When I came to the United States at age 11, I acquired English fluency in about two years and remember being in bilingual education for that period of time. I remember that it was listening to input that was made comprehensible, as Stephen Krashen proposes in his theory, that allowed me not only to aquire the language, but to do so at the native speaker level. Different factors helped me, however the most important was that I listened to everyone, teachers, classmates, family, friends, television and music with much interest and then one day I simply started to speak pretty close to the native level and shortly after that I reached the level of a native speaker.
First of all, it’s amazing that you sit down with so many people who’ve dedicated their entire lives to language learning. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re always right or that I agree with everything they say, but in a time when so many self-proclaimed language experts are spreading nonsense online, I find it fascinating to hear from people who’ve done decades of dedicated research. Thank you!!! It was really interesting. Overall, I also think vocabulary is the hardest part, especially in the long run. For me, it becomes particularly challenging around the B2 level and beyond because, no matter how much you immerse yourself, some words just show up so rarely. That’s why I started focusing on one topic at a time for 2-3 weeks, only watching and reading content about that topic and using Anki for active recall. That said, I have to disagree with the idea that a teacher brings me value or is even necessary. I don’t need anyone to teach me a language, and I’m convinced I’m more efficient without one. Of course, this doesn’t mean teachers can’t be valuable for others - it just doesn’t work for me. I had English in school for over 10 years and attended a language center three times a week, which is quite common in East Asia. Looking back, I wish I could’ve saved my parents the money. Ever since, I’ve learned Thai, Korean, and Spanish almost for free and in a fraction of the time it took me to learn English-all on my own.
Very interesting. Since you say that you don't like learnnig with teachers, can you mention which method has been better for you to acquire all those new languages?
@@sevillavieira Sure! But this is probably going to be a long one. I have different stages, I would say. In the first stage, which I call language discovery, I start by consuming vlogs of native speakers that provide subtitles. I use the premium version of Language Reactor to display dual subtitles and save words I find interesting with one click. Language Reactor saves the word along with 1-3 sentences of context. At the very beginning though, I often use rather AI to create very basic sentences with these words. Sometimes, I even mix the target language word with the rest of the sentence in my native language or English. This way, I still see the word in context without feeling overwhelmed. I then mass-upload these sentences to Anki and review them daily while continuing to consume content and add new material to Anki. I also create language islands, which are personalized sentences about myself and topics that interest me. I generate these sentences with AI and have them corrected by native speakers on HiNative. These sentences also go into Anki for active recall, and I practice them by talking to myself. Because I follow this approach, I like to say I learn through immersion, not just input. I immerse myself in the language while actively looking things up, unlike comprehensible input supporters, who often avoid doing so. Once I get past the initial beginner phase, I switch almost entirely to reality shows and dramas while continuing the same process as before. At this stage, I also start echoing what I hear in these shows. I would watch these shows anyway, so it’s a total win for me. Eventually, I start talking to people and reading articles or books using a pop-up dictionary. I rarely focus on grammar because I tend to acquire it naturally through immersion and Anki. Most importantly, I stay consistent with Anki. This makes my immersion feel much faster, more meaningful, and increasingly enjoyable over time. And that’s basically it. I can totally see the value of a teacher for people who prefer a different learning style, but for me, I’d feel like I was wasting time and money. Plus, I’ve found a way to learn languages that’s genuinely fun for me. I love watching vlogs and shows, and I actually enjoy testing myself with active recall.
@@Yihwa-G__Amazing, I think that you’re right, sometime it’s up to us because is our motivation that help us to learn everyday, I took English since kindergarten to Highschool but tbh in my 20’s I can achieved a good level, now I want to learn mandarin is so interesting for me, I hope someday I can speak it fluently hehe greetings.
@@Yihwa-G__ I also wonder if you'd ever used stuff or materials like textbooks, grammar or courses to enhance your skills in all those languages. In my English learning journey I'm working mainly with comprehensible input (2-4 hours a day), but I also tray to do at least 4 times a week one Oxford English Lesson of a course called American English File which we already had at home. It takes me about 1 to 1 and a half hour each lesson, though, and I'm not sure if it's a wasting of time. What do you think about?, Did you use any materials like this one?
Great podcast. We actually have really good examples of the input type of learning. They are the creole varieties of different languages that shows that a language can be learnt by exposure alone but rather in an inaccurate way affecting meaning and pronunciation. Balance is key in this case.
I’ve learned English, Polish and Norwegian using “Krashen’s” method before knowing about it. The take away is: do everything, see what works. He did not answer at any moment how to go about learning besides word lists… he just said teachers are important, him being one of them. Also, I did not hear how many languages he has managed to learned if any at all… My native language is Spanish
As language teachers, monolingual native speakers are good tacticians, but lousy strategists. They can teach any aspect of a language in great detail, they just don't know how to teach a language in its entirety. The same goes for researchers.
Indeed, he has experience teaching English in Japan. He was teaching in English, and just being a native speaker was enough to qualify for that job. We also should consider that Japan is absolutely terrible at English proficiency.
We don't know about the languages he has learnt, but it shouldn't matter, he's sharing his theoretical knowledge, not his practical experiences. I think this is why Loic showed him to us.
Doesn't matter what languages he speaks or doesn't. You do know that most professional athletes make for bad coaches, right? While amazing at what they do, they don't really know how they acquired their skills exactly nor how to generalize that knowledge to other people in all their uniqueness. So, right away, whatever master polyglots say on the matter does not necessarily mean it's true for anyone but them and people like them. And that's why you get all sorts of people who mastered foreign languages using all sorts of methods: CI + Anki (Steve Kaufmann), content on steroids (including not quite comprehensible input) + Anki (Matt vs Japan and the AJATT people), good old translation (Luca), intensive college courses (Oriental Perl) and so on, and so forth. This guy here was supposed to give some theoretical background on why he thinks, as of today, Krashen's theory doesn't hold water. Which he kinda did, but kinda didn't: I'd love to see more links to studies, for example. Besides, no one seems to know what Krashen's theory exactly is. Learning in L2 from context is not exactly new, it's been around since the 19th century, if not earlier than that
Krashen's theory (the words he uses) has been discredited, but the language phenomenon he's attempting to describe is still very much real. Acquisition = implicit knowledge Learning = explicit knowledge Krashen paved the way for decades of further research. Simply saying his theory has been discredited is ignoring how truly influential his research has been.
To elaborate, Krashen's idea of 'comprehensible input' hasn't been defined in specific terms and thus hasn't been measured, making it a redundant scientific term for theory construction. The same goes with his idea of the 'affective filter' and the 'monitor'. The issues with his theory is in theory construction, namely that he hasn't properly defined his terms. Much like how Darwin didn't define 'natural selection'. However, decades later other researchers built upon Darwin's theory, by discovering DNA for example. Krashen is brilliant because he focused our attention on a very real phenomenon, which is that we have a dual knowledge system - explicit and implicit.
@jesse_ledesma Explicit knowledge of a language is NOT a language. Language has a specific area in our brain, usually left temporal lobe. All explicit knowledge is stored in the frontal lobe. Theoretically, we can use explicit knowledge to TRAIN our language in a desired way. But explicit knowledge has no effect on implicit knowledge, it's the training that contributes to implicit knowledge.
@@Alec72HD I guess Krashen's main contribution is that he showed that one can internalize vocabulary and grammar without explicitly training the implicit language model (although, that is also not quite right, but close enough maybe)
@@Alec72HDWe can learn aspects of language explicitly and with time they become implicit. It’s more effective than trying to learn everything implicitly, for adults anyway, not children.
Those ideas were not developed by Krashen, they had been around in the nineteenth century if not earlier. His theory contains numerous false assertions. And he didn’t even tell us how we know if something is learnt or acquired.
