The myth of input | How NOT to learn a language
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2021
- Anyone who has tried to learn a language knows that there are a million different learning systems and methods out there, and a million different people trying to sell them to you. But after a while you will probably notice one idea that everyone seems to believe in, and that is the importance of input, based on the input hypothesis of Stephen Krashen. But does this idea have any evidence, or any value for learners?
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Do you think I'm wrong? Want more scientific evidence? Watch this: • My response to the Inp...
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As someone who magically became fluent in English just by consuming CZcams, I can confirm that input does indeed work.
I don't believe you. What kind of magic do you use to write, then? To spell indeed or work. I suspect that you learned the language the traditional "wrong" way.
@@igorgoliney9494the same magic you used to learn how to read in your native language
@@igorgoliney9494ya know , folks who came up with what we call “English alphabet” could spell the word “shit” in a number of ways, so, are you surprised a person who listens to something or watches a movie WITH subs can actually spell better than them spelling bees ?
Yes, true, because it's not black and white; I mean, lots of (comprehensible / not so comprehensible) input are very import in order to put them into practice (with people, IA, texting etc..) and (Steve Kauffman), when practicing, background of previously inputs can help up autocorrect (because "it doesn't sound right" when trying to speak/write... and the more you listen to and read, the more passive vocabulary you "acquire", but the more 'intelligent" tools you use (autocompletion, autosuggestion, etc...) the more you can try to put them into practice.
Currently, I'm learning italian, and knowing some rules helps to understand, but not practice (and Effortless English method, AJ Hogg, is also a good inspiration for learning)
And, finally, don't be a follower, be a student (Jim Rohn) and use your mind to make your own opinion and ... methods to learn that suit you...
I'm interested in this. Did you became fluent with no prior or later lessons at all? How did you learn to read and write this comment with the spelling so different from the pronounciation?
I am nearly fluent in a second language because I watched tons of TV in that language as a kid. Much more than in my native language due to more and better content in the language. I have never practiced speaking it. I never spoke it to a native (I was shy about it). And yet, to this day I can produce it on a nearly native level. Despite never actually practicing or speaking it actively.
Input works.
I met a guy in Spain who lived in Miami for a year when he was 7. He sounds virtually indistinguishable from an American despite living back in Spain for the next 14 years. His older sister has spent far more time in the English speaking world yet has a thick accent. The difference? The brother has watched a ton of CZcams in English. That is all.
You are a wise man, indeed
@@Bestink Not wise. Just a normal person. This is how anyone would learn a language in the same situation.
Better get practicing. I learned just as you did, but when I began trying to speak it was a huge barrier for me. I knew the words, but producing them correctly was quite challenging. I recommend you find a conversation group or something similar, then you'll be able to say that you are fluent, not *nearly* fluent. Good luck!
@@HM-hu4hu it was russian humor) I guess your advice is wrong, because, i cant become a child, I'm 40 years old, you know)
I am a bilingual offspring of immigrant parents. I'm also a language teacher. I've worked to acquire other languages. And I respect the work of Krashen. I believe that input comes first. It is the clay you need to do something with. After you have that clay, you then go on to do something with it. I see the language-learning process that way.
100%
Agreed.
Yeah I posted a similar metaphor. Input gives you pieces for the puzzle. The more pieces you have the more complete the puzzle you can make. Acquiring them takes time. Once you have them you got to start putting them together though (practicing)
Correct.
Well said. Input and output is needed
Consistent input + conversation is infinitely superior to traditional grammar rule based, classroom learning. That's not only my own experience, but also the experience of every other polyglot I know. Lots of reading, lots of listening.
It is not. In truth to learn efficiently you need all - input, conversations, vocab drills and grammar training. You can try to learn the language only by input if the target language is from the same family group or at least has a lot shared vocab with the language you know. Trying to learn Arabic that way when you know only English is very, very inefficient.
@@adapienkowska2605 how many languages have you learned that way and how well can you speak and understand them?
@@adapienkowska2605 Maybe for you, but everyone learns things differently. Duh.
but without grammar knowledge you cannot read so no input method
@@hilbert2547 wrong. Or did you learn grammar rules before you learnt to read your native language?
Comprehensible input is exactly how I learned to speak Spanish, Italian, and French fluently, and also how I am currently learning Russian at a fast pace.
Надеюсь вы изучите русский тоже до свободного уровня.
Don't learn ruzzian unless you want to become an orc yourself
@@mona.supremacy Many non-Russians speak Russian, including Ukrainians. Stop the invasion of Ukraine, but please also stop spouting nonsense that leads to discrimination.
@@EnglishwithJoe "ruzzian" being a semi-artificial language serves no purpose except being used to get rid of local languages and dialects spoken by conquered nations. I couldn't care less about feelings of those who recognize themselves as loyal to the ruzzian empire and its historical mission to make eveyrone's life miserable and full of suffering. Dear Joie, I'm no Ukrainian and my mother tongue was actually ruzzian so u better understand one thing before speaking up for murderers and invaders next time: speaking ruzzian is a choice people make in life. Ironically, those who let their guard down and began tolerating ruzzians and their "language" paid a huge price with their lives, freedom or financial wellbeing were taken away from them. Ukrainians, Moldovans, Belarusians, Georgians and many other nations fell victims of that in the last 30 years.
There's only one reason you haven't lost anyone you loved bc of your beliefs - I did it for you. Ukrainians do it every day so that you can lecture me on discrimination from your safe dorm. Stay safe, Joie
c'est ça tu parle le français nickel, m'étonnerais bien mon bon seigneur si on te sort des santier que tu t'est toi même tracé tu va rien bitté
The fact that this man literally compared input based methods to a “parasite” shows that he understands nothing about the topic. And outputting broken sentences into the world as a beginner who knows nothing is somehow “generous”? These arguments make no sense.
He gets very intense about it... 😐😐😐
The thought experiment makes no sense either, because language learning is so different to technical fields like medicine where a ton of theoretical knowledge is necessary. I actually think nothing compares to language acquisition in this way. Except maybe music in some cases.
This guy in this video is monolingual, is that right? Why is he trying to teach someone who might speak more than 2 languages? He knows nothing when it comes to learning new languages.
It’s about income protection
He speaks labout truth , comprehensible input like passive learning for me i've got input from CZcams ,song,many others for ten years
But can't speak
Then i change my way on learning language After seing his motivated video, i started with translated my mother tongue phrases that are acceptable to englis
@@ibnurusydi8066Had you spent more time on comprehensible input instead of jumping too early on output despite having little to no building blocks for it, your comment would've been more comprehensible.
Dude, I have done nothing with my time during the entire pandemic but watch series in Catalan and sentence mine there. After 15 months of nothing but input I activated the language, speaking it for the first time. Fluently. It's a new chapter for me living in Barcelona. You know nothing.
That's very heartening to hear. Thank you. And Congratulations!
That’s dope. I think he’s misrepresenting the ideas to some degree. I never took krashens ideas as “this is the only thing you need to do” I took it as you will acquire the majority of your language through input you understand, whether in convos, videos, reading etc. I think it’s important to be conceptually aware of things, but certainly don’t have to be, just see the pattern again and again and pick it up. But I think if you get the basic idea of the structure of the language first you open up the input a lot quicker. But Input is king….like I’m certainly not going to try to perfect “was” in Spanish on some deep thinking level. I’m going to read and listen a ton and naturally get the feel for it. It’s ridiculous to expect students to do it the other way
Benvingut a la nostra terra 😃
Love that! I’ve been thinking about learning Catalan after Spanish and German. Such a beautiful language.
@@austinlang6946 yeah I think studying is a form of input I think using a language is multiple skills its training your ears to hear what's being said its the ability to pronounce and say those words without much thought ,and it's becoming comfortable in reading it like your native language ,to me it seems like when I study then watch something and hear what I studied it makes it stick but if I don't study it sounds like gibberish ,I think the key is doing as much in the language as possible ,not just input or output but generally exposure in all aspects, that's what I've gathered so far ,I'm personally bad about sticking with a language however. But I'm either gonna stick with japanese or indonesian, I will learn both eventually japanese is mainly hard to become literate which in turn makes everything else harder ,I belive Indonesians simple grammer and Roman alphabet will make it easier than latin languages cause once you get past the shared vocabulary the grammer makes it hard ,and if chinese didn't have tones it'd be pretty easy grammatically.
I achieved a C1 level in English a few years ago by reading and listening to English for three years so I am a true believer in input theory.I am learning French now and I use the same method. I think it annoys you teachers that there is a way to learn languages where you are not indispensable.
probably he was losing students so he had to post his rant lol
I've had many a C1 level student who didn't know the difference between 'I went' and 'I've been' - one of the drawbacks of language certificates is that you can achieve a high level merely on the strength of your reading and listening skills.
@@luigibaker7713 C1 didn't know that?! I'm stunned.
@@luigibaker7713 There is a vast majority of natives who can't explain the difference between I went and I've been.
@@aquarius4953 Why bother explaining something to someone who never gets it wrong? It might instead be worth doing to someone who never gets it right no matter how many times they heard it used correctly.
