I'm super happy for it. I recently got the option to enroll in language classes at uni which would be something I would do in an instant before, but this method destroyed my view of language classes lol
@@jackneals5585 Yeah man I did two years of GCSE (UK school qualifications) French at school, my final grade was A* and I can't really speak French at all hahaha
Yep and at the end of the day a lot of the "learn japanese material" out there is all just to make money. That's it. It's all just marketing hype. Like look at Rosetta Stone!!! It's $200! haha int's insane...
@@jackneals5585 It's ironic that the best method relies only on yourself and is virtually free. That's also a good reason to trust it, because no one stands to make money from it.
YES! this is what i realized recently. i thought to myself "well it might seem like i'm not progressing in japanese but this is the way i learned english.." like it really blew my mind how constant input and context is learned by your unconscious brain without you noticing it
5:10 Look at that grace, that elegance, with which he drank from that bottle. His form is exquisite, perhaps even perfect if I dare say. To move so effortlessly but with such incredible speed, is nothing short of pure talent.
I started playing Skyrim in German with zero knowledge. I’d do some vocabulary study and then play the game for a few hours afterwards. At first I didn’t understand anything, but After a few weeks of playing, an NPC spoke and I really understood it. Like On a fundamental level. It felt weird, but also very rewarding
I love that conclusion about "maybe it's more effective to have easier material, like baby books or movies but you will spend more time looking for those perfect material than truly immersing yourself"
Krashen's theory was i + 1, to use language that was just beyond the learner's level. He was concerned if it was too high above the learner's level, the brain would shut down and not process the information. If it was too low, you wouldn't be learning new info. He also thought it is very important for the material to be compelling. Very interesting. And for the learner to be relaxed, not stressed. In my research on L1 reading, there has been an overemphasis on reading level. More important is the student's interest in the topic. If a student is really interested in the topic, he will find a way to get the information. He will reread, askquestions, use the dictionary, whatever it takes to get the information. So, the level of difficulty is much less important than the level of interest.
Yes! I agree 100%. I am a teacher also. French and Spanish. I think compelling input trumps comprehensible input. Each student has different interests. Sports or music or whatever. If they find something of interest in their particular field, they will find a way to make it comprehensible. Especially now with Google Translate available at a click of a mouse. Some other foreign language experts who I greatly respect are big proponents of graded readers. That is a big improvement over boring textbooks and some graded readers are ok for beginners and low intermediate language learners. But interesting or compelling input is what really motivates people to learn a language. Need to connect with the students' interests.
ive read 20 pages of the ring (one of my favourite movies) and ive had to look up 170 chinese words. yes its inconvenient but because i love the book so much im happy to persist. @@ronlugbill1400
This is the exact way how I learned my English 😂as a Chinese person, my English level was pretty basic before .just this is a pen level 🤣then one day, I bought a VPN, in China, we can not use TH-cam, I think this is the most valuable purchase that I ever had 😄 After that I spent a lot of time on TH-cam,I was almost watching everything,after a long time,I realize I can somehow knows a lots of English words,even I don’t know how it writes,but I know what it was.for example,when I watching some cooking video,I don’t know how to write 香菜 in English,but I know how to say it,and how it sounds ,something like cilantro 🤣and I got many other words like this, I know this way of learning English may make me look like a 文盲🤣only understand the language but can’t write or speak English properly ,so few days ago, I downloaded a language exchange app,I hope It will improve my English writing skill😂 I think a lot of input is extremely important,I try to write something in English just few days ago,and it was amaze me that I can actually write something in English that long😅
Wow it's really interesting how you know words without even knowing their writing. I want to do the same thing with Japanese but I don't know how much effort I must put into it. Can you tell how much time it took for you to come to this level? I too have improved my English with TH-cam a lot, but I can't exactly know how much time it took because I already had English education plus a lot of exposure through video games.
Muhammed Gökmen I guess years 😂I am not sure exact number, and I didn't take it seriously which I should, I just learn it for fun🤣 I guess if I put more effort, then it won’t take me this long
Your English is pretty good, I'm glad you are learning another language. ^-^ I'm trying to do the same thing with Japanese (and it has worked better than my previous attempts) ウキウキ ^-^
A year ago I wouldn't be able to understand 90-95% of what you were saying in this video. Now, thanks to your approach, which I've been following, I understood the whole video. Thanks man, keep going.
@@genxian72 i've watched a lot of video on youtube about comprehensible input recently, and can't clearly understand how it works, since school everyone always said that learn a new language is about learning grammar and memorizing a lot of words. But like you said it works for you and really cool. I've been using this approach for 3 weeks now, i can't really say that i feel any results yet, but i keep going and will see how it works for me. have you used subtitles or tried to find content that is understandable without them ?
@@maximust-fm1ww Although i can't explain it for you clearly, i'm sure it is very helpful. I've learned English since elementary school, i can only get a good score in exam, it's not learn really english, i just can select a correct answer.
My original language is spanish. As a kid my dad used to change the language of every single TV channel i watched to English. At first I understood nothing but over time I think watching TV in English (along with video games mostly in English) was the biggest single factor that helped me acquire the language. Even more than classes at school. Now I'm trying the same full immersion approach to learn french (granted I already knew a little from school) and Japanese
I watched a bunch of german kids shows (and a bunch of german podcasts) and I got to B1 comprehension in like one month. This video mirrors my own observations.
11:30 "…you're going have to spend so much time chasing down the perfect material that you're going to be spending more time looking for materials than actually just immersing with them." You just summed up my last two years of Japanese study. 😩 I definitely have to immerse myself more native input from now on. Thanks for the advice.
Yo, I've been studying for 5 years now and I can confirm. Even if you find great resources... lacking the mass input means lacking the intuitive side of learning, it feels hard and I ended up burning out and falling off it a lot of times. So I'm trying this new approach, I'm very excited about it; watching anime as learning for the small price of not knowing all the words :D Good luck!
The fact that you called the reinforcment a "Natural SRS" is so completely fitting for the point you were making cause I only learned about SRS for the first time yesterday, and you're the third person I've heard say it since then.
I decided to ask my mother how she learned French and she just said “I had to work with French people” and I said “so how did you study” she said that she didn’t and I was so confused cuz she said that she just picked it up from hanging out with French people and try to say the stuff they say. She literally just immersed herself and became fluent in a language without knowing any grammar rules whatsoever or studying at all
it’s kind of like if you look at how babies learn a language. we learn our mother tongue essentially through immersing ourself. we watch tv in that language, get spoken too, and are usually constantly surrounded by it.
@@psibarpsi It´s not necessary, you can immerse yourself in french with youtube videos, netflix, reading books, etc. There are so many ways to do it at your home without going to another country. Just listen a lot and read a lot.
13:02 this was a super pivotal thing that I learned a few months back during AJATT. In some of your old videos, you talked about how watching subbed anime was a waste of time, and that you can't learn Japanese from it. While this is true, one of the first things I thought about was the idea that watching an anime subbed first, in PREPARATION for using it as immersion material has its advantages, as you mentioned here. I find it significantly easier to catch on to whats being said in a show if I've seen it subbed first, before watching it raw.
Just make sure you take the subtitles with a grain of salt! Sometimes the sentences have a completely different literal meaning but contextually are roughly equivalent. Sometimes the translation, for some reason or other, is just completely and totally different. If purity of translation to maintain the exact experience as much as possible is your thing, you may even say it can be downright wrong at times, but it can certainly be very different. 全然違う. Sometimes it can be really confusing how they came up with their weird translations. Other times I think, “Ehhhh, I _guess_ I can see where they’re coming from with that, but x is both closer to the literal meaning and encompasses more of the nuance as well.” Some of it probably comes down to translators being human and thus error prone. Especially on their off days where they really have to put in extra effort and even then it isn’t the same quality they can usually produce, which happens to everyone from time to time, not to mention a good translation is at least in part an act of inspiration at times. Surely it’s something approaching even an art form, especially depending on what you’re translating. Plus, not all of us get our work immortalized as the standard translation and perhaps the only means that potentially an entire fanbase may have to understanding otherwise currently inaccessible media. TL;DR The subtitles can be immensely helpful for greater immersion and comprehension on a raw rewatch, but they can just as easily lead you astray to the true meaning of the original language if you’re not careful (or at least mindful of it)
I keep watching Italian fairy tales, even though I've heard it might not help me as much as other input. They're just so cute! And I am picking up new words and verbs.
I learned English with that method without knowing about its existence. Thank you, Matt! Now I understand better what happened with me and how to replicate with other languages. Since I was little, I have been consuming a lot of content in English. And now I comprehend almost everything in the language and it's easy for me to talk. Although it's still hard for me to write in English because I didn't assimilate very well the grammar, because I never really studied these aspects of the language. It took me some years to achieve (conversational) fluency because every part of it was in a passive mode. Now I'm starting to get a little more active to improve my English towards an advanced level. I also started to learn Spanish. I'm hoping to implement your method in my daily routine. Thank you for all of this wonderful content!!!
I remember Khatzumoto mentioning in the ajatt blog that he used to read Physics textbooks in Japanese even tho he didn't get most of the vocabulary, simply because he enjoyed Physics and he was aware of how Physics textbooks work and are organized. No matter the language they are written in, Physics textbooks have a similar structure, so he ended up understanding a good part of them and learning a lot in the progress. All these points make total sense to me!
I think it’s a very nice and welcome change :-) Matt posted this video around the general time frame of your comment: th-cam.com/video/EaCYzV2S3LU/w-d-xo.html
I wasn't a huge fan of just straight, fluent input, but now that I think about it, even though I don't speak much Spanish (coming from a Spanish household), I understand 90% of it, and that was just through years of input and barely speaking it and not much studying (I forgot everything in high school). So I give this video a huge thumbs up.
I saw that too! Tripped me out since I don't sub to many TH-cam channels and Matt posted this video just hours before that video was posted. I love when two separate people are on the same wave length about something.
I honestly prefer watching anime that will take me 2 hours per episode and will have to look up 200 words and make anki cards from them then a simpler anime that I'd have to look up only 5 to 10 words per episode, because most of those 200 words while they're not extremely common words, they're still useful, and most of them use kanji that I already knew so not only i learn new vocabulary but I also enjoy what I'm watching, even though it's "ahead of my level" Something i realized is that the harder it is for you to understand something, the more you are learning, if it's easy to understand, then you're not learning, and this realization actually helped me a lot when i was learning English, I didn't get frustrated because I wasn't focusing on enjoying it, I was focused on learning, because if I tried to enjoy it, I wouldn't be able to, and when i started to learn instead of enjoy, or to put it differently, the joy came from studying what I was watching and not what I'm watching itself, yes I was watching but it wasn't the main point, now I tried to use this thought process on japanese and I don't get frustrated anymore, and I think it's working a lot
I became obsessed with The Untamed last year and told my husband I’d keep watching it until I could understand it without subs. Turns out this is a pretty sound strategy😀
Just two days ago I really noticed again how important intrest in something is. For a while I really tried to watch show which where recommended, because of them using easier japanese. I was wondering the whole time, why I was understanding so little of whats beeing said, despide them beeing "easier". Two days ago I thought f**k it I wanna watch something that's fun, so I started rewatching attack on titan ... and oh boy what a difference. I understood 10-15% right of the bat and I found it alot easier to pic out single words inside a sentence that I knew. It is really astounding what a difference interest in something can make.
This is so inspirational. I graduated with a degree in Chinese and minored in Japanese, and I was able to learn my Chinese through this immersion method, the phrase "your cutting edge" makes soo much sense. Thank you for sharing this peak knowledge with everyone! This is truly the secret that works.
