanted to try pronunciation. He did not speak French, never had a class. He repeated perfectly whatever was said. You could swear he was a native French speaker. He had no idea what he was repeating.
3. Find a topic of interest. Find a movie in a language of your choice. Watch it. You will associate the body language and the situation with the spoken language.
💯Using the language in everyday life situations like the ones you mentioned above is best! You will remember more and learn much faster!
Were there any I Love Lucy episodes where they were in a chemistry lab?
Jeff is my guru. I've listened to all of his ESL Podcast episodes.
Excellent interview and very useful questions asked. Thanks a lot!
I love that last bit of advice at the end about being realistic! Somehow I find that too often, adults make the all too easy excuse of children learning faster
Thank you for your time and advice!
Planet Saturn cultists are everywhere. 🎉🎉🎉🎉😮😮😮
He is completely wrong about flashcards and Anki. Acquiring words via input may work ok if you are learning a language similar to your own (e.g. English & Spanish that share a lot of vocabulary), but try to memorize Japanese words, which have zero commonalities with European languages (not to mention memorizing kanjis kanjis) by just consuming input. That may work for extremely common words, but once you get into more advanced vocabulary, their frequency in input drops considerably and it makes really hard to remember them. From my personal experience of regularly using Anki, I do all my daily reviews in 25-30 minutes with 10 new words every day, and let me tell you, there is no freakin way I'd be able to learn 10 new words every day by doing 30 minutes of comprehensible input. The numbers just don't add up: Anki shows you only the words that you want to learn, while for CI to work properly well over 90% of the words you encounter are supposed to be words that you already know. This sounds like a massive waste of time, and there's no way you can cram enough repetitions into such a short interval to make the words stick when most of the words you encounter are not your target words. Another benefit of Anki (particularly with the latest FSRS algorithm) is that it tracks exactly your performance for every single card and can figure out when to show it before you are likely to forget it (so it will show you more frequently words you struggle with and less frequently words that are easier). This is an extremely efficient use of your study time: it's impossible to implement a similar tracking algorithm by just watching videos or reading CI materials.
In addition, he is wrong to suggest that it's been empirically prove that tje CI method for learning vocabulary in context is the most time-efficient; the evidence is very thin and inconclusive and in fact there's evidence to the contrary. Paul Nation, an expert on vocabulary acquisition, cites in his works many studies that show that there is no real benefit of learning words "in context" as opposed to more traditional methods, while there's ample evidence that spaced repetition (i.e. flashcards) is extremely effective for long term retention and in fact that most efficient memorization method known.
Finally, and this is the thing that I hate the most about all these comprehensible input gurus, is that they make this into an exclusive choice - you either study through comprehensible input, or you waste your time with traditional methods. The truth is that it's never been controversial that input is absolutely essential for mastering a language, no one has ever became fluent by just reading textbooks or sitting in a calssroom. You need absolutely massive amounts of exposure to the language in its natural form (either spoken or written) to internalize it to the level of reaching any kind of fluency. But that being said, it doesn't follow that input alone is enough, or that it is the most efficient study method, and as I indicated there's really very little evidence that this is the case. My position is that input is essential for reinforcing and solidifying what you've already learned by deliberate means (such as grammar and vocabulary study), and it's actually not very effective or efficient if you try to completely replace deliberate study with CI (unless your target language is already pretty close to other language/s you already speak). There's no question that it is possible to learn solely through comprehensible input, that's true (this is indeed how children learn, and some adults, say as immigrants). But the question is whether this is the most effective and time efficient method that an adult language learner can use to teach himself a language - and the answer to that is pretty conclusively a no.
"Finally, and this is the thing that I hate the most about all these comprehensible input gurus, is that they make this into an exclusive choice - you either study through comprehensible input, or you waste your time with traditional methods."
Couldn't agree more. This binariy thinking of it's either my method or it won't work at all of these people is driving me crazy. Anyone who has studied languages seriously (as an adult) knows you need a variety of methods to make progress. There is no one simple solution that fits all.
This is the correct response. Even someone who thinks 100% CI is the best method for learning must see that spending even 20% of that time with intentional study of grammar/vocab will make a ton more input more comprehensible more quickly.