Then why am I able to speak in English quite comfortably?
I haven’t outputted in English so much (I guess less than 24 hours in life), but I’ve gotten more than 10,000 hours of input.
You are the wise man, really!
Let's not forget that Stevie's first ever video is him speaking English for the first time ever. Now, a year or so later, he's literally a native level speaker in every way bar his German accent.
Same for me
@Johan R having 10k hours under your belt it's not dunning kruger effect wtf XD. That's probably more than triple that yours
Same
To increase your vocabulary you definitely need lots of input. I also believe we learn languages in context, whole sentences. And being continuously exposed to certain structures will help us internalize the language. This is my own experience of learning English. I consider myself a relatively fluent speaker and I got here, I believe, by lots of reading and listening. But also speaking! They do go hand in hand but I still think there is a place for the comprehensible input hypothesis. It is simply one of the most effective and organic ways to improve your language ability.
That is right
I learned the non comprehensible input way, basically just learning the translations of things. The problem is I could only understand what was being said after I translated the shit in my head into english and then would have to translate the english back into the language and try to speak it. Made me sound slow and dumb and I strugged with sentence structure because I was always having to develop the full sentence in my head before speaking. This is not something you do in a naturally acquired language, yet this is how everyone is taught.
For me the only words in my desired language I can understand the moment they are said as if natively is words I have developed some sort of visual, physical, or direct experience of which tells me the brain structures we are teaching people to use to learn language in schools, universities ect are not the same brain structures that are used for language and the only way I have found I can create those language brain structures on a native level is through comprehensible input.
@@TwoPlusTwoEqualsFive32 when we learn a target language in a school environment we learn mostly to read and write and almost forget about the main ability to develop, which is listening.
- This is due to the teacher's teaching approach. - Then speaking will slowly start to develop. The other two - reading and writing- can wait for a while, although speaking and reading come hand in hand. But I think speaking shoulb be more important at this point.
English is my second language and I'm fluent in it despite the fact that I've never been to a country that can speak it. I've learned English almost exclusively from watching gameplay videos on youtube, playing games and watching cartoons on TV with audio set to EN. I remember when I first started feeling confident enough to speak, words just wouldn't want to come out on their own. I definitely believe forcing myself to speak over the years has helped improve my speaking, however I also know that if I hadn't kept getting more and more input between the rare times that I felt confident enough to speak about something in English, I would've never improved in the slightest. I know, from my experience, for a fact that input is 100% the most important part of being able to not only understand but also speak a language. Nowadays if I'm lucky even native speakers occasionally mistake me for a native speaker and I never had to study for it. I never had to prepare vocab cards, practice speaking phrases or study pronunciation and writing. But go ahead, call the way I learned my second language complete bullshit.
You give me hope. I'm trying to be fluent, but I always have the doubt if I will can reach it without live in a english speaker country.
@@XxalmanzorxX Don't just have hope, be free in knowing that comprehensible input is 100% the most important part of learning a language! How's it going btw? Almost a year has gone by after all
@@dogmeat2418 Hi! The truth is I couldn't study the complete year in a row. Between november and march I couldn't study almost nothing (personal problems) but even so, I feel a great improvement.
I can see tv shows, movies (with english subtitles) and understand an 80%, so I can follow the plot and enjoy. Also I read books etc.
The produce of the language it's my main flaw, because I only use input and not output, by now, but it is because my principal interest it's just comprehend. If you want to be able to speak fluently just combine both.
@@XxalmanzorxX You're absolutely correct, you do need to combine both, though input is still definitely more important.
If you wrote this comment without any help (looking up words, translating and so on...) and it wasn't too hard for you, I'd say, at least judging from my own experience, that you're well on your way to being truly fluent!
If you can understand the content you consume 9 times out of 10, then you're practically done *trying* to learn. At this point you just need to enjoy good english content and the language will come naturally to you without much of a struggle.
Thank you for inspiring me to work on my target language and good luck!
@@dogmeat2418 I just use google to revise the orthography after write the text. But it isn't the same speak than write, I have problems with pronunciation and those things, but I am not worried , as I said, my main goal it is understand (specially read because I just can see movies with subtitles and improve my listening in this way).
Said that, to be honest, I don't chase my level in only one year, because here in Spain we study english at highschool, so when I started again I already had certain base.
And yeah, I'm agree, input it's 90% of the work. I use input and when I see new word I put them in Anki. Then the only thing I'd add it is speaking. With these I think you have everything.
Thanks for your kind words and keep goign!
The man was saying "comperhensible input" not only "input". I was studying for an English exam. I tried to memorize a lot of vocabulary and grammer rules and failed it. Then I decided to read a lot instead studying hard (memorizing vocabulary). After time, I realized that I had much more vocabulary than it is needed then passed the exam. The secret of language acquisition is understanding what you are reading or listening. It needs to be understood. It needs to be so understandable that it allows your brain can acquire that language.
Define what it means to “study”
I couldn't agree more. However, I wanna correct some few mistakes you've made. It's "Grammar" and "Comprehensible" this is how we write these words.
@@Mseleku1 Hmm... and "wanna" isn't a word. It's spoken only. Correcting other people's typos on CZcams or any other forum is usually done by people with small minds and very little else to say.
i disagree, you have to be in contact with your target language as much as possible to learn it so of course input is very important, that's the way you learn, you need immersion :) eventually you will be able to use the language in your daily life, doing your normal activities, watching things you enjoy on youtube/netflix, etc.
that's how i'm learning English.
@@Acro_LangLearn b
Well you just wrote something accurate, clear, natural sounding that seems like it was written by a native. And yet you're learning English though immersion. You are living proof that he is wrong and you are right 😆.
@@bobfranklin2572 not really, because even by writing here in the comments this person is actively practicing output. The guy never said that input and immersion aren't important, but that you need to practice other skills (like speaking and writing) as well to get good at those. (Which I personally agree with )
@@justme-qd6qb don't water down the argument of the video on purpose. Nobody has ever said you don't need to at least work on those skills to become good at them. People used to think that.. until they tried it. That isn't my argument. But let's not pretend that the video is *Only* saying that immersion is great, but you need to work on the other stuff too. Let's be real here.
@@justme-qd6qb but you’ll never be able to write without input first
classic trick: find an example where the argument is not valid (surgery), then use "analogy" to invalidate the original argument. because the world is so simple and elegant and there's no such thing as case-to-case basis.
I think it's not correct to compare watching videos about surgery where you only could get theory about it and watching videos in your target language to actually practicing listening skills. Yes, you can't learn speaking only from listening, but it's still practice, meanwhile in the case with surgery videos it's pure theory
imagine surgeons learning by "error correction" because it works for language learning. XD
@@antonyakimenko9572 Yeah. This guy is full of it. He's pushing an English learning channel. Probably runs a language school/program. Of course you wanna keep it running.
His fundamental misunderstanding is thinking of language as if it is any other skill. We do not have a part of our brain which is dedicated to acquiring surgery by watching surgeons. If you leave two baby twins in a locked room they won't start spontaneously inventing surgery procedures and operate on one another due to a surgery instinct. Language, while traditionally thought of as a skill, is not at all a skill like surgery, swimming, driving, coding or whatever other skill one can think of. It is its own separate thing which is acquired in a totally different way.
@@user-hm5me1rx9b Yup. I acquired my English without knowing it when I was a kid. I think if I had studied it like people do in schools, I would've never become fluent. It was only after reading Krashen that I went like "So that's why I can speak English, and no matter how many times I correct my students, they can't".
I think you misunderstood the input method. The main concept of the method is to get enough input in your target language so that you can produce it. Just think about how we learn our native tongues. We listen every single day, right? And after like several years, we start to speak even though we make tons of mistakes. It is the same principle. How can you speak a language if you can not understand a conversation? How can you write a language if you can not even understand what you read? And of course once you reach that certain level, you should speak and write as much as possible. But without listening and reading, the output is not going to be good because reading and listening are the foundation of the other two skills.
Yes, I could you get something out of a box if there's nothing inside.
It almost feels like you're desperately trying to convince us that traditional language learning methods, like yours, are still needed
Not almost, it is exactly that.
Yeah, he obviously has no experience of comprehensible input but he claims he is qualified to tell us it doesn't work (based on his gut feeling and nothing else). Yet those of us who use this method can tell you it absolutely does work.
People who have something to sell will always criticize Linguistic Professors like Krashen
What about receptive bilingualism? Is this phenomenon occurring enough to attract attention? Why don't children of immigrants, for example, respond to their parents in their native language?
@@Joachim1010Because they are lazy and don't listen.
They zone out, and speak to them in English, as they know it from friends and school.
So their parents learn broken English or a few words in English and they learn nothing of their parents language.
It is not rocket science
I'm not a native English speaker, I learned English from watching TV, youtube videos and gaming. I never really practiced speaking it, but when I suddenly needed to for an English assignment, when I opened my mouth:
there it was.
I'm bilingual, my native language is Dutch even though my parents are both Turkish. I can speak Turkish fluently and understanding does seem to come easier than producing the language, but it's hard to say by how much.