I found that the best method is to have regular input right from the start (that leaves you really with very low % comprehension input at first) and regular formal instructional material that follows a progressive system, reviewed at least once, if not twice over time. The input allows you to get familiar with the language, reinforce what you have learned from the instructional material, and also encounter new things that you may not understand yet but allow you to form the foundation to acquire them properly in the instructional material later on.
I find the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon great in the field of language acquisition. The fact that noticing it once will lead to you noticing it more sounds like a perfect, subconcious way to reinforce it.
As a kid, I learned my native tongue from my parents; Swedish from being put in a Swedish school; English before it was taught at school just from playing video games and watching TV. And now I'm learning Spanish from watching Spanish and Mexican streamers. The only language I learned by studying in school is German, and even with it I made the most progress by reading one Harry Potter in German and watching German TV-shows. I completely agree with your points about immersing with material that you find interesting and that have lots for you to learn.
Krashen's theory of "Comprehensible input" is not saying that you need to understand everything that's going on for it to be comprehensible. But that somehow, the message (broadly speaking) is conveyed in a way that you understand. I'm currently a beginner in Russian, and while watching Masha and the Bear is much more digestible because it is for children, I find watching "Better than Us" in the original russian with the russian sub is way more engaging bc the way these stories are told are very differently from each other. In the former, there is very little continuity between stories (more for the short attention span of a kid of 4 years old or so). Whereas, "Better Than Us" is written by adults for adults, and the visual storytelling adds enough context to actually convey what's going on. While I know very little besides "Меня́ зову́т..." I was amazed at how much of the story I was able to follow just by the visual storytelling. Then all of the vocab I already have stuck out like a sore thumb and started to fit into a broader context of the story. Even, listening to a podcast where the speaker is going slow through russian texts or articles I can clearly pick out words I know, and words I don't know, and then somehow I'm kinda magically able to put some things together. Now, the benefit to that is that the reader then goes on to translate every sentence word for word after finishing a section. And it's remarkable how much more easily things stick. I think the real benefit that Krashen's theory and method have is that you don't have the stress associated with forgetting a word and getting stuck in a rut. The emphasis he places is on being relaxed, focused, but focusing on the big picture. While when you're starting from 0 you'll pick up close to nothing, after a week or so, you'll pick up some more, and a little more, and a little more. This is one of those things that I really thought was going to be bogus, but it's really not. Our brains are remarkable computational instruments that are excellent at pattern recognition. My brain didn't need teachers telling me that the past-tense existed for me to properly use it in speach. Likewise, a 5 year old russian need not understand which case her word is in so that it agrees with the rest of her sentence. She just knows, and then does it. Krashen's theory frees us from the shackles of modern day language learning by telling us that it should be as natural and simple as breathing. For those of us who are on our second or third language as adults, all we have to do is put in the time and effort to just sit down and maybe be a little confused for a bit, but to remember that doing this is something that should be fun, and not a chore.
But what if I know like, 3 words in a language? How do I start comprehending the rest? In this video Matt assumes the viewer is on a 30% level of comprehension. But what if I'm at 1%? Where do I even begin with the input?
I became fluent in Moroccan Arabic (Darija) by living in Morocco during two periods, from ages 0 to 2 and 7 to 17, immersing myself in the language. In school, I had lessons in Classical Arabic (Fous7a). Although Darija is considered a dialect, of Fous7a, the two Arabic forms had little in common. Despite having 10 years of Classical Arabic lessons with both school and a private tutor, I didn't learn much because I lacked immersion opportunities in Classical Arabic - no one spoke it. On the contrary, for Moroccan Arabic, I never had a formal lesson. I learned it entirely through immersion and eventually became fluent. However, I often had moments of late realization about the meanings of words and occasional confusion due to words having multiple meanings, that could have been clarified sooner if I had had some kind of lessons. For instance, the word "nmchi" could mean walk, go, or work. Being fluent in other languages helped me associate meanings based on context. For example, since "ça ne marche pas" in French means "it doesn't walk" to convey that something doesn't work, I could understand that "nmchi" could mean both walk and work in different contexts.
I agree with most of your explanations. But often, even understanding only the general message would depend on one single word. You can not always compensate to not knowing the crucial words (or some grammar) by mere hand movements. But being motivated and (therefore more easily) investing time are the key success factors. For me, total immersion and being in the country made the real difference.
I was just wondering about this after watching Krashen's talk. I totally agree. You need material that is engaging. Adults using material designed for children can be frustrating and boring.
When you go meta on your own language it’s very crystal clear what you’re saying, the way we completely switch off our active engagement speaking English because we already have those patterns engraved in our brain, I’m guessing it’s the same with Japanese. I also speak Spanish and it’s the same way, I don’t have to actively engage it, it just flows.
I've always took that same stance. It doesn't NEED to be completely comprehensible, but it should be "figure-out-able." I think I agree with you. There are more opportunities to learn with lower % of comprehensibility, provided you have the tolerance for the frustration of not knowing the larger %.
This is such a liberating message about comprehensible input!! Especially for those of us who are learning languages without a lot of media content with subtitles or captions. Thank you!! Super helpful!!
I personally think that children books (audio books) are fantastic tools. They use vocabulary repetitively to reinforce learning, yet they still use full sentences with all the tenses and verb conjugation, so you don't limit yourself there. Make no mistake, I agree with you. Understanding 30-40% works for learning. But the issue is that when you start you don't know 30-40%, you know like 5%, if that. I'm not the best person to truely judge whether this is effective, but I've found that when it comes to the very initial stages of learning French, these children audiobooks have massively jumped my ability to just hear and understand the flow of speech. They are what jumped me to being able to listen to French in movies and begin that step of understanding 30-40%
@@MsCankersore if you're learning a language, DEFINITELY get anki. It automates the SRS. Though I was told it's much better to make your own flashcards rather than downloading others. It takes a bit longer, but you're learning as you're making the cards
@@LannasMissingLink Complex subject but I disagree. I've made my own flashcards and used others and generally they are all the same, except I make more mistakes and my cards are lower quality, not to mention a waste of time. I would just focus on premade sentence decks. I believe that you should definitely use anki for the first 2k words or so, and then input as much as you can. Over time you can drop anki altogether.
Starting MIA today after 4 semesters of Japanese at my college, glad I found it before I spent even more time learning half-assedly. Thanks for all your work.
@@qw1626 Yeah, it's been going great. Still taking classes at the college so I can get my degree but using MIA (or more specifically something similar to MIA as I don't follow it strictly) has helped me immensely.
@@aslipperysnake I will make notes insofar as that I save stuff to make cards for, like screenshotting manga, or general sentence mining stuff but outside of that no.
When I listen to something of which I understand less than fifty %, I feel soon motivated... to find something else and stop wasting my time. Add to this, I don't like listening to audios or videos dealing with topics I'm not interested in. I admire your ability at staying focused on something you don't understand, but I can't. Besides motivation, I also have a memorization concern as I forget new words or new phrases at least 10 times before I can simply, naturally, easily remember it. So, when I listen to something of which, I already know 90%, let's say, I consolidate large parts of what I already know. I listen a lot in English (my mother tongue is French) and I always select speakers and topics I'm interested in and that I can broadly understand.
As for the subconscious mind working on things in a multi faceted way, sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with some epiphany about some grammar or sentence structure that didn't make sense and suddenly getting it. I try and immerse myself as much as possible. It works.
this is actually a great topic to talk about. I had a very fast spurth of learning japanese for 3 months but i was discouraged when i spend so much time perfecting my grammar but when i hop on an anime or j drama i just understand 30 - 40% max. so i stopped. but not completely tho, i had beyond basic knowledge of the japanese already so although i wasnt trying to intentionally progress with my study, i still watch anime and j dramas and after stopping for about 6 months, i picked up where i left off but i was surprised that i improved drastically. there was this even this video that i was only able to understand 10 - 20% of back then i could understand 80% now and the sentences became much more clearer to me. you just actually need to not pressure yourself in to listening and just try to pick it up naturally. when you focus too much on perfecting it you will find yourself very frustrated.
In general when watching something completely beyond my level I have a hard time not "tuning" the parts I don't know out unconciously, even when focusing. Now that might not mean my subconscious isn't doing its job and is picking up bits at a time but I find it hard to stay engaged on a conscious level if I'm "drowning". I try to mix it up, when I am focused and studying I keep it on a higher% of comprehension. If it is just background input then I don't mind if I am not grasping it.
This is a great comment I find this too. If there is too much you are not understanding then you’ll have to try hard to keep interested it it. I also find that you could be watching something at 60% if it was normal language but then they throw in slang every now and then that’s throws you off to like 20/30%.
I fully agree with the last part of the video. I do think that nowadays, we always end up searching the "why" and "how" for everything. Whereas, centuries before, we would prioritize enjoyment, interactions and so obviously the messages. As Matt said, if you want to learn a new language, you need engagement and motivation and then, just live? Just go out and listen and communicate. How do you think people did without Internet? And we still ended up with many many languages before Internet. Move your ass out, take your motivation in your bag and live and get the messages you hear.
Why not both? I think it really helps if you’re kinda open to listening to all kinds of stuff. For me personally, i enjoy the nursery rhymes like goshushu or shows like oshiri kajiri mushi. You’re basically able to memorize/understand all of it, and it in turn helps with the 30%~ ones as those words act like pegs similar to the nuances you catch on.
You've got some extremely good advice even for non Japanese learners. Not a Japanese learner but am a Chinese learner and noticed when I was taking a break and my brother was watching anime I recognized a few of the characters, it freaked me out and I looked up that they have lexical similarities and it got me excited. I'm B2 in Spanish and A2 in Chinese. Once I pass a C2 certificate test in both of them I'm moving onto Portuguese and Japanese the lexical similarities between my current target languages excites me.
I found that this is exactly how I acquired Japanese as well. My subconscious mind would be working on things I heard and at random times they would pop into my head and suddenly I would understand them. The main point is to get as much input as possible so your subconscious mind has a ton of experience to draw from. Trust the process and you will get there.
Eng native speaker who also knows Spanish here. I'm a beginner in Italian. I'm experimenting with consuming as much material as I can that already has translation. I got a book, "2000 Most Common Italian Words in Context" for learning new vocabulary. It comes with a translation of every sentence. I'm also watching as many YT vids as I can that have subtitles in Eng. My reasoning is that knowing the meaning of a particular word or sentence is just the beginning of the process. I still have to memorize the words (& produce them later on), so skipping the frustrating step of not knowing what the words mean makes the whole process less painful. There is still a lot of work involved bc I still have to go over the words/sentences many times to make the meanings stick (memorization). I still read short online texts in Italian w/o translation, & watch vids w/o translations (mostly Lucrezia's Vlogs). Already knowing Spanish helps w this so I'm making good progress.
This! I mean I've only been doing MIA for about 2 months but I was a complete noob before hand. I didn't even know what sumimasen or hai (I'm not joking) meant. It's kinda cool after watching a bunch and seeing those words used in the same way or in different ways you just come to understand their meanings and I'm assuming that only increases with things like sentences once you immerse more and more. The brain is so fascinating!
Ohhh, that makes sense, then. I haven't got around to watching that video yet, but when I saw the title when it was uploaded I somehow read it as the 'missing in action' kind of MIA.
Thanks for talking about this! I don't actually think what you said contradicts with the comprehensible hypothesis :) "Given enough input, i + 1 will be there."-S.Krashen. I agree with prioritising your engagement over comprehension. If something is engaging to you, it probably means that at least some of the messages present are comprehensible and you are probably acquiring :) I have heard Krashen say that creating/finding input that is both comprehensible AND interesting, especially at the beginner/low intermediate stage, is very difficult. For this reason, I agree that exposing yourself to large amounts of interesting input at varying degrees of comprehensibility, like you mentioned, is a decent solution. It's what I am doing and seems to be working. Thanks again!
