We DO learn languages through input
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2024
- This video is a response to Christian from Canguro English who made a video called "The Myth of Input".
I believe the very basis of his argument is untrue, and additionally his following logic is flawed.
Input is NOT the only thing required to learn a language, but Christian doesn't understand its role in the overall language learning process.
View the series of 3 videos:
• Response to Canguro En...
The Canguro English video can be found here:
• The myth of input | Ho...
In this video I mention Matt vs Japan:
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Steve Kaufmann:
/ lingosteve
Dogen:
/ dogen
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Timestamps:
00:00 Canguro English Surprised Me
03:07 Is Input the Most Widely Used Method?
06:43 How big a deal is Stephen Krashen?
07:55 Input is BS
08:55 The Three Schools of Thought on Language Learning
11:04 The Input Hypothesis is False
16:46 My cousin shows the Input Hypothesis to be True
18:10 Speaking Swedish did Nothing to Improve my Speaking
19:59 Rounding Off
OK if you've reached the end of the description on a 20 minute video then you obviously need something to do.
I have given a number of clues in my last 6 or 7 videos or so as to who my favourite TH-camr is. Who is it and what's your reasoning?
The input hypothesis does not mean that you should never study, it means that the focus of your study should be making input more comprehensible. And when it does become comprehensible, you don't stop, you continue to receive input then you truly grow to aquire the language.
I actually think you can get away with not studying at all besides some vocabulary at the beginning. In English I didn’t even do that, just through video games, brand names the internet and music I got to fluency in English at the age of 14 I never looked at grammar and I didn’t have anybody at home that spoke English. The only reason why I think you have to study sometimes is because comprehensible input for your level is not available so you have to work your way through boring lists of vocabulary.
@@RrRr-or5tw I mostly agree with you but study can actually speed things up. Also, there were actually some clumsy uses of words that could arguably called "mistakes" in your comment there that would be ironed out with a small explanation of grammar. (Native speakers make the same mistakes but they sound no less clumsy when said by natives.)
Actually, it does. Krashen quite clearly proscribed flashcards and even vocabulary lookups. The input hypothesis is the conjecture that language can only be acquired and never learned; the real truth is that learning can accelerate and guide acquisition, but that’s not “the input hypothesis” as formulated by Krashen.
you got it
@@RrRr-or5twbut who wants to spend 14 years on the natural method when we can speed things up? Kids absorb languages way faster than adults
I’ve been a ESL teacher for over 15 years and Krashen was largely the butt end of a lot of jokes by big names in TESOL. His ideas supported my experience of learning German and French when I was younger so I never really understood the hate; input is not the only thing, but it is important. As a teacher now, I never stop telling my students how important it is to build strong reading and listening habits. From my observation, Krashen really only gained “legend” status when the polyglot community become more visible on social media.
Crashen was already a very well known and respected linguist before the polyglot community discovered him. He wasn’t like Noam Chomsky or anything, but was still a very respectable figure in the field. All the polyglot community did was elevate him into the broader public consciousness, since 99% of people who try to learn a new language are not regularly reading linguistics journals or something
The same here! Also a teacher who speaks 4 other languages and tells her students the SAME!
Big names such as?
Yeas, I've learned all my languages through basically input based learning. And now that I entered on the ESL to teach in Vietnam I can say not only the great majority deeply hate even hear about input hypothesis as some of the teachers will actively work to make a bad name for you among other teachers if they discover that you are a proponent of the idea. Not only is completely FALSE that everybody uses input hypothesis as it's the case that 1- your students 99% never even heard about it and 2- techers generally will make you an enemy if you defend it.
@@JohnnyLynnLee people may hate it since it's not easy to monetize from... just a supposition
25 years ago I spent a little time travelling around China and getting to know a few Chinese people. I met a few very diligent students who had degrees in English and they really struggled to communicate. I understood of course that they found it hard to go from 'learned' English to spoken English as back then getting good materials was very hard. But quite randomly around China I met a few people with surprisingly excellent English. The common denominator among them was simple - they listened to the BBC World Service every night (you could even hear the BBC inflection in some voices). Later on, I've met Vietnamese, Thai, Koreans, etc., who learned excellent English simply from being addicted to US TV shows, playing online games in English or similar. Long before I heard of the input theory this convinced me that passive listening and reading 'natural' material was far more important for learning than formal classes or early speaking (which in my opinion only reinforces bad habits).
I literally listened to BBC World Service every day when I was studying English at the university. And I still do, not for learning English but it has become part of my morning routine.
As a child of immigrant, I concur with what you explained. I'm french and my parents only speak in russian with me (while I spoke back in french for my whole life), and even if I can watch any movie and understand 80-90% with no subtitles, I'm only realizing now that I'm really trying to learn the language, that my input is very basic : because the main input I was exposed to what stuff like "dinner is ready/did you tidy your room? etc" stuff that people would hear in a household. It's only by exposing myself to more tvshows, books (reading is still very hard for me, since I lack input), comic books etc, I get to increase my vocabulary and my comprehension and hopefully my communication skills. For example, until I started to read a few chapters of Berserk, I didn't know how to say "knight" in russian, because it's not part of the topics encountered in daily family life.
Totally! I'm bilingual in Mandarin and English, living in Canada. I have a friend who is the child of Chinese immigrants & was exactly like you. When they asked me to speak in Chinese with them, what surprised both of us was their lack of vocabulary- they always thought they were "fluent in listening" but actually their grasp on the language (even just listening) couldn't allow them to hold a meaningful conversation. (Another factor is, imho a lot of immigrant parents don't *want* their kid to speak the heritage language- since they suffered due to language barriers, they want their kid to be as westernized as possible.) Anyway my friend became fluent scarily fast after discovering Chinese web novels & audio drama lol
Messir! Ramenez donc le porc cuit à la table voyons donc! Mère, où est donc mon donut sepoudré de...de sucre
In my experience most normies (by which I mean people who don't obsessively consume YT language learning content) would not identify input as an important factor in language learning. More commonly mentioned factors are consistent study, consistent speaking practice, and talent/memory. Sometimes they'll get a bit closer and say immersion, but usually they have going to live in another country in mind.
I've never got people "hating" on input... You always learn from input. Outputting will force you recognize what words and structures you don't know and do need (which I why about 10 - 20% of my studying is output), but input is where you do the actual learning/ acquiring... You can't just say "I want to learn Swedish" and start outputting Swedish, everything you say has GOT to come from input first!
As a German learner, i've done almost zero speaking. However I randomly have thoughts in German as I would in English. My biggest pet peeve with the 'start speaking right away theory' is that you have nothing to say! If anything goes off the script you're screwed basically. Just immerse yourself and read a lot. I don't really understand Christians argument, the 'receptive' children of immigrants could easily just spend probably a month and suddenly bring their speech up to speed. I think writing is a far better method than speaking.
geht mir genauso
"children of immigrants" - it's the worst argument in the FRIGGIN' world because these people have no perspective whatsoever on the 1000s of hours needed just to get passive listening comprehension, so if you told them they had to put 300 hours in to get speaking they would think it outrageous. I've observed them pop up on language forums randomly for decades asking for the "one weird tip" that could work like magic for them...... *grumble* *grumble*
Have you ever had dreams in German? My first foreign language was French, and I've never dreamt in French. Then I started studying German, and I studied it for many years. I had some opportunities to speak German outside the classroom, whereas I had no such opportunity for French practice. I had lots of dreams in German. Then I studied Latin and ancient Greek. I never had a dream in either of them. I thought maybe that was because we only read and wrote in those dead languages, never speaking them or listening to them in class. Then a couple years ago, I started teaching myself Finnish from a book. I've never spoken Finnish, and I've only heard a little spoken on TH-cam videos--yet I started dreaming in Finnish right away! I have no explanation for this. I do have one big caveat about my dreams in both German and Finnish, which is that when the narrative of my dreams demanded something to be said which I don't know how to say in those languages, English was substituted. I took no notice of that while dreaming, but after I woke up, I thought long and hard about my dreams, and I realized that they weren't as monolingual as they seemed while they were happening.