I'm still a believer of comprehensible input.
Good to hear a sceptic voice though.
Thanks
Only with input may be you will have a strong accent or not fluently speak because you have to renember the words. But you can speak and communicate.
The if you want to improve, it's just automate the process.
One thing is clear, without input, you never will speak.
You can't really compare brain surgery to language learning; they are very different things.
I agree people have different learning methods. And yeah, method might not be perfect but, it's how some of us learnt languages.
This is something I was exactly thinking about lol
Such a dumb argument, one thing "Brain surgery" and "language aquisition" use two completely separate areas of the brain. The language centre of your brain is far older and more primative then the part you would use for complex tasks like engineering or brain surgery it makes sense that it can only be taught in a more natural primitive way.
Imagine you come across a new tribe of people who have had no connection to the outside world, their language is unknown, there is no translation, there is no-one that bilingual how would you teach them your language? Comprehensible input because it's the same way we as babies who had no language learned from our parents and the people around us to speak, this part of your brain doesn't just "switch off" when you grow up.
It’s an analogy. Like watching someone drive (input) vs doing any action (output) or driving in this case
@@tekonethemcWell it's a bad one, since language and complex tasks that integrate high-level knowledge with fine motor skills aren't analogous
Mr. Canguro, with respect I think you are very, very far afield. My experience as a teacher has taught me the opposite of pretty much every argument you've made here, so I really hope for the sake of your followers that you put some serious time into upgrading your understanding of language acquisition.
What about receptive bilingualism? Is this phenomenon occurring enough to attract attention? Why don't children of immigrants, for example, respond to their parents in their native language?
@@Joachim1010 because the child brain is very efficient if he found that he can use the local language of the country and the parents still understand him by time he will lose the ability to speak the language but if the opposite happened the child will be forced to use the other language and then he will end up being bilingual the summary is comprehensible input is the only way to acquire the language because it's very complicated to the brain to treat the language as a skill cause there are a lot of grammatical structures to know and a lot of vocabulary to memorize there is no way you gonna do that relaying on your conscious i can understand why people dont trust the comprehensible input path because school and society they were encouraging people to practice and practice and not go to the next level till you eat the concept you are studying unfortunately it does not work that way not even in languages but in everything because your brain need novelty and different contexts to fully understand something if you just try to read from one source about something you will hit some plateau and you will never increase you understanding ability tolerating ambiguity is the core of success in every field being obsessed with nail down anything from the first try will cause you a lot of trouble and will just limit your choices and will make you uncomfortable whenever you decide learn new things because you are so obsessed with perfection
@@Joachim1010 Maybe just because they don't try to speak it.
@@Joachim1010 There is a huge aspect of psychology in speaking a language
@@Joachim1010 I've seen this exact comment from you several times in this comment thread. You're one of the only supporting voices of the video in this comment thread, why are you copy-pasting the exact argument over and over?
🇺🇸🇧🇷 It's totally understandble that it's hard for any English teacher, who were created in a formal system, listening and teaching complicated stuff, to accept S. Krashen ideas. They may never accept that learn a new language can be much more easy! I can say it! I'm learning using input method in a country were traditional methods are almost 100% failure!
People use comprehensible input daily especially in non-english countries where alot of foreign(American) TV, movies and games are consumed where often there is no dubs or subtitles available.
Input is very useful indeed, but why be so bigoted as to rule out the usefulness of some form of explicit instruction. No offence, but you're a prime example of someone whose English would benefit from some explicit teaching.
@@luigibaker7713 thanks for sharing your opinion! I'll tell you why I'm 'bigoded' as you said, our mother didn't hire a professional to show us how to speak our native language, we just used to listen her voice and learned, people love to make something easy look complicated, there's no 'flap T' or 'schwa sound' just listening, lots of it! Don't waste your money!
@@luigibaker7713 I don't think the promoters of the input hypothesis are entirely 'ruling out explicit instruction'--after all, kids typically *do* receive formal instruction even in their native tongue. Even Steve Kaufman, a major supporter of SK's theory, also talks about using a private tutor now and then. The point is that language is mainly acquired not via a 'skill-building' model like other subjects (i.e. studying grammar structures that you will easily forget, memorizing decontextualized vocabulary lists that also will not stick), but by repeated exposure to content that is *interesting* and that you *already understand* (at least somewhat) but cannot necessarily use actively yet. This works (as so many commenters here have attested) because learning a language is an activity that is *natural to human beings*, something the brain has evolved to be good at.
What about receptive bilingualism? Is this phenomenon occurring enough to attract attention? Why don't children of immigrants, for example, respond to their parents in their native language?
I've a simple question for you: how can you speak well something you don't understand well? The answer is: you can't! So the input comprehensible, and acquire the language, will always come first. And nobody is saying you don't have to practice. Make no mistake, you will have to speak a lot, to improve. But if you keep repeating verbs like a parrot don't take you anywhere. I'm a Brazilian who has learn four languages, and I know the input comprehensible works.
What are the other languages you have learned?
You need to practice speaking IN ADDITION to exposure to input. He’s saying input isn’t enough.
Actually having experiences to use the language, such as at a language exchange, are essential.
@@elathiaskade7311 It goes without saying that speaking is an inevitable part of communication. The thing is, you CAN'T say what you don't understand, and understanding requires consistent input. The ability to speak is the natural result of input, and any serious language learner will eventually speak/write when the situation asks for two-way communication. Deliberate output practice or grammar study can accelerate the acquisition of a language, but it's not absolutely necessary.
We all aquire language in one way and only one way when we understand messages .
In my early to mid twenties i watched a lot of Korean drama tv series with subtitles. After several months i was able to understand certain phrases. I then started to learn about grammar and it was fun because it already felt familiar, like i had this intuitive feeling of how the words should be formed into sentences. It was such a fun joyful experience while my traditional way of learning English was really traumatizing. I learned it against my teachers methods, not because of them.
Same here, weeb that has watched anime with subtitles since like 3 or 4 years old. Before I even started learning japanese, I realized I could already form and understand without subtitles some sentences. Input really is the MVP of language learning.
Your brain is still developing up until your mid twenties, so what people thought of as the critical period for learning a language in a native-like way has changed. You picked up the language naturally because it was a secondary output for you. The thing you were really engaged in was the dramas you were watching.
@@Blacksquareable yeah I know, except the language learning period is still the same. The things thar are still developing until your mid twenties or even up to your thirties are prefrontal cortex and social cognition
I've learned 4 languages using it 😁😁
¿Entonces sí funciona? he estado pensando en contratar Netflix tan solo por intentralo..
@@omarn1946 obvio que funciona. Intenta casi solo hablar como dice este tipo y seguiras entendiendo casi nada al ver una serie en netflix, pero si haces lo contrario podras responder naturalmente a una conversacion aunque sea algo basico, sin pensar en tu lengua nativa.
Es gracioso porque entendí tanto este comentario como el video completo haciendo lo que el tipo dice que no hay que hacer porque supuestamente no funciona para nada, con el método tradicional de leer gramática y esperar que funcione no podía ni entender una oración de 10 palabras 😅
@@omarn1946 Yo aprendi ingles y frances solamente con Input, ahora estoy aprendiendo Japones y Portugues, este CZcamsr no tiene ni idea de lo que esta hablando, seguramente solo habla ingles xd
@@miguel-rj4ewI learned about it years ago and forgot about it. I worked with a guy who did not speak a lick of English and I quit the job. Saw him 6 months later and he sounded like a native English speaker. I sked him how he did it. He said lots of cartoons in English. His acquisition of English was nothing short of miraculous in my eyes
I love this debate. I think this video is doomed by a misunderstanding of the input hypothesis. As far as I understand the hypothesis, in order TO SPEAK a language you need to have the needed words and the rules to combine them INSIDE your head. And to have words and rules in your head, the only thing you need is comprehensible input. Not grammar classes, not lists of words to study. The input hypothesis is just about this. Then, OF COURSE, you need to actively USE the language (PRACTICE).
I think this is a very good way of putting it.
This is true of many learning methods; for in order to be good at anything you cannot simply learn one technique. You can't win as a boxer simply by relying on pure offense; and likewise, in language learning we cannot hope to become fluent without being well-rounded in how we learn. I could hardly call myself fluent if I could speak and listen but be unable to write.
Wow ! I will never forget that quote, '' We acquire language in only one way, when we understand it.'' Wow! That's so real for me
Hi Christian, I very much like your charismatic vlog. Nevertheless, today I wouldn’t agree with your theory that much, no matter how attractive it is. In my view if someone starts learning a language, he/she has to acquire A BIG ESSENTIAL INPUT FIRST (vocabulary, basic grammar, pronunciation, for example) to be able to speak, write and understand - as well as to be understood by others in the same basic way at least. Unfortunately, there is no way round it. Until after a student has gone through this, he/she can actively focus upon an area of the given language he needs to improve or likes and really enjoys.
Yes, that's exactly right!