This is basically how I learnt Korean. Without noticing it. Just like a baby. Then I went to Korea and took the TOPIK test then boom! Level 4! (Level 6 is the highest) I’m planning to use the same method to learn Spanish.
@@moonchild-df1kj Yes! watching without subtitles ofc. Otherwise you never improve.. Try repeating what you hear and impersonate others. It works like magic!
Thanks for these videos Matt - I recently found your channel last week after picking up Japanese again with the intent of studying it every day. It seems like we were in relatively similar situations as I did a year at university but decided that I prefer to learn languages by myself. It's very reassuring to hear that some of the stuff I'm noticing and the anxieties I'm having are perfectly normal and that the end goal I'd like is definitely achievable. Kudos to you mate, very much appreciated
When there are tens of things you don't know, that's a lot of work to learn them. When there are one or three things, it's easier to learn them. So, a learning process which "feeds" you just a few bites at a time can be easier and quicker.
this video provides good food for thought for the beginner. I speak Spanish and I study Catalan and Thai. For a language like Spanish, that shares a lot of cognates with English, a good portion of learning is automatic and unconscious, I believe. You can watch a movie as a beginner and wake up the next day and your Spanish is somehow better, without any conscious effort at all. It doesn't seem to work however for non-Indo European languages like Thai. That takes a lot more conscious effort, though at the same time there's still a lot of unconscious automatic learning going on. To me language acquisition is a natural thing, it's just that the natural part becomes more difficult as we age because we have a first language interfering with the second or third one.
Your hypothesis about going from 98% to 100% being the same progress as from 30% to 32% being the same but a lot harder seems actually plausible. Say you are playing in a video game, and have a region at 30% exploration. There is 70% left to be explored, and a ton of places to find chests to increase the exploration. On the other hand, when you have 98% progress, it is very difficult to find those 2% left chests since most of the area is already explored, and it is hard to tell where you didn't find the chests
Thank you for addressing this. I literally was troubled by this today. Coincidentally this video had popped up. You captured exactly what I wanted answers to. You articulated it well.
What really helped me was switching my passive listening to be audio from something I at one point listened to or watched actively (Terrace House episodes in my case). By doing this you know the plot of what you're listening to, and therefore it's much easier getting a grasp of what they're saying. This is especially true if you ripped the audio from an episode of something you enjoy, as you end up unconsciously replaying the entire episode in your head, even if you're only passively listening to it.
Don't know how I've missed it either then haha, I didn't start doing it until I read it on Japanese Level Up a while after I had started immersing. And yeah, I'm from Norway actually! :D
As my name suggests, I am an English student. I'm from Peru and right now I can understand 90% of your video. I am already using this method for 3 months.
This idea seems to hold up when you consider how ancient peoples learned other languages. They just listened to other people and picked it up over time just using their instincts. Our brains are just good at noticing patterns and helping it find those patterns on purpose is what learning is.
I agree. I don't think starting from 0 understanding is great. Having some pieces of the puzzles like studying basic grammar and common vocabulary can really be a game changer for a beginner and speeding up the process dramatically.
It fells almost like me through my process of learned English .Everything started when i was 10 years old, my cousin said to me that I should sing the songs that I was sing with lyrics so this way I kind would know what the word and how the words were pronounced , even though I didnt understand a word, but I did.So, when i was 17 and start to take English classes everything seems normal for me so less than 1 year I was speaking pretty well , so last year I did the same with french and learned in 6 months,now I started Russian and Spanish in 2020 I hope to get them RIGHT !!! by the way my mother tongue is Portuguese from Brazil.
@@zakky4175 so with Russian i have to put more effort to it cuz is not a latim alphabet(the one that im used to) , but yes i used a lot of music still now i can have basic conversation in russian but this time didn't work just song , i had to read more and more listen people talk and read what they say , its been a journey to learn Russian , but feel like im going in the right way sometimes i guess myself think in Russian, is the best felling !! The big tip is just immerse yourself in the lang ! ps.: i do not say that for asian language. Actually i still trying to figure out how to start my korean !!!! Hihihihi 🤣🤣
I would add that some videos really help beginners understanding thanks to images that show context and action. You can understand without translating in many cases from what you see and hear, besides the main speech or conversation. Here comes something that matters, I feel. it is the way you watch and listen: either you go for the easy lazy extensive way or you go for a more analytic, deep learning mode. Alternating these two approaches helps to improve faster, at least according to my own experience as a self-taught learner.
Today, I was watching an Italian show and reading the subtitles, and at one point I did not read fast enough, so missed the last few words, but I heard what the chatacter said, and luckily understood her perfectly. That was a real buzz! And a few times recently I have had to miss the subtitles due to looking away for some reason, but I was able to understand what was said. Another major buzz!
I've been trying to learn for years and thought I wasn't getting anywhere. This week I tried finally watching videos without subs and I'm surprised by how much I understood and how fast I've been improving.
I wish I knew about you when I was learning Japanese! I'm learning portuguese now but obviously your content is still extremely helpful and motivating. Ironically , I found out about you on a video about 3D art by flipped normals!
Such a relief. I thought I was dumb not to understand 100%, and it always upset me. But after hearing what you're saying, maybe there's hope. Even Matt had trouble understanding 100%. I agree, it is messy or should be, otherwise, there would be no progress.
I feel you, bro! I tried to watch some cartoons when I got started in French, but it was utterly weird and boring for me, even though I could barely understand what they say in those too, to be honest. So I just switched to podcasts and/or other types of media in french which may have been more difficult for me to understand, but it was definitely a lot more interesting and enjoyable. :)
I watched your video with Spanish subtitles. I forgot most of my Spanish from middle school and high school when I was in the top level classes. The Spanish started to come back as I read the subtitles, but my vocabulary is weak. I used the GNU emacs text editor with org mode for organizing things in an outline form that can fold up to show the top of the tree and not the children. I study French. I started a vocabulary list under categories on the top level of the tree and under parts of speech on the second level of the tree. I will read and copy sentences to the words that I have in the tree, but not the example sentence for all of the words in the sentence. I will add all of the words from each sentence. I will know which words that I know, marked by TO_DO, and which words that I do not know, marked by DONE. |I will add all of the words from each sentence. SUBTREE |* person (category) |** pronouns (part of speech) |*** DONE I (word) |****** I will add all of the words from each sentence. (example sentence) |* want (category) |** verbs (part of speech) |*** DONE will (word) etc. FOLDED |* person (category) |* want (category)
First: This video is very good. My comments below, about how my particular brain actually handles this. Despite me learning English through osmosis, I'm definitely from the camp which believes that the input needs to be mostly comprehensible. Looking back through time that's exactly why my extreme English input sessions actually taught me English - I (because I was interested in the content, not the language) ended up always picking the right "level" of comprehensibility (though I had never heard about Krashen way back then, of course). And then, looking back at more than ten years of Japanese immersion, though *not* having the option of setting the comprehensibility level, but also having a deep natural interest in the language, I learned nearly nothing [though I could probably talk all day about grammar and structure]. But now, by following a setup which actually does define the comprehensibility level (in this case, Yuta's JVS), I'm suddenly learning. I'm starting to getting it. I understand more. Finally, finally. There are some important points to this: 1) Get into the story of whatever you're hearing or reading. Don't get into the *language*. Get into the story. Only then will the mind start automatically grasping meaning from context. EditAdd: And yes, interesting input. That's what's necessary to get into the story, the information, the science, the whatever theme it is (I learned German by reading car magazines when I was young). 2) The acquisition comes when your brain starts to pick out the words you don't understand, as opposed to picking up the words you do understand. That's when the brain will start figuring things out, and catch on the next time (or later) when you come across that term, word, or expression again. You should *not* have to make a note of it, and you should *not* have to stop, underline, look it up in the dictionary. Only in the hopeless cases, where you've come across something multiple times, on different days, and still haven't got it - then it's clearly on your mind and at that point give in and look it up. 3) The last part of the previous paragraph: When you stop to underline a word, or to look it up, you're leaving the story and your mind loses the imagery and the flow of the story and your'e just back to printed words (or audio signals) again. YouDon'tLearnThatWay. Instead, keep the flow going, that's much more important than getting the meaning of particular words. Thus, comprehensible input. Krashen absolutely knows what he's talking about.
Oh, my God, your videos are a hidden gem that everybody should watch. One question: How do you tackle the language tests problems related to content? I mean, in language tests they usually ask the participant to be able to speak, write, read and listen to a huge variety of topics, most of them really boring at least for me. For example, I may be at a C1 English level in topics that interest me, like physics, language acquisition, political philosophy, etc. while I may be at a B2 or even B1 level in topics that don't interest me as much or at all like sports, travelling, etc. If I don't like those topics, what can I do to push them to a B2 or C1 level without massive exposure? If I don't like them and, as a result, can't push them to a B2 level, does that mean that these tests are flawed because they don't test your strong points and instead ask you about shitty questions like "What places do you like to travel"? If someone just prepared to answer to that question but is at a B1 level, can actually obtain a better mark than me, who didn't prepare the exam questions at all because I know that I am at a C1 level but fail to answer quickly to that question.
6:13 i like the idea of being “bombarded with opportunities” because it’s both challenging and organic, it’s like a positive way to approach learning in the dark the way you do when taking input that you aren’t *comfortable* with
all our brains work differently and for me, listening to hours upon days / weeks / months / years of japanese, (tv shows, anime, youtube tutorials, f2f conversations) would appear to have not helped me in my learning process. i struggle to hear words and sentence patterns. apart from the occasional, "honto, heeee, arigatou" etc etc i feel no closer to improving my ability to understand japanese than I did some 3 years ago when I started my self teaching marathon. i feel my japanese proficiency is slowly improving i.e vocab, grammar, reading speed etc, but that is driven by text books, youtube tutorials SRS apps etc. My ear struggles to hear even the most basic of sentences, as does my efforts to construct my own sentences. i find that if i get to a word i hear that i dont recognise (which is a lot) i cant store it and listen to the rest of the sentence. instead, i momentarily try and remember what the word meant and by that time, a micro second later, i've missed the next couple of words and instead of playing catchup with the rest of the phrase, my mind switches off. i find, that in many of these cases, when there are japanese subtitles, i can rewind the sentence I had no idea about and then after reading it, almost totally understand what was said. luckily, im in no rush to improve my japanese, i still enjoy the process albeit a little frustrated at perhaps some poor decisions in the early part of my learning, where i used my study hours on things i enjoyed instead of things that were either more improtant or should have been progressing at the same rate as my vocab. thx for this video - i really enjoy watching ur vids! :)
@@lorax121323 very interesting. thx for sharing :) one of my biggest mistakes was not reading kana right from the start. i learnt katakana and hiragana but never practiced. instead i used english and romaji on my 1000+ flash cards. oh well, live and learn. also, problem is with english subtitles when listening to japanese audio, is that they aren't translated exactly and the grammar is very different, so extremely difficult to try and both listen and decipher in real time.
This question sort of answers itself. You would understand more at 90% than 30%, but how did you get to that 90%? In a video game, if you’re having a tough time, your instinct is to turn the difficulty down. In reality, if you turn the difficulty way up, your brain will adapt to it. Then if you turn the difficulty back down to normal, it will be like playing on easy mode. This is what your brain does for you in language. You go from knowing nothing of a language and being terrible at it. You decide to get better. You start with simple words and phrases and realize you are really bad at it. Then, if you crank up the difficulty with harder input, you will find that those simple words and phrases you started with are easy.
Evening Matt, i just wanted to mention that i truly appreciate your videos; not only because they actually help me with my progress in Japanese but because of the maturity and knowledge you occupy brings me satisfaction and trust towards what you tell us, your viewers. Take care.