In other words, the most efficient way to practice CI is something along the lines of 80/20 split using SRS. Adults don't have to handicap themselves. We don't have to be at the level of a 5-year-old after 5 years of full-time study.
@@wardm4 That's exactly right, and it's also been my experience. Been doing Anki for under half a year (usually under 30 min a day) and my comprehension of input has skyrocketed. This proves that what the professor said is wrong - the vocabulary you learn with spaced repetition is undoubtedly retained and you can absolutely recall it in real time when listening without any trouble (of course you may struggle to remember some words, but the same is true for CI which only works with sufficient repetition).
Another thing that irks me about CI is the insistence on not using the language/s you know as a crutch for learning. First of all, as you said, adults have a huge advantage over children - they already know at least one language, and it's insane not to use this knowledge to help learn the target language. The idea that it's better to try and guess what new words mean from context rather than relying on bilingual translations just doesn't make sense to me. It makes things very slow and inefficient. I've watched plenty of CI materials that try to teach new words by means of gestures and pictures and so on, and I didn't find any of these methods remotely as effective for long term retention compared to memorizing word with their English definitions via Anki. You can of course learn this way, but is it the most efficient use of one's time? Most probably not.
The rationale and success behind Spaced Repetition learning is consistent with the research from Cognitive Psychology - experts in learning, (and associative learning)and cognition.
@@stevencarr4002 This, plus their brains are wired to suck up all aspects of language in young age, much faster than a adult brain can manage.
0:53 Starts here
It was a great interview. It was very enlightening!!🎉 Thanks.
I used the immersion method described as a student at school. In my first year of french using that method I learned one word: 'Je'. My parents then switched me out of that school to another school where I was taught grammar tables and rote learning. By the end of the second year using the grammar and rote learning method I could form sentences in 3 tenses and had a vocabulary of about 1,000 words which enabled me to have a basic conversation and translate a passage from either language.
I was taught French in school in the 7th and 8th grades. I learned nothing. I was then taught Spanish in school in the 9th and 10th grade. I learned nothing. Then I settled in Germany, and learned to speak near-fluent German in less than a year. And since living in Europe, I've also learned to speak Swedish, Dutch and Italian, and I'm now learning French (the right way). Therefore, my tip: If you really want to learn a language, go live where it's spoken.
Too expensive 😅
There's some stuff in here that I disagree with. Those languages where I haven't consciously studied grammar I tend to have fossilized errors, little issues with conjunctions and the like where I keep making the same mistakes again and again and again. And you can meet Chinese-speaking natives who have lived abroad many years and can speak English at a rapid pace and understand nearly everything, yet speak 100% in present tense because they never studied the way that Indo-European languages handle verb tenses.
This is simply untrue. It's obvious to anyone who has ever spoken to or taught one of those Chinese people that they have studied tenses extensively, and that studying the grammar explicitly did nothing.
@@uchuuseijin So why, then, having spoken the language for decades and being fluent enough with what they do know, is the CI method unable to teach them how to properly conjugate their verbs. Why is the guy who has been serving English natives for 15 years still saying, "You want dumpling or you want noodle?"
I think it's because he came with some basics and then never tried to figure out the grammar. To be clear, this is not all Chinese people--some of whom speak great English--nor is it *only* Chinese people. I've known Russians who never learn how to use articles because they don't exist in their language and they never figured it out in spite of thousands of hours of contact with the language.
@MrLilwallace Because language learning takes a lot of effort - exposure to a huge amount of comprehensible input and caring enough about getting it right to listen closely and repeat. Many adults stop at good enough for their life situation. They don't emerse in enough variety or repetition of comprehensible input and don't try to get it right. It's easier to get the exposure as a kid.
Native speakers don't learn tenses etc through grammar - they learn through example sentences. The brain is wired to learn like this. Same for second languages
@@MrLilwallace first of all, CI is not a method, a grammar book contains comprehensible input. It is literally impossible to do anything resembling language study without putting language in your head (input), and useless to do anything that you don't comprehend. Every method contains CI.