@@bigscarysteve I've had two German dreams, the one that I can currently remember, I was in Germany somewhere and this old man and squeezed past me on the sidewalk - between a rubbish bin or lamp post and fell off the curb and I ended up helping him get up etc. Really random but him and I just had a typical kind of interaction in the dream. "Haben Sie Schmerzen?" etc
@@Cam-fs4jf In my last Finnish dream, I was walking around Helsinki, and I saw a street called "Sardine Street." In my dream, I thought I was reading this sign in Finnish--but I don't know how to say "sardine" in Finnish! As my dream continued, I asked someone why the street was called that. They told me that there was a big sardine fishing industry in Finland, and that the Finns loved sardines. When I woke up, I went to Wikipedia to see if this was true. Nope. Sardines live in the Mediterranean, but not in the Baltic Sea.
I have another anecdote for you. My wife was a "receptive bilingual" of Italian, her mother spoke only Italian to her while she was growing up. After spending a summer in Italy with relatives at age 19, she was very frustrated with her level of speaking. She could communicate but with lots of mistakes, and her Italian cousins openly mocked her speaking. Upon returning to the US, she studied Italian at university and went from a low level to C1 in less than a year, and she started out completely illiterate in Italian. I believe that kind of progress is only possible with the years of input she had growing up. She went on to take graduate level courses in Italian literature.
Thats probably why i have such a good italian accent when i first started learning because i would always hear my mum speaking it... just never to me!
I noticed this when I learned Spanish in jr. high. I had never learned it before, but I had regularly overheard employees speaking it at my family's business for years before that. In class, it came very easily to me, and I didn't understand why my peers struggled.
Her Italian was probably good enough. My cousins got mocked for their Spanish, but their Spanish was great, just with an American accent, and that’s why they got mocked. 🤷🏻♀️
Speaking and writing are skills that we develop after the fact. Some native speakers are still poor communicators in their native tongue. People only get better at communicating effectively and producing rich complex ideas by listening to better speakers and reading better literature. If your wife's mother was the only source of Italian was her mother a doctor or a great intellect? I had a GF in a similar situation. He parents were Italian natives living in the UK but they themselves were peasants: Hardly a great model for learning a language.
@@TheCompleteGuitarist It’s true that many native speakers are not impressive even in their native language but compared to a language learner their language is quite advanced. They don’t have to be highly educated.
Really well put. I agree that the way Christian went about the input method is a bit reductive. I'm Brazilian and teach English as a foreign language, and what I see the language schools around here advertise (and students to expect) is to speak as much as possible, from the very first class. As a teacher, I've been to my fair share of training programs and they talk an awful lot about maximizing student talking time and minimizing teacher talking time in class.
And on top of that, most people who advocate for input don't say you should only ever get input and never speak or write the language.
And here's my anecdote: I started studying English as a teenager with a word list and sentence translation method paired with random reading sections. Most of the classes were input, and more than half of the speaking I did was just repeating and translating sentences. It was an extremely tedious routine and the only reason I stuck to it was that I was a very dedicated student (my parents were paying for it so I gave it my all), but most of my classmates dropped out within the first year. Now, I wouldn't recommend that method because most people would die of boredom before they learned anything, but surprisingly after a few months I realized I was understanding a lot of what I tried to read. Then I started watching anime in Japanese with English subtitles, reading manga and books in English, and finally watching American series without subtitles. Soon enough I was making online friends from all over the world by speaking English and that's how I became highly conversational in about a year. In two years I could say I was "fluent" by most standards. For me it was basically in this order: lots of input in class > lots of input by consuming media > speaking. It's like speaking came to me really fast once I started trying after I'd had a fair amount of input.
Anyway, sorry for the long comment!
My first language is Italian, and living in Italy means no chances to practice speaking in english. But when the chance comes sure enough my english is on point. Last time i took a test i scored C2. All of this by this made possibile by just hangin around on the internet :') Im not even remotely an excepion. Input just works. Trying the same methodology with Japanese this time around, so far im very satisfied with the results.
How many hours a day did you spend studying English?
@@juicyjfan literary zero minutes a day. I studied grammar in highschool but i saw it as a chore, so my english speaking and comprehension sucked back then. When i started consuming english content that i was genuinely interested in thats when words started to come up in my mind faster and faster until at one point i noticed i didnt need to translate in my head anymore and things just flowed without effort. My opinion now is that vocabulary>grammar. If i say a grammatically incorrect sentence i probably can be understood anyways through context, if i dont know a specific word what am i gonna do, pull out a piece of paper and start drawing? XD To know vocab you need to have listened to a word a lot of times in a lot of different contexts(!!!). All of that said, it was not a short process, let me tell you that.
@@juicyjfan sorry, i noticed that i might not have answered your question. I never studied english in the typical sense of the term, ie: sitting down and learning lists of words, studying grammar rules etc. I did none of that. In terms of consuming english content, hours every day, for years. If you only know Italian the internet is very limited, so it kinda was a necessity in my case. I would say that my curiosity led me to just know english, but i never had a structured plan.
I did the same the same thing with English, effortlessly absorbing the language through the years. However when I recently had to learn Italian, i had to invest some time studying studying a bit of grammar in order to understand when to use what , also because it's harder to find resources on the subjects that I like. Ma alla fine credo che sia veramente utile l'input e allo stesso tempo la ripetizione verbale, dopo aver praticato questi mesi vorrei sapere se ti posso chiedere di contattarti su alcun altra piattaforma per sapere la tua opinione in riguardo al mio livello di Italiano soprattutto con la pronuncia :)
@@AF-qg1zu ciao, ho cancellato tutti i miei social network anni fa quindi non saprei che contatto darti, se hai qualche idea dimmi pure. Comunque, se parli come hai scritto l' ultima parte in italiano ti dó già un 10/10👍👍 molto ben scritto, impressive. Posso chiederti qual é la tua prima lingua?
I was shite at English in school, and now 7 years later I am at a C2 level. Input turns out to be the most important.. for me at least. I was subconciously learning English after graduating highschool by going to the Irish pub, hanging out with British friends, watching shows in English and reading course material for university. All without actively learning the language. And then suddenly I was good at it. Although, when I think too deeply about it, I still get uncomfortable and see the teenager that couldn't even pronounce 'while' or 'vocabulary' and almost wanted to cry when asked to speak in class.
I think input is very underestimated and it is always about 'actively using grammar and vocabulary' in schools and language courses, in my experience.
How can you call it BS when there's thousands of people online who say that's how they learned their English?
BTW: Me included
Because English is another level 1 language plus the English colony was the biggest and #1 in the world in the past, that's the reason why it's so widely spoken and used internationally but try that method with czech, polish, hungarian, russian, chinese, hindu or arabic languages ... i doubt you'd learn it that easily .. languages that have little to no latin origin relation@@TheCudlitz
not saying you are right or wrong, but no number of anecdotes is a valid replacement for some form of scientific controlled study.
@@user-gr8hv8fs2uI was about to say the same thing with Japanese. Glad you said so ❤. Japanese have something called markers wich basically determines what is the noun, the object. It's a grammar driven language if I could say. Good luck trying to understand it just by input.
@@user-gr8hv8fs2ubro who cares about colonies when people are saying they learned all their English through the internet, and mostly something like youtube and tv shows? Bringing up old ass colonies makes 0 sense lol. There are 0 english speakers in my extended family yet English is the language I am now most competent in, even though it's my third language.. So how is that the case if input doesn't work? How is that the case for MOST non-native English speakers on the internet. You could ask any european how they learned english and I guarantee 80% of them would tell you they learned almost all of it through the internet, not your colonies lmfao
I found out a while ago my grandpa was trying to learn German with those CDs from the library that prompt you to speak a lot. He moved to the us from Germany when he was 12 and stopped speaking it. I suggested he try Mass Input instead and he researched it and said he would like to do that. He later said it gave him confidence to start speaking to people. Input still seems like a very niche way to learn a language. In my high school, most people expected the classes to get them fluent or at least very close.