Heritage speakers often don't get nearly enough input to qualify as a true native speaker. If you added up all of the minutes you converse with your parent in the heritage language, what would the average number of daily minutes be? Maybe 30 minutes? An hour if you are really chatty? And the topics will often be the same common things which come up again and again in daily life, so it won't cover the breadth of language use necessary to be fluent. Some children are raised bilingual and do end up as true native speakers in more than one language, and I would assume it's just because they are getting way more input than the failing cases (like they watch old country cartoons or something).
Heritage speakers are also interesting to look at because they very often go through a silent period after moving to the new country (sometimes lasting several years) before they actually start speaking. This is yet more evidence of the input hypothesis at work.
I don't believe that comprehensible input is the be all and end all of acquiring a language, but it's like 95%. The only thing it doesn't solve is that when your comprehension hits 90%+, you stop acquiring new grammar as your brain is more than capable of piecing together enough meaning to get by, so it isn't incentivised to notice the finer details. So some additional study which aids you in actually noticing those subtleties rather than glazing over them is helpful.
Exactly. He should delete this horrible video
This makes perfect sense.
But wait, are we certain that the Input hypothesis dismisses the rest of the things most language learners do? Maybe I got it wrong but I always thought S.Krashen is just emphasising the _importance_ of input, not suggesting you should do only that to - eventually - learn _and_ use a language.🤔
Yes, i am love to combine immersion, a bit of grammar, and word learning. Works perfect for me, i also have good accent because of input, even i don't practive speaking so much.
I know, that Cristian understands it, but i guess, i just didn't get his point.
I think that is what most strange CZcamsrs and "snake oil salesman" want you to believe, that through that hypothesis you can get every communication ability
Are we certain? Let's actually read and know what Krashen says before we suppose things...
Yes. Krashen explicitly states that speaking ("output") does not cause language acquisition to occur. That clip of him sums it up in lay terms: "we acquire language in one way and one way only: when we understand messages." So yes, he's absolutely dismissing output and anything like explicit grammar instruction, error correction, etc. as potential contributors to language acquisition. This doesn't mean that classroom applications of his model don't include output and other things. It just meant that he doesn't think these actually contribute to language acquisition.
@@bofbob1 But his idea makes perfect sense in that only input can give you new information about a language. Everything you're able to produce is the result of the input being previously processed in your brain.
Grammar correction is also input, why not? As long as it's comprehensible and doesn't put a lot of pressure on the student
no, this time you missed the boat, I think. Input is extremely important. It's not the only thing we should focus on, I agree, but it is likely the most important
Maybe, but how do you explain the children situation..? They don't take one single lesson, Read one single book and learn one single grammar rule but every child could speak the language where they live... How come...what did I miss?
Agreed!
Or what about going with input and output equally? It goes without saying Input is really important, it is like amassing so many ammunitions, but if you don't know how to shoot a gun with them, all efforts go useless..
(What's the point when you can't use your gun in a violent battlefield?)
Public school system feeds students with only input methods, without teaching how to convert it into output. That's the real issue too..
@@WandleR133Definitely, but I wasn't talking about the mother language, children are very talented at learning also a second language except for their mother language.
I’ve became fluent in English by listening to podcasts religiously and started doing the same in Spanish and I can understand random radio conversations in Spanish just fine after 2 Month
It works extremely well for me
- learn basic vocabulary
- listen to tons of content which is just slightly above your level
- focus while listening
I'm just another one of the many cases listed in this comment section of people who learned a second language based solely on input. I started consuming content in English when I was 11, simply because I loved listening to Linkin Park. Afterwards, I started watching TV series, movies and a lot of youtube videos about topics I liked. I didn't have a conversation partner, nor English classes. However, after 4 years or so, I could understand pretty much everything I heard/read and could communicate without any problems. My comprehension became so good I could even tell when other people made mistakes in English, no matter how small they were, and later became an English teacher at a language school. I achieved that with input exclusively, living in a non English speaking country, having no one to teach me but native content videos. By my experience, I have to totally disagree with everything you said in this video.
Input works.
Wow, So inspiring!!! Sometimes I feel like using this method of input takes such a long time to learn a language but I’ve seen it work for others so I’m going to stick with it!! Thanks for sharing!!
@@jes8203 I do believe studying grammar properly shortcuts your way to fluency, but that’s not the reality of many language schools (at least where I live - Brazil) and it’s certainly not the only possible way to do it. Talking about my experiences again (just for context), when I turned sixteen I got a girlfriend and we took the TOEIC test at our school. I ended up scoring one point higher than her (literally one xD). It may not seem much, but she had spent eight years studying at a certain English school (very big and famous chain in Brazil btw) and I had only spent half that time acquiring the language through consuming native content, without ever traditionally studying and still I could do better than her on a formal test. I hope that shows how effective input really is and how much better it can be for some people, because it makes the journey more fun and allows you to have more flexibility.
Totally recommend you stick to it!
@@abraaomelandes2099 Oh wow, what a cool experience! That definitely helps give me a better perspective on the benefits of consuming input. Thanks so much for sharing your experience! I will definitely keep pushing forward with consuming lots of input. One thing I can honestly say about this experience is that it has definitely been a stress free way of language learning rather than the traditional grammar based method which stress me big time and made me turn away from learning a number of times. The Input method takes a bit longer for me but it has definitely been learning more enjoyable thus far!
@@jes8203 You're totally right! Not having the obligation makes it a lot lighter and more enjoyable! Helped me a lot too! And I'm glad my experiences helped you! Keep it up and you'll definitely see results!
Of course comprehensible input alone is not enough, but it has been the single most useful thing in improving my understanding of English. Here teachers in school are all about grammar, translations, making word lists and other such exercises but I never learned a thing. I really began understanding and improving my spoken and written English after consuming tons of American TV series and I made another big jump after I discovered audiobooks. I started with a very slowed down Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone (a book that I read in my own language many times) and by the third book I was listening at 1.25x to not get bored. Of course my spoken English is not as good as my general understanding of the language, but knowing how a phrase should sound is a massive help in speaking and writing it. I also don't know how else I could have acquired as much vocabulary as I did. Maybe I am wrong or maybe when you speak of learning through input you mean a different thing from me, but for me it has been a fundamental part in my learning journey.
-_-
Sometimes, the language community seems absolutely weird. This is a pretty hard stance on a topic where you will have, especially in the field of Japanese, a giant group of learners that just learned to read, watch shows or play video games - and got to a level they can even speak very, very well. So overall, I do very, very much disagree with such a hard stance on this topic. Especially since I do consider myself a person that hardly ever had any opportunity to speak and never went into shadowing or listing to the own voice. Still, I very much succeeded with language acquisition.
If you start out? Let yourself aid by classic starter materials, will make the start easy because you needn't have your own system. You go beyond the beginner stages? Now you need to make sure you aim towards what you want to do with the language - reading, speaking, playing video games? Whatever it is, try to move there as fast as possible and build a system that allows for tackling what you want to do - like to have a great grammar and a great vocab source
Once people do what they love, they will advance in the highest speed possible for them.
Everyone that falls into any trap of believing one individual that they know something is right or something is wrong.
Now for speaking & acquiring language: the more anyone is exposed to a language, the easier speaking will get as well. Oh and in regard to the English language: I only got basic education in school. That was it. Without any extra studying or conversation practice, I still hold my own in whatever situation. And I absolutely will include even legal talk in there because I am confident in my knowledge. Now on the topic of Japanese, fluent conversation is something I do not yet have achieved. However, I am getting there. Occasional shows & video games are going to support all the former input I did read for soon being able to pretty much always understand everything and, too, produce language around a large variety of topics.
Having ADHD you literally could not pay me $1000 an hour to stay in a traditional language learning class room, however if I take a good narrative/story driven game with lots of dialogue and switch it to my target language after an hour of play time I have usually learned dozens of words, in their full context and usage. I do this also with movies TV and youtube and get a pretty solid beginner grasp on a language by 3 weeks. I have done 3 weeks of standard language learning.. you wanna know how much I remember by the end of 3 weeks? Basically nothing and couldn't string a sentence together if I tried.
Paradoxically, when I clicked the video, I got an advertisement trying to sell me an English micracle course.
Lol, criticise a man on CZcams, who has so much name, done work for his entire life on a specific doman==wallaaaaa money money $$$$$$.
Sorry but it seems you didn't understand exactly how comprehensible input works.
El input comprensible si funciona, es súper fácil ver los resultados, en menos de 6 meses entenderán cerca del 40% O más de todo lo que vean o escuchen, yo ya lo comprobé
¿Sin saber gramática?¿ podrias decirme como lo hiciste oor favor?
@@omarn1946 Para que necesitas saber gramática, yo no tengo ni idea de la gramática del español pero se usarla. Es como si un gringo supiera que es el pasado continuo en ingles, no nadie sabe pero saben usarla a la perfección.
@@omarn1946 Te dejo dos links. PD. no es spam
czcams.com/video/60Pyx7mmLRM/video.html
czcams.com/video/NQlFIrSZiIE/video.html
@@omarn1946 sin estudiar no significa sin aprender. la gramatica la aprendes tambien leyendo y escuchando.