Second, these people are very often people who have studied English in classrooms for years on end. They've done nothing *but* grammar study. I have taught adults who make these kinds of mistakes and, most of the time, if you prompt them to correct themselves, they can. But, as the video says, they continue to make the mistake anyway. That's precisely what fossilization is- knowing what is correct and continuing to be wrong.
It is almost certainly *because* they studied grammar in a classroom setting, and only had other people correcting/teaching them their grammar, that they never developed the skills they'd need to notice and correct their own mistakes in real time.
Long and Swain both note that linguistic features need to be explicitly noticed- in other words, explicit grammar instruction, in which grammar is noticed for the student by someone else, can have the opposite effect and cause the student to tune the grammar features in their input out.
They may even be deliberately trying to *avoid* noticing their own grammar mistakes, as they're forcing themselves to speak as fast as they can, so as to do their jobs.
Third, you're neglecting to mention the examples you've doubtlessly seen where explicit grammar instruction *caused* students to make mistakes. People saying things like "noodles shop" because there's more than one noodle there and their teacher drilled it into their heads that "multiple=plural". Or when students say something like "I met the him" because they were corrected every time they forgot to say "the" when they should have, and so now they overcorrect themselves. In fact, this also pretty easily explains the avoidance in the "you want noodle" example as well- they were probably tired of putting the s in the wrong place and getting yelled at, and so developed a habit of avoiding it altogether.
In general, "X doesn't work because people make mistakes" is a pretty specious argument because most people try a lot of different things and imperfection is the norm.
Very true.
Worth watching! Very informative, well as always! Thank God I saw your video again! Thank you! ❤
very useful and realistic information, i always get stuck in reading flash cards over and over again just because i want to proceed faster, but at the end i always find myself forgetting those words, it's indeed hard to trust my brain and letting it slowly learn those words and phrases, but having someone who has dedicated their life to this matter saying it so confidently makes it easier to trust my brain.
thank you.
"i before e except after c" is possibly the worst language "rule" he could have given as an example.
Watching videos like this one on how to learn languages instead of learning a language is what hinders learning.
Sorry for your inability to understand the video. This video worths more than 99% of the videos about language on YT. Your I.q for sure are less than 70pts
Dr. McQuillan is parroting Krashen's input hypotheses, and for all of his scholarly-sounding confidence, I am flatly unconvinced. I admire the work of Dr. Krashen and CERTAINLY see the benefit of comprehensible input, but I simply cringe when I hear someone say that explicit learning is "a waste of time". In the first place, if comprehensible input were all that was necessary, then there would be no such thing as receptive bilinguals (people who can understand a language, but who cannot speak it), nor would there be SO VERY MANY people who have acquired comprehension skills, but who cannot speak in a grammatically correct way or with anything approaching a decent accent---yet, we all know that that is not the case. Even before acquiring my Ph.D., I never could get past that.
I've had classes of kids who had two to three years of heavy comprehensible input in Spanish who still could not correctly use the present tense--only to be told that it doesn't matter--they'll get it with more input. Supposedly, what was important was that they were "communicating" and "having fun using the language". Hogwash. Secondly, I have never seen any substantial evidence supporting this big dichotomy between "learning" and "acquisition"---as a fluent Spanish interpreter who didn't start learning Spanish till I was 13, I strongly and stridently disagree with the notion that explicitly studying vocabulary or grammar is a waste of time. We can front-load our learning through direct, explicit study, THEN we can put it into practice and use it to the point of automaticity. This has worked very well for me, and I've seen it work for others as well. On the other hand, SHOW ME THE STUDENTS who have "acquired" language skills through comprehensible input to the point of being able to read and understand their L2 on a functional level, speak and write in a grammatically correct way, and have a decent accent. I'm asking this sincerely---I've seen SO MUCH PROMOTION of these hypotheses, and I just don't see the results. ON THE OTHER HAND, combining explicit learning (I'll use the word) with large amounts of comprehensible input and reading and conversation practice DOES yield results, and I'm living proof. No, grammar and memorized vocabulary alone do not result in L2 skills...but neither does comprehensible input.