Just going to share a little anecdote of mine: I spent a solid 2 years learning French with an SRS-based system, but it was really only after I decided to read a bunch of books and got hooked on French TH-cam that I really made progress in both my comprehension and output.
Wow, I'm more inclined to follow your method since I'm not really into SRS like Anki and such. What kind of books you read?
Right? SRS seems so logical you may want to just SRS your way to fluency but it doesn't work like that. Or at least not very well.
@@Ryosuke1208 Nothing super crazy, I started with the Harry Potter books (took me a summer or so to work my way through them), then read some random sci-fi books, both of French authors and anglophone authors translated to French. I’m also watching ~30 mins daily of French TH-cam videos, topics ranging from comedy to documentaries to rap analyses. I’m certainly still not as good as I eventually hope to be, but lots of input has helped me become comfortable enough in the language to talk about more or less any subject with native speakers. More to the point of your question, I’d say just read whatever will keep you reading; if that means sci-fi or fantasy, read those, if that means murder mysteries, read those. Imo most important thing is to read (and watch) things that make you want to consume more.
@@paulwalther5237 I’m not completely disavowing the SRS-I still think it is very useful early on in the process (say 2000 most common words), especially for making sure those words stick, but past there, I’ve personally found it a lot more motivating to just learn words through context rather than the chore that the SRS had become. For sure though, an SRS alone will not bring one to fluency
@@oncorhynchusnerka3900 Nice. I don't feel comfortable watching french youtube content to enjoy it but I don't mind binge-watching french series on Netflix with french subtitles. Maybe after I finish "Le petit prince" I could start some harry potter books (which I never read in any language before)
I am one of those receptive bilinguals (English is my third language, btw). While it is true that your level of comprehension is usually much higher than your level of output, frequently using said language (while on vacation in the old country for example), will dramatically improve your output even within a single week. So yes, the hypothesis still stands. You _do_ actually _learn_ the language mostly from input. Speaking it is just another skillset that relies on your understanding of it.
Or it could be that: You know more of the language than you think > then you need to use it a lot more often in the country > you impress yourself with how well you are speaking, producing the illusion of improvement > it does improve your confidence in the language > a confident speaker = a better speaker
17:59 "My personal take-on would be that input alone is not enough, but it massively magnifies the results of speaking when speaking is eventually attempted." - That's what I am going to recall from this video! Thank you, this has been a super interesting video!!
Was watching TH-cam, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon in English since age of 5. Never practiced speaking.
When moved to the UK at the age of 21 only problem I had was that I spoke with an American accent, lol
Another aspect of receptive bilinguals is that they may be getting only a very narrow range of input from their parents. In the same way, you might learn to understand Let's plays on TH-cam really well in your target language but still struggle to output.
The impression I’m getting on children language TH-cam is that children need to see the utility somehow, they drop what they don’t think of as useful. I wonder that if you restrict all the child’s entertainment to the target language you create input, utility and leverage TV to a useful purpose? I also wonder that if a trip to the country at a young age will show them that there is a whole society that speaks the language and shows them utility?
@@tredegar4163 I think you're probably right, and it makes perfect sense when you think about it -- children's brains at that point are focused on acquisition for entirely practical/survival reasons. It's already taking a lot of processing power just to figure the grammar out, so the brain likely discards a lot of vocab it initially thinks is worthless - the same way our short term memory dumps everything it doesn't anticipate us using again.
That is true from my experience. I pretty much only speak my mother tongue at home, and I've always had trouble expressing complicated ideas to my family. I usually have to directly translate one language into another and it just ends up sounding weird to them. Also, how long have I not heard gaming videos being called "Let's Plays", lol.
Yes. We are talking about the small set who are exposed to a language but have no speaking competency in it. That means they either don’t reply to the input or reply in another language they feel more adept in.
Most family interaction is repetitious and limited in vocabulary and grammar. It Lis unlikely that they are talking about philosophy and politics in complex sentences in their language and you are replying in yours. It’s probably “Dinner!” “Ok”. “How was school?” Etc. both parties would be deliberately simplifying their vocabulary and grammar t be understood.
I respect the fact that you admit to "doing a 180" and have changed your views. For some people, their ego is too big for them to admit that their views have changed.
My philosophy towards the input and output approaches is that I sit on the fence a bit. Incorporating a balance of both is great. I think using the 80/20 rule - spend 80 percent of the time towards input, 20 percent of your time towards output is a good aim. For me, this is about 7 hours of comprehensive reading and or listening in the week (an hour a day), with about an hour or two of speaking practice in the week - as my bare minimum.
And in my opinion, a silent period is still a great approach, spending somewhere between 3-12 months (depending on the foreign-ness of the new language) before speaking practice.
14 months ago, my beliefs were very different with these two philosophies. Perhaps I might think differently in 10 years time, who knows.
Love listening to your thought-provoking language learning discussions regardless, keep it up!
Yep! It's a balance thing. And the balance shifts as you get more fluent and can comprehend more, like he says about when speaking brings diminishing returns, start listening/reading more.
Saying that "comprehensible input is bs" is extremely arrogant and disingenuous, because it ignores the fact that this method is based on scientific research (which has been independently verified by people other than Krashen) and asserts that "my own personal intuition is just better because reasons".
^
He has another video from 1 year ago (th-cam.com/video/FcKDLpIdNDw/w-d-xo.html) where he talks about input as if "you are sitting there like a zombie" and keeps contrasting it against "active methods" as if listening/reading something isn't an active process. It's clearer than clear that he has completely failed to grasp what comprehensible input actually is.
And also the fact that it worked for so many of us already, lol.
@@user-hm5me1rx9b This dude really desperate to keep his channel alive lol
@@sandwichbreath0 exactly
The reality is that the best way to acquire a language is to be like Matt vs. Japan. Be totally obsessed, do nothing else, lock yourself in your room for 3 years only listening and reading (do nothing else, very important) and stay obsessed. Rinse and repeat for years on end until you achieve near native fluency. The funny thing is that he has been "learning" Mandarin for years and has admitted he is not anywhere close with it compared to his Japanese. Obsession is unhealthy but it is a hell of a motivator/driver and it applies to everything in life.
It think obsession can be healthy only of it's to get out of a situation that's unhealthy (e.g. quitting alcohol or tobacco or severe overweight) otherwise that obsession isn't good when it's affecting other important parts of your life like work, family or health.
@@Ryosuke1208 Depends. Matt speaks better Japanese than virtually any other American.
"Yeah, but at what cost?" True, but today I don't think even matt would recommend going at that extreme. He reached that level in 5 years, maybe one can get at his level in 7-8 years? Dogen is also very good, especially his pronunciation.
I think Matt thinks that singer he interviewed speaks the best Japanese he's head from an American.
My money would HAVE to be on Dogen simply because he spends all that time still today trying to perfect it for videos plus he lives there. It's not shade to Matt to say that surely Dogen's must be better... Although honestly they're both in a different league so I dunno haha.
@@Ryosuke1208 I totally agree with you
I don't know of anyone who says input only - even Steve Kaufman is input heavy until something like 20,000-50000 lingQ words are known, but then says that if you want to speak a language well you have to speak a lot.
Great discussion video!
"Language is acquired in “only one way”, that is, “by understanding
messages, or by receiving ‘comprehensible input’” (Krashen 1985)
I'll add that Steve Kauffmann also starts to speak, with a tutor or if he meets speakers of the target language, after only a few months of input, not years.
@@Paljk299 "to acquire" is not the same thing as "to speak fluently". To "acquire" means to have the rules and the words in the unconscious part of the brain (while to "learn" means to have the rules and the words in the conscious part of the brain). To speak fluently is an activity that necessarily involves practice. What Krashen says is that speaking is useless in order to acquire a language.
@@AlinefromToulouse Bear in mind as Kaufmann has retired and has nothing else to do other than learn languages, his input of "a few months" is equivalent to what us normal people would need around a year to match. The benefits of having enough free time I suppose.
@@canchero724 I mean that although Steve Kaufmann seems to spend a long time on input and the discovery of the language before starting his speaking practice, in reality, this first period is
short. But it remains proportional to the global time spent by each person on learning the language. After a while input may become boring, for most people the ultimate goal is to communicate.