No necesariamente necesitas leer todo respecto a gramática para aplicarla adecuadamente, le podrías preguntar cualquier nativo del español que es un subjuntivo y la mayoría ni conoce esa palabra, pero usan el subjuntivo correctamente porque han escuchado a otros usarlo pero sin saber que se llama así y sin saber siquiera expresar en palabras cuando y como debe usarse, solo saben cuando está bien usado y cuando no de forma intuitiva
Stephen Krashen's hypothesis on comprehensible input in the language learning seemingly makes language teachers useless. By the way, that hypothesis is confirmed every year by about 100 millions newborn children that start their language learning journey without teachers, without dictionaries, without explicit rules of grammar, without ability to speak, just using comprehensible input. The same method can be used also for second language learning, where due diligence plays equally important role as comprehensible input. The primary role of the second language teacher is to select or generate best possible comprehensible input and provoke and encourage due diligence and thus make second language learning more effective. Trying to undermine obvious. role of comprehensible input in the second language learning is useless and unfair and also misleading for many young people that begin to learn their second language.
It wouldn't make language teachers useless if they use CI techniques like Total Physical Response (TPR), Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), Storylistening by Beniko Mason, and even just in-general guiding them with beginner friendly content to consume like graded readers and whatnot.
This likely won't happen because textbook companies who sell thousands of grammar books to teachers will lose their profits if most language teachers would switch. And since teaching via these methods are more ambiguous and don't easily fit into a curriculum, lot of teachers will push-back on it and justifying the reasoning for said pushback by falsely claiming it doesn't work and that they've been teaching for years.
@@HoraryHellfire correct. Most of the teachers at my school just stop listening if I start talking about comprehensible input. It would mean they have to change their whole method, and they don't want to do that. Also, people somehow feel very sophisticated when they teach or learn grammar rules. Why? I have no idea, it's not rocket science, especially not in your own language. I still do grammar lessons, because it's often what students want and expect, and it's necessary just to keep them on side!
This guy in this video is monolingual, is that right? Why is he trying to spread stupid thing like this? Can anyone clarify for me?
@@EnglishAbsorbed Hi I wanted to ask are you an English teacher? If so are you allowed to use input methods to teach? I am just curious because I am hoping to be a teacher but would rather use input methods than grammar based stuff.
Some great input methods that you should research as you become a language teacher are: task-based language teaching, total physical response, teaching proficiency through reading and story telling, English as a lingua Franca, and extensive reading (and more recently extensive listening) programs that use graded readers. I hope that helps you!
I'm glad that you brought up Deliberate Practice, because I can ask some questions. What do you think the role of practice is? How do you differentiate between bad practice and great practice? And why is "Deliberate Practice" consistently the best form of practice no matter the subject? What do you think the "cause" of improvement is?
From my experience as someone who's coached hundreds of people in things and have gotten better at being a coach because of it. Practice's role is often misunderstood. People seem to believe that you can just do practice and automatically improve just because you are practicing. This is why the vast majority of people never get "good" at things (see skill distribution curves in any skill). All they do is just mindlessly do an action over and over again as "practice". But practice is so much more than just doing an action repeatedly as a drill. The purpose of practice isn't to do an action and automatically get better at it. The role of practice is to expose you to input. Every time you do an action, there is a cause and effect relationship with the environment, and that the exact repercussions are something you observe, meaning this is input. This input is the cause of your improvement, not the fact that you're doing the action.
This then moves onto "bad practice"/"great practice" and deliberate practice. Bad practice happens when a person does the same thing over and over again for the sake of repetition, and they usually get lazy and straight into autopilot. This will yield poor improvement and this is what most people do. But great practice, such as Deliberate Practice, involves actually paying attention to the cause and effect relationship between what you do and what happened. This means your brain can create a link between the result and the cause just from the details. And the more you do it, your variation in consistency will give different actions and thus different results to build up a repertoire of cause and effect relationships. And deliberate practice is not only about just paying attention to the details, but also coming up with ideas on how to change a detail to find different effects. It's also about spotting a problem, analyzing the details, and coming up with ideas as a solution to fix the problem by changing a detail. Often you would logically conclude _which_ detail is the cause of the problem and change it. This is exactly why Anders Ericsson found that every expert used deliberate practice in some form to get to where they are, and why that on average the best in their field on average had 10,000 hours of deliberate practice done. It's because when you are exposed to dozens of details each time you do something, and experimenting with them, your brain has thousands of patterns built up right inside your head. And you don't even have to consciously understand _how_ it works or _why_, just that the result is better.
I also want to bring your attention to your lack of understanding of acquisition. You presume that just because you "acquire" something, that it's the ability to recognize it, process, and comprehend it, but this isn't what acquisition _is_ at all. This is what the process of acquisition, not the result. Let's change the subject from Krashen to general skill acquisition. When someone says they acquired a new skill, do you honestly believe it is referring to the the ability to process and comprehend the ability? No. It directly means that you have the ability to not _just_ understand the skill, but also be able to use it on command and pretty consistently too. So now back onto Krashen and acquisition. It literally means the exact same thing. That when you acquire a word or a grammar point, that not only do you understand it, you can consistently use the word on command in the correct situations with an innate feeling. Just like skill acquisition, knowing the theory behind a skill does not mean you can use it in the correct situations on command.
I also want to point out to your surgeon example as it's actually directly in support of the input hypothesis. No amount of watching videos will ever lead you to being able to do surgery. Just because you understand what the videos show doesn't mean you understand what it feels like to actually perform one. The feeling of accurate and precisely moving along your arm consistently while holding a knife in the right spot to cut correctly. The feeling of actually seeing the organs, blood, bones etc etc while you are performing the surgery. The ability to compare what you see with the theory you know _and_ the past experience of a previous surgery. Your innate understanding of which actions to perform, and when, and when it is best to stop pursuing. See, videos don't provide any of this information except theory. It's not input. It's conscious knowledge. The only thing that would _ever_ be able to give you this input without you actually doing it yourself is unfeasible, which would be for someone to "send" their brain's comprehension of performing surgery. Think the old movie "Brainstorm" (1983). So the only real way of getting this input is to do it yourself and see the cause and effect yourself. This is exactly why before becoming a surgeon you have to be an assistant to a surgeon first. So that you get this experience of input to some extent before performing one yourself. And after you start, you would start on the easier surgeries first.
This lets me conclude with this. Skill and language development are severely misunderstood. That people, for too long, assumed the output of practice is the result of improvement instead of the input you get from it. And that years of this idea circulating around conflated this to language ability, meaning that you can improve in language with "practice". In reality, language's output doesn't result in input. It indirectly can when speaking with natives, but the difference between language and most skills is that you don't ever need to output to get input. You can just get the input right away. But for most skills, input is _only_ attainable by output. The feel of the angle you move your arm as you throw a baseball, feeling the amount of strength, the wrist movement, the exact way the ball leaves your hand and at what time. None of this is in a book, and all of this is input when you practice (if you pay attention to the details that is).
Great contribution to the discussion. Indeed its quite possible to go through hundreds of hours of practice without a proportional gain in ability. It's about quality and not just the quantity of hours. I like the idea of using the experience of practice as a real time feed back / input of knowledge.
Do you post coaching content somewhere ?
@@marcelocardoso1507 Sorry, I do not. I privately teach people in a specific subject.
That comment is so long, I’m gonna wait to release a movie about
This paints a very dishonest picture of comprehensible input.
Here in Brasil we have this "saying" (kinda) - Informação não é Formação" , meaning Information is not Formation.
Formação" = training un abraço
@@mulattotvc15 Yep... the acumulated knowledge by years and years of dedication and study to finally master something.
@@larry6006 interesting, I have a very high function in English but when I started to teach I soon realised my understanding of the mechanics were inadequate.
So now I try to blend the two input & mechanics depending on age.
Getting kids to produce is a bit of a nightmare as often I suspect their production in their native language is pretty weak.
However I had that lightbulb moment when I started to learn jazz; despite years of input; lessons, books, videos, CD's ... I struggled to improvise. I consequently found I had little knowledge of the mechanics of music, & hence could not produce, without a reference. Praps this is what Christian is getting at.
So now I mix the two, but you are right time is needed. With the strong kids it's not an issue but everyone wants to learn fast (y en español hablar rapidoó)..
I found with my jazz this is not always possible.
So I changed my teaching to focus more on production blending in theory as needed (or not). Results came fairly quickly, particularly with children considered weak.
@@larry6006 true, we have to manage expectations ... not easy when it's out there you can learn something very difficult in 4 weeks. We have to explain, this is not possible!
...and finally: the "little problem" with the input hypothesis (as you see it), is that acquisition is not learning. How in the world could you not have distinguished between those two completely different concepts?
As he says here, Krashen is foundational. He is truly a legend.
There is not one person that can speak a language without understanding it... Understanding has to come first.... Input is the best way to understanding... To be able to speak a language, undeniably you must practice speaking.. I think you are misunderstanding the process as I've yet to see any program that pushes not speaking ever.