That's how I learned english as well. I heard words in context, I knew what it could mean but never looked it up. Heard it again somewhere in other context and adding those together I get closer to the exact meaning. The only problem with this style of learning is that you have harder time when trying to actually translate things, tho rarely that's a goal of learning for anyone. Even if it is it's a good price for fluency
It's OK to achieve the level that you able to communicate in daily life. But if you are an advanced learner, you will find many words appeared in very low frequency, you maybe even forget you have came cross it last time, so you have to look it up in dictionary and memorize it. Even native speakers need dictionary and memorize vocabulary.
@@cosmosben6726 Yeah dictionaries exist for a good reason. However I'm in an advanced English course right now, and I don't see a need to memorize words. I haven't encountered many words that I wasn't able to understand. I do like to read academic texts for fun though, so for me many of the "low frequency" words are not low frequency at all. Most of the words that I can't understand are special terms in subjects I can't understand even if it was on my native language xD
@1237 Thank you for your reply. I'm curious about your learning process . I have some questions hope you can answer it. Appreciate you reply in advance. 1.Did you beginning learning English with children's show? 2. What does "advanced English course" mean? The class in school? 3. In novel and news, there are many slang, phrases and abstract words with delicate nuance. For example, for smile, there are smirk, grin, sneer, etc. for sad, there are gloomy, sorrow, depression, melancholy, etc. In news, there are words like denounce, condemn, accuse, etc., and revoke, relinquish, abolish, etc. Can you watch normal novels and news without much trouble now (not just get the gist) ? If so, what resources do you think are very helpful for you to achieved this level?
@@cosmosben6726 Great questions! I did start learning English in school. However, I was not very good, barely able to keep up. So I did learn the basics in school. That gave me a good foundation to start learn for real. It helped me a lot but it really wasn't how I learned English. Years of regular learning and I was barely conversational. I didn't start with children's shows. I actually started with memes xD Then I started to watch youtube. At the time there wasn't much entertainment available on the internet in my native language and all the 'cool kids' were watching stuff in English. And I started to do that too. At first it was mostly music and videos where the language wasn't in such a crucial role. Eventually I started to watch more storytime videos and such. I went in a year from working hard to get barely passing grades to not even bother to do my homework and still being one of the best students. That makes it sound fast, easy and effortless. However it took me a lot of time. I checked my youtube statistics and I had 40 hours per week watchtime on average. All of it was in English. I can imagine that intergating a language you are not comfortable with to that extent to your life is hard. For me it happened due to social pressure and easy availability of English content. The English course I was talking about is a mandatory course at University where I'm studying at. By advanced I mean that we write academic texts there. Also it's completely in English. The teacher doesn't even speak the local language. I think I'm pretty fluent. When it comes to watching news etc, I understand quite effortlessly mostly everything. Watching English content doesn't feel like learning or studying to me anymore. I'm also a bit of a nerd, so I like to watch videos and read articles about various scientific subjects, and I don't struggle with that. There's still words that I'm not familiar with, but often I don't need to check the meaning because I can understand it from the context. My biggest tip overall is: don't worry so much over individual words. If you understand the message you can move on. So basically try to make the language a part of your life somehow. For example try to involve entertainment in that language. It can be hard, because entertainment is ment for relaxing and not for studying. Also finding content in your target language that is both easy enough to understand and interesting is very hard. I recommend making a second youtube account and training the algorithm to recommend videos on that language. That way it's easier to find stuff you actually are interested in. I hope that anwsers everything :) thank you for the questions!
I don't know if I clarified the timeline, so here it is: Started learning english at school around the age 9. That continued with not very good results until at age 14 -ish I started to consume English content online. Around 15 - 16 years of age I was already pretty fluent, at least I was at the point where I felt similar mental ease listening to english than listening to my native language. At 18 I met a german guy who I chatted with every day in English. He was the first person I voluntarily spoke English to. Until that point I only spoke English if my teacher made me xD. And that german guy lives with me now so using English is an everyday task to me now
I totally agree with you, Matt. I works for me the same way as you described it. Graded readers have certainly their place but they always felt for me like driving with the handbreak on for me. Even if I understand only 20% at first, I celebrate every new piece of the puzzle that I unlock. What matters the most to me is that I'm interested in the material. I also feel that I make faster progress this way. It feels more exciting for me. I'm one of the few people that seem to love reading up on Grammar. That's where I usually start.
I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of this type of immersion the more I use it. I am curious how long it has taken for other people before they were able to converse at a high level and understand advanced speech without subtitles? For example, I started doing tons of immersion with German back in March. I've learned around 4000 words (at least that's how many I've made Anki cards for) and done at least 200 hours of input (both comprehensible and otherwise). In the last month I've been able to start watching German content on Netflix with subtitles and understand probably 80% or more, which, for me, is enough to enjoy a show. I took an online evaluation that ranked my German level at a B1, although I can definitely understand content at a higher level than that. I'd love to hear other people's experiences.
This is exactly how I learned english and hindi , I never really studied either of them I just used to watch TV where they aired shows for children in hindi(I think there were shows in bengali my mother tongue but I was too dumb to figure out how) I just kept watching shows in Hindi and picked up Hindi. And it is the same for English, I just watched a lot of TH-cam videos and English movies😆
30-40% is already quite a ait comprehension to begin with tbh. I feel like right around the 1/3rd area is the sweet spot for opprotunity+idealness for i+1, if go too high in comprehension and your opportunities are lacking, go too low and things are sooo new to you, you dont rly learn jack shit, MAYBE you pick up some thing via context through bodylanguage/action, but thats it.
Totally agree about engagement when I watch something boring I catch myself thinking about other things and not even really listening. So what should be active listening becomes passive.
One thing with Japanese that has helped a bit in the few days I have tried to be more immersive is definitely in lighted with the engagement, but also changing the speed of the language. A lot of Japanese is hard to understand at full speed, but at 75% speed is far more comprehensible. I watched a video on a subject I was familiar with (the planets) intended for elementary school children, and it was awesome. I learned the names of all the planets, how to talk about orbits, the diameter of objects, a bunch of celestial objects and other things. What do you think about slowing down the speech of youtube videos about for input to make it more comprehensible but it being the same content?
What Matt says at 11:20 exactly sums up why I stopped learining Japanese so often. I was constantly trying to find stuff that was 90% for me, and in this time, searching, looking up anki decks, creating anki decks and so on, I actually didn't see or hear any Japanese at all. And after hours, when I found something good, I did 2 sentences and got burnt out. Now I do Heisig and use sub2srs with Inuyasha for Inuyasha sentence cards and watch Inuyasha without subtitles and I feel so relaxed and actually look forward everyday to coming home and finally being able to practice Japanese. I mean, textbooks are cool for the beginning, but as soon as Japanese isn't as exiting and stuff starts to repeat, just watch this video and "how often do I need to look stuff up" and go for it, with whatever you wanna watch/read/listen to. It's so, so much better. Thanks for your great advice, Matt!
@@matheuszanelladias Sorry for not answering, I usually don't dwell in comment sections. I personally don't think so, because whenever I try it, I don't hear anything from the voices, because I'm so occupied reading the subtitles and I'm just not fast enough. I guess with your 5-10% rate you aren't either, so just watch anime without subtitles, listen closely and enjoy (without reading you can even see the pretty pictures :D)
@@TheAnimeZz Recently I started watching one of my favourite animes of all time which I have already seen many times, without subtitles. It was amazing how different it felt. Even when I was understanding a lot of it, the feel was just different. I feel like the nuance became clearer. Was a really surreal experience. The creepy parts suddenly actually did feel somewhat scary. I think, even if you're a fast reader and still get a good look at the images, watching with subtitles actually does prevent you from fully immersing with the atmosphere and story. Like you can fully comprehend the story and all its details, but only when you take away those subs and just watch and try to listen do you gain the true intended experience.
But the idea is that parents dumb down languages to children and basically give them those +1 sentences. Isn't that what Krashen says too. But even if that is the most effective way I have no idea how you would reliably find simple language for beginners. And yeah the interest in the content is basically what keeps you immersing. What I think helps a beginner is to look for content that you normally wouldn't watch as an adult but is more forgiving and more interesting when you don't understand as much. For example shounen fighting anime isn't exactly what I would watch with subs but when I started out with Japanese those kinds of anime was more interesting than more wordy stuff that I would like more when I understood it fully. So basically by maximizing the fun "variable" you will naturally tend towards simpler stuff until your comprehension goes up. That is if you are actually honest about what content you find fun while watching (not forcing yourself to watch stuff you "should" like) and also try a lot of new content.
Who else is super happy and grateful that they discovered this language learning community!?
I'm super happy for it. I recently got the option to enroll in language classes at uni which would be something I would do in an instant before, but this method destroyed my view of language classes lol
100% I have taken some Language classes before and they were a joke!
@@jackneals5585 Yeah man I did two years of GCSE (UK school qualifications) French at school, my final grade was A* and I can't really speak French at all hahaha
Yep and at the end of the day a lot of the "learn japanese material" out there is all just to make money. That's it. It's all just marketing hype. Like look at Rosetta Stone!!! It's $200! haha int's insane...
@@jackneals5585 It's ironic that the best method relies only on yourself and is virtually free. That's also a good reason to trust it, because no one stands to make money from it.
This feels like it won’t work. Until I realize that I’ve gotten to a native level of English by only watching English TH-cam videos.
Hell yeah dude
ikr
same here
YES! this is what i realized recently. i thought to myself "well it might seem like i'm not progressing in japanese but this is the way i learned english.." like it really blew my mind how constant input and context is learned by your unconscious brain without you noticing it
So damn true
5:10 Look at that grace, that elegance, with which he drank from that bottle. His form is exquisite, perhaps even perfect if I dare say. To move so effortlessly but with such incredible speed, is nothing short of pure talent.
he didnt even drool
no water hahaha
screw learning a language, i want to perfect the art of drinking
To me it looks like the video must have been worked over, it looks like fast forward.
飲むの上手ですね
I started playing Skyrim in German with zero knowledge. I’d do some vocabulary study and then play the game for a few hours afterwards. At first I didn’t understand anything, but After a few weeks of playing, an NPC spoke and I really understood it. Like On a fundamental level. It felt weird, but also very rewarding
Interesting experience, maybe I should try smth similar
Im doing the same thing! But with Japanese. So far, i only really understand borrowed english words, and where verbs are though lol
Try reading those skyrim lore books. Sets the bar on how much you actually need to know to get a decent comprehension.
Even in the beginning? Like how do you know what to do with zero knowledge
@@RezZ0172 It's Skyrim, if you don't already know literally the entire game from muscle memory alone it's probably not the best thing to do
I love that conclusion about "maybe it's more effective to have easier material, like baby books or movies but you will spend more time looking for those perfect material than truly immersing yourself"
zoomed through that hydration o-o
yea that was scary tbh
That was like a junpscare. The only part of the video that was sped up😂
I love it that your videos start without any bullshit intro... ^^
Sorry... I have been meaning to do this but I love a good intro!
I liked your "Dust turns into nightfall, sand turns into glass" intro...
Gosh darn it George, a TH-camr with the subscribers you have should know better ;p
It's actually refreshing. Intros should be no longer than one second
Olly Richards practically cuts off the first word of the first sentence in his vids. Sometimes he intros himself, sometimes not. lol
Krashen's theory was i + 1, to use language that was just beyond the learner's level. He was concerned if it was too high above the learner's level, the brain would shut down and not process the information. If it was too low, you wouldn't be learning new info. He also thought it is very important for the material to be compelling. Very interesting. And for the learner to be relaxed, not stressed. In my research on L1 reading, there has been an overemphasis on reading level. More important is the student's interest in the topic. If a student is really interested in the topic, he will find a way to get the information. He will reread, askquestions, use the dictionary, whatever it takes to get the information. So, the level of difficulty is much less important than the level of interest.