IMHO, the importance of emphasizing input early on is supported by the number of language learners I've met who can express themselves fairly well in the target language but have an extremely difficult time understanding the language. If the goal of language acquisition is communication and you can speak but not understand what's being said to you, you have not acquired the skills necessary to truly communicate.
Reminds me a lot of the guy who got his JLPT N1 and degree in Japanese, but couldn’t property hear or speak until he did a lot of input. All the learning put a lot of information on the surface so it wasn’t a waste of time, but the input was needed to push that information to the subconscious
The one that did two interviews with matt, right?
@@ndescruzur4378 Right the one interview and the follow up after he improved.
Can I get a link to that video?
@@tnk4me4 th-cam.com/video/k5t37q1neC4/w-d-xo.html
@@tnk4me4 th-cam.com/video/k5t37q1neC4/w-d-xo.html
One year later: th-cam.com/video/TKs-NZvxa_Q/w-d-xo.html
This is true. I received about 15 years of semi-regular Japanese input. And beyond recalling a few vocabulary words I was still only an English speaker at the end of the day. Then in August of 2019 I started finally studying the language, reading, writing, and speaking, and within a few months I was already in the Intermediate level, this was bolstered even further by meeting my current girlfriend (Native speaker of Japanese) which created this perfect storm that felt like unlocking a chest. A chest that I had been building up inside of myself because of all of this input... and then suddenly I'm able to access it. So the points in this video I completely agree with. Input is crucial to forming the lock and key needed to open the door, but at the end of the day outputting the language is what helps you to turn the key.
Having been learning languages for decades thorough different systems, output heavy is definitely the norm. I never even heard about "input hypothesis" until this year via TH-cam. And no-one who has ever actually learned a language to a functional level has ever claimed that any one technique is all you need. You have to do ALL the techniques at some point, the only questions are how much, how often.
Heritage speakers often don't get nearly enough input to qualify as a true native speaker. If you added up all of the minutes you converse with your parent in the heritage language, what would the average number of daily minutes be? Maybe 30 minutes? An hour if you are really chatty? And the topics will often be the same common things which come up again and again in daily life, so it won't cover the breadth of language use necessary to be fluent. Some children are raised bilingual and do end up as true native speakers in more than one language, and I would assume it's just because they are getting way more input than the failing cases (like they watch old country cartoons or something).
I don't believe that comprehensible input is the be all and end all of acquiring a language, but it's like 95%. The only thing it doesn't solve is that when your comprehension hits 90%+, you stop acquiring new grammar as your brain is more than capable of piecing together enough meaning to get by, so it isn't incentivised to notice the finer details. So some additional study which aids you in actually noticing those subtleties rather than glazing over them is helpful.
this. it wasn't until I started studying Korean last year and turned off the English subtitles on Korean media that I realized how little I actually knew. My parents never forced me to read Korean books growing up or get much native-level input; they were happy if I talked with them in any Korean at all. Now, I have to undo all the bad speaking habits I built up as a kid, because I was essentially forced to speak Korean without enough input.
He's also overestimating how much the average kid cares about what their parents say.
If all your friends speak English, there's not a lot of motivation to learn heritage language beyond chores and family member names.
"Native listening" is great for phonology and accent, though.
I watched Matt, Stephen Krashen and several more channels about input. I've tried to learn english without any teachers based on the hypothesis and anki, 18 months later it turned out I got 7.5 ielts. Now with the confidence from the prior success I use the same method to learn french and japanese.
I think that you can see the whole 'input vs. output vs. classroom' debate in a new light if you read Barbara Oakley's 'Learn like a Pro' or 'Uncommon Sense Teaching'. She explains that we have two main learning system in our brains: declarative (logical, step-by-step, classical classroom style) and procedural (intuitive, based on patterns, practice, and repetition). Both systems complement and reinforce each other. Usually the declarative system is faster but less reliable, while the procedural system is slower at first but then becomes automatic and effortless. That's why in traditional language classrooms with grammar exercises and drills you can 'learn' many words at a rapid pace, but then struggle to keep a conversation. On the other hand, intuition developed by mass input (procedural) can make you fluent almost in a magical way, although it can be veeery slow (hundreds or thousands of hours of input). The same is true with speaking, you need both learning systems in place to reach some proficiency, that includes exercises, scripts, drills, and conscious study, as well as many hours of 'mindless' practice. In general, I believe that input is still more important than output, though, basically because input and comprehension comprise more than 90% of the time I use a language, and I rarely need to output.
Great video! Looking forward to parts 2 & 3.
(Background: Spanish native speaker, English & Swedish as second languages)
I think the important issue with language is how much it has to be intuitive/automatic (if you want using that language to be anything like using your native language)
@@kevinscales I believe that if we want fluency (or automatic language), we should rely more on our automatic procedural system, which works with practice, repetition, and variety. Mass input offers all these three things: we're constantly practicing comprehension when we read or listen (it's an active process), we're encountering repeated words and expressions all the time, and ideally in different contexts (variety). All this strengthens the neural links in your memory, and language can be retrieved easily and almost unconsciously. It's similar to a repeated habit or sports technique like a tennis serve (which I suck at, btw). To me, the issue with the 'output first' approach is that it's harder to achieve many hours of practice (speaking a foreign language, making mistakes and all, can be very tiring), and it's also more difficult to speak about different topics than listening or reading about them (I don't remember the last time I actually *spoke* about any of the content I watch on TH-cam). The 'classroom approach' can be useful as a jump-start to understand the basics or learn something quickly to later build upon it. I don't need 10,000 drills on how to make a third conditional, give me one basic explanation, then expose me to many examples and my brain will pick up the rest.
heritage speaker here. because I use it at home, I actually have spent a lot of cumulative time speaking. as far as my input goes though, it's only very narrow and contextually restricted.
if it were the case that speaking makes u better, I wouldn't have stagnated at like the age of 5.
Yeah, that's another thing. The context thing.
I could not write these videos if I had only ever spoken to my mum about how my day at school was. As Matt says, you need a lot of input from the relevant category to be able to talk about it eloquently.
Excited for parts 2 and 3! I have a heritage language that I barely speak but understand at a basic level. If I really think about it, my exposure to English as a child would have far exceeded that of my heritage language. Likely 90%+.
He recently appeared in "Luke's English podcast" saying that he didn't clarify quite correctly what he wanted to convey. He's a great TH-camr, as well as you are.
Oh, he communicated VERY clearly. He said the input hypothesis is complete bullshit, and then, iirc, pinned his own comment saying that anyone defending it in the comments just proves how fanatical we are.
@@ADHDlanguages He also went off on a weird tangent about how we "don't contribute or share anything" which was rather odd. Like, he doesn't realise that we too aim to speak the language? Does he think we are just going to sit in a room listen to podcasts forever and not ever use the language we are acquiring? Beyond strange.
@@ADHDlanguages Exactly lmao
@@user-hm5me1rx9b Yeah I spend some time on that in part 2.
I feel the offside explanation so hard. Once in a blue moon someone in my "real life" will engage with me about how I've been acquiring language(s), and I'm not sure if they don't accept it or they don't understand.
I definitely agree this is something people need to learn for themselves. I certainly did.
My explanation I've diluted is now to:
You already acquired a language, and humans did it tens of thousands of years before school and grammar books.
It takes hundreds or thousands of hours, but it doesn't have to be "hard" or unenjoyable.
At times it will be frustrating, and that's okay. You also get runner's high moments so it's not all bad.
The pattern (I believe) is input > staying curious and asking questions > getting answers > noticing the answer in the input.
Output and explicit memory/recall takes dedicated practice, but a requirement is implicit memory/recognition and understanding.
A language is not "just" a language. It's a culture and shared set of references. To really be "fluent" you need to become a member and want that as an outcome.
Skill Level Goals are fine to have but not controllable, what you can control is what you do and if you enjoy the process.
I have maybe convinced one friend, but he's still taken aback by the sticker price of 2.000+ hours to learn Japanese.