At this moment, I'm listening to ur podcast so I'm over an input moment of my learning. But then, I'm gonna repeat some sentences, gonna do some grammar exercises and I'm gonna try to speak to a native, but that's gonna be most on this weekend. I agree with u this time. Thx a lot.
That’s quite a combo of straw man destruction and category switching for a result that is both trivial and wrong. Of course you need to practice speaking to speak well. But what is it that you are going to say? What you acquired through comprehensible input.
As an language teacher, what I've learned is that people are too diverse for us to believe one method will fit everybody. But of course, some methods will work on most people, so they have their value. But in the end, it's up to each one to find out how they feel more confortable learning and what method provides the best results for them.
These are good comments regarding comprehensible input. I was born in a Latin American country to Asian parents. So all day long I was exposed to Spanish until I went home to Korean-speaking parents. I was a receptive bilingual until at age 13, I decided to learn Korean. For a whole year, I read my bilingual Korean-Spanish Bible. I tried using the words I had learned when answering my parents’ questions. My ability to speak and read Korean skyrocketed. But I couldn’t and still can’t write it very well (no practice time). Then I emigrated to the US and I started the whole process of learning a new language again. I was a young adult. I memorized a ton of words. This didn’t help. I learned to memorize the words I needed for daily US living: vocabulary related to banking, buying groceries, enrolling in college, etc. I watched a lot of TV with captions. I got an English-Spanish bilingual Bible (NIV was the easiest version). And of course, practiced speaking with peers. I read a lot of books in English I had already read in Spanish (Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, etc). The last batch of English I have learned related to kids and phonics, which I learned by having kids in the US. I’m so grateful at the opportunity to have homeschooled my kids (read, write, and to math in a second language). It takes time and work, and repetition. You are absolutely right. Now regarding Dr Krashen, I don’t think he’s that wrong. My adopted son from China did learn English by just listening at first. I think it was 9 months before he said the word “cow,” his first English word. He was obsessed with Chica Chica Boom Boom. Now, age 9, he begs me to read. So thankful I’m now reading “Little House in the Big Woods.” It’s work to read. Learning a language is like building a mountain one grain of dirt at a time. Good thought, Kanguro! Going to try to apply those thoughts as I teach Spanish to homeschoolers at my co-op!
Looking forward to seeing how good you are at Spanish. As you seem pretty confident about your method
OK. So, let me see if I've got it right. Your recipe for learning a language is like 'Mambo no 5'. I mean: 'A little bit of Listening in my life/ A little bit of Speaking by my side/ A little bit of Reading's all I need\ A little bit of Writing's what I see etc, etc.
Sing along ...
yess! brilliant analogy!!
I actually heard the music when I read that 😂
@@Tony32 It's a sign from Beowulf.
I am bilingual Spanish/English. Fluently. Combination of input, speaking, reading and writing. I am now acquiring French the same way. Comprehensible input makes sense and has worked for me. Acquiring and producing goes hand in had.
I think putting in practice the language you learn goes without saying... who ONLY listens to a language and hopes to learn it? I think that's a misunderstanding of what Krashen means...
I have to say that the languages I speak I do mostly because I immersed myself into them. I fully learned English by watching series movies and studying medicine (my profession) in English. I learned catalan by living in mallorca for 4 years, I learned French by spending a whole year listening to podcasts while cooking and cleaning, and by looking up occasionally the things I didn't get. I learned German by living in Munich for 2 months (of course a very basic German, but still).
I don't deny that some grammar played a role in the acquisition of those languages, but without a doubt input has been the main reason I could learn these languages.
Of course my English, catalan, French and German are not as good as my mother tongue (Spanish), but I can say with confidence that I can communicate in these languages, and I owe it to the Krashen method.
From my experience you need way more input to internalize a language & being able to reproduce it than to just understand. This is also my hypothesis about the assymetric bilinguals that you talked about: that they had enough input to understand but not enough to internerlize the language to a level that they can reproduce. That is also one point all to often forgotten when talking about the input hypothesis: language learning takes years and you need an extensive amount of input.
[Disclaimer] I'm not an English native speaker. I understood your video thanks to comprehensible input. I think comprehensible input is a good way to get English but I agree with you. You need to develop active languages skills like speaking and writing at the same time passive languages skills like reading and listening. I took an English exam and I notice my passive skills are better than my active skills. There's a moment when you need to communicate and this is so important because you have the chance to make mistakes and learn about these. I think comprehensible input gives us more motivation to learn a language because you're understanding stuffs you like it, but at the same time you should find another places to apply it and to identify what you need to improve. Greetings from Colombia.
I learned English by watching episodes and their re-runs of Dragon Ball Z and Naruto in English. One day, as crazy as it sounds, I woke up to episodes suddenly understanding what they were talking about.
Dude am the perfect counter example.
I learned english at school, they forced us to talk in english whilenwe had no idea what we where doing.
At the end of high school noone , absolutely no one was able to speak.
I watched alll tv with subtitles, sometimes i didnt even had them, for years cause i had no choice, and i never learned any grammar rules.
Maybe it doesnt apply to russian , but for English, as a french native, comprehensive input is just incomparable.
I recommended this teacher to read Krashen's original works. I think this teacher didn't understand the concept of "acquisition", which is totally the opposite from what he have said, "error correction" or learning. Krashen has evidence of the uneffectiveness of error correction. This teacher also missed another part of the theory, that is the silent period. Languge learners, like children who acquire their mother tongue, have a period they not yet prepared to generate output. But that doesn't mean they don't know anything of the languge, they know something, but just not enough. See, output, esspecially the output of a adult languge learner, requires a high level of comprehension, so that they can convey their messages to other adults. So that they need sufficient input to let him prepared from output. So, I think this teacher just ignored some components of Krashen's theory.
Are you comparing learning motoric skill like a surgery to a linguistic skill. I would have to use some awful words to describe what are you doing to logic that way ..
Well, actually, a good command of a language is a motoric skill - the direct link between your brain and speech organs. If you have to think first in your native language and then translate into the target language (or vice versa) it's just a white belt. Just a thought.
I remember back in the early 2000s, after high school. After all those years of formal English teaching, I was pretty bad at it. Started watching TV series with subs looking up words I didn't know. After a while I understood all the subs, then some speech, then all speech. In parallel I started reading only books in English.
After a few years I moved to an anglophone part of my country and was surprised that I could (after a few days only) speak at a near native level.
I would say comprehensible input was the way to go for me (even though I knew nothing about it when I started doing it). But I would say learning a huge amount of vocabulary using flash cards also helps tremendously to make the input comprehensible. In fact, learning vocabulary lists is the only useful part of my high school English education.
Doing the same for Spanish now, and I can say that without a doubt it works. I can understand about 98% of the language by just reading stuff on the internet, and Anki flash cards. Speaking is all but inevitable.
I remeber having grammar lessons as a baby. That's how I learned English. My parents watched this and never spoke to me.
I now spend fifteen minutes considering every semtence and I can't speak properly despite English being my first language.
learning only by input sound great , and it seems easy but remember
“if it sounds too good to be true, it probably”
@@Acro_LangLearn I agree that input is really helpful in acquiring a language. Clearly, there is no output without input. However, some people depend totally on input. I would say 80% input 20% output. This is how you should spend your time.
Bullshit, I am brazilian and I learned english just by listening FNAF theory videos, my english is not perfect but it definetly good enough, just by input.
As a professor with over 20 years of experience in English, I firmly advocate for input-based language learning. It's the most effective and, in my view, the primary method for true language acquisition. Language acquisition, as proposed by Crashen & Allis (1994), relies on comprehensible input, just slightly beyond the learner's current proficiency level.
I can illustrate this with the case of my 15-year-old Brazilian student who learned English solely by watching "Friends" repeatedly. Through extensive exposure to comprehensible and enjoyable language input, her brain naturally processed and internalized the language patterns, resulting in her speaking General American English fluently with a flawless accent, all without formal courses or going abroad.
Several reasons support the effectiveness of input-based learning:
It mirrors the natural process of acquiring one's first language.
It enables the practice of all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Its enjoyable and motivating nature encourages long-term commitment.
It's accessible to learners at all levels, from beginners to advanced.
If you're committed to language learning, I highly recommend embracing input-based learning. It's the surest path to achieving your language fluency goals.
Could you tell me in more detail the method of how to learn English from the series, friends?
...Krashen... 🤣
@@slaventiyecUS yes, I would watch the entire Friends show with subtitles in your own language and a second time with subtitles in English.
Input is the most important variable by far. I learned English by listening to radio and TV in English, then practicing. Family members who went to night school still haven't learned.
As someone who was raised by Russian speaking parents in a Hebrew speaking country who acquired English through input I can agree that input alone won't get you very far. As from a personal experience I can perfectly understand Russian but unfortunately speak very poorly because of the lack of variety in conversational topics. I believe it really depends on how often your parents engage you in conversations. And the same thing goes for my English - I have thousands of hours of input but I don't believe I would've been able to speak the way I do now if I hadn't outputted at all. On the other hand I don't believe I would've been able to speak English at all if I hadn't had as much input.