Wow, this is the first time I've heard the term "receptive bilingual", that's what I am, I can understand my mother's language but can't speak it. I feel like I have a mental block between hearing the words, understanding them and speaking them. Do you have any tips for breaking out of that block?
@@fruitytarian This phenomenon is INCREDIBLY common--much more than most people imagine--and it is often seen among the children/grandchildren of immigrants. When parents/grandparents speak your heritage language but allow you to answer in English, they are setting you up for this to happen. I knew one woman who had such a bad case of it that she couldn't even speak up and defend herself when people were talking about HER! She'd sit there and listen to adults say, "Well, how come she can't speak Spanish if she's Mexican?!?!?!"--and she'd understand everything.
While the language is the same and there is crossover between functions, to a great degree, language reception and language production are processed in different parts of our brains. You've actually already got the hardest part done---if you can understand your heritage language, then the language has already been frontloaded into your brain. I've known people in your situation who largely get hung up on the different ways sentences are structured grammatically between the two languages---they just don't know how to reframe the thought in a different way other than what they're used to saying it in English.
Here are a couple of things to do: Get reading material in your mother's language. You'll run into vocabulary that you don't know (just because it was never used at home), but that's not a bad thing--read things one paragraph at a time and start making lists. If your heritage language is written with the Latin alphabet, you'll probably be surprised at how easily you'll be able to pick up on reading. Pinpoint things that are said differently, and back-translate them. Think: "Hmmm....now how do we say that in English?" and just passively recognize those differences. This will help you to begin to recognize and think about how the two languages are structured differently when you're not under pressure to perform and you have time to analyze the structure.
Finally, you're going to have to just jump into the deep end and start speaking---even if it's not right at first, and even if it sounds strange or takes time to crank it out. People learn to speak by speaking (and don't let anybody ever tell you anything different).
Give your friends/family members permission to gently correct you. It won't take long. Start with simple things, then get into more complex sentences as you go along. As soon as possible, find a grammar of your heritage language that explains what you're saying in English. That will help you to categorize the different elements and give you a name for them. This will make it tremendously easier as you go along. Best wishes!
Bravo! Finally someone says it. And as a native Spanish speaker and because of my own experience as a teacher of Spanish language, what the man in this video says it's not always true
@@TroyLFullerton thank you! This is so helpful, and fascinating. I think my problem is I "know" I sound "silly"/ have the wrong accent when speaking my mother language. English was my first language, and as you mentioned, my parents spoke to me and with extended family around me in their language but never insisted I responded in the language. When I tried to speak as a child my words sound odd to my ears, not like how my parents spoke, and I didn't like that so I stopped speaking.
In highschool I became exposed to the lingua Franca in my country and had the same problem, I hated the way I sounded so I never spoke it. But once I started working I had no choice, everyone spoke it and so I had to too. There were a few years of anxiety and discomfort any time I was forced to speak but now 12 years later I'm fluent in it.
I've recently started teaching myself Russian and I have no problem speaking words because I don't "know" how "bad" I sound. There's no voice in my brain comparing what I know the word should sound like to what comes out of my mouth, saying "what was that? That did not sound like what you thought it did.." since Russian has not been frontloaded in my brain... Quite fascinating, I look forward to trying out your suggestions to finally get speaking my native language. thank you again 🤓
To me, one of the important functions of input is to make me go "huh, what's that" about a thing in a piece of content, and then check what the word/grammar point was. That way I have a connection to it in existing material so it's not some disembodied fact in a conjugation table but I also get an explicit explanation as to what it is. Then seeing it again in your input content helps solidify then new thing you just learned. Being input heavy and checking interesting things is more or less how I ended up learning English to fluency.
Speaking definitely also needs practice by itself, even if you've done a good regimen of heavy input. It shouldn't need too much practice if your comprehension is good, but needs some, and that part definitely benefits from corrections - hell, kids get corrected all the time when learning their native language and when they happen to say something wrong.
Teachers focusing on "Supposedly, what was important was that they were 'communicating' and 'having fun using the language' " sound like they have brainworms and want to feel warm and fuzzy rather than really build good skills for their students.