My.personnel experience completely validate the input theory.
I learned basic english in school but was bot able to speak properly, even in a very basic conversation.
But a friend gave me hours and hours of us sitcoms and bbc comedy without subtitles.
I was lonely, there was no internet, and i watched them over and over many times.
It lasted a year, and almost instantly become the first in english, so i started to read books, and listen to more content, and in the space of two years i became truly fluent, i wad able to understand nativr speakers completely and speak with them naturally.
So yes, 100%, comprehensible massive input is a game changer.
I like your points about the limits of the speak early approach especially with languages that are very different from your native language. I think Benny Lewis, who is probably the best known advocate of early output, is a good example of this; he was very successful with French and Spanish and German, but if you look at the progress he made in languages like Chinese, Czech, and Japanese, he wasn't able to make progress at the rate that he expected to.
When I first heard of the input hypothesis (about 6 months into dabbling in Spanish) I felt, despite not knowing anything about language learning at the time, like I intuitively "knew" that it was the way to go. Not long after trying it for a month or so, I went to say 'traffic lights' in English and I almost said the Spanish word instead, it literally came out of my brain BEFORE the English. That's when I KNEW that the input hypothesis was the sh*t, and that no "other" method would come close.
And so did you think just because of this it doesn't work?
@@gabenewell8583 OP said “it’s THE sh*t,” so that means OP really likes it.
@@Acro_LangLearn oh, yeah I kinda missed this one
@@gabenewell8583 English strikes again.
@@Acro_LangLearn intuitively i understand that, but come here in the comments for becoming sure about it, by the way, i'm learning english
I remember attempting to make sense of the words "deuxième" and "douzième", and I saw another frustrated learner post about it on the french subreddit, and someone responded that they couldn't tell them apart simply because they didn't know how to say them. This of course is more of a pronunciation issue, but I feel like it could be applicable to other elements of language, speaking is powerful and I feel like it can help construct mental maps to better understand Input as well as construct output more effectively. Maybe you think this idea is stupid, however I really do appreciate that this channel isn't just another fake polyglot channel and there are people here who can make arguments for how we can learn language more efficiently, cheers!
I love your videos. They are so thoughtful and interesting!! Another great one! I'm looking forward to the next parts
As someone who is mostly a receptive bilingual, I can tell you that input is the MOST important thing and that most of your results in language learning will come from that. For some context, I am South African, but I have spent most of my life speaking English. For the 1st few years of my life (about 1-4 years), I spoke SeSotho. But things changed when I had to go to a school where the language of instruction was English, and I had to learn English. I think after that, it just stuck.
I was already using it in school, and almost all people in my life outside of school could speak English as well, regardless of what their native language was, so people would often speak to me using a mixture of both Sotho and English. On top of that, I was one of those kids who spent most of their time in the house, so I spent a lot of time on the internet and watching TV, and reading books, all in English.
There were things on TV that I could watch on TV, but most of it was reality TV and soap operas, stuff I wasn't interested in. So, as a result of all that, my English is far better than my Sotho, BECAUSE I've seen it be used in so many different contexts. BECAUSE I have more comprehensible input. I realize now that the key to being able to speak Sotho better is using the input to learn what I'd say in Sotho if I wanted to greet someone the same age as me, vs someone who's older, or what I'd say in Sotho if I wanted to bring up a new topic in conversation, or what I'd say if I was struggling to find the word for something.
I know how to do these things in English because I've seen English speakers do them countless times compared to Sotho. In fact, one thing that got me to start speaking it more and improving was moving to an area where a similar language Setswana was used a lot more than English, therefore providing me with more context and input than I'd had living in a place where English is more dominant. So the point of this long-ass comment is that yes, although won't work alone, it is the foundation for any sort of language learning you hope to achieve.
I have learnt 4 languages with professor Krashen's method, 2 of them are at C1 level, 1 is B2 and the last is B1. So I am pretty sure it works.
Spot on, seriously your language learning channel is the only I can tolerate and enjoy.
I'm always impressed by how measured and nuanced your responses are.
Really interested video, super well thought out. Looking forward to the next parts!
I definitely agree that input is very important. I was raised in the U.S. in a Spanish speaking home where everything my kid brother and I watched had to be Spanish. Both my brother and I got the same amount of input in spanish as kids. I however, am fluent in speaking spanish but he barely can talk. The difference is I made an effort to always speak in spanish. He reverted to the dominant language of English and has trouble speaking. It goes to show how the first half of learning a language is getting the input, but putting it to use is also incredibly important.
I was born and raised in Canada by Korean immigrants and I was one of those kids who ended up exclusively speaking English to their parents. Like you mentioned, I guess that there was just a certain point where it just became more comfortable to do so after having used it more in most aspects of daily life such as at school, with friends and through media. I also think there are two main reasons why such children of immigrants end up stagnating or even declining in their mother tongue:
First of all, as we get older, the need for our mother tongue continuously diminishes as we become more independent and require less interaction with our parents. Add to the fact that our parents are mostly able to understand us when we use English anyway, the need to speak our mother tongue is pretty much eliminated. Additionally, much of the vocabulary that our parents use when speaking to us is very limited in scope (e.g. "Did you eat anything yet? Where are you going? How was your day?") so even just expanding our passive vocabulary eventually hits a wall once we have acquired the most essential 2k-4k words.
Now I am learning Spanish with a textbook (and accompanying workbook) I bought nearly 15 years ago. This textbook is said to be based on Krashen's natural approach. But from my point of view (I did language teacher training, and Master of Applied Linguistics, and then taught Japanese at universities for total 8 years), it is a very classic textbook - Explanation of grammar, exercises and vocabulary.
By the way, every time I hear the argument against input, I think to myself "Without input, what will come out of an empty head?"
I'm a receptive bilingual and I take issue with what Mr. Canguro English is saying about us. I learned Polish at home as a heritage speaker, I heard my parents speak it, I even read comic books and a couple of teenage novels as a child. However, when I traveled to Poland, I was unable to speak about deeper subjects I really enjoyed, like philosophy or economics or theology. The reason? My time spent with those subjects was 100% in English. I never read a book on economics in Polish or anything about philosophy in Polish - so the vocabulary and the grammar surrounding that vocabulary (you know, the declensions and such) were all missing. But, ironically enough, my "kitchen Polish" was sometimes better than my "kitchen English," because I grew up my whole life hearing the names for different pots and pans and foods and so on in Polish.
Since that time, I've fixed this issue by... watching documentaries in Polish, reading non-fiction books in Polish, listening to the news in Polish, etc.
And I've used mostly input to "learn" or acquire Russian as well.
The final thing you said in this video is the most important: you believe in the Input method because you have personal experience of it. The biggest problem with the Input method is it sounds too good to be true! I struggled for 2 years using an early Input method (FRENCH IN ACTION) which nevertheless had a TON of traditional exercises (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) which I finally realized just slowed down the rate of input. A year ago, I paused FIA and switched to consuming as many graded audio books, books, podcasts, and TH-cam videos as possible ('graded' meaning aimed at a certain level, like A2 or B1). In one year my French improved vastly... I would say by 3 or 4 times. Anyone who says Input doesn't work, just hasn't tried it. BTW, Krashen now says the writing does help, and I agree with that. I have been writing essays, etc., for about 2 months and feel like it is helping to cement things that I 'know', but have not nailed down in my head. Surprisingly, my spelling in French is amazingly good. If I can pronounce the word, I can usually spell it correctly, even though I've never spent one minute studying French spelling. My verb conjugations are about what you would expect at a B1 level -- pretty good, but not great. But this is without studying them at all! I am sure they will get better as time goes on. Input works!
Yeah, and to be clear, I don't completely believe Krashen's hypothesis that we only acquire language through input. The thing that makes arguing about this so difficult is that what everyone is saying is very slightly different to each other, and people will often think that you're saying XYZ when you're really saying XZZ or something similar but genuinely different.
People will also use the motte and bailey argument to defend themselves rather than to say "Hang on, that's not what I'm saying..."