Yes! I agree 100%. I am a teacher also. French and Spanish. I think compelling input trumps comprehensible input. Each student has different interests. Sports or music or whatever. If they find something of interest in their particular field, they will find a way to make it comprehensible. Especially now with Google Translate available at a click of a mouse. Some other foreign language experts who I greatly respect are big proponents of graded readers. That is a big improvement over boring textbooks and some graded readers are ok for beginners and low intermediate language learners. But interesting or compelling input is what really motivates people to learn a language. Need to connect with the students' interests.
Interesting
ive read 20 pages of the ring (one of my favourite movies) and ive had to look up 170 chinese words. yes its inconvenient but because i love the book so much im happy to persist. @@ronlugbill1400
@@ronlugbill1400did you just reply to yourself
@@zaqimel7096 witnessing this in 2024
This is the exact way how I learned my English 😂as a Chinese person, my English level was pretty basic before .just this is a pen level 🤣then one day, I bought a VPN, in China, we can not use TH-cam, I think this is the most valuable purchase that I ever had 😄
After that I spent a lot of time on TH-cam,I was almost watching everything,after a long time,I realize I can somehow knows a lots of English words,even I don’t know how it writes,but I know what it was.for example,when I watching some cooking video,I don’t know how to write 香菜 in English,but I know how to say it,and how it sounds ,something like cilantro 🤣and I got many other words like this, I know this way of learning English may make me look like a 文盲🤣only understand the language but can’t write or speak English properly ,so few days ago, I downloaded a language exchange app,I hope It will improve my English writing skill😂
I think a lot of input is extremely important,I try to write something in English just few days ago,and it was amaze me that I can actually write something in English that long😅
これはペンです
Soyboy MIA hahahahahah いいえ、それは箸です🤣🤣🤣🤣
Wow it's really interesting how you know words without even knowing their writing.
I want to do the same thing with Japanese but I don't know how much effort I must put into it. Can you tell how much time it took for you to come to this level? I too have improved my English with TH-cam a lot, but I can't exactly know how much time it took because I already had English education plus a lot of exposure through video games.
Muhammed Gökmen I guess years 😂I am not sure exact number, and I didn't take it seriously which I should, I just learn it for fun🤣 I guess if I put more effort, then it won’t take me this long
Your English is pretty good, I'm glad you are learning another language. ^-^
I'm trying to do the same thing with Japanese (and it has worked better than my previous attempts) ウキウキ ^-^
A year ago I wouldn't be able to understand 90-95% of what you were saying in this video. Now, thanks to your approach, which I've been following, I understood the whole video. Thanks man, keep going.
me too. I'm native Chinese. Now I can understand 80% of matt's video, which i just can understand 20% last year.
@@genxian72 have you done it just consumed content in target language?
@@maximust-fm1ww yeah,but i still can't speak english well
@@genxian72 i've watched a lot of video on youtube about comprehensible input recently, and can't clearly understand how it works, since school everyone always said that learn a new language is about learning grammar and memorizing a lot of words. But like you said it works for you and really cool. I've been using this approach for 3 weeks now, i can't really say that i feel any results yet, but i keep going and will see how it works for me.
have you used subtitles or tried to find content that is understandable without them ?
@@maximust-fm1ww Although i can't explain it for you clearly, i'm sure it is very helpful. I've learned English since elementary school, i can only get a good score in exam, it's not learn really english, i just can select a correct answer.
My original language is spanish. As a kid my dad used to change the language of every single TV channel i watched to English. At first I understood nothing but over time I think watching TV in English (along with video games mostly in English) was the biggest single factor that helped me acquire the language. Even more than classes at school. Now I'm trying the same full immersion approach to learn french (granted I already knew a little from school) and Japanese
So....how far are ya?
how did it go?
I watched a bunch of german kids shows (and a bunch of german podcasts) and I got to B1 comprehension in like one month. This video mirrors my own observations.
11:30 "…you're going have to spend so much time chasing down the perfect material that you're going to be spending more time looking for materials than actually just immersing with them."
You just summed up my last two years of Japanese study. 😩 I definitely have to immerse myself more native input from now on. Thanks for the advice.
Yo, I've been studying for 5 years now and I can confirm. Even if you find great resources... lacking the mass input means lacking the intuitive side of learning, it feels hard and I ended up burning out and falling off it a lot of times. So I'm trying this new approach, I'm very excited about it; watching anime as learning for the small price of not knowing all the words :D Good luck!
The fact that you called the reinforcment a "Natural SRS" is so completely fitting for the point you were making cause I only learned about SRS for the first time yesterday, and you're the third person I've heard say it since then.
I decided to ask my mother how she learned French and she just said “I had to work with French people” and I said “so how did you study” she said that she didn’t and I was so confused cuz she said that she just picked it up from hanging out with French people and try to say the stuff they say. She literally just immersed herself and became fluent in a language without knowing any grammar rules whatsoever or studying at all
it’s kind of like if you look at how babies learn a language. we learn our mother tongue essentially through immersing ourself. we watch tv in that language, get spoken too, and are usually constantly surrounded by it.
@@melaniecubells1236
ye exactly
That's the way to go! That's the most organic and ideal way to learn a language.
Too bad _I_ can't go to France for _my_ French learning.
Why is this so surprising to us though? It sounds crazy, but as he says, that's how children and babies learn. It's clearly no different for adults.
@@psibarpsi It´s not necessary, you can immerse yourself in french with youtube videos, netflix, reading books, etc. There are so many ways to do it at your home without going to another country. Just listen a lot and read a lot.
“Sooooo, yeah.” That’s how I end all my presentations too lol
13:02 this was a super pivotal thing that I learned a few months back during AJATT. In some of your old videos, you talked about how watching subbed anime was a waste of time, and that you can't learn Japanese from it. While this is true, one of the first things I thought about was the idea that watching an anime subbed first, in PREPARATION for using it as immersion material has its advantages, as you mentioned here. I find it significantly easier to catch on to whats being said in a show if I've seen it subbed first, before watching it raw.
Just make sure you take the subtitles with a grain of salt! Sometimes the sentences have a completely different literal meaning but contextually are roughly equivalent. Sometimes the translation, for some reason or other, is just completely and totally different. If purity of translation to maintain the exact experience as much as possible is your thing, you may even say it can be downright wrong at times, but it can certainly be very different. 全然違う.
Sometimes it can be really confusing how they came up with their weird translations. Other times I think, “Ehhhh, I _guess_ I can see where they’re coming from with that, but x is both closer to the literal meaning and encompasses more of the nuance as well.” Some of it probably comes down to translators being human and thus error prone. Especially on their off days where they really have to put in extra effort and even then it isn’t the same quality they can usually produce, which happens to everyone from time to time, not to mention a good translation is at least in part an act of inspiration at times. Surely it’s something approaching even an art form, especially depending on what you’re translating.
Plus, not all of us get our work immortalized as the standard translation and perhaps the only means that potentially an entire fanbase may have to understanding otherwise currently inaccessible media.
TL;DR The subtitles can be immensely helpful for greater immersion and comprehension on a raw rewatch, but they can just as easily lead you astray to the true meaning of the original language if you’re not careful (or at least mindful of it)
@@littlefishbigmountain I take everything in life with a grain of salt.
paul walther
That’s a very useful mindset to have. I try to live my life the same way!
This is my advice
Just enjoy the journey, if you don't like the way you learning, that doesn't make any sense
“Baby-level content isn’t an ideal source of language stimulation” I hear as I sit down for my 5th episode of “Folktales from Japan” today
I keep watching Italian fairy tales, even though I've heard it might not help me as much as other input. They're just so cute! And I am picking up new words and verbs.
Me watching Peppa pig in japanese dub:
@@peekyoin8347 how is it going
@@d42 learning words with context clues,and understanding 60% of it without subs
@@peekyoin8347 do you feel like you have had good progress in the past month?
I learned English with that method without knowing about its existence. Thank you, Matt! Now I understand better what happened with me and how to replicate with other languages. Since I was little, I have been consuming a lot of content in English. And now I comprehend almost everything in the language and it's easy for me to talk. Although it's still hard for me to write in English because I didn't assimilate very well the grammar, because I never really studied these aspects of the language. It took me some years to achieve (conversational) fluency because every part of it was in a passive mode. Now I'm starting to get a little more active to improve my English towards an advanced level. I also started to learn Spanish. I'm hoping to implement your method in my daily routine. Thank you for all of this wonderful content!!!
How is your Spanish now ?
Your writing is flawless except for the one part where you mentioned not being good at writing aha.
I remember Khatzumoto mentioning in the ajatt blog that he used to read Physics textbooks in Japanese even tho he didn't get most of the vocabulary, simply because he enjoyed Physics and he was aware of how Physics textbooks work and are organized. No matter the language they are written in, Physics textbooks have a similar structure, so he ended up understanding a good part of them and learning a lot in the progress.
All these points make total sense to me!
I wouldn't trust anything a liar like him says.
@@based9930 what why is he a liar can you say more?
We can see that Matt is starting to be more and more open with his ideas now!
I think it’s a very nice and welcome change :-)
Matt posted this video around the general time frame of your comment:
th-cam.com/video/EaCYzV2S3LU/w-d-xo.html
Character development at its finest
I wasn't a huge fan of just straight, fluent input, but now that I think about it, even though I don't speak much Spanish (coming from a Spanish household), I understand 90% of it, and that was just through years of input and barely speaking it and not much studying (I forgot everything in high school). So I give this video a huge thumbs up.
The Channel "what i've learned" is officially on board!!! He just released a video on the input method!
I saw that too! Tripped me out since I don't sub to many TH-cam channels and Matt posted this video just hours before that video was posted. I love when two separate people are on the same wave length about something.
One of my favourite channels on TH-cam!
I honestly prefer watching anime that will take me 2 hours per episode and will have to look up 200 words and make anki cards from them then a simpler anime that I'd have to look up only 5 to 10 words per episode, because most of those 200 words while they're not extremely common words, they're still useful, and most of them use kanji that I already knew so not only i learn new vocabulary but I also enjoy what I'm watching, even though it's "ahead of my level"
Something i realized is that the harder it is for you to understand something, the more you are learning, if it's easy to understand, then you're not learning, and this realization actually helped me a lot when i was learning English, I didn't get frustrated because I wasn't focusing on enjoying it, I was focused on learning, because if I tried to enjoy it, I wouldn't be able to, and when i started to learn instead of enjoy, or to put it differently, the joy came from studying what I was watching and not what I'm watching itself, yes I was watching but it wasn't the main point, now I tried to use this thought process on japanese and I don't get frustrated anymore, and I think it's working a lot
a Quora top answer: "the real answer is nobody knows, but...!"
Lol
1:25
thanks quora
I became obsessed with The Untamed last year and told my husband I’d keep watching it until I could understand it without subs. Turns out this is a pretty sound strategy😀
This is exactly why I started learning Chinese. 😂
No way ha! Me too! I love The Untamed
Just two days ago I really noticed again how important intrest in something is.
For a while I really tried to watch show which where recommended, because of them using easier japanese.
I was wondering the whole time, why I was understanding so little of whats beeing said, despide them beeing "easier". Two days ago I thought f**k it I wanna watch something that's fun, so I started rewatching attack on titan ... and oh boy what a difference. I understood 10-15% right of the bat and I found it alot easier to pic out single words inside a sentence that I knew.
It is really astounding what a difference interest in something can make.