Thanks a lot for such a great video. Best wishes 🤩🤩🤩
I think this approach is the best way to learn. In fact, all teachers should be teaching this way, but when a student needs to improve pronunciation, its important to make him or her aware of the specific things to improve, because pronunciation is not going to get better just by listening.
Great interview, thank you!
Watch some Peppa Pig
Did you learn that from Mark Thompson's Russian Accelerator. He has a whole section on Peppa Pig 🤣
Yes! I've been watching loads of Peppa Pig in German. It's really well done.😊
Based : 🔥
Boring
I have found it very helpful!
A weird thing that has happened is that people are being referred to as objects rather than as people. Instead of using the word “that” when referring to the professor, I suggest using the word “who.”
Some people really are just objects though, like women for example
Native speakers' knowledge of English is declining. "Whom" is almost extinct, and "who" is being replaced by "that". People don't know the difference between "affect" and "effect", so they replaced both with "impact": "How will the tax increase impact people?" -- instead of "How will the tax increase affect people?" People don't use the subjunctive and replace it with the conditional: "If I would have known that they were out of that item, I wouldn't have driven all that way to the store." -- instead of "If I had known ... ". People use the singular "There is" (There exists) even when a plural follows: "There is people who can't eat that." -- instead of "There are people ... ". The list goes on.
Wow, this guy makes the most sense of anyone I've ever listened to talking about learning a new language. The problem for learners is finding those reading/listening materials that hit that sweet spot of 90+% of words that you know and comprehend so that your brain can begin to absorb the other 10%. It can be very time consuming to find them. I have been using LingQ for this and it is somewhat helpful with this but I still struggle to find texts at just the right level. Most are too hard and so I tend to opt for those that are too easy because I have already worked out that the impost important part of reading and listening in Spanish is understanding (and enjoying) the content. What is missing for me from this very interesting presentation is discussion about the most effective route to language production in the target language. I get the importance of immersion through reading and listening but am still left wondering how to we cross that huge chasm between understanding (recepetive language) and speaking and writing (productive language). My ability to understand in Spanish is so much better than my ability to express myself in Spanish. I wish he had gotten on to talking about this in this interview. Can you please get hm back to talk more about this? Thanks for a wonderful video!
I am a Portuguese Native speaker, and as a English and Chinese learner, I can totally agree with Jeff! Actually Dr Jeff´s podcast helped me learning English! Greetings from Brazil.
English is my third language, and I'm really not familiar with the grammar rules at all. I can't articulate the reasons behind using "a" or "an," but I have a good sense of when to use each.
English is my first language and it is the same for me. lol
The thing is that there's basic concepts and Actual Grammar rules,
Learning a/an, ei after c, or etc are pointless.
But, verb tenses, verb conjugations, word orders are undoubtedly essentialls of the language.
It's "a" before a consonant and "an" before a vowel. We teach that rule to English children in English schools.
thank you for the interview, very interesting.
I have tried comprehensible input for Polish and found that new vocabulary does not stick unless I made flashcards, and grammar did not stick until I started making flashcards based on exercises from grammar books. I enjoy listening and reading and I get better at it by doing it, but it doesn't help me on the production end at all.
It might seem that way as a very early absolute beginner, but I suspect that by the time you get past that stage heading towards intermediate where you start to understand some real conversation, you'll have long since changed that opinion drastically... 🙂
In my experience, flash cards can have a usefulness if and ONLY if you have a firm real life context for every flashcard word - it should either come from a story that you know well or (and much better, actually) from a real life situation or person or thing that you attribute it to. If it doesn't, you'll be learning that card over and over and over again, without ever really acquiring it. I started like that - just learning words from text books, and I too, for a while, thought flashcards were working. It didn't work, and it's only after the acquisition really does start to work that you understand deeply why it didn't work before when you thought it was working - because you were only learning word meanings, not acquiring it to use. I used flashcards (Anki wrongly for years learning Korean before I realised). I still use flashcards, but I use them to remind me of words I have already acquired, NOT to learn them. If you've acquired the words, you can go through hundreds flashcards in half and hour and still feel mentally brain fresh. If you haven't acquired them, you're brain will fry after about 50 words in about half an hour.