What I'm trying to say is input goes and in hand with output - specifically conversations where you both get input and to output.
* mic drop*
Sounds far more like you didn't receive enough comprehensible input and it plateaued in difficulty. The only source of Russian input was your Russian speaking parents and you aren't consuming input from them more than a total of 30 minutes a day on average. And even if you were, they would almost always talk about the same things in a way you already know.
You wouldn't need to output that much. You need more Russian comprehensible input. Both it being _more_ comprehensible by acquiring more and more words through context (that you previously didn't know), and it being more _of_ comprehensible input as in you needed a larger volume of it.
@@HoraryHellfire he did say he can't speak Russian because he doesn't know enough topics.
For me I can speak Japanese not because I read easy Japanese books or text but of having many interest within Japanese. From anime, manga, hollolive, cute girls, drinking games and parties. Japanese history, daily life.
All those things are what leeds to becoming fluent in a language.
I some when learned the expressions "passive vocabulary" and "active vocabulary" and it was clear that the passive one is bigger than the active one. I still think that comprehensible input helps a lot with the passive understanding and this prepares the learning of actively using what you're already familiar with through listening and reading.
But I also had found out that I'll never "aquire" the ability to use a language myself through only listening and reading.
But especially with English the ability to understand it is much more important to me than being able to speak it *well*, because there are a lot of original sources about issues I'm interested in, and when I need to talk English it's mostly for telling a tourist the way to the next metro station! 😁
Yeah I really agree, especially when I wasn't as well practiced as now I could listen and read text quite good but I was very bad at speaking because I didn't have that much active vocabulary and it took me a long time to recall words. The only thing that improved that is speaking and writing a lot (while I still think input and immersion is very important I think you should also (re) produce language actively in order to learn a language well)
Hi! I've learnt a few languages in many different ways, and my take on this is as follows:
- Comprehensible input is a prerequisite to language learning. You can't internalise a rule, structure, or vocabulary, if you haven't come across it enough times to form a good understanding.
- Speaking is as much a language skill, as it is a social one. Not only will people speak much differently when conversing from the way they produce a monologue (vocab, structures, freer grammar), in most cases a language is inseparable from the culture of its speakers, so having the right cultural context is very important as well.
- Writing systems that languages use are pretty much arbitrary. They don't constitute an integral property of language (there are many examples of languages being written in several writing systems), and thus its rules must be learnt separately. However, reading greatly improves your ability to write, and of course you can't learn to write without learning the language itself.
- [FROM THE TWO POINTS ABOVE, it follows that] you won't start speaking better without speaking practice, you won't write better without writing practice;
- The order in which you learn a language and practice its parts depends on your goals. If you just need to be able to read it, it's one thing. If you just wanna understand the spoken form to watch movies or consume other content, it's another. But the former is a prerequisite to writing, and the latter is a prerequisite to speaking.
Based on these thoughts, my approach to learning a new language when I want to casually speak with a native speaker and be able to engage with the content in this language is
1. understanding its context a bit (culture, people, history) in a language I already know.
1a. trying to understand a bit of the linguistic properties and more or less the phonology (but that's very high-level and mostly because I'm interested in linguistics in general).
1b. Plan more or less when I'll be going to need to speak it (i.e. plan a trip to a place where I can use it, or find such a place locally / online)
2. comprehensible input, first with the focus of dissecting phonemes (sounds) and trying to repeat them if they are new to me
2a. comprehensible input, trying to catch the words. At this point I can start using a translator. Again, I repeat the words to practice pronunciation and internalise them.
2b. comprehensible input, trying to catch the general meaning. I use subtitles and sometimes translate chunks of text or specific words. I also utter what I caught.
2c. comprehensible input trying to dissect specific phrases and constructs. Once I can identify a structure very well, I'll sometimes look it up in a grammar book
2d. comprehensible input trying to understand full sentences.
3. Start practicing speaking
4. From this point onward, the more you surround yourself with the language, the better. You gotta produce it (speaking, writing) if you wanna get better at producing it, but listening and reading should be at least as important.
I haven't yet tried learning a language which didn't use a writing system I didn't know, so I can't say how I'd approach it, but I think I'll try skipping the written form and focusing on listening and speaking first.I was learning Japanese in class, and we learnt hiragana after half a year of classes using transliteration to write stuff down, and it went quite well.
I started writing rap music at 13. Rap music is my favorite music. Thru comprehensive input I took rap lyrics of my favorite artist and translated them into Spanish from English. Hearing music, stories and material I already knew in my target language definitely helped to learn words faster.
However I do suggest getting a friend to speak with at least twice a week.
Understanding foreign language content is far more difficult than produce that. IMHO, having a skill of using about 3000 words and structures is enough to convey any idea or information but to apprehend you need much more; you have to know about 10000 in passive. Anyway, the first you obtain information and only after that, you can use it, more using - more easy to use.
Of course, “input” is not a magic wand but according my experience it works. I have been almost never speaking (I have no purpose), only reading texts and watch videos including your channel (It is the best!) and still I can speak, not fluently but I can and people understands me.
Children spend over a year just listening and learning as much as possible. They only start speaking/writing much later.
Maximize input and then start writing
You don't have children do you? ^^
Well...I can tell you that as an argentinian spanish speaker, I went to the US when I was 12 years old and the state of SC put me in seventh grade with the rest of the kids in a public school. I never had a special teacher of any sort...my learning was fully done through listening for the first 4 months, after the summer break I started 8th grade as a regular student and passed all my subjects, never had a problem...I've never studied grammar or vocab.
So, it seems like you've never experienced this process...
Im an english teacher now, specializing in sound recognition...I could teach you a thing or two
I never studied a single piece of grammar when learning English, yet thanks to input, and ONLY thanks to input, I am native level in it. I could effortlessly communicate in english before I even learned what a conjugation was. Now because I spend most of my time online and with English speaking friends, it has basically taken over as my native language... Even though English is my third language lol.. I grew up in a Finnish speaking household, then I went to a swedish speaking school at around kindergarden age, my Swedish was so bad that my classmates would switch to Finnish when speaking to me (and my brother) but by the end of the first year that was no longer necessary as my Swedish level had already gotten to basically fluent at that point.. I never studied a lick of swedish either.
So if input doesn't work.. Then how am I trilingual?
Input...worked for me. Study boring grammar, write nonsense essays, speak like a robot, listen artificial audios....well it didn't. Cheers!
Hi Christain! I totally agree with all what you said about the comprihensible input and consider myself to be a victim of this idea. I am a native Arabic speaker but I have been learning English for more than 20, and I can understand English perfectly well. However, I still find it hard to speak and express myself confidently. That's of course because of all the teachers who kept speaking all the time without giving me enough time to practice speaking the language, thinking that it would be enough if students just listened and were exposed to the language.
Teachers don't speak like natives, though, they use artificial tone/pace so that students can keep up; you're not getting 'input' (as we use the term) when listening to them or classmates. Because you understand so much English already, you could actually use input/immersion now to focus on how native-speakers express certain thoughts/ideas (phrases, word choice, etc.), so that you can begin to emulate these yourself naturally, without having to form English sentences in your head first -- which sounds like the area you want to improve at this stage? This can't be taught directly, or deliberately studied, because native-speakers aren't even aware of most of their language's specific quirks and deviations. We do it all automatically (but consistently), and you can absorb these habits/patterns for yourself with targeted immersion in native content. Again, because you already understand English, I imagine you'd see results relatively quickly.
For how to actually do it, check out MattvsJapan's channel here on CZcams, and the refold.la website, if you're interested. Both are totally free, I'm not selling anything, ha -- but this video is full of inaccuracies about how the hypothesis is applied today, so I wanted to point to you to the actual method. I think you'd find it very useful. Good luck!
What? You really believe in this BS?😒
It motivates me every time whenever I watch your videos or listen to any of your podcast episodes.
I have been learning English on my own over the past 1.5 years. And I can say that it is very important not only to take input. Your input could not become very good if you do not speak. I speak also on my own. But a brain works so that to improve your input, you have to produce output. It is because when you are listening to something, the understanding quality depends on how you can remember and repeat what you heard. I still do not have very good results. 1.5 years are not very much. But the technique to remember and repeat helps me a lot.
Input works . My language learning was painfully slow until I discovered comphrensible input method . Don’t listen to anybody criticizing the input method . It’s not exaggeration to say it’s the end all be all
I think Krashen’s input hypothesis is still valid, but I agree that’s it’s not complete. This video you just made needs to be watched by the whole language learning community. Most relevant one I’ve watched in months.
Only i have one thing that i can't understand. Why are these types of your videos has low view counters? Because every word that comes out your mounth are gold. Big thank you for your all your hard work and making these videos.
You know what's most annoying for a language learner?
People speaking unnaturally slow. Then in a normal conversation they cannot pick up.
Speed (x1.5) and now I can listen to you, CZcams is a great tool indeed.