This is so inspirational. I graduated with a degree in Chinese and minored in Japanese, and I was able to learn my Chinese through this immersion method, the phrase "your cutting edge" makes soo much sense. Thank you for sharing this peak knowledge with everyone! This is truly the secret that works.
hi! could you maybe share what content you watched in Chinese? Finding things i genuinely like is kinda hard :)
@@newit906 I watch cartoons and anime that I like but in their Chinese dub versions. I like watching Steven Universe and Avatar the Last Airbender
@@chelseaanglin5933 thank you :)
I found that the best method is to have regular input right from the start (that leaves you really with very low % comprehension input at first) and regular formal instructional material that follows a progressive system, reviewed at least once, if not twice over time. The input allows you to get familiar with the language, reinforce what you have learned from the instructional material, and also encounter new things that you may not understand yet but allow you to form the foundation to acquire them properly in the instructional material later on.
I find the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon great in the field of language acquisition. The fact that noticing it once will lead to you noticing it more sounds like a perfect, subconcious way to reinforce it.
That came immediately into my mind when he mentioned it, especially with the examples of the cars.
As a kid, I learned my native tongue from my parents; Swedish from being put in a Swedish school; English before it was taught at school just from playing video games and watching TV. And now I'm learning Spanish from watching Spanish and Mexican streamers. The only language I learned by studying in school is German, and even with it I made the most progress by reading one Harry Potter in German and watching German TV-shows. I completely agree with your points about immersing with material that you find interesting and that have lots for you to learn.
Krashen's theory of "Comprehensible input" is not saying that you need to understand everything that's going on for it to be comprehensible. But that somehow, the message (broadly speaking) is conveyed in a way that you understand. I'm currently a beginner in Russian, and while watching Masha and the Bear is much more digestible because it is for children, I find watching "Better than Us" in the original russian with the russian sub is way more engaging bc the way these stories are told are very differently from each other. In the former, there is very little continuity between stories (more for the short attention span of a kid of 4 years old or so). Whereas, "Better Than Us" is written by adults for adults, and the visual storytelling adds enough context to actually convey what's going on. While I know very little besides "Меня́ зову́т..." I was amazed at how much of the story I was able to follow just by the visual storytelling. Then all of the vocab I already have stuck out like a sore thumb and started to fit into a broader context of the story.
Even, listening to a podcast where the speaker is going slow through russian texts or articles I can clearly pick out words I know, and words I don't know, and then somehow I'm kinda magically able to put some things together. Now, the benefit to that is that the reader then goes on to translate every sentence word for word after finishing a section. And it's remarkable how much more easily things stick.
I think the real benefit that Krashen's theory and method have is that you don't have the stress associated with forgetting a word and getting stuck in a rut. The emphasis he places is on being relaxed, focused, but focusing on the big picture. While when you're starting from 0 you'll pick up close to nothing, after a week or so, you'll pick up some more, and a little more, and a little more.
This is one of those things that I really thought was going to be bogus, but it's really not. Our brains are remarkable computational instruments that are excellent at pattern recognition. My brain didn't need teachers telling me that the past-tense existed for me to properly use it in speach. Likewise, a 5 year old russian need not understand which case her word is in so that it agrees with the rest of her sentence. She just knows, and then does it. Krashen's theory frees us from the shackles of modern day language learning by telling us that it should be as natural and simple as breathing. For those of us who are on our second or third language as adults, all we have to do is put in the time and effort to just sit down and maybe be a little confused for a bit, but to remember that doing this is something that should be fun, and not a chore.
Hi. Three years from now, do you think the same?
But what if I know like, 3 words in a language? How do I start comprehending the rest? In this video Matt assumes the viewer is on a 30% level of comprehension. But what if I'm at 1%? Where do I even begin with the input?
I became fluent in Moroccan Arabic (Darija) by living in Morocco during two periods, from ages 0 to 2 and 7 to 17, immersing myself in the language. In school, I had lessons in Classical Arabic (Fous7a). Although Darija is considered a dialect, of Fous7a, the two Arabic forms had little in common. Despite having 10 years of Classical Arabic lessons with both school and a private tutor, I didn't learn much because I lacked immersion opportunities in Classical Arabic - no one spoke it.
On the contrary, for Moroccan Arabic, I never had a formal lesson. I learned it entirely through immersion and eventually became fluent. However, I often had moments of late realization about the meanings of words and occasional confusion due to words having multiple meanings, that could have been clarified sooner if I had had some kind of lessons. For instance, the word "nmchi" could mean walk, go, or work. Being fluent in other languages helped me associate meanings based on context. For example, since "ça ne marche pas" in French means "it doesn't walk" to convey that something doesn't work, I could understand that "nmchi" could mean both walk and work in different contexts.
I agree with most of your explanations. But often, even understanding only the general message would depend on one single word. You can not always compensate to not knowing the crucial words (or some grammar) by mere hand movements. But being motivated and (therefore more easily) investing time are the key success factors. For me, total immersion and being in the country made the real difference.
5:10 I wish I could drink water that fast, it would make a lot of things much easer. 😆
You should see how quickly he takes a leak...
I was just wondering about this after watching Krashen's talk. I totally agree. You need material that is engaging. Adults using material designed for children can be frustrating and boring.
You should have a conversation with Krashen. That would be cool. He might be up for it.
That would seriously be amazing to listen to
Yeah he finally did recently
@@rxmth9242 Ah! How can I find it? P.s.: I already found it. I should have searched before asking. Sorry!
sorry for what
based in your experience i've aquired english from 30% of listening to almost 99% comphrension greetings from Venezuela.
When you go meta on your own language it’s very crystal clear what you’re saying, the way we completely switch off our active engagement speaking English because we already have those patterns engraved in our brain, I’m guessing it’s the same with Japanese. I also speak Spanish and it’s the same way, I don’t have to actively engage it, it just flows.
I've always took that same stance. It doesn't NEED to be completely comprehensible, but it should be "figure-out-able." I think I agree with you. There are more opportunities to learn with lower % of comprehensibility, provided you have the tolerance for the frustration of not knowing the larger %.
This is such a liberating message about comprehensible input!! Especially for those of us who are learning languages without a lot of media content with subtitles or captions. Thank you!! Super helpful!!
I personally think that children books (audio books) are fantastic tools. They use vocabulary repetitively to reinforce learning, yet they still use full sentences with all the tenses and verb conjugation, so you don't limit yourself there. Make no mistake, I agree with you. Understanding 30-40% works for learning. But the issue is that when you start you don't know 30-40%, you know like 5%, if that.
I'm not the best person to truely judge whether this is effective, but I've found that when it comes to the very initial stages of learning French, these children audiobooks have massively jumped my ability to just hear and understand the flow of speech. They are what jumped me to being able to listen to French in movies and begin that step of understanding 30-40%
This is honestly one of the best videos I’ve ever seen on language learning. Matt is probably the best advisor for learning Japanese.
4:35 "it's like a natural SRS"
I think my IQ got higher, this is THE method to learning languages
what's SRS
@@MsCankersore Spaced Repetition System
@@MsCankersore if you're learning a language, DEFINITELY get anki. It automates the SRS. Though I was told it's much better to make your own flashcards rather than downloading others. It takes a bit longer, but you're learning as you're making the cards
Spaced repetition, it reminds you of words or whatever you're trying to remember when you'd be about about to forget to keep it fresh in your memory
@@LannasMissingLink Complex subject but I disagree. I've made my own flashcards and used others and generally they are all the same, except I make more mistakes and my cards are lower quality, not to mention a waste of time. I would just focus on premade sentence decks. I believe that you should definitely use anki for the first 2k words or so, and then input as much as you can. Over time you can drop anki altogether.
Your explanation of the percentages of what you know, and how you use that to figure out the context of unknown words clicked with me. Thanks dude!
Starting MIA today after 4 semesters of Japanese at my college, glad I found it before I spent even more time learning half-assedly. Thanks for all your work.
any luck?
@@qw1626 Yeah, it's been going great. Still taking classes at the college so I can get my degree but using MIA (or more specifically something similar to MIA as I don't follow it strictly) has helped me immensely.
@@joshf8730 when you immerse do you take notes or anything?
@@aslipperysnake I will make notes insofar as that I save stuff to make cards for, like screenshotting manga, or general sentence mining stuff but outside of that no.
Josh F how’s it going so far
When I listen to something of which I understand less than fifty %, I feel soon motivated... to find something else and stop wasting my time. Add to this, I don't like listening to audios or videos dealing with topics I'm not interested in. I admire your ability at staying focused on something you don't understand, but I can't. Besides motivation, I also have a memorization concern as I forget new words or new phrases at least 10 times before I can simply, naturally, easily remember it. So, when I listen to something of which, I already know 90%, let's say, I consolidate large parts of what I already know. I listen a lot in English (my mother tongue is French) and I always select speakers and topics I'm interested in and that I can broadly understand.
As for the subconscious mind working on things in a multi faceted way, sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with some epiphany about some grammar or sentence structure that didn't make sense and suddenly getting it. I try and immerse myself as much as possible. It works.
Omg same but in my dreams this happens, it’s the freakiest coolest thing lol
this is actually a great topic to talk about. I had a very fast spurth of learning japanese for 3 months but i was discouraged when i spend so much time perfecting my grammar but when i hop on an anime or j drama i just understand 30 - 40% max. so i stopped. but not completely tho, i had beyond basic knowledge of the japanese already so although i wasnt trying to intentionally progress with my study, i still watch anime and j dramas and after stopping for about 6 months, i picked up where i left off but i was surprised that i improved drastically. there was this even this video that i was only able to understand 10 - 20% of back then i could understand 80% now and the sentences became much more clearer to me. you just actually need to not pressure yourself in to listening and just try to pick it up naturally. when you focus too much on perfecting it you will find yourself very frustrated.
In general when watching something completely beyond my level I have a hard time not "tuning" the parts I don't know out unconciously, even when focusing. Now that might not mean my subconscious isn't doing its job and is picking up bits at a time but I find it hard to stay engaged on a conscious level if I'm "drowning". I try to mix it up, when I am focused and studying I keep it on a higher% of comprehension. If it is just background input then I don't mind if I am not grasping it.
This is a great comment I find this too. If there is too much you are not understanding then you’ll have to try hard to keep interested it it.
I also find that you could be watching something at 60% if it was normal language but then they throw in slang every now and then that’s throws you off to like 20/30%.
completely agree
I fully agree with the last part of the video. I do think that nowadays, we always end up searching the "why" and "how" for everything. Whereas, centuries before, we would prioritize enjoyment, interactions and so obviously the messages. As Matt said, if you want to learn a new language, you need engagement and motivation and then, just live? Just go out and listen and communicate. How do you think people did without Internet? And we still ended up with many many languages before Internet. Move your ass out, take your motivation in your bag and live and get the messages you hear.
Why not both? I think it really helps if you’re kinda open to listening to all kinds of stuff. For me personally, i enjoy the nursery rhymes like goshushu or shows like oshiri kajiri mushi. You’re basically able to memorize/understand all of it, and it in turn helps with the 30%~ ones as those words act like pegs similar to the nuances you catch on.
You've got some extremely good advice even for non Japanese learners.
Not a Japanese learner but am a Chinese learner and noticed when I was taking a break and my brother was watching anime I recognized a few of the characters, it freaked me out and I looked up that they have lexical similarities and it got me excited.
I'm B2 in Spanish and A2 in Chinese. Once I pass a C2 certificate test in both of them I'm moving onto Portuguese and Japanese the lexical similarities between my current target languages excites me.
I found that this is exactly how I acquired Japanese as well. My subconscious mind would be working on things I heard and at random times they would pop into my head and suddenly I would understand them. The main point is to get as much input as possible so your subconscious mind has a ton of experience to draw from. Trust the process and you will get there.