Learning is a LOT harder than acquiring, but acquiring is a very slow boil - like watching an Olympic swimming pool fill via a thin hose - it seems fast at first watching the first water spurt, but fills VERY slowly. One of the most important traits you need for language acquisition is patience!! The thing that makes learning seem faster than acquisition is that it seems easier initially (ONLY initially) and you can see the list of words you have 'learned' and you feel accomplished. Acquisition is slooooow, and happens when you aren't watching.
The guy in this video and Krashen - look him up because he's saying exactly the same thing and his books and research is freely available on the internet - are correct. You can also search for him on TH-cam. Another person you might look up is Steve Kaufmann - a very experienced language learner who has learned 20 languages - including most of the difficult ones. He has great advice.
@@fransmith3255 I'm at the intermediate stage and it still doesn't work. I've tried it again for Polish the last few months and am going back to creating flashcards. Making flashcards is a pain but they work.
@@fransmith3255 My vocabulary flashcards are mostly within sentences, so I get context. If it's a concrete noun that I can use a picture for I just do that without the sentence. And yes, it would be wonderful if I could acquire the words first, but that's easier said than done. For example, I just finished a conversation session in Polish with my teacher. I got these new words, among others: bruised rib, sprained ankle, eclipse, in the back, golf course, related, and diploma. There's nothing I can read or listen to that will have all those words. If I don't do something most of them will be gone for good. I'll recognize them fine but won't be able to produce them again, except for maybe diploma (dyplom).
During the discussion I had occasion to use a word from my flashcards, the word for "injury". It's not a common word but I knew that I had learned it. I got the last letter wrong and got corrected (I said "uranium" instead of "injury"). Not a good testimonial for flashcards, but having done it in flashcards gave me some context and now it will stick better. If I hadn't made a flashcard for it I would have nothing.
I have a pretty high tolerance for flashcards. Today I had 107 vocabulary cards. More than I'd like but doable.
I've seen Krashen and Kaufmann around for years. I would really like their methods to work for me but they just don't.
That's interesting because Polish is so complicated that I wouldn't even know how to go about it if I wanted to learn grammar intentionally. For Polish I would just stick to comprehensible input + learning fixed phrases by heart. English is much easier when it comes to grammar. It's almost mathematical. Anyway, powodzenia! Mam nadzieję, że się nie zrazisz, chociaż moim zdaniem nauka języka polskiego ma mało sensu, chyba że chcesz rozmawiać z członkiem rodziny, który nie mówi po angielsku.
@@chrolka6255 English is almost mathematical? What's your mother tongue?
I have taught English one to one for 20 years. This is excellent advice. I also teach English like a mother teaches her children. I look (and am) delighted when they get something right. I later go back and correct mistakes . I find out their interests and tell them to read, watch what they would read inFrench and NEVER to read anything boring. We can do that together andI complain about the Baccelaureat text as much as they do. We study art together . Results - mostly distinction....
I think both are important, aquisition and grammar/syntax. Grammar can explain concepts that you otherwise don't know at the beginning, maybe would confuse you and that sometimes would take ages to extract from casual aquisition. I'm currently learning my third foreign language and english is one of them. After aquiring some stuff, grammar can sometimes help you advance.
I mostly agree, but there are a few practical issues with the "95% comprehensible input" advice. That "perfect input" just doesn't exist for everyone at all levels on their language learning journey.
The best strategy I've come across to bridge that gap between incomprehensible to compensable input is to use the "n+1" approach to make spaces repetition sentence cards from native level material. It can be done by hand, but I use the Migaku plug-in for Japanese specifically to automatically analyze subtitles and text files/website pages for good sentences to aquire words from. That way, I can use native level material I only comprehend some of, but still aquire words the same way I would with 95% comprehension.
I would also say that not all words have to be aquired from input to fully understand them. I learned what the Japanese words like 曲 or 誘う meant from from anki card long before I had seen it in input material. Simple nouns and verbs can be learned with more traditional methods as their meaning is not as dependent on context.