Really appreciate the honesty about your own learning experiences, it's really helpful to know what didn't end up working for you!
Nice video Lamont! I’m glad someone made a response and I’m glad it was you. The thing I found strange about Christian’s video was that for an obviously intelligent and eloquent guy the video ended up coming across like the kind of conversation you end up in with an uncle at the end of a night on the beer.
Also (this is my 4th comment), hell yes! I feel like this topic is need of a real in-depth analysis and I'm super excited that this long video is only part 1 of 3.
Awesome video bro, I've watched his video for some reason (didn't know his channel) and thank you so much for making this video, I really wish the input hypothesis were as popular as christian says haha
Great video. The fact that you can say quite a lot of things jn a short space of time but never really push forward is that you don't need to. It's like going to the same place on holiday every year - you can comfortably say enough to survive for a fortnight, but the next time you go you use roughly the same vocab all over again. Input is the best way forward and surely you want your level of comprehension to increase even if you never speak to anyone.
I met a girl who spent 4 years learning English but had very little outside the realm of studying it and gaining input from music mostly. After a month or two of talking with me when she was on the UK, she was basically fluent, it was wild how quickly she went from struggling to very competent.
Thanks for helping me to discover Christian's channel! Searching for something in french, found your opinion about input, I went there from curiosity and I saw that his content is amazing
😂
I became fluent in English primarily from watching TH-cam content in English starting from when I was in 5th grade. I knew some basics at that point as I was learning English in school since 3rd grade but I didn't really learn that much except basic grammar rules and some vocab. But getting mass input through TH-cam videos greatly increased my comprehension of the language. It helped so much in one year I was basically outputting at a native level without me even realizing. And at the time I didn't even realize what I was doing was making me fluent in English. And from my experience I think I can be cocky enough to say that mass input with a side of grammar and vocab is what will turn you fluent. And as someone said in this comment section, reaching fluency means acquiring the language, not leaning it. So yeah, what I'm tying to say is that Christian's opinion is bs.
love your videos. It's clear the dedication that you put in your content. Thank you for sharing what you know about language acquisition and congratulations for your channel
Thank you so much for this insightful analysis. Once again you're helping me put into words what I already knew intuitively from my own experience, which matches yours pretty accurately. I'd been watching American tv shows for years before starting to travel and getting a chance to actually speak it. Although already vastly more fluent than right out of school, it still felt very clumsy. But just this relatively small amount of speaking practice was a great catalyst for employing all the knowledge gained through massive input over the years and I made rapid progress.
Now with Polish, I tried speaking very early and also made rapid progress. But already the second week brought much less progress than the first, of course. And my speaking is hindered by not knowing enough words and their correct forms and not having a feel for the language yet, while I'm also having big trouble understanding any replies I get. So I've switched to massive input again, and I can already feel how it improves my ability to speak, while crucially also allowing me to understand the response.
Best experience so far was my French learning experience in France, where after a year of intensive study I arrived hardly able to speak at all. But after a few weeks of listening and speaking, while being able to do a bit of grammar review daily, this great synergy also lead to rapid progress. I remembered the rules while speaking and the examples, mistakes and doubts from the days before while reading about the applicable rules. Unfortunately for that I think you actually have to live in the country, while still having time to study a bit. Something which is especially hard to do for several different languages.
Anyways, now my goal with every language is to just study to a level where I can barely understand audiobooks. After a few audiobooks I understand most of it well and it just goes from there. Then I combine that with a bit of study or speaking, using this same synergy again, of having enough examples in my head and finding the right general rule to make sense of them.
Thanks for the very well-done video on this and those doses of logic you tend to bring to light.
Wonderful video. Loved the breakdown, and perfectly executed and explained. I agree with almost all of your points on the benefits input has brought you and can bring you. Just needs to be utilized properly. I also feel like input method is best with the 80-20 approach. 80 percent of time spent should be input, other 20 is your output. That is how I’ve been structuring my learning and I’ve been loving it for far. Been doing that method for about 2 years now
Very well put! I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said that it might be something they'd have to experience and realise for themselves. I feel like all the grammar and vocab (mostly grammar) that we learn in the early stages of our studies create this illusion of 'fluency' - we go from knowing nothing about a language to suddenly being equipped with all these tools that are supposed to be the fundamental makeup of the language and suddenly we feel like we can say anything we want. Not saying that studying grammar is unimportant (it isn't!), but we *cannot* in fact say anything we 'want', unless we're content with stitching together words into odd-sounding, awkward combinations. We can't create natural-sounding sentences that we haven't seen or heard before (except by happy accidents), and if we spend most of our time trying to output, then we won't be 'seeing' or 'hearing' much of anything at all, which means we'll be stuck saying things the same way we've been saying. There's input in the form of what the other person is saying to you, but you'll have to be super focused to really pay attention to all of it, maybe even write it all down for reinforcement later and it's just not very doable in an actual real-time conversation. The more you speak, the more it becomes apparent that you don't have much within you to draw from, so a shift in focus (to input) is probably inevitable. Unless, of course, they're happy with the level they're currently 'stuck' at, which is also possible. Maybe sounding natural isn't their goal - there are people who aim to just be able to get what they want to say across - in which case, yes, the amount of input they need would be significantly smaller than those who are aiming for a wider range of self-expression in their target languages.
Absolutely agree with you. I rarely come across people suggesting “input”… although it is what I’ve always been naturally drawn to.
Great video. It makes sense that It seems that you're advancing quickly with early output but it does not last.
I was born in Canada, when I was roughlu 1.5 years old my Swedish mother decided that Sweden was a better place to raise a child in than Canada. Since my dad couldn't really speak Swedish, my mom did and my dad spoke English. I think that helped quite a bit, had pretty good grades in English without even trying (could have gotten perfect grades if I could be motivated to).
13:55 Before the internet was widely available, cable TV certainly helped with getting English input. So many good cartoon series during the 90s, we where pretty spoiled for choice regarding how many good series that where aired at the time.
"three distinct schools of thought"
1. Classroom Study
2. Speak Early
2. Mass Input (?) 10:53
Excited for these next two videos. And really, just excited for the comprehensible input hypothesis overall. It's a very interesting theory, and it could revolutionize language learning if it (1) actually works and (2) we can convince the world that it works.
It definitely does work. It's not the whole story but I believe 90% of the hurdle in between people wanting to learn a language and learning that language is not understanding the role of comprehensible input. Everyone is in a rush to speak something that they don't yet grasp.
Your example with your friend who's mom spoke Japanese really does work in input's favor. She wouldn't've been able to succeed in an advanced Japanese class if she hadn't already been exposed to so much of it at home
To add on to your response I saw this video from a person who went to a French immersion school for 5 years where speaking in your target language is basically required all day everyday (or at least 50% depending on the school) and she had no problem outputting. She came to the realization that her output was never improving and her ability to understand natives was nearly impossible when the class visited Quebec. Her hypothesis was that she wasn't communicating/inputting with native speakers, only non natives and 1 native speaking teacher who was simplifying the French. When she started learning Japanese she made it a point to input with natives. She feels inputting with native Japanese was the key to advancing in a much shorter amount of time past her ability to speak in French th-cam.com/video/l8NbQkUaalw/w-d-xo.html
I have spent nine years learning classical piano, and five years on French. During that time I have had various teachers, and the one thing that stands out is that only one of them seemed to understand the mindset of a student in the various phases of learning. This always seems regrettable because the student is forced to, for the most part, find their own path through the hardest part of any subject. So as much as I like Canguro, I have to be wary in taking any advice. Especially when even teachers seem to disagree on how to teach.
I cannot agree with you more about speaking lots but not getting anywhere. I thought my speaking skills had improved, but I found my conversations were repetitions of the same old stuff. My plan has been to start a radical overhaul of how I am learning, and I have been picking up some good tips from this site. Thankyou.
Great video!!!
I study Turkish language at University as my major. What is interesting is that I had no experience of speaking to Turks, except for our native teacher (1 hour per week) for about 5 month. So from the very beginning of my journey (September) all the way to February I didn't speak Turkish more than 1 hour per week. Yet I worked hard did all of the assignments and wrote little useless texts about seasons and my family (which we had to memorize, but I always expressed myself by just writing it once and improvising remembering some key points).