Eng native speaker who also knows Spanish here. I'm a beginner in Italian. I'm experimenting with consuming as much material as I can that already has translation. I got a book, "2000 Most Common Italian Words in Context" for learning new vocabulary. It comes with a translation of every sentence. I'm also watching as many YT vids as I can that have subtitles in Eng. My reasoning is that knowing the meaning of a particular word or sentence is just the beginning of the process. I still have to memorize the words (& produce them later on), so skipping the frustrating step of not knowing what the words mean makes the whole process less painful. There is still a lot of work involved bc I still have to go over the words/sentences many times to make the meanings stick (memorization). I still read short online texts in Italian w/o translation, & watch vids w/o translations (mostly Lucrezia's Vlogs). Already knowing Spanish helps w this so I'm making good progress.
This! I mean I've only been doing MIA for about 2 months but I was a complete noob before hand. I didn't even know what sumimasen or hai (I'm not joking) meant. It's kinda cool after watching a bunch and seeing those words used in the same way or in different ways you just come to understand their meanings and I'm assuming that only increases with things like sentences once you immerse more and more. The brain is so fascinating!
What exactly is MIA? I tried searching for it on Google, but I somehow doubt it's referring to Mia's Language Adventure: The Kidnap Caper.
Ohhh, that makes sense, then. I haven't got around to watching that video yet, but when I saw the title when it was uploaded I somehow read it as the 'missing in action' kind of MIA.
So what's MIA
Mass immersion approach
How's your progress?
Thanks for talking about this! I don't actually think what you said contradicts with the comprehensible hypothesis :) "Given enough input, i + 1 will be there."-S.Krashen.
I agree with prioritising your engagement over comprehension. If something is engaging to you, it probably means that at least some of the messages present are comprehensible and you are probably acquiring :)
I have heard Krashen say that creating/finding input that is both comprehensible AND interesting, especially at the beginner/low intermediate stage, is very difficult. For this reason, I agree that exposing yourself to large amounts of interesting input at varying degrees of comprehensibility, like you mentioned, is a decent solution. It's what I am doing and seems to be working. Thanks again!
This is basically how I learnt Korean. Without noticing it. Just like a baby. Then I went to Korea and took the TOPIK test then boom! Level 4! (Level 6 is the highest) I’m planning to use the same method to learn Spanish.
@@moonchild-df1kj Yes! watching without subtitles ofc. Otherwise you never improve.. Try repeating what you hear and impersonate others. It works like magic!
@@adieodds thank you so much💜
@@moonchild-df1kj :) hope it works for you as well. good luck!
@@adieodds 🤗💜
@@adieodds hey, do you watch with subtitles first then turn it off? When you don't understand a word do you search it up on naver?
Thanks for these videos Matt - I recently found your channel last week after picking up Japanese again with the intent of studying it every day. It seems like we were in relatively similar situations as I did a year at university but decided that I prefer to learn languages by myself. It's very reassuring to hear that some of the stuff I'm noticing and the anxieties I'm having are perfectly normal and that the end goal I'd like is definitely achievable. Kudos to you mate, very much appreciated
When there are tens of things you don't know, that's a lot of work to learn them. When there are one or three things, it's easier to learn them. So, a learning process which "feeds" you just a few bites at a time can be easier and quicker.
this video provides good food for thought for the beginner. I speak Spanish and I study Catalan and Thai. For a language like Spanish, that shares a lot of cognates with English, a good portion of learning is automatic and unconscious, I believe. You can watch a movie as a beginner and wake up the next day and your Spanish is somehow better, without any conscious effort at all. It doesn't seem to work however for non-Indo European languages like Thai. That takes a lot more conscious effort, though at the same time there's still a lot of unconscious automatic learning going on. To me language acquisition is a natural thing, it's just that the natural part becomes more difficult as we age because we have a first language interfering with the second or third one.
Your hypothesis about going from 98% to 100% being the same progress as from 30% to 32% being the same but a lot harder seems actually plausible.
Say you are playing in a video game, and have a region at 30% exploration. There is 70% left to be explored, and a ton of places to find chests to increase the exploration. On the other hand, when you have 98% progress, it is very difficult to find those 2% left chests since most of the area is already explored, and it is hard to tell where you didn't find the chests
Thank you for addressing this. I literally was troubled by this today. Coincidentally this video had popped up. You captured exactly what I wanted answers to. You articulated it well.
What really helped me was switching my passive listening to be audio from something I at one point listened to or watched actively (Terrace House episodes in my case). By doing this you know the plot of what you're listening to, and therefore it's much easier getting a grasp of what they're saying. This is especially true if you ripped the audio from an episode of something you enjoy, as you end up unconsciously replaying the entire episode in your head, even if you're only passively listening to it.
Don't know how I've missed it either then haha, I didn't start doing it until I read it on Japanese Level Up a while after I had started immersing. And yeah, I'm from Norway actually! :D
Haha du er norsk selv ja! Har dessverre ikke det nei :P
Kult å se at andre norske ser på Matt sine videoer
As my name suggests, I am an English student. I'm from Peru and right now I can understand 90% of your video. I am already using this method for 3 months.
It just shows how effective this method is. Great progress!!
This idea seems to hold up when you consider how ancient peoples learned other languages. They just listened to other people and picked it up over time just using their instincts. Our brains are just good at noticing patterns and helping it find those patterns on purpose is what learning is.
I agree. I don't think starting from 0 understanding is great. Having some pieces of the puzzles like studying basic grammar and common vocabulary can really be a game changer for a beginner and speeding up the process dramatically.
It fells almost like me through my process of learned English .Everything started when i was 10 years old, my cousin said to me that I should sing the songs that I was sing with lyrics so this way I kind would know what the word and how the words were pronounced , even though I didnt understand a word, but I did.So, when i was 17 and start to take English classes everything seems normal for me so less than 1 year I was speaking pretty well , so last year I did the same with french and learned in 6 months,now I started Russian and Spanish in 2020 I hope to get them RIGHT !!!
by the way my mother tongue is Portuguese from Brazil.
how do you learn now? sing songs?
@@zakky4175 so with Russian i have to put more effort to it cuz is not a latim alphabet(the one that im used to) , but yes i used a lot of music still now i can have basic conversation in russian but this time didn't work just song , i had to read more and more listen people talk and read what they say , its been a journey to learn Russian , but feel like im going in the right way sometimes i guess myself think in Russian, is the best felling !!
The big tip is just immerse yourself in the lang !
ps.: i do not say that for asian language. Actually i still trying to figure out how to start my korean !!!! Hihihihi 🤣🤣
I would add that some videos really help beginners understanding thanks to images that show context and action. You can understand without translating in many cases from what you see and hear, besides the main speech or conversation. Here comes something that matters, I feel. it is the way you watch and listen: either you go for the easy lazy extensive way or you go for a more analytic, deep learning mode. Alternating these two approaches helps to improve faster, at least according to my own experience as a self-taught learner.
Today, I was watching an Italian show and reading the subtitles, and at one point I did not read fast enough, so missed the last few words, but I heard what the chatacter said, and luckily understood her perfectly. That was a real buzz!
And a few times recently I have had to miss the subtitles due to looking away for some reason, but I was able to understand what was said. Another major buzz!
Also you'll be able to understand things they say that don't make it to the subtitles.
I've been trying to learn for years and thought I wasn't getting anywhere. This week I tried finally watching videos without subs and I'm surprised by how much I understood and how fast I've been improving.
I wish I knew about you when I was learning Japanese! I'm learning portuguese now but obviously your content is still extremely helpful and motivating. Ironically , I found out about you on a video about 3D art by flipped normals!
Such a relief. I thought I was dumb not to understand 100%, and it always upset me. But after hearing what you're saying, maybe there's hope. Even Matt had trouble understanding 100%. I agree, it is messy or should be, otherwise, there would be no progress.
I feel you, bro! I tried to watch some cartoons when I got started in French, but it was utterly weird and boring for me, even though I could barely understand what they say in those too, to be honest. So I just switched to podcasts and/or other types of media in french which may have been more difficult for me to understand, but it was definitely a lot more interesting and enjoyable. :)
I watched your video with Spanish subtitles. I forgot most of my Spanish from middle school and high school when I was in the top level classes. The Spanish started to come back as I read the subtitles, but my vocabulary is weak.
I used the GNU emacs text editor with org mode for organizing things in an outline form that can fold up to show the top of the tree and not the children. I study French. I started a vocabulary list under categories on the top level of the tree and under parts of speech on the second level of the tree. I will read and copy sentences to the words that I have in the tree, but not the example sentence for all of the words in the sentence. I will add all of the words from each sentence. I will know which words that I know, marked by TO_DO, and which words that I do not know, marked by DONE.
|I will add all of the words from each sentence.
SUBTREE
|* person (category)
|** pronouns (part of speech)
|*** DONE I (word)
|****** I will add all of the words from each sentence. (example sentence)
|* want (category)
|** verbs (part of speech)
|*** DONE will (word)
etc.
FOLDED
|* person (category)
|* want (category)
I got fluent in english after 2 years (2013-2015) by doing this without even noticing.
What content do you consume most
First: This video is very good. My comments below, about how my particular brain actually handles this.
Despite me learning English through osmosis, I'm definitely from the camp which believes that the input needs to be mostly comprehensible. Looking back through time that's exactly why my extreme English input sessions actually taught me English - I (because I was interested in the content, not the language) ended up always picking the right "level" of comprehensibility (though I had never heard about Krashen way back then, of course). And then, looking back at more than ten years of Japanese immersion, though *not* having the option of setting the comprehensibility level, but also having a deep natural interest in the language, I learned nearly nothing [though I could probably talk all day about grammar and structure]. But now, by following a setup which actually does define the comprehensibility level (in this case, Yuta's JVS), I'm suddenly learning. I'm starting to getting it. I understand more. Finally, finally.
There are some important points to this:
1) Get into the story of whatever you're hearing or reading. Don't get into the *language*. Get into the story. Only then will the mind start automatically grasping meaning from context.
EditAdd: And yes, interesting input. That's what's necessary to get into the story, the information, the science, the whatever theme it is (I learned German by reading car magazines when I was young).
2) The acquisition comes when your brain starts to pick out the words you don't understand, as opposed to picking up the words you do understand. That's when the brain will start figuring things out, and catch on the next time (or later) when you come across that term, word, or expression again. You should *not* have to make a note of it, and you should *not* have to stop, underline, look it up in the dictionary. Only in the hopeless cases, where you've come across something multiple times, on different days, and still haven't got it - then it's clearly on your mind and at that point give in and look it up.
3) The last part of the previous paragraph: When you stop to underline a word, or to look it up, you're leaving the story and your mind loses the imagery and the flow of the story and your'e just back to printed words (or audio signals) again. YouDon'tLearnThatWay. Instead, keep the flow going, that's much more important than getting the meaning of particular words. Thus, comprehensible input. Krashen absolutely knows what he's talking about.
Oh, my God, your videos are a hidden gem that everybody should watch. One question: How do you tackle the language tests problems related to content? I mean, in language tests they usually ask the participant to be able to speak, write, read and listen to a huge variety of topics, most of them really boring at least for me. For example, I may be at a C1 English level in topics that interest me, like physics, language acquisition, political philosophy, etc. while I may be at a B2 or even B1 level in topics that don't interest me as much or at all like sports, travelling, etc. If I don't like those topics, what can I do to push them to a B2 or C1 level without massive exposure? If I don't like them and, as a result, can't push them to a B2 level, does that mean that these tests are flawed because they don't test your strong points and instead ask you about shitty questions like "What places do you like to travel"? If someone just prepared to answer to that question but is at a B1 level, can actually obtain a better mark than me, who didn't prepare the exam questions at all because I know that I am at a C1 level but fail to answer quickly to that question.