I think about this a lot because I feel like anyone I've listened to online that said they learned via "immersion" still totally did academic study of some sort. Maybe not as intensive as a college degree but had some introduction to the language. And as a Spanish learner, my conjugation charts from high school Spanish have been immensely helpful to my study today lol
By now I think there's plenty of people who didn't do that at all, and it still works. Whether it's more effective - and whether it's more effective for *everybody* is a big question
@@Limemill oh I imagine a combination of the 2 is ideal (not going to speculate on the ratios of which holds more weight because I'm sure there's someone who will argue about that & I truly don't know), but for adults, I imagine, having actual lessons would help immensely with their immersion process. Just like for a student, having access to IRL native speakers is key
@@msmendes214 Yeah, I agree. This ratio will probably depend on the personality type and whether or not the learner is neurotypical, so it's even harder to formalize or generalize it.
@msmendes214 Some explicit learning is very inefficient, borderline useless. And some could be fairly useful, though not entirely necessary. Learning ABOUT L2 in your native language L1, that's a waste of time. Sure, a few hours could be devoted by a complete beginner. But the goal is to progress to learning L2 (explicitly) without using L1 in the process. That is, IF you aspire to achieve a fairly advanced level eventually.
Excellent interview. What he says matches my modest experience learning French and German. I’m glad that you are interviewing a range of people. Unfortunately many online language commentators tend to interview only Krashen and his disciples, which gives a very distorted view of the SLA field. In truth there are countless theories of SLA, and countless sub-fields, Krashen’s is but one theory, and as I understand it the parts of his theory that are valid were not developed by him. His theory is in the view of many mostly nonsense and not supported by the evidence e.g. neurological studies. I followed his method for years and gradually realised that it just doesn’t work, not for me anyway.
This actually mostly confirms a lot of Krashens work. Krashen gets the most important things right, the need for spaced repetition with a variety of contexts. For example, Krashen advocates for narrow reading, which massively increases the opportunities for spaced repetition in a variety of contexts. He also advocates for extensive reading and listening, with the concept of i+1, which again produces spaced repetition in a variety of contexts. I would say though that there are some unnecessary limitations to Krashens approach with can be overcome by using the more flexible approach of Paul Nation for more efficient learning.
If you learn the basics of the grammar of a language, the rest is vocabulary building. The greater the vocabulary at your fingertips, the easier it is to communicate. As the professor says, it's all about communication.
I feel like you guys are kind of talking about two different things with the intentional versus incidental discussion. Schmitt is talking specifically about vocab, whereas proponents of implicit learning are typically referring to the acquisition of grammatical structures, which is indeed stage like and primarily implicit. I think it’s easy to mix these two things up. In my experience has a language teacher, the perfect balance is intentional learning of important vocabulary, lots of input, and communicative tasks and discussions with a reactive focus on grammar as needed
thats just not true. You can learn so much vocabulary from input. It is very hard to learn that level of vocab through word lists or memorisation. Think of how many words you know in English that you explicitly learned vs how many you seem to have just acquired
I agree. I think that, at the first stage, it's very important work in learning by heart at least the 1.000 (or a bit more) most frequently used words of the target language, and the most commons uses of sentences and expressions. With this base it is easy and enjoyable to get comprehensible input at the required level.
@@sevillavieira Even with those first 1000 words, input will help you aquire them. The best way I think is to try and learn them AND do easy input (e.g. netflix shows with subtitles). The 1000 most common words will pop up all the time. Rote memorising 1000 words is VERY hard and not enjoyable at all
I enjoy his critique of course books not recycling vocabulary well enough. Where I think this researcher may not be fully informed is with the work of Benico Mason who has developed a method called "Story Listening" which works with complete beginners. She works with Krashens theories basically. She produces good results.
Super, excellent, wonderful, fabulous, extraordinary, amazing, unimaginable, fascinating... Very useful for foreign language learners compared to those, I have ever seen. I am not a native speaker and don't live in an english spoken country and I have never been abroad. Until now, I listened plenty of unreal advices on TH-cam. But this a realistic way of learning a foreign language. You may face thousands of promises related to learning foreign language in a few weeks or days. But I have been learning English since 2022 and I am aware of that without knowing certain amount of vocabulary learners haven't chance to reach advanced level. We need to keep in mind, in a real communication, you can't say your partner "don't say the words that I don't know" 🙂
So many things about Krashen's theory that Dr Shmitt doesn't understand. Actually, explicitly teaching English (L2) in English is still a form of Comprehensible Input. Same as teaching Biology or Science in a target language is also a CI. What doesn't work, is teaching L2 explicitly, but mostly using L1 in the process.
@malenalucero6473 Science of language acquisition is very rudimentary, not an exact science, not yet. So yes, I can dare. There are a few opposing theories, so someone has to be wrong.
You can learn some L2 from the L1. At the start it is the best method, until one starts to understand some L2. Even in later stages it is much more efficient to learn some grammar in the L1. For example - Ich will ein Haus bauen lassen - means I want to have a house built. I figured out how to construct that phrase while in my L1. It took me a while to figure out the function of lassen. I had heard such phrases countless times in the L2, and I could not for the life of me figure out what the construction meant or how it worked. I have the same experience in French, I have to think about the grammar in my L1, it’s like solving a puzzle. One thing I notice is that words often have a basic concrete meaning, and I have to discover what it is. That concrete meaning then explains its use in other situations. This idea that you cannot learn any L2 using the L1 is nonsense, a falsehood propagated by Krashen. Of course one needs input, and in later stages one simply cannot become fluent without massive input.
Thanks a lot for this podcast Usually I stumble soon demonisation of memorisation In my psychology exams I have a lot of technical terms and on top of that I have to understand the concepts Best is to use both like the professor said
This relates to learning to read the New Testament in Koine Greek which maybe not general to everyone. One of the things I notice is people try to read the New Testament by learning more and more grammar and this is an almost impossible task - especially when identifying all the grammatical features of a verb and clause, so the more grammar you have the slower your reading will be, the greater the frustration and of course people give up. People are often on their second grammar book and only know a couple of hundred words. This can't work. If, on the other hand, one acquires vocab one's reading speeds up to close to that of L1 and that is a virtuous cycle because in reading more you revise more words you already know (in context) and learn words from context and acquire grammar implicitly and it's enjoyable. The other direction you go you just get slower and slower and more dispirited. And then give up. With NT Greek 1,000 words of higher frequency will give you a coverage of 90-95% of words and some texts are a lot easier than others ether because of syntax, strucutre or because the passage is welll known. I myself use Anki for NT Greek - it seems to work quite well, but textbooks will present vocab lists in their chapters (in a textbook I think the reading passages and vocab are the most important things). Because the words are presented in different lists and readings it reinforces the learning. If people are willing to go through the pain of going through a grammar book then a few years of going through word lists/Anki decks is a good price to pay if the end result is good. By the way - if anyone is designing teaching materials then definitely do all you can to promote contextual learning (with or without explicit lists etc) [pictures/context etc]. Where it can be done this is clearly the more potent method and actually a lot of progress can be made. Equally more effort identifying low/lower vocab stories for learners so they aren't overwhelmed and can get a good reaing speed. I don't know if this is done but adapatation of classics that remove rare or archaic words would be really great.
The only important factor is uninterrupted time spent with L2. Any monolingual method for learning L2 would work just as good as any other. It depends more on personal preference.