And guess what, when we had a speaking club with Turkish students at my Uni that studied Ukrainian everyone was astonished by my speaking abilities, I was super concentrated and red and sweaty but I was creating sentences using almost all of the grammar we had learnt by then.
Only after a half a year I had my second experience of speaking to a Turk and it was fine, because colloquial language was almost a completely unknown thing for me at that point. I hadn't watched any TV shows, I wasn't speaking to people, I only studied what was given at my uni and reading graded home reading book.
Now, I have studied Turkish for almost 2 years and I feel pretty comfortable speaking with people on daily topics, about world issues or complex topics and I understand a lot. From what I understand I have B1 level now.
What I think is important is to work, in any way possible, speaking practice is important, but it's better to have someone who can speak at a level you understand Comprehensible input kind of thing, but it's not only about input, it's about materials and practice. I have never hesitated to speak Turkish, even though I knew a tiny bit, I was even eager to speak, when there was a chance. However, the key point here is a lot of work, mixed with speaking or writing practice (So basically Lamont's situation).
The video is great. I simply love this channel.
Okuduğunuz için teşekkürler ;)
Like Canguro's video, also superb from a different perspective: From my experience, input, output, and feedback all have to be meaningful taking into consideration a learner's goals, prior knowledge and motivation.
I really respect how you still heart comments on old videos.
My experience confirms your response to Canguro 100%. Sometimes my first job with a new student is to have a long conversation about their expectations of how the process looks and what works and what doesn't. This can get interesting especially with older students who went to schools that followed traditional models (looking at you, former Soviet Union! - but to be fair, everywhere else too). Sometimes I do traditional textbook exercises as a kind of "learning theater", not so different from the "safety theater" my school did by putting up tiny little plastic "barriers" on desks to prevent the spread of COVID... Anyway, the difference I notice between my students who have started a daily input habit as their primary time investment and the ones who haven't is dramatic, and gets more and more noticeable the longer the students have been at it.
Finally someone responded, thank you Lamont!
Very interesting, Lamont. I kind of have experience of all strategies you talk about. And I support it all! :-)
I'm a bit on marathon on your channel now :D but this channel is very good, anyway i wanted to say that i wouldn't believe in input based approach if i hadn't learned English to very high level only through input and doing it unconsciously. I was just reading and listening to stuff that i enjoyed because of course English side of the internet is the broadest. Overtime i became fluent without doing any grammar exercises, without speaking, without nothing. That's why i believe in it now in my journey of learning Italian to very advanced level.
As always very interesting video. I agree that the importance of input (and reading in particular) isn't really accepted although with the Internet I it's spreading some. But a lot of people, for good reason, just get overwhelmed when they try to read a book in a foreign language or turn of the subtitles completely etc and then to keep doing that for long periods of time - out of the question. So they automatically reject this method out of hand. But your own experience between the two methods I think is very convincing. And it's well documented through you videos like you said. Looking forward to your next video on this.
The way I see it is that input is the foundation of output, if you have massive input it potentiate your output phase, the reverse is not nearly as true
Steve Kaufman is one of the main TH-cam proponents of input, but he does stress that 'to get good at speaking, you have to speak a lot'. Input gives you the words and expressions needed for a meaningful conversation, but for conversation to become 'natural' and 'fluent', you need tonnes of speaking practice to develop the necessary language 'reflexes'.
My personal experience definitely attests to this. With daily input, my knowledge of French grammar and vocabulary is significantly better today than it was 18 months ago. But I speak French less fluently, as a result of personal life changes that have meant that I have far fewer opportunities to speak the language.
I have also met British PhD students specialising in French literature who have a highly advanced level of French reading (they have to read French texts in their original language), but who aren't able to produce the language to a highly advanced level, simply because they have no need to (they write and speak for an anglophone academic audience).
Whatever the case, it's an interesting question. Great vid as usual!
Input is how I (and so many of my peers) learnt English! I never realised it had a name before lurking in the online polyglot community. I've never seen anyone promote it offline.
I agree with Christian from Canguro. Learning a language isn't just about input. In Germany, I've seen immigrants who can speak decently with basic grammar and words (A1/A2 level). They can say what they need, but that's about it, despite tons of input they have here. To move beyond, taking a language course (or studying on your own) is key. You've got to learn more advanced words and grammar, fix your mistakes, and realize when you mess up. Without that extra effort, you stay stuck at the same level. Christian nails it - it's more than just input; it's about pushing yourself to get better.
95% of people need more input, not more practice.
Some people need more practice, but that's not most people.
Thank you for the intelligent discussion and food for thought. I’m learning Spanish. I’ve noticed that I seem to have more confidence speaking when I have completed a high amount of input. (My listening comprehension is coming along albeit slowly). IMO it would take me considerably longer to speak confidently if I hadn’t read so much. After seeing the words and phrases numerous times, they started to stick. I am more likely to remember them and use them in the correct context. This from a woman who first took Spanish by correspondence and by that I mean with a textbook, cassette tapes, and an occasional phone call with my tutor. (80s). I had no other resources and no Spanish speaking people around me. I still managed to learn and did quite well in this class. But it was a high level of input. It was all I had. If a high level or even a similar level of output was necessary, I would not have passed my class. Instead it lit a fire in me and I continued to read and learn. That being said, my listening and speaking level are impaired and I need to put more focus on that to progress.
My problem is: all my input is watching videos talking about input and language learning!
I have that problem too, i'm seeing it's working
Love your sense of humor. It's so down to earth and it's like you're making fun of yourself sometimes :v
I don't stick with only one school of thought, i integrated the three of them, at differents stages i prioritize one over another and it's working well with learning japanese and english ! Great video btw
It's fine to integrate them but actually they are "integrated" anyway, but I still firmly believe that they are very different.
I need to do a video on this because it's complex haha.
I'm just over a year of only reading books in Spanish at age 50. I've shattered my previous high school level many fold...tried other stuff and it's harder to keep going and harder to make noticable progress
OMG! Thanks. This video is unbelievable and finally I found somebody who try to explain what's happening in the language field. I should say battle field ;)
I just want to add some anecdotal proof that purely input does do wonders. I started learning swedish a little over a year ago because i was going to be starting my exchange year this august. I was in full time high school, so i didnt feel like actually ’schooling’ my way through swedish. That one year before i moved, i spoke almost nothing, except for to my dog. I combed through the internet to watch any swedish videos i could find, subtitles or not and watched those repeatedly. Same with other resource i could find, i watched the whole of pippi långstrump on svt (swe subs) and followed the julkalender that year. I never touched a grammar book or language app except for on specific things i couldnt figure out myself (like the difference between tycka, tänka, tror) occasionaly. Multiple people thought i was crazy, that id learn nothing by just getting input of stuff i barely understood. Flashforward to this august, arriving in sweden and blowing people’s minds just by understanding them when they spoke to me in their language. It took me about a month to start using swedish myself and ditch the english the mos
I just saw that the ending got messed up.
The most i could. Passed the three month mark today and i would say i am conversationally fluent in swedish, im far from perfect and obviously lack a ton of vocabulary but i prefer this to the way language is taught in school. No, my grammar isnt always correct, but it feels like i’ve allowed myself to start to create a feeling for the language similar to the one i have in my native language, where you instinctively know what’s wrong or not without being able to pinpoint why. After all the grammar was based on the language and not the other way around seeing as no native speaker has studied grammar to be able to speak their own language, it’s an unconscious process.
I’m very comfortable understanding my classes, taking notes simultaniously, texting my friends, speaking swedish almost fulltime and i actually helped presenting on my school’s öppet hus today to people who didnt know i wasnt swedish until halfway through. I’d say the most important thing is to find a way in which you enjoy the process. I never liked my 8 years of french classes more than the next person, but I am genuinly enjoying the challenge of learning this language the best i can on my own terms. I’ve always been interested in languages and I’m over the moon that I’ve found a way that works wonders for me and that i love doing. I’d love to learn more languages in the future but i want to focus on the ones i’ve already kind of started on first and improve those. (Dutch as mother tongue, english, french, german and now swedish, gotta love being european). Thanks for your take on it Lamont and for finally giving me an explanation for the way i intuitively like to learn languages.