6:13 i like the idea of being “bombarded with opportunities” because it’s both challenging and organic, it’s like a positive way to approach learning in the dark the way you do when taking input that you aren’t *comfortable* with
all our brains work differently and for me, listening to hours upon days / weeks / months / years of japanese, (tv shows, anime, youtube tutorials, f2f conversations) would appear to have not helped me in my learning process. i struggle to hear words and sentence patterns. apart from the occasional, "honto, heeee, arigatou" etc etc i feel no closer to improving my ability to understand japanese than I did some 3 years ago when I started my self teaching marathon. i feel my japanese proficiency is slowly improving i.e vocab, grammar, reading speed etc, but that is driven by text books, youtube tutorials SRS apps etc. My ear struggles to hear even the most basic of sentences, as does my efforts to construct my own sentences. i find that if i get to a word i hear that i dont recognise (which is a lot) i cant store it and listen to the rest of the sentence. instead, i momentarily try and remember what the word meant and by that time, a micro second later, i've missed the next couple of words and instead of playing catchup with the rest of the phrase, my mind switches off. i find, that in many of these cases, when there are japanese subtitles, i can rewind the sentence I had no idea about and then after reading it, almost totally understand what was said. luckily, im in no rush to improve my japanese, i still enjoy the process albeit a little frustrated at perhaps some poor decisions in the early part of my learning, where i used my study hours on things i enjoyed instead of things that were either more improtant or should have been progressing at the same rate as my vocab. thx for this video - i really enjoy watching ur vids! :)
@@lorax121323 very interesting. thx for sharing :) one of my biggest mistakes was not reading kana right from the start. i learnt katakana and hiragana but never practiced. instead i used english and romaji on my 1000+ flash cards. oh well, live and learn. also, problem is with english subtitles when listening to japanese audio, is that they aren't translated exactly and the grammar is very different, so extremely difficult to try and both listen and decipher in real time.
This was solid information. Thank you.
This question sort of answers itself. You would understand more at 90% than 30%, but how did you get to that 90%?
In a video game, if you’re having a tough time, your instinct is to turn the difficulty down. In reality, if you turn the difficulty way up, your brain will adapt to it. Then if you turn the difficulty back down to normal, it will be like playing on easy mode. This is what your brain does for you in language. You go from knowing nothing of a language and being terrible at it. You decide to get better. You start with simple words and phrases and realize you are really bad at it. Then, if you crank up the difficulty with harder input, you will find that those simple words and phrases you started with are easy.
Evening Matt, i just wanted to mention that i truly appreciate your videos; not only because they actually help me with my progress in Japanese but because of the maturity and knowledge you occupy brings me satisfaction and trust towards what you tell us, your viewers. Take care.
That's how I learned english as well. I heard words in context, I knew what it could mean but never looked it up. Heard it again somewhere in other context and adding those together I get closer to the exact meaning. The only problem with this style of learning is that you have harder time when trying to actually translate things, tho rarely that's a goal of learning for anyone. Even if it is it's a good price for fluency
It's OK to achieve the level that you able to communicate in daily life. But if you are an advanced learner, you will find many words appeared in very low frequency, you maybe even forget you have came cross it last time, so you have to look it up in dictionary and memorize it. Even native speakers need dictionary and memorize vocabulary.
@@cosmosben6726 Yeah dictionaries exist for a good reason. However I'm in an advanced English course right now, and I don't see a need to memorize words. I haven't encountered many words that I wasn't able to understand.
I do like to read academic texts for fun though, so for me many of the "low frequency" words are not low frequency at all.
Most of the words that I can't understand are special terms in subjects I can't understand even if it was on my native language xD
@1237 Thank you for your reply. I'm curious about your learning process . I have some questions hope you can answer it. Appreciate you reply in advance.
1.Did you beginning learning English with children's show?
2. What does "advanced English course" mean? The class in school?
3. In novel and news, there are many slang, phrases and abstract words with delicate nuance. For example, for smile, there are smirk, grin, sneer, etc. for sad, there are gloomy, sorrow, depression, melancholy, etc. In news, there are words like denounce, condemn, accuse, etc., and revoke, relinquish, abolish, etc. Can you watch normal novels and news without much trouble now (not just get the gist) ? If so, what resources do you think are very helpful for you to achieved this level?
@@cosmosben6726 Great questions!
I did start learning English in school. However, I was not very good, barely able to keep up. So I did learn the basics in school. That gave me a good foundation to start learn for real. It helped me a lot but it really wasn't how I learned English. Years of regular learning and I was barely conversational.
I didn't start with children's shows. I actually started with memes xD Then I started to watch youtube. At the time there wasn't much entertainment available on the internet in my native language and all the 'cool kids' were watching stuff in English. And I started to do that too.
At first it was mostly music and videos where the language wasn't in such a crucial role. Eventually I started to watch more storytime videos and such. I went in a year from working hard to get barely passing grades to not even bother to do my homework and still being one of the best students.
That makes it sound fast, easy and effortless. However it took me a lot of time. I checked my youtube statistics and I had 40 hours per week watchtime on average. All of it was in English. I can imagine that intergating a language you are not comfortable with to that extent to your life is hard. For me it happened due to social pressure and easy availability of English content.
The English course I was talking about is a mandatory course at University where I'm studying at. By advanced I mean that we write academic texts there. Also it's completely in English. The teacher doesn't even speak the local language.
I think I'm pretty fluent. When it comes to watching news etc, I understand quite effortlessly mostly everything. Watching English content doesn't feel like learning or studying to me anymore. I'm also a bit of a nerd, so I like to watch videos and read articles about various scientific subjects, and I don't struggle with that.
There's still words that I'm not familiar with, but often I don't need to check the meaning because I can understand it from the context. My biggest tip overall is: don't worry so much over individual words. If you understand the message you can move on.
So basically try to make the language a part of your life somehow. For example try to involve entertainment in that language. It can be hard, because entertainment is ment for relaxing and not for studying. Also finding content in your target language that is both easy enough to understand and interesting is very hard. I recommend making a second youtube account and training the algorithm to recommend videos on that language. That way it's easier to find stuff you actually are interested in.
I hope that anwsers everything :) thank you for the questions!
I don't know if I clarified the timeline, so here it is:
Started learning english at school around the age 9. That continued with not very good results until at age 14 -ish I started to consume English content online. Around 15 - 16 years of age I was already pretty fluent, at least I was at the point where I felt similar mental ease listening to english than listening to my native language.
At 18 I met a german guy who I chatted with every day in English. He was the first person I voluntarily spoke English to. Until that point I only spoke English if my teacher made me xD. And that german guy lives with me now so using English is an everyday task to me now
I totally agree with you, Matt. I works for me the same way as you described it.
Graded readers have certainly their place but they always felt for me like driving with the handbreak on for me.
Even if I understand only 20% at first, I celebrate every new piece of the puzzle that I unlock. What matters the most to me is that I'm interested in the material.
I also feel that I make faster progress this way. It feels more exciting for me.
I'm one of the few people that seem to love reading up on Grammar. That's where I usually start.
I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of this type of immersion the more I use it. I am curious how long it has taken for other people before they were able to converse at a high level and understand advanced speech without subtitles? For example, I started doing tons of immersion with German back in March. I've learned around 4000 words (at least that's how many I've made Anki cards for) and done at least 200 hours of input (both comprehensible and otherwise). In the last month I've been able to start watching German content on Netflix with subtitles and understand probably 80% or more, which, for me, is enough to enjoy a show. I took an online evaluation that ranked my German level at a B1, although I can definitely understand content at a higher level than that. I'd love to hear other people's experiences.
This is exactly how I learned english and hindi , I never really studied either of them I just used to watch TV where they aired shows for children in hindi(I think there were shows in bengali my mother tongue but I was too dumb to figure out how) I just kept watching shows in Hindi and picked up Hindi.
And it is the same for English, I just watched a lot of TH-cam videos and English movies😆
30-40% is already quite a ait comprehension to begin with tbh.
I feel like right around the 1/3rd area is the sweet spot for opprotunity+idealness for i+1, if go too high in comprehension and your opportunities are lacking, go too low and things are sooo new to you, you dont rly learn jack shit, MAYBE you pick up some thing via context through bodylanguage/action, but thats it.
The automatic close captioning translating あ、ごめん。こんにちは。to "Ah, come in. Gonna eat you up." is pretty funny.
I'm copying the Bible in French so I can learn French while forcing myself to read it
Is it working? How is your French?
@@Mike-lu1pt I got lazy on Genesis 17, but I'm slowly getting used to it
Your channel is a lifesaver, thank you!
makes sense. i think i+2 you're really interested in is better than i+1 you couldn't give a shit about.
I really liked what you said about understanding not being a black and white “yes or no” answer, very well put!
Ur accent in Japanese is so authentic sounding
Totally agree about engagement when I watch something boring I catch myself thinking about other things and not even really listening. So what should be active listening becomes passive.
One thing with Japanese that has helped a bit in the few days I have tried to be more immersive is definitely in lighted with the engagement, but also changing the speed of the language. A lot of Japanese is hard to understand at full speed, but at 75% speed is far more comprehensible. I watched a video on a subject I was familiar with (the planets) intended for elementary school children, and it was awesome. I learned the names of all the planets, how to talk about orbits, the diameter of objects, a bunch of celestial objects and other things.
What do you think about slowing down the speech of youtube videos about for input to make it more comprehensible but it being the same content?
What Matt says at 11:20 exactly sums up why I stopped learining Japanese so often. I was constantly trying to find stuff that was 90% for me, and in this time, searching, looking up anki decks, creating anki decks and so on, I actually didn't see or hear any Japanese at all. And after hours, when I found something good, I did 2 sentences and got burnt out.
Now I do Heisig and use sub2srs with Inuyasha for Inuyasha sentence cards and watch Inuyasha without subtitles and I feel so relaxed and actually look forward everyday to coming home and finally being able to practice Japanese.
I mean, textbooks are cool for the beginning, but as soon as Japanese isn't as exiting and stuff starts to repeat, just watch this video and "how often do I need to look stuff up" and go for it, with whatever you wanna watch/read/listen to. It's so, so much better. Thanks for your great advice, Matt!
Do you think it helps to watch japanese content with japanese subtitles? I'm at a level that I understand about 5 - 10% of what I listen/read.
@@matheuszanelladias
Sorry for not answering, I usually don't dwell in comment sections.
I personally don't think so, because whenever I try it, I don't hear anything from the voices, because I'm so occupied reading the subtitles and I'm just not fast enough. I guess with your 5-10% rate you aren't either, so just watch anime without subtitles, listen closely and enjoy (without reading you can even see the pretty pictures :D)
@@TheAnimeZz Recently I started watching one of my favourite animes of all time which I have already seen many times, without subtitles. It was amazing how different it felt. Even when I was understanding a lot of it, the feel was just different. I feel like the nuance became clearer. Was a really surreal experience. The creepy parts suddenly actually did feel somewhat scary. I think, even if you're a fast reader and still get a good look at the images, watching with subtitles actually does prevent you from fully immersing with the atmosphere and story. Like you can fully comprehend the story and all its details, but only when you take away those subs and just watch and try to listen do you gain the true intended experience.
But the idea is that parents dumb down languages to children and basically give them those +1 sentences. Isn't that what Krashen says too. But even if that is the most effective way I have no idea how you would reliably find simple language for beginners. And yeah the interest in the content is basically what keeps you immersing.
What I think helps a beginner is to look for content that you normally wouldn't watch as an adult but is more forgiving and more interesting when you don't understand as much. For example shounen fighting anime isn't exactly what I would watch with subs but when I started out with Japanese those kinds of anime was more interesting than more wordy stuff that I would like more when I understood it fully.
So basically by maximizing the fun "variable" you will naturally tend towards simpler stuff until your comprehension goes up. That is if you are actually honest about what content you find fun while watching (not forcing yourself to watch stuff you "should" like) and also try a lot of new content.
My understanding is that a child develops language ability sooner if the parents omit baby talk than if they use it.
Your TH-cam channel has given me more than any other. Glad I somehow found it while looking for audiobooks.