It makes no sense. Schmitt says that comprehensible input works, but only if you have enough time, and then talks about study trough lists and flaschcards beause, in that way, you can learn many aspects of a family word. In one hour you could learn maby 50 words, but you have to review those words in order to not forget it. Doesnt it requires a lot of time too? The study trough comprehensible input makes a natural seletcion of the most commons words related to the topics that you are interested in. When you go deep in those topics or pic new interests, you will increase your vocabulary naturaly (sorry about mistakes. Brazillian learning english here)
On top on that, he mentions that you cannot avoid using CI or else you won't be able to distinguish between finer differences and get a handle on collocations and to use words in appropriate contexts
I've used flashcards quite a lot with some success. (I made my own little app for this.). One problem I found was that I could learn a word very well and remember it each time it came up in the app but when I needed to use the word outside of the context of the app i.e. a 'real life' situation either reading, writinig or listening then I would not remember it.
A couple of strategies can help a bit with that: 1) When you see the word, don't just try to memorise the word/spelling - _also_ intentionally think about the thing or action it represents as well (e.g. if it's a word for "elephant", it should bring an elephant to mind - not just "a word"). 2) Make flashcards with very short simple phrases, using those new vocabulary words in different contexts, not just flashcards with single "isolated" words.
This researcher said that vocabulary can't be learned by flashcards alone. We need contextual use, but flashcards help reinforce what is learned or prevent forgetting, making learning a bit more efficient over time. But he said we need a variety of contexts to really learn a word.
This guy, Dr. Norbert Schmitt, is spot on, but note that he is talking about English, not foreign languages. Why is that important? For English, a word family is like steal and stealthy, in other words, the meanings can get fairly distant. In German, they can be similarly distant, but generally they are not, more like ice and icebox. Still learning beziehen (no. 878 in the frequency dictionary) before beziehungsweise (no. 291) is greatly advisable because simpler words are easier to memorise. But you have the deck set by the frequency, not the word family root. Another complaint he implied against Anki (at least no one has answered me yet) is that Anki shows you the word automatically for an adjustable period, often 10 seconds, but that becomes contextual learning. Intentional learning means I take the time to memorise the word before I move to the next word. And that takes me minutes the first few times. If I can set the cards to advance manually, please instruct on how. And third, he spoke correctly about textbooks and their vocabulary choices. The original source textbooks come from the period when a shopper had to request a clerk give them items from the shelves and that appears to be what that vocabulary is intended for, those instructions. But what he did not mention is that frequency dictionaries do the same thing. They take words from all spheres, not just the one you are interested in. Thus, that beziehungsweise above is common is you are reading technical literature, but not very useful for cafe conversations.
Vocabulary is probably the most important. You can learn all there is to know about grammar, but you get to a point where you know all the how's of grammar, yet you arent good at using it yet. At this point, you dont need to learn grammar, you need to practice it. If you dont have a large vocabulary yet, you cant practice it nearly as efficiently. Not to mention, with enough vocabulary, you can figure a huge percentage of sentences out without knowing grammar.
As someone who's been in academia and doing a PhD, I can assure everyone that there is A LOT of "research" which is completely bollocks. I would like to see his methodology and results before taking his word for it, because many people who have actually learned several languages appear to disagree with him, and just "having done research" doesn't prove anything.
😅 vocabulary lists are not for me. I prefer comprehensive input. It has worked for me in the past and now I am learning German and Russian through comprehensive imput.😊
@@and-xl2ey I watch them with subtitles and without them. I dont try to learn. I dont suffer. I enjoy the process. I have an account on TH-cam to watch and save videos in German on subjects I am interested in. I am starting interacting with Germans on TH-cam and Reddit. I use deepl but try to write the first version in German. I do shadowing sometimes to practice my pronunciation and watch German videos with subtitles in German. I am an absolute beginner in Russian. I only watch A1 and A2 stories. I dont try to memorize words. I let the brain acquire them. Soon I will be learning a song in Russian and I will sing it. It is a song I love from a Russian cartoon. Which language do you want to learn?
Where Krashen is partially correct is with grammar acquisition being different than learning, but he is incorrect about vocabulary acquisition being different than learning. I think we can use Bruce Lee's analogy, take what useful, and discard what is useless. Conscious grammar is not the same as acquired grammar, although it is probably helpful to have Conscious knowledge of grammar for enhancing comprehension and noticing, and both of these probably improve the acquisition of grammar overtime.
If you manage to put together a contradictory debate over the validity of the "Krashen theory", with legitimate debaters, that video would probably make a very high number of view, because as far as I know, there is none on youtube. It would be really interesting because each side says the same thing "experiments prove my point". Bref ça serait vraiment unique, et une vrai avancée dans le débat sur ce sujet, qui est quand même au centre de toute le milieu des polyglottes, au moins au niveau populaire en tout cas.
I don't know but I have been self learning Latin mainly through CI and I am much further along after 4 months then a year of German got me in that language at college. College taught me I was horrible at language, Kashin and those who followed in his footsteps showed me I can learn languages. The way they taught me in school did not work for me.
Interesting interview. Thanks for it. However, I beg to disagree with Dr Norbert Schmitt. I understand that having especially studied vocabulary learning, he has come to think that this is the most important part of learning but you can guess what a grammarian would say, can't you? There is a metaphor I like about learning a language: when one learn how to drive a car, what is the most essential tool you need to master? The clutch? the Throttle? The driving wheel? The rear view mirror? The brakes? Actually, it's none of them, it's all about articulating them, combining them according to what you want to do. In matters of language acquisition, I feel the same. Every learner has to combine four basic skills - reading, writing, listening and speaking - plus a major skill that supports each of the others: thinking.
@@liammarshall-butler3384 Okay, but he says something more than grammarian would say the same about grammar. He says vocabulary is the key. My point is that vocabulary is not the key because there is no key. This key metaphor is misleading learners. There are just methods that are more or less efficient. How can I say? The idea of key suggests either a starting point or something that can quickly get you fully enter the world of some new language. Does this really make sense?
@@jean-louismorgenthaler4725 He didn't say key, he said he was going to make his case that vocabulary was the most important, but that a grammar would say grammar is the most important and that grammar is important.
I actually do think vocab is the key to progression in a language up to a certain point. If you understand all the words in a sentence you will very likely understand or guess its meaning. If you understand all the grammar but none of the words you are genuinely lost. I agree vocab can be taught and also acquired through, say, pleasure reading. Vocab plus language in context (reading/listening/speaking/writing).
I’ve bootstrapped half a dozen languages to enjoyable reading level, by 1) readingdetective novels and popular science books on topics I’m familiar with, *OR* 2) shadowing those audiobooks at reduced speed with hi frequency bias *BUT* never distracting myself by “multitasking” both methods. And being very stingy about stopping to use the dictionary. Why? Popular writing serves as a functional frequency list. Detectives repeat events again and again, so do science books. After I’ve met a word I don’t know several times in sentences, I’m willing to believe I should stop to learn it, and that I will notice it as it appears again in meaningful sentences as I read on. But even an apparently significant single use isn’t worth looking up until it bothers me and I know I’ll see it again a few times. And audiobooks are the densest source of auditory input. Language is made entirely of sound: phonemes, syllables, rhythm and tones. Vocabulary, grammar and meaning are higher order patterns of sounds. We do acquire impressions of the frequencies that sounds and longer sound patterns occur. To repeat nearly simultaneously is hardly incidental but requires intense intentional focus on those patterns. And to keep up we soon begin to cheat on active listening, by predicting upcoming words. So we end up *co-writing* much of each audiobook. That’s output! WDYT?
I really appreciate that he says stephen krashen's theory is discredited in the academic sphere. We should also just let it go and concentrate on what other linguists have to offer.
@@malenalucero6473 Not just me, many young adults progress from a beginner to advanced (or near native) in one year. I can post a longer explanation if you are interested.