Hey Lamont, great video btw! I just have a question if you don't mind. When acquiring a language, we know that we can learn grammar and vocabulary solely through immersion. But if there is one word that keeps appearing and you just can't figure out the meaning, is it okay to look up the translation of it so you figure it out? Or is it better to just leave it be and you'll somehow know the meaning in the future. How damaging is looking up translations when you're doing an input heavy method?
Great stuff. Glad I subscribed!
my mom had a similar experience to your cousin! her parents both spoke spanish natively and used it around the house, but she only spoke english. not a word of spanish. in high school she had to take spanish classes, and by the end of her high school career she was completely fluent. i hope i have a similar experience 😅 i understand spanish pretty well but im horrible at speaking it. but with a little studying i’m sure i can get there
Lamont, I have a question for you. What stage of learning do you think is the best time to get into an audio program, keeping in mind the input theory, as these programs are incredibly output heavy but at the same time also help beginners build a good foundation ?
PS- It'd be so cool to watch you review different audio courses like glossika, language transfer, etc.
We are all anticipating the duolingo video
I haven't watched the second video yet as of this posting, but I struggle to think of people who insist on input only. Anki is a huge topic as well as dictionaries, both native to target language and monolingual. In fact, I see acknowledgment that input is a long term, compounding type of investment, that if your goal is to go on vacation or greet a foreigner at a business meeting you're better off rehearsing from phrase books. Most of the internet language community is focused on acquisition efficiency with the goal of fluency in mind.
Great video. i had problems with Christian's video as well. I learned russian and spanish through input. Not perfectly, but conversationally and of course continue practicing everday. My wife learned English the same way. From experience, speaking happens pretty easily after you have enough input to easily understand a normal conversation. I'm not sure I understand the argument against input. Languages are pre-existing things. You can't learn history without inputing history. In the same way, you have to input vocabulary and grammar in order to speak and write a language. The traditional classroom method focuses heavily on grammar and this seems to work, because speakers can manipulate a smaller set of vocabulary words using the algorithms inherent in grammar. They always sound strange because you can translate your own language into patterns that are correct grammatically but rarely used by native speakers. But this is still input - just more focused on grammar manipulation than pattern recognition. In practice, comprehensible input is all about memorizing patterns. I know that it isn't clearly stated this way, but that's what is actually happening - you hear in context words and phrases so often, you can manipulate them yourself. The third method you mention - speaking. Well, I'm puzzled by it. I'm not sure you could learn to speak a language without getting input first. So, by speaking early, I think you mean you first learn phrases through input, and then you practice these phrases. Well, this is still input. And so the question that is raised is not "does input work or not work", but how much and what type of input. And so I think this debate is not really a debate about the mechanics of language learning but a debate about pedagogy.
I think the problem with saying "You still get input when you speak early" is that it very much puts the emphasis in the wrong place, because unlike other activities, with language learning, we actually have no idea what success would even look like before we have a model of the language. In music, you know what the music you're trying to play sounds like. In writing, you have read other books.
The problem with "Speak from day 1" is that it is like saying "Write your first book before you've read a book and along the way, you might read a few pages of someone else's book."
@@daysandwords My point was that people who denigrate input are mistakenly thinking that their methods aren't also input driven. I completely agree with you that the most efficient method of learning is comprehensible input. Every method uses input, but by emphasizing input, Krashen's method gives you the most bang for your buck. Great channel btw
@@themorrishouseofwizardry3555 Ah ok I get you.
I spoke to some language learners yesterday and they thought that my learning Spanish by watching Peppa Pig and taking no classes was just crazy. Input is not mainstream at all, no matter what Christian says.
I also find Christian's manner of speaking English extremely irritating although, of course, he is aiming it at non-native speakers and he knows what is best for them.
It's very, very painful. How are second-language learners going to get a feel for natural English prosody when exposed to speech like that?
Not mainstream, but very common on how non-native speakers of English learn English, by input.
I'm watching Peppa Pig for Spanish as well. I never thought I'd ever watch Peppa Pig intentionally but here I am lol.
@@jamesmccloud7535 Peppa Pig is great for learning languages, because there is so much repetition and even a narrator to explain the story to you. I went through a 4 hour compilation of Peppa Pig and when I went back and restarted episode 1 , I was amazed how much easier it was.
This is such an underrated point. Teachers speak artificially so their students hear each syllable, but in doing so they remove all connected-speech and actually (re)introduce letters that natives omit or morph in natural speech. That's why it's so common for advanced students to discover they can barely understand natives, only to check the subtitles/transcripts and find they actually do know most/all of the words used. That's what happened to me when I finally started moving into native Russian content, a good 1.5 years into 'serious, proper' study: I couldn't understand 95% of it, and what I could understand was pronounced wildly different to the complicated, unnatural speech I'd spent so long perfecting. That setback led me to start critiquing language methods in general; but as you say, I really had to dive deep before I came across Matt, Lamont, Olly, etc. People who learned English through TV/TH-cam understand it intuitively, but the broader language-learning world really isn't talking about input or immersion at all.
On the topic of input being main stream, it wasn't at my school and that wasn't long ago (finished 6 years ago). I've had to learn Italian and English in school and while we did read some articles and textbook short stories and stuff, regular input like reading a book or watching TV was never something we were encouraged to do or something we talked about. I started to do that myself at some point with English, just for fun, and improved massively :)
In my experience with both Icelandic and Japanese, I can say that speaking at the beginning is probably not the best idea. However, at some point you do need to start speaking (and not when you're already passively fluent) in order for your mouth and brain to get used to producing the new sounds and quickly compose sentences in your brain. I think there is a healthy halfway between the two schools of thoughts.
Also, if your goal is communicating as soon as possible, than starting a bit early to speak makes sense. If your goal is ultimate fluency, then you can wait longer before outputting.
I think it should be a mix. I did a very output based approach with my portuguese and I never learned a language as fast. BUT I also already knew my mothertongue German, Rnglish, a little french and chinese. So English and French were helping me plus the fact that I already practiced the skill of learning a language.
But you could argue what output based means. I had almost no active vocabulary in the beginning so I would literally tell my teacher what I wanted to say, they'd translate it for me, I took notes and repeated what they said and had entire conversations like that. Of course that always i cluded their part of the conversation with translation which again is input. At the same time I watched a lot of shows and listened to music and studied the lyrics of my favorite songs.
So in the end of the day, I think the secret is to combine it all. As you said many immigrant kids understand their parents language perfectly but can't speak. It's cause they don't practice it! I claim it's not just lack of input but simply lack of practice. If they'd be forced to reply in their language only they would also be perfectly fluent in their parents language but unfortunately many parents let it slide ehen they reply in the local language OR the even more common bilingual child issue: Use the local word for the ones they forgot in the other language. At that point at least they'd need fo be corrected and repeat what that word is called in the other language but that rarely happens at home.
I in the other hand would get those corrections when talking to my italki teachers and therefore I'd keep improving by getting the specific inputs I would be missing out on. I believe you can at some point hit a plateau like that as you did and I did so woth my portuguese after a bit over a year (same timeframe as you me tion). Then it has to be more input based cause in oral conversations we don't use as wide of a vocabulary as if we read a book for example. That's why you had a level boost after switching to more input based studying. I don't think your approach was therefore wrong : inefficient but I just think you missed the moment when you had to mix things up
Thank God! I thought my issue with russian was BARELY speaking. I practice speaking copying the Pimsleur method and making it my own for the most relevant sentences. But I am too afraid to speak (output) to native speakers as practice. I still wholeheartedly believe I need to incorporate conversation practice, but it’s so helpful to hear about how your output heavy approach to swedish barely helped you to progress and didn’t contribute to the understanding side of it. Thanks for your honest takes on this video.