For brand new beginners taking time to learning basic vocabulary before starting to learn from acquisition makes the process feel a bit less overwhelming.
I think languages like Chinese, Korean and Arabic need a different approach yes...or at least combo approach.
@@YogaBlissDance Yeah, learning languages like Japanese or Chinese need a bit more dedicated study to learn. The Chinese characters used in both languages are pretty difficult to "just acquire" even for native speakers. With no obvious pronunciation guide, they require the reader to already be entirely familiar with each character to understand each word. Schools spend a lot of time teaching children how to read and write them. Adults can learn them faster than children, but it's still going to take a lot of dedication.
Great video. But, there are other professors who have given different advice, aren't there? I was just browsing Paul Nation's ebook 'What do you need to know to learn a foreign language', where he advocates memorizing vocabulary and even studying some grammar (in addition to other things). Apparently, it's all backed by a lot of research, too.
As I understand it, there are multiple intellectual camps in this line of research and both have bodies of papers that support their own position. I don’t know if one faction has conclusively “won” over the other. It seems that the vocab/grammar camp is still dominant in schools and the immersion camp is dominant on the internet.
Paul Nation is great. He doesn’t disagree with the approach taught here, but he shows that comprehensible input isn’t the whole story. Ultimately he advocates an approach called the 4 strands, which offers a balance of opportunities to practice meaning-focused (ie compressible) input, meaning-focused output (ie communicative events, without regard to correctness), language focused learning (ie deliberate study of vocab and grammar), and fluency
@@admasnd Just because there's an alternative to traditional language doesn't mean it's some infallible method. It's what I like to call the DeFacto well-wishing program of what you want to hear vs the real give and take of true learning. Everything can't be fun, even fun can turn into boring and repetitive, you can and will plateau with just about every avenue you take. You learn the most in the beginning and it takes more brain power to compile the information as you go up in levels. There's' too assumptions of memorizing vocab and grammar being bad, and acquisition, ci and immersion being the only way. Just like this loaded statement, "learn with context," yeah sometimes, because you can't always have the right answer even with context. The acquisition, ci and immersion camps have turned everything into just as dogmatic practice as traditional school-based methods. Melding things and knowing you can delve into a lot of things to keep learning is better than holding everything to steadfast rules. Everything in moderation even moderation. Playing the drinking game of learn like a child, natural way, context, ci, acquisition and immersion and whatever else tends to leave as many gaping holes as everything else. Do everything sometimes, sometimes on a large scale sometimes on a small scale.
Paul nation has previously stated his own failure in learning languages. I know what this video is saying is true because it's how I've learnt languages.
@@jasonjames6870 Unfortunately that's not how scientific research works. You've fallen into the same trap that Stephen Krashen has.
I HAVE BEEN AN EFL TEACHER FOR 20 YEARS.AT UNIVERSITY I USED TO TAKE PART IN DEBATES ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF GRAMMAR.NOWADAYS, MY CONCLUSION IS:IT DOES NOT REALLY MATTER THE APPROACH BEING USED IF THE LEARNER IS NOT WILLING TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS.
There's a button on the left side of your keyboard that says "Caps Lock." Please press that button now.
True. People must take ownership for their own learning. Nobody else can do the work for them. But I think sometimes when people sign up for classes, especially group classes, they expect the teacher to do most of the work and they take more of a passive role in the process.
Yes, I’m a firm believer in working only as hard as the students work.
That said , it’s difficult to apply that model if you’re teaching a class of 50 students.
@@MrLilwallace haha...exactly my thoughts...lol
I agree with everything! I really suggest the interviewer and/or the professor to take contact with Professor Krashen or Steve Kauffman and have a another useful video on this same topic
Journaling is key though. Journaling in whatever language you use is always going to increase your ability to communicate and connect with your the spirits inside of you. I love doing my Chinese journaling. It helps me to keep my new vocabulary.
💯Yes, and that is a good way to use the language in everyday life situations.
Start out with everyday situations then go on to more complicated topics.
Raise a child and you will see CI is not how they only learn. They are trying to speak straight away, and you spend years correcting them, explaining why you say X a certain way etc.
You learn a language largely from interaction as your input