As language teachers, monolingual native speakers are good tacticians, but lousy strategists. They can teach any aspect of a language in great detail, they just don't know how to teach a language in its entirety. The same goes for researchers.
In my experience untrained native speakers make awful teachers because they have no appreciation of the challenges faced by the non native speaker. Even bilingual native speakers who speak the L1 and L2 can be dreadful.
@StillAliveAndKicking_ True, but just to be a devil's advocate, we all learned a language to a native level from untrained native speakers, usually our parents. So, I wouldn't completely dismiss certain advantages that native speakers have in teaching their language.
@ Yes but we did that as children, and not just from our parents. Try learning your parents L1 as an adult when you don’t speak it. I have a friend whose L1 is Welsh. She tried to bring up her children speaking Welsh but both refused. They spoke only English. They complained that Welsh is hard. My experience with French is that untrained native speakers are dreadful teachers. They correct you all the while. Do they correct babies and young children? No.
@StillAliveAndKicking_ I often hear it about French. "Languages simp" was complaining how after being robbed in France 🇫🇷, a responding police officer was constantly correcting his French. French are just very but t hurt that their language is no longer the international language. About kids not wanting to learn some obscure and useless language. I don't blame them. Language has to be useful and a part of a well developed eco system with plenty of content.
Years is not a good way to count time it is better to count in hours to learn spanish for a english speaker it is 3000 hours to learn a unrelated language like russian or irish it is 6000 hours
Wow, that is disappointing. I was expecting to hear something really new and impressive about the ways we can learn vocabulary, and all he has is "flashcards"? I would love to know if he can quote any tests that measure the percentage of words that people actually attained after a couple of months. I would bet it is close to zero. We memorise and remember words when we USE them. I never force my students to memorise words just for the sake of it. This way the process is as close as possible to what a child does, and the results are immeasurably better.
Ok input is really important, I know that. Ok use flash cards is useful(list of words), ok but how is the best way to make great cards? There are a lot of kind of cards, but what is the most useful to learn and remember new vocabulary?
How many native Americans have you met who speak German? Its probably less than 1%. It would be surprising if anyone who has an American accent speaks German.
English was my first language. I learned Canadian French in grade school, though not from a teacher - the language laws here state that English and French have to coincide on packaging, so while I sat at the table and ate cereal, I taught myself french using the corresponding English on the other side of the box. When I got a bit older and had the chance to try my french out, it turns out that cereal box french is just as good as school-taught french. Then twenty years went by devoid of language learning, and I later decided to learn Norwegian (I was going to visit that place to do a bike trip around the fjords). I went from illiterate to fluent with about 3 months of constant study, about an hour or two per day. Vocabulary was never an issue. It's in my head now like English and French are, and it was very easy to learn. (It turns out that everyone there speaks English anyway, but they were all very helpful if I flubbed a word here or there. Very nice place, great people and the women are gorgeous.) So I thought it was probably a fluke because Engelsk and Norsk are very similar languages, so I decided to learn Hangul Korean. I thought the different script and grammar and that it wasn't Indo-European Latin-based would be add to the difficulty. Learned it in about 3 months doing the same thing, constant practice for about an hour every day. It was also easier to learn than I bet English is for foreign students. Just like last time, vocabulary was never an issue. So now I'm learning Old English just for fun, and again, it's going well. It turns out practice is the key to learning. I also wonder if my exposure to varied languages makes it easier, that someone who speaks one language only has a harder time with a second language than someone who speaks multiple languages learns a third or fourth language. All I hear about is vocabulary vocabulary vocabulary. I don't know why because it is not difficult to match sounds to concepts. Doesn't every human already do this? If you can read this, then that proves that you've already mastered it, so all you have to do is do it again. The hardest part about language learning for me is finding someone who will speak it back and take time to correct my pronunciation (and a lot of those services on line which provide this are terrible and the people aren't motivated at all to actually help, they just want the $10 or whatever for little or no effort, so I've given up on that). I have to disagree with his premise that teachers are important. They might have been once upon a time. I didn't have to be taught French just like I didn't have to be taught English, and I have learned all the other languages that I know sans teacher. The internet has ushered in the age of the autodidact, and I'm gladdened that the boomers and their terrible attitudes and opinions are on their way out.
You’re either not telling the truth, or incredibly gifted. Normal people do not become fluent so quickly. And cereal packets only have a small subset of language.
I'm not saying you are not telling the whole truth but would say that absorbing any language content that makes it comprehensible to you means you learned a bit of the language. Then another bit and so on. Part of it is an optimism of the mind to just the language go in without judgment or expectation. I doubt cereal packets will take you all the way there but they might do a good job of starting you off. Plus you may be gifted.....
Good interview. But unexpectedly I found no new information from a researcher with 30 years of experience. Maybe the questions were not good for such a person.
I wish more people would come to understand that it is impossible to teach yourself to read. I think those rumors and legends have impacted many people's world views in a negative way.
Английский богат лексически (несомненно), но любой язык с богатой письменной культурой не менее богат. Утверждение, что он как-то богаче соседей, весьма сомнительно.
Researching only a single language (English) isn't a base wide enough in order to draw conclusions regarding linguistics. English has little grammar compared to other languages, which have much more conjugation of verbs and hide meaning in many suffixe. He is right about the compound words in German, like Leichenwagen, meaning hearse, which is made by putting Leiche (corpse) and Wagen (wagon, car) together. Kühlschrank means refridgerator, from kühl (cool) and Schrank (cupboard).
That in itself isn't a deciding factor regarding his theories. There are English as ESL researchers or teachers, who may be monolingual. A person shouldn't have to learn a random language if they have no use for it. I don't agree with his point of view regardless.
English has too many vocabulary because it is very inefficient to describe new ideas and thoughts by using existing words. People have to create new words to describe new things appeared. This is not true to other advanced and more flexible languages like Chinese language.
When I came to the United States at age 11, I acquired English fluency in about two years and remember being in bilingual education for that period of time. I remember that it was listening to input that was made comprehensible, as Stephen Krashen proposes in his theory, that allowed me not only to aquire the language, but to do so at the native speaker level. Different factors helped me, however the most important was that I listened to everyone, teachers, classmates, family, friends, television and music with much interest and then one day I simply started to speak pretty close to the native level and shortly after that I reached the level of a native speaker.
But you didn't listen to the academic, what you say has no value because ''studies'' discard it...
@@allaflecheyeah, lots of those studies are very poorly designed, with glaring logical flaws…
I have the lived experience as do countless other people@@allafleche
Did you ever do some ground work?
I'm not sure what you mean.@@friedchicken892
First of all, it’s amazing that you sit down with so many people who’ve dedicated their entire lives to language learning. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re always right or that I agree with everything they say, but in a time when so many self-proclaimed language experts are spreading nonsense online, I find it fascinating to hear from people who’ve done decades of dedicated research. Thank you!!!
It was really interesting. Overall, I also think vocabulary is the hardest part, especially in the long run. For me, it becomes particularly challenging around the B2 level and beyond because, no matter how much you immerse yourself, some words just show up so rarely. That’s why I started focusing on one topic at a time for 2-3 weeks, only watching and reading content about that topic and using Anki for active recall.
That said, I have to disagree with the idea that a teacher brings me value or is even necessary. I don’t need anyone to teach me a language, and I’m convinced I’m more efficient without one. Of course, this doesn’t mean teachers can’t be valuable for others - it just doesn’t work for me. I had English in school for over 10 years and attended a language center three times a week, which is quite common in East Asia. Looking back, I wish I could’ve saved my parents the money. Ever since, I’ve learned Thai, Korean, and Spanish almost for free and in a fraction of the time it took me to learn English-all on my own.
Very interesting.