I love your channel and I have seen all your interviews. I am very happy you brought up this topic. In my humble opinion, the Comprehensible Input Theory is correct but it has been sold as the solution to everything. Firstly, Krashen uses the word acquisition because he wanted to highlight the difference between acquiring and learning grammar back in '70/80. Learning means a conscious process of trying to acquire a second language. Acquisition means an unconscious process. He pointed out how children learn "ate" instead of "eated" via massive input and not vocab list or grammar explanation and this idea of acquiring means massive listening. He just discovered that grammar exercises and explanations are less effective than optimal input. Moreover, Krashen has always been in favour of reading and he always points out that storytelling is a great tool for input. In the same interview you showed, Matt (vs Japan) told Krashen that he improved a lot thanks to speaking and he asked an opinion about it to the professor. Krashen said that he could not explain how speaking can improve L2 knowledge because he never ran massive researches about it but he claimed that speaking could be a good way to recall information. The great misunderstanding of comprehensible input is due to companies that used this theory to sell their summer camps in UK or US claiming that a school trip in the UK or US will boost your knowledge without studying just having fun and interacting with natives. The real Optimal Input theory is the opposite: a lot of listening and reading stuff internalizing the L2 .
You missed the point. You cannot make mistakes if you don't speak/write. Trying to "output" a language when u barely understand it is illogical. Input comes first, output later
Outputting early on can be extremely demotivating as well when you can barely understand anything that's being said
2 years (about 1000 hours) of input before output? I think that's a good deal. I am convinced that approaching a language analytically in the early stages does more harm than good.
Slightly aside the input and production debate, I really like what you said at the very end, that communication is about understanding yourself and contributing. I completely subscribe to this tenet. Thank you for Your contribution to the teaching community.
Oh, Chris, oh, Chris. I enjoy your videos, but in this particular one, you are making a strawman argument...
You Are Not a Clown. You Are the Entire Circus.
Actually Raed it using his voice 😂
I can speak English fluently just by listening after 1,3 years. I just listened radio. because I’m professional driver and I just listened it in my car. And people told me they understand me perfectly
If you can listen and read and understand content without being able to speak it, practicing speaking will be orders of magnitude easier. Imagine the difference when practicing speaking and running into an hole in vocabulary and asking the teacher/language parent to remind you the word. If you have enough input they say it and you’re like oh yeah, I can’t believe I forgot it. If you’d never heard the word in your life and you’re trying to use it already it’s like swinging a baseball bat with a blindfold on. Two very distinct feelings. I know which one I prefer…
This is great. The emphasis on input made it difficult for me to express myself in another language. So I learned "lines," like a jazz guitarist (I'm a guitarist) and started practicing them in real conversations. Overtime I learned more, so it was like improvising in music. Input did help me to understand by becoming familiar with the language and hearing words or phrases I had learned. And in my own case I found that transcribing what I heard made me pay more attention (kind of like transcribing music to make tabs). What's the best way to learn a language? Do everything and eventually it starts to stick.
Brilliant, as always, Christian! The only thing is that in automatically generated subtitles your play on words was lost. You were talking about "prophets" and "profits" but the subtitles displayed the same spelling twice - "prophets and prophets".
I think he has nothing to do with subtitles as you said they are automatically generated by a programmed machine. I don't know if youtubers have the ability to edit auto generated subtitles
My mom, my grandmother, and my grandfather are from Panama. My sister and I grew up in a part of the United States where there are no other Spanish-speakers. They all spoke to us in Spanish growing up, and as such, we have native listening capacities, but we have trouble speaking it.
Hi Christian, I couldn´t get to your point. "Practicing" a new language without having a previous minimal understanding of it is like imitating the sounds of a seagull, or a monkey. They communicate, and we have a few clues, if any, of what they are trying to communicate, but surely they are communicating with their communities. Speaking a language without understanding it is getting into the "invented language" stage which is a common stage where some English learners got stuck. I´m not an expert, I´m just using my experience as an ESOL teacher. THis is my way to understand the INPUT Hypothesis.
To my mind, the crux of the matter is that one's output skills won't never be better than their input skills. In other words, in order to become a good speaker or reader, firstly, one has to get tons and tons of input. However, the reflection brought by our dear Christian is still quite relevant, and we shouldn't overlook the importance of regular output practices. Thank you, teacher!
I'd like to see you discussing this theory with Stephen Kaufmann who used it to learn 8 languages (I'm not sure about the number but 8 or 9).
He interviewed him. The way I see it, is "I can become a famous CZcamsr to teach English. I begin doing research. Turns out the whole system is (mostly) flawed. But my business depends on students coming to me. So, my brain will (perhaps unconsciously) twist whatever rethoric I need to in order to justify my existence".
He did. He just didn't like what he was told cause it hurts his business.
If he manage too learn 8 languages with this method, than it's obviously an effective way to learn a language. 🤯
Just no discussion, it's a fact
@@AndresBarrosMusic this guy in this video is just monolingual, is that right?
@@kimcuongtran5495 According to some comments, he speaks some Spanish. How good it is, I've no idea.
I am deperately trying to learn Brazilian Portuguese as a native English speaker. I am married to a Cariaoca, a Bralizian woman from Rio. I understand a fair amount of what she and her brother from Bazil say on the phone. But I can shit in the language. I don't have enough understanding of the grammer and the rules of the language to put it together in my own brain and make it come out of my mouth. I think that both sides to this agrument have a valid point, but I think it takes more than just "input" to make one conversational in a rapid period of time. I am wrestling with how to do this. I listen to Brazilian music, I read short stories in Portuguese, I watch tv news programs from Brazil, but it doesn't seem to help my output.
As someone who is bilingual in English and Polish I'll give you my take on why I can hear more than I speak. It's simply living in America I don't hear Polish enough even if I did hear it every day. So my ability to recall words is difficult but when I hear the word it jogs my memory enough to recall it then. However when I spend an extended period of time in Poland then it's easier to speak because my immersion is greater. Another thing that might be going on is an illusion of understanding. Sometimes I have difficulty translating what I hear in Polish, I feel like I understood it but probably didn't fully.
I will always prefer the suggestions of other students that have reached their objective, rather than teachers who speak 1 or barely 2 languages. They haven't gone through the process of learning to a high level.
Lots of polyglots on internet back up input hypothesis, and thanks to that I quit Japanese language school and began learning by myself. In a few months I learned more than in 2 years in class.
Of course you will need speaking practice to develop speaking skills, but you can't practice something you don't even know in the first place. A lot of schools urge you to "use the new language from day one", how can you speak something you don't know? Yeah you could "practice" the 5 words they teach you in the class but you will spend half an hour or an hour practicing 5-10 words, instead of learning 50+ in an hour with input, its a matter of time efficiency.
Depending on the language, after some months (or even years for hard languages), when you have a decent vocabulary amount is when you start practicing speaking.
Its still good to hear other opinions like this video tho.
Forgot to add that english is not my first language, like a lot of other comments here, I learned with TV and video games and youtube when I was younger, without never speaking a word. One family member got an American partner and came home, and that's where I really first tried speaking english and to my surprise, we had a very fluent conversation, struggling with some words from time to time and pronunciation, but at a normal speaking speed. That's when you know input worked.
Dunno. Part of me agrees with you. But at the same time, a teacher (at least an attentive one) has a much wider sample to work with. A teacher will have worked with hundreds or thousands of students and seen what seems to work for them and what doesn't. A self-taught learner on the other hand only has one data point. And a very common mistake is for them to say "this worked for me, ergo it must work for everybody, and it must be the most effective method for everyone".
For instance, you bring up "speak from day 1". Well, I've done that for most of the languages I now have C2 certifications in. But I wouldn't go around saying it's necessarily the way for others to approach language learning. What I can say is: this has worked for me, so you can always try it out and see if it works for you. But if I really wanted to argue that point, I'd have to call on the scientific research because it just wouldn't do to use one single data point. And when you do that, what you find is that the data leans overwhelmingly towards early output being beneficial. I'd imagine it's a natural consequence of the generation effect, a well-established principle according to which production allows for deeper encoding of new information. It's on that basis that you could then argue that early output yields more efficiency. But once you do that, the question is: efficiency towards what? And that's where all the personal things like goals, motivations and circumstances come into play. There's room for a wide variety of approaches because of that diversity of learners.
@@bofbob1 Well, seems like you have way more experience than me so thanks for the feedback.
For now I only speak 3 languages. I am a Japanese language teacher, and what I've seen so far is the ones that follow only the school method don't get past A1, and the ones that take my advice about input are getting better (for now no more than 5 students from at least a hundred), still I've been teaching for only 3 years so its hard to tell if its only the method fault or if that's the expected amount of students that stick to the language no matter which method they use.
At the end of the day it comes probably to how many hours and years you spend with the language.
"You get good at what you practice".
More you practice, More you improve. Thanks for such interesting topic...
In my occasion I didn't practiced speaking before. I just worked on comprehension(read books, enhanced vocabulary and improved listening skills) before I went to the Malaysia for practicing speaking.
My speaking skills were poor, but it took half of year to become confident speaker. It takes the most for learning vocabulary and understanding speech, other skills don't require so much time.(one year is enough)
It's totally right! I saw many time families with children who understand parent language but can't speak