Since you say that you don't like learnnig with teachers, can you mention which method has been better for you to acquire all those new languages?
@@sevillavieira Sure! But this is probably going to be a long one. I have different stages, I would say. In the first stage, which I call language discovery, I start by consuming vlogs of native speakers that provide subtitles. I use the premium version of Language Reactor to display dual subtitles and save words I find interesting with one click. Language Reactor saves the word along with 1-3 sentences of context. At the very beginning though, I often use rather AI to create very basic sentences with these words. Sometimes, I even mix the target language word with the rest of the sentence in my native language or English. This way, I still see the word in context without feeling overwhelmed.
I then mass-upload these sentences to Anki and review them daily while continuing to consume content and add new material to Anki. I also create language islands, which are personalized sentences about myself and topics that interest me. I generate these sentences with AI and have them corrected by native speakers on HiNative. These sentences also go into Anki for active recall, and I practice them by talking to myself.
Because I follow this approach, I like to say I learn through immersion, not just input. I immerse myself in the language while actively looking things up, unlike comprehensible input supporters, who often avoid doing so.
Once I get past the initial beginner phase, I switch almost entirely to reality shows and dramas while continuing the same process as before. At this stage, I also start echoing what I hear in these shows. I would watch these shows anyway, so it’s a total win for me.
Eventually, I start talking to people and reading articles or books using a pop-up dictionary. I rarely focus on grammar because I tend to acquire it naturally through immersion and Anki. Most importantly, I stay consistent with Anki. This makes my immersion feel much faster, more meaningful, and increasingly enjoyable over time.
And that’s basically it. I can totally see the value of a teacher for people who prefer a different learning style, but for me, I’d feel like I was wasting time and money. Plus, I’ve found a way to learn languages that’s genuinely fun for me. I love watching vlogs and shows, and I actually enjoy testing myself with active recall.
@@Yihwa-G__Amazing, I think that you’re right, sometime it’s up to us because is our motivation that help us to learn everyday, I took English since kindergarten to Highschool but tbh in my 20’s I can achieved a good level, now I want to learn mandarin is so interesting for me, I hope someday I can speak it fluently hehe greetings.
@@Yihwa-G__ Very insightful. Thank you very much.
@@Yihwa-G__ I also wonder if you'd ever used stuff or materials like textbooks, grammar or courses to enhance your skills in all those languages.
In my English learning journey I'm working mainly with comprehensible input (2-4 hours a day), but I also tray to do at least 4 times a week one Oxford English Lesson of a course called American English File which we already had at home. It takes me about 1 to 1 and a half hour each lesson, though, and I'm not sure if it's a wasting of time. What do you think about?, Did you use any materials like this one?
Great podcast. We actually have really good examples of the input type of learning. They are the creole varieties of different languages that shows that a language can be learnt by exposure alone but rather in an inaccurate way affecting meaning and pronunciation. Balance is key in this case.
I’ve learned English, Polish and Norwegian using “Krashen’s” method before knowing about it. The take away is: do everything, see what works. He did not answer at any moment how to go about learning besides word lists… he just said teachers are important, him being one of them.
Also, I did not hear how many languages he has managed to learned if any at all…
My native language is Spanish
As language teachers, monolingual native speakers are good tacticians, but lousy strategists.
They can teach any aspect of a language in great detail, they just don't know how to teach a language in its entirety.
The same goes for researchers.
Indeed, he has experience teaching English in Japan.
He was teaching in English, and just being a native speaker was enough to qualify for that job.
We also should consider that Japan is absolutely terrible at English proficiency.
Yep, I totally agreed
We don't know about the languages he has learnt, but it shouldn't matter, he's sharing his theoretical knowledge, not his practical experiences. I think this is why Loic showed him to us.
Doesn't matter what languages he speaks or doesn't. You do know that most professional athletes make for bad coaches, right? While amazing at what they do, they don't really know how they acquired their skills exactly nor how to generalize that knowledge to other people in all their uniqueness. So, right away, whatever master polyglots say on the matter does not necessarily mean it's true for anyone but them and people like them. And that's why you get all sorts of people who mastered foreign languages using all sorts of methods: CI + Anki (Steve Kaufmann), content on steroids (including not quite comprehensible input) + Anki (Matt vs Japan and the AJATT people), good old translation (Luca), intensive college courses (Oriental Perl) and so on, and so forth. This guy here was supposed to give some theoretical background on why he thinks, as of today, Krashen's theory doesn't hold water. Which he kinda did, but kinda didn't: I'd love to see more links to studies, for example. Besides, no one seems to know what Krashen's theory exactly is. Learning in L2 from context is not exactly new, it's been around since the 19th century, if not earlier than that
Krashen's theory (the words he uses) has been discredited, but the language phenomenon he's attempting to describe is still very much real.
Acquisition = implicit knowledge
Learning = explicit knowledge
Krashen paved the way for decades of further research. Simply saying his theory has been discredited is ignoring how truly influential his research has been.
To elaborate, Krashen's idea of 'comprehensible input' hasn't been defined in specific terms and thus hasn't been measured, making it a redundant scientific term for theory construction.
The same goes with his idea of the 'affective filter' and the 'monitor'.
The issues with his theory is in theory construction, namely that he hasn't properly defined his terms.
Much like how Darwin didn't define 'natural selection'. However, decades later other researchers built upon Darwin's theory, by discovering DNA for example.
Krashen is brilliant because he focused our attention on a very real phenomenon, which is that we have a dual knowledge system - explicit and implicit.
@jesse_ledesma
Explicit knowledge of a language is NOT a language.
Language has a specific area in our brain, usually left temporal lobe.
All explicit knowledge is stored in the frontal lobe.
Theoretically, we can use explicit knowledge to TRAIN our language in a desired way.
But explicit knowledge has no effect on implicit knowledge, it's the training that contributes to implicit knowledge.
@@Alec72HD I guess Krashen's main contribution is that he showed that one can internalize vocabulary and grammar without explicitly training the implicit language model (although, that is also not quite right, but close enough maybe)
@@Alec72HDWe can learn aspects of language explicitly and with time they become implicit. It’s more effective than trying to learn everything implicitly, for adults anyway, not children.
Those ideas were not developed by Krashen, they had been around in the nineteenth century if not earlier. His theory contains numerous false assertions. And he didn’t even tell us how we know if something is learnt or acquired.
I think about this a lot because I feel like anyone I've listened to online that said they learned via "immersion" still totally did academic study of some sort. Maybe not as intensive as a college degree but had some introduction to the language. And as a Spanish learner, my conjugation charts from high school Spanish have been immensely helpful to my study today lol
I've wasted plenty of time learning L2 the conventional way (grammar, translation).
By now I think there's plenty of people who didn't do that at all, and it still works. Whether it's more effective - and whether it's more effective for *everybody* is a big question
@@Limemill oh I imagine a combination of the 2 is ideal (not going to speculate on the ratios of which holds more weight because I'm sure there's someone who will argue about that & I truly don't know), but for adults, I imagine, having actual lessons would help immensely with their immersion process. Just like for a student, having access to IRL native speakers is key
@@msmendes214 Yeah, I agree. This ratio will probably depend on the personality type and whether or not the learner is neurotypical, so it's even harder to formalize or generalize it.
@msmendes214
Some explicit learning is very inefficient, borderline useless.
And some could be fairly useful, though not entirely necessary.
Learning ABOUT L2 in your native language L1, that's a waste of time.
Sure, a few hours could be devoted by a complete beginner.
But the goal is to progress to learning L2 (explicitly) without using L1 in the process.
That is, IF you aspire to achieve a fairly advanced level eventually.
Excellent interview. What he says matches my modest experience learning French and German. I’m glad that you are interviewing a range of people. Unfortunately many online language commentators tend to interview only Krashen and his disciples, which gives a very distorted view of the SLA field. In truth there are countless theories of SLA, and countless sub-fields, Krashen’s is but one theory, and as I understand it the parts of his theory that are valid were not developed by him. His theory is in the view of many mostly nonsense and not supported by the evidence e.g. neurological studies. I followed his method for years and gradually realised that it just doesn’t work, not for me anyway.
Great interview, I think Dr. Schmidt's approach makes sense.
Needs more flashcard talk.....
This actually mostly confirms a lot of Krashens work.
Krashen gets the most important things right, the need for spaced repetition with a variety of contexts.
For example, Krashen advocates for narrow reading, which massively increases the opportunities for spaced repetition in a variety of contexts.
He also advocates for extensive reading and listening, with the concept of i+1, which again produces spaced repetition in a variety of contexts.
I would say though that there are some unnecessary limitations to Krashens approach with can be overcome by using the more flexible approach of Paul Nation for more efficient learning.
If you learn the basics of the grammar of a language, the rest is vocabulary building. The greater the vocabulary at your fingertips, the easier it is to communicate. As the professor says, it's all about communication.
I feel like you guys are kind of talking about two different things with the intentional versus incidental discussion.
Schmitt is talking specifically about vocab, whereas proponents of implicit learning are typically referring to the acquisition of grammatical structures, which is indeed stage like and primarily implicit.
I think it’s easy to mix these two things up.
In my experience has a language teacher, the perfect balance is intentional learning of important vocabulary, lots of input, and communicative tasks and discussions with a reactive focus on grammar as needed
thats just not true. You can learn so much vocabulary from input. It is very hard to learn that level of vocab through word lists or memorisation. Think of how many words you know in English that you explicitly learned vs how many you seem to have just acquired
I agree. I think that, at the first stage, it's very important work in learning by heart at least the 1.000 (or a bit more) most frequently used words of the target language, and the most commons uses of sentences and expressions. With this base it is easy and enjoyable to get comprehensible input at the required level.
@@sevillavieira Even with those first 1000 words, input will help you aquire them. The best way I think is to try and learn them AND do easy input (e.g. netflix shows with subtitles). The 1000 most common words will pop up all the time. Rote memorising 1000 words is VERY hard and not enjoyable at all
I enjoy his critique of course books not recycling vocabulary well enough.
Where I think this researcher may not be fully informed is with the work of Benico Mason who has developed a method called "Story Listening" which works with complete beginners.
She works with Krashens theories basically. She produces good results.
Super, excellent, wonderful, fabulous, extraordinary, amazing, unimaginable, fascinating... Very useful for foreign language learners compared to those, I have ever seen. I am not a native speaker and don't live in an english spoken country and I have never been abroad. Until now, I listened plenty of unreal advices on TH-cam. But this a realistic way of learning a foreign language. You may face thousands of promises related to learning foreign language in a few weeks or days. But I have been learning English since 2022 and I am aware of that without knowing certain amount of vocabulary learners haven't chance to reach advanced level. We need to keep in mind, in a real communication, you can't say your partner "don't say the words that I don't know" 🙂
So many things about Krashen's theory that Dr Shmitt doesn't understand.
Actually, explicitly teaching English (L2) in English is still a form of Comprehensible Input.
Same as teaching Biology or Science in a target language is also a CI.
What doesn't work, is teaching L2 explicitly, but mostly using L1 in the process.
@@Alec72HD I wouldn't dare to say a linguist specialized in the topic doesn't understand the theory of one of his peers.
@malenalucero6473
Science of language acquisition is very rudimentary, not an exact science, not yet.
So yes, I can dare.
There are a few opposing theories, so someone has to be wrong.
@@Alec72HD That's not a science, it's a theory. Linguistics is the science and it's not rudimentary.
@@malenalucero6473
Linguistics is a broad field.
We are talking about L2 language acquisition here.
You can learn some L2 from the L1. At the start it is the best method, until one starts to understand some L2. Even in later stages it is much more efficient to learn some grammar in the L1. For example - Ich will ein Haus bauen lassen - means I want to have a house built. I figured out how to construct that phrase while in my L1. It took me a while to figure out the function of lassen. I had heard such phrases countless times in the L2, and I could not for the life of me figure out what the construction meant or how it worked. I have the same experience in French, I have to think about the grammar in my L1, it’s like solving a puzzle. One thing I notice is that words often have a basic concrete meaning, and I have to discover what it is. That concrete meaning then explains its use in other situations. This idea that you cannot learn any L2 using the L1 is nonsense, a falsehood propagated by Krashen. Of course one needs input, and in later stages one simply cannot become fluent without massive input.
Thanks a lot for this podcast
Usually I stumble soon demonisation of memorisation
In my psychology exams I have a lot of technical terms and on top of that I have to understand the concepts
Best is to use both like the professor said
This relates to learning to read the New Testament in Koine Greek which maybe not general to everyone. One of the things I notice is people try to read the New Testament by learning more and more grammar and this is an almost impossible task - especially when identifying all the grammatical features of a verb and clause, so the more grammar you have the slower your reading will be, the greater the frustration and of course people give up.
People are often on their second grammar book and only know a couple of hundred words. This can't work.
If, on the other hand, one acquires vocab one's reading speeds up to close to that of L1 and that is a virtuous cycle because in reading more you revise more words you already know (in context) and learn words from context and acquire grammar implicitly and it's enjoyable.
The other direction you go you just get slower and slower and more dispirited. And then give up.
With NT Greek 1,000 words of higher frequency will give you a coverage of 90-95% of words and some texts are a lot easier than others ether because of syntax, strucutre or because the passage is welll known.
I myself use Anki for NT Greek - it seems to work quite well, but textbooks will present vocab lists in their chapters (in a textbook I think the reading passages and vocab are the most important things). Because the words are presented in different lists and readings it reinforces the learning.
If people are willing to go through the pain of going through a grammar book then a few years of going through word lists/Anki decks is a good price to pay if the end result is good.
By the way - if anyone is designing teaching materials then definitely do all you can to promote contextual learning (with or without explicit lists etc) [pictures/context etc]. Where it can be done this is clearly the more potent method and actually a lot of progress can be made. Equally more effort identifying low/lower vocab stories for learners so they aren't overwhelmed and can get a good reaing speed. I don't know if this is done but adapatation of classics that remove rare or archaic words would be really great.
I learn with pure incidental acquisition, no explicit learning, so it is obviously possible. The question should be which method is more efficient.
The only important factor is uninterrupted time spent with L2.
Any monolingual method for learning L2 would work just as good as any other. It depends more on personal preference.
Input is three to 5 times more efficient depending on the compelingness of it
What about TPRS? I actually just started using it with my students and I was surprised by the result.
It makes no sense. Schmitt says that comprehensible input works, but only if you have enough time, and then talks about study trough lists and flaschcards beause, in that way, you can learn many aspects of a family word. In one hour you could learn maby 50 words, but you have to review those words in order to not forget it. Doesnt it requires a lot of time too? The study trough comprehensible input makes a natural seletcion of the most commons words related to the topics that you are interested in. When you go deep in those topics or pic new interests, you will increase your vocabulary naturaly (sorry about mistakes. Brazillian learning english here)
On top on that, he mentions that you cannot avoid using CI or else you won't be able to distinguish between finer differences and get a handle on collocations and to use words in appropriate contexts
I've used flashcards quite a lot with some success. (I made my own little app for this.). One problem I found was that I could learn a word very well and remember it each time it came up in the app but when I needed to use the word outside of the context of the app i.e. a 'real life' situation either reading, writinig or listening then I would not remember it.
A couple of strategies can help a bit with that: 1) When you see the word, don't just try to memorise the word/spelling - _also_ intentionally think about the thing or action it represents as well (e.g. if it's a word for "elephant", it should bring an elephant to mind - not just "a word"). 2) Make flashcards with very short simple phrases, using those new vocabulary words in different contexts, not just flashcards with single "isolated" words.
This researcher said that vocabulary can't be learned by flashcards alone. We need contextual use, but flashcards help reinforce what is learned or prevent forgetting, making learning a bit more efficient over time.
But he said we need a variety of contexts to really learn a word.
@@dalejohnson2682 - absolutely :)
The thumbnail should have been "the two approaches reinforce each other".
Thank you for sharing!!
This guy, Dr. Norbert Schmitt, is spot on, but note that he is talking about English, not foreign languages. Why is that important? For English, a word family is like steal and stealthy, in other words, the meanings can get fairly distant. In German, they can be similarly distant, but generally they are not, more like ice and icebox. Still learning beziehen (no. 878 in the frequency dictionary) before beziehungsweise (no. 291) is greatly advisable because simpler words are easier to memorise. But you have the deck set by the frequency, not the word family root.
Another complaint he implied against Anki (at least no one has answered me yet) is that Anki shows you the word automatically for an adjustable period, often 10 seconds, but that becomes contextual learning. Intentional learning means I take the time to memorise the word before I move to the next word. And that takes me minutes the first few times. If I can set the cards to advance manually, please instruct on how.
And third, he spoke correctly about textbooks and their vocabulary choices. The original source textbooks come from the period when a shopper had to request a clerk give them items from the shelves and that appears to be what that vocabulary is intended for, those instructions. But what he did not mention is that frequency dictionaries do the same thing. They take words from all spheres, not just the one you are interested in. Thus, that beziehungsweise above is common is you are reading technical literature, but not very useful for cafe conversations.
Vocabulary is probably the most important. You can learn all there is to know about grammar, but you get to a point where you know all the how's of grammar, yet you arent good at using it yet. At this point, you dont need to learn grammar, you need to practice it. If you dont have a large vocabulary yet, you cant practice it nearly as efficiently. Not to mention, with enough vocabulary, you can figure a huge percentage of sentences out without knowing grammar.
As someone who's been in academia and doing a PhD, I can assure everyone that there is A LOT of "research" which is completely bollocks. I would like to see his methodology and results before taking his word for it, because many people who have actually learned several languages appear to disagree with him, and just "having done research" doesn't prove anything.
I am doing exactly what dr. Schmitt says. First, I study flashcards then I read adapted books
😅 vocabulary lists are not for me. I prefer comprehensive input. It has worked for me in the past and now I am learning German and Russian through comprehensive imput.😊
Do you have any recommendations? Maybe resources or how you study
@and-xl2ey for German I started here th-cam.com/video/34bTlvYw8AE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=CulV1ets3p6jnhcX
@@and-xl2ey for Russian here th-cam.com/video/prSfxdmjNzE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=XMqkZRi5CezYCmnI
@@and-xl2ey I watch them with subtitles and without them. I dont try to learn. I dont suffer. I enjoy the process. I have an account on TH-cam to watch and save videos in German on subjects I am interested in. I am starting interacting with Germans on TH-cam and Reddit. I use deepl but try to write the first version in German. I do shadowing sometimes to practice my pronunciation and watch German videos with subtitles in German. I am an absolute beginner in Russian. I only watch A1 and A2 stories. I dont try to memorize words. I let the brain acquire them. Soon I will be learning a song in Russian and I will sing it. It is a song I love from a Russian cartoon. Which language do you want to learn?
@@and-xl2ey th-cam.com/video/prSfxdmjNzE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=XMqkZRi5CezYCmnI
Where Krashen is partially correct is with grammar acquisition being different than learning, but he is incorrect about vocabulary acquisition being different than learning.
I think we can use Bruce Lee's analogy, take what useful, and discard what is useless.
Conscious grammar is not the same as acquired grammar, although it is probably helpful to have Conscious knowledge of grammar for enhancing comprehension and noticing, and both of these probably improve the acquisition of grammar overtime.
Good interview as always.
Why did he get emotional about Krashen? You can’t think rationally when using the emotional part of the brain.
hi Lois - would be great to get some listening experts on your channel. Something I struggle with enormously. Thanks for what you do :)
Thanks for the suggestion!
If you manage to put together a contradictory debate over the validity of the "Krashen theory", with legitimate debaters, that video would probably make a very high number of view, because as far as I know, there is none on youtube.
It would be really interesting because each side says the same thing "experiments prove my point".
Bref ça serait vraiment unique, et une vrai avancée dans le débat sur ce sujet, qui est quand même au centre de toute le milieu des polyglottes, au moins au niveau populaire en tout cas.
What do you think of dreaming spanish
I don't know but I have been self learning Latin mainly through CI and I am much further along after 4 months then a year of German got me in that language at college. College taught me I was horrible at language, Kashin and those who followed in his footsteps showed me I can learn languages. The way they taught me in school did not work for me.
Interesting interview. Thanks for it. However, I beg to disagree with Dr Norbert Schmitt. I understand that having especially studied vocabulary learning, he has come to think that this is the most important part of learning but you can guess what a grammarian would say, can't you? There is a metaphor I like about learning a language: when one learn how to drive a car, what is the most essential tool you need to master? The clutch? the Throttle? The driving wheel? The rear view mirror? The brakes? Actually, it's none of them, it's all about articulating them, combining them according to what you want to do. In matters of language acquisition, I feel the same. Every learner has to combine four basic skills - reading, writing, listening and speaking - plus a major skill that supports each of the others: thinking.
That's what he says at 2:50
@@liammarshall-butler3384 Okay, but he says something more than grammarian would say the same about grammar. He says vocabulary is the key. My point is that vocabulary is not the key because there is no key. This key metaphor is misleading learners. There are just methods that are more or less efficient. How can I say? The idea of key suggests either a starting point or something that can quickly get you fully enter the world of some new language. Does this really make sense?
@@jean-louismorgenthaler4725 He didn't say key, he said he was going to make his case that vocabulary was the most important, but that a grammar would say grammar is the most important and that grammar is important.
@@liammarshall-butler3384 He did. Listen 35.24.
I actually do think vocab is the key to progression in a language up to a certain point. If you understand all the words in a sentence you will very likely understand or guess its meaning. If you understand all the grammar but none of the words you are genuinely lost. I agree vocab can be taught and also acquired through, say, pleasure reading. Vocab plus language in context (reading/listening/speaking/writing).
Stephen Crenshaw is legend in the field!!!!
No I have no idea. But thanks for an interesting take on learning a language
I’ve bootstrapped half a dozen languages to enjoyable reading level, by 1) readingdetective novels and popular science books on topics I’m familiar with, *OR* 2) shadowing those audiobooks at reduced speed with hi frequency bias *BUT* never distracting myself by “multitasking” both methods.
And being very stingy about stopping to use the dictionary. Why? Popular writing serves as a functional frequency list. Detectives repeat events again and again, so do science books. After I’ve met a word I don’t know several times in sentences, I’m willing to believe I should stop to learn it, and that I will notice it as it appears again in meaningful sentences as I read on. But even an apparently significant single use isn’t worth looking up until it bothers me and I know I’ll see it again a few times.
And audiobooks are the densest source of auditory input. Language is made entirely of sound: phonemes, syllables, rhythm and tones. Vocabulary, grammar and meaning are higher order patterns of sounds. We do acquire impressions of the frequencies that sounds and longer sound patterns occur. To repeat nearly simultaneously is hardly incidental but requires intense intentional focus on those patterns. And to keep up we soon begin to cheat on active listening, by predicting upcoming words. So we end up *co-writing* much of each audiobook. That’s output!
WDYT?
I really appreciate that he says stephen krashen's theory is discredited in the academic sphere. We should also just let it go and concentrate on what other linguists have to offer.
I think Krashen's theory works.
I mostly learned my second language in accordance with Krashen.
@@Alec72HD It takes time... but It works.
@coyotl23
I know. I learned my second language in one year, mostly with Comprehensible Input.
Disclaimer, I only used a second language 24/7/365.
@@Alec72HD But that's your individual experience. You can't say from only your experience if a theory is valid or not.
@@malenalucero6473
Not just me, many young adults progress from a beginner to advanced (or near native) in one year.
I can post a longer explanation if you are interested.
As language teachers, monolingual native speakers are good tacticians, but lousy strategists.
They can teach any aspect of a language in great detail, they just don't know how to teach a language in its entirety.
The same goes for researchers.
In my experience untrained native speakers make awful teachers because they have no appreciation of the challenges faced by the non native speaker. Even bilingual native speakers who speak the L1 and L2 can be dreadful.
@StillAliveAndKicking_
True, but just to be a devil's advocate,
we all learned a language to a native level from untrained native speakers, usually our parents.
So, I wouldn't completely dismiss certain advantages that native speakers have in teaching their language.
@ Yes but we did that as children, and not just from our parents. Try learning your parents L1 as an adult when you don’t speak it. I have a friend whose L1 is Welsh. She tried to bring up her children speaking Welsh but both refused. They spoke only English. They complained that Welsh is hard. My experience with French is that untrained native speakers are dreadful teachers. They correct you all the while. Do they correct babies and young children? No.
@StillAliveAndKicking_
I often hear it about French.
"Languages simp" was complaining how after being robbed in France 🇫🇷, a responding police officer was constantly correcting his French.
French are just very but t hurt that their language is no longer the international language.
About kids not wanting to learn some obscure and useless language.
I don't blame them.
Language has to be useful and a part of a well developed eco system with plenty of content.
@@Alec72HD Your comments on Welsh are ill informed, arrogant and offensive.
Years is not a good way to count time it is better to count in hours to learn spanish for a english speaker it is 3000 hours to learn a unrelated language like russian or irish it is 6000 hours
Russian and Irish are related to English.
@jeffreyreid yea
Wow, that is disappointing. I was expecting to hear something really new and impressive about the ways we can learn vocabulary, and all he has is "flashcards"? I would love to know if he can quote any tests that measure the percentage of words that people actually attained after a couple of months. I would bet it is close to zero.
We memorise and remember words when we USE them. I never force my students to memorise words just for the sake of it. This way the process is as close as possible to what a child does, and the results are immeasurably better.
I love your videos
Ok input is really important, I know that. Ok use flash cards is useful(list of words), ok but how is the best way to make great cards? There are a lot of kind of cards, but what is the most useful to learn and remember new vocabulary?
As a German I was so surprised he said he didn't speak any German. 😅
How many native Americans have you met who speak German? Its probably less than 1%. It would be surprising if anyone who has an American accent speaks German.
@DonaldMains Zero, but I also didn't think he was a native American. I thought he was a German expat who spoke excellent English 😂
English was my first language. I learned Canadian French in grade school, though not from a teacher - the language laws here state that English and French have to coincide on packaging, so while I sat at the table and ate cereal, I taught myself french using the corresponding English on the other side of the box. When I got a bit older and had the chance to try my french out, it turns out that cereal box french is just as good as school-taught french. Then twenty years went by devoid of language learning, and I later decided to learn Norwegian (I was going to visit that place to do a bike trip around the fjords). I went from illiterate to fluent with about 3 months of constant study, about an hour or two per day. Vocabulary was never an issue. It's in my head now like English and French are, and it was very easy to learn. (It turns out that everyone there speaks English anyway, but they were all very helpful if I flubbed a word here or there. Very nice place, great people and the women are gorgeous.) So I thought it was probably a fluke because Engelsk and Norsk are very similar languages, so I decided to learn Hangul Korean. I thought the different script and grammar and that it wasn't Indo-European Latin-based would be add to the difficulty. Learned it in about 3 months doing the same thing, constant practice for about an hour every day. It was also easier to learn than I bet English is for foreign students. Just like last time, vocabulary was never an issue. So now I'm learning Old English just for fun, and again, it's going well. It turns out practice is the key to learning. I also wonder if my exposure to varied languages makes it easier, that someone who speaks one language only has a harder time with a second language than someone who speaks multiple languages learns a third or fourth language. All I hear about is vocabulary vocabulary vocabulary. I don't know why because it is not difficult to match sounds to concepts. Doesn't every human already do this? If you can read this, then that proves that you've already mastered it, so all you have to do is do it again. The hardest part about language learning for me is finding someone who will speak it back and take time to correct my pronunciation (and a lot of those services on line which provide this are terrible and the people aren't motivated at all to actually help, they just want the $10 or whatever for little or no effort, so I've given up on that). I have to disagree with his premise that teachers are important. They might have been once upon a time. I didn't have to be taught French just like I didn't have to be taught English, and I have learned all the other languages that I know sans teacher. The internet has ushered in the age of the autodidact, and I'm gladdened that the boomers and their terrible attitudes and opinions are on their way out.
You’re either not telling the truth, or incredibly gifted. Normal people do not become fluent so quickly. And cereal packets only have a small subset of language.
I'm not saying you are not telling the whole truth but would say that absorbing any language content that makes it comprehensible to you means you learned a bit of the language. Then another bit and so on. Part of it is an optimism of the mind to just the language go in without judgment or expectation. I doubt cereal packets will take you all the way there but they might do a good job of starting you off. Plus you may be gifted.....
This reminds me of a good joke. Teachers teach but life also teaches. The difference is that life punishes you and never explain. 🙂
Good interview. But unexpectedly I found no new information from a researcher with 30 years of experience. Maybe the questions were not good for such a person.
thx
Всем привет)
Coke dealer ?
Как дела ?
Horror show ?
Хорошо ?
@@Alec72HDeverything is fine)
I wish more people would come to understand that it is impossible to teach yourself to read.
I think those rumors and legends have impacted many people's world views in a negative way.
Mikel Hyperpilyglot method moggs.
Английский богат лексически (несомненно), но любой язык с богатой письменной культурой не менее богат. Утверждение, что он как-то богаче соседей, весьма сомнительно.
I agree, French is as rich as english at least , and it probably is the same for almost all languages.
I kind of discredited himself there.
Trust me, English has more words than any other language.
But half of them are seldom used and have identical (in meaning) synonyms.
@@Alec72HD just as any language with a long enough textual culture
Researching only a single language (English) isn't a base wide enough in order to draw conclusions regarding linguistics. English has little grammar compared to other languages, which have much more conjugation of verbs and hide meaning in many suffixe.
He is right about the compound words in German, like Leichenwagen, meaning hearse, which is made by putting Leiche (corpse) and Wagen (wagon, car) together. Kühlschrank means refridgerator, from kühl (cool) and Schrank (cupboard).
Ask him to speak a language other than English, I wanna hear it 😂
That in itself isn't a deciding factor regarding his theories.
There are English as ESL researchers or teachers, who may be monolingual.
A person shouldn't have to learn a random language if they have no use for it.
I don't agree with his point of view regardless.
English has too many vocabulary because it is very inefficient to describe new ideas and thoughts by using existing words. People have to create new words to describe new things appeared. This is not true to other advanced and more flexible languages like Chinese language.
You spend 10-15 years just to learn to write your own language.
Talking about inefficient 😅