Does immersion have to hurt? Language learning secrets from
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- ➡️ Watch Part 2 with Matt interviewing me: • The 10 Laws of Effecti...
🤔 In this video, I'm joined by Matt, the co-founder of the new site Refold.la, and the man behind the popular Matt vs. Japan CZcams channel. I previously interviewed Matt and have recently done one of my new method breakdown videos about his approach (see links below), but today, we're going to get personal. We're going to get tactical. And we're going to see just how deep the Matt rabbit hole goes!
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
In the interview, we discuss:
0:00 Intro
1:05 Matt's new project Refold.la.
4:45 Why immersion-based learning isn't as popular as it SHOULD be given how effective it's when done right.
8:15 "TTF" (Time to Fun)
11:25 TikTok immersion?
12:27 How to strike a compromise between efficacy and enjoyment.
15:14 Why learning is about ACTION, not KNOWLEDGE, and the power of accountability through coaches and community.
17:26 What would Matt do differently he started learning Japanese from scratch today?
26:19 What do people wrong about Matt?
For more about Matt:
👉 Check out my method breakdown about him: • How This Guy Learned F...
👉 Watch my first interview with Matt from April 2020: • Hardcore language lear...
📺 Visit Matt's CZcams channel: / mattvsjapan
💻 Visit Matt's new site: refold.la
Other language learning projects I've documented on CZcams:
👉 Learn Italian in 3 Months: • I'm going to learn Ita...
👉 Learn Thai in 14 Days:
czcams.com/users/playlist?list...
👉 Daily Study Routines and Schedules:
• Foreign Language Study...
And here are some other cool videos I like about learning languages fast:
👉 • Asking a POLYGLOT How ...
👉 • The secrets of learnin...
👉 • HOW TO LEARN ANY LANGU...
After trying to learn Korean for 3 years with textbooks as my main resource, I was going nowhere. I am now following the Refold method and immersing into native content and my level of Korean has skyrocketed. I think Matt is a great guy and I admire his dedication to Japanese a lot.
I've read that it takes at least 4000-6000 hours to get fluent (as to be comfortable working, dating and taking classes in your TL) so I wish you the best of luck.
@@Ryosuke1208 Thank you ! Best of luck to you too.
@@Ryosuke1208 source for that stat?
@@notalot22 Take it with a grain of salt, I may have read about it on a Quora comment but I do not have the source.
@@Ryosuke1208 I’ve heard it’s 2200
Immersion isn't populair because they can't make money of you that way. Same thing with diets vs calorie counting. If they can't make money with it they will completely ignore the method.
The fact that "the market cares _only_ about money" should be obvious to me but for some reason it isn't.
This also happened to Bag-less Vacuum cleaners. I want to think of more things but I don't know that many stories about that many inventions in the world
@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx Maybe like selling bottled water?
Same with improving health through diet lol, so instead they just lie.
Good old capitalism
Actually, there are ways of directly teaching a language with input and a teacher, such as TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) which is based off of Krashen's input hypothesis. It more-or-less works by having a teacher guide immersion (such as by telling stories or giving material to read to students) to have the optimal amount of comprehensible input to maximise language acquisition.
I don't think learning a language without studying grammar is rare. I think most people who learned English as their second language did exactly that.
English has grammar?
@@GAOMaster Don't it? 😅
Indeed. A common answer I've heard from people who learned English as a second language is that they got really into a tv show/sitcom like Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Fresh Prince of Bel-air, etc)
I think almost anyone who was forced to take English in school for years is in the "studying grammar" camp. (I mean, no matter what you do afterwards, you've studied years of grammar.) More importantly, all of Europe and South America combined has far less people than mainland China alone, where learning English without studying grammar is really rare. So it's probably not "most people who learned English as their second language."
@@fto1176 well I can only speak for myself but eventhough English classes were indeed mandatory I still would not say I "studied" English grammar. I was able to pass the tests and fill in the blanks because I just knew the answers. The reason being, at the time, I already felt quite comfortable using the language. Kind of like asking a native French speaker for help when you are doing your French homework. They don't necessarily know the grammar yet they will be able to provide the right answers. As for the 'most people part', that's definitely something I hadn't considered. So yeah maybe not 'most' people but I would still say a considerate amount of people were able to learn English without studying grammar. In my personal opinion, enough people to no longer call it rare.
Edit: I also kind of believe you are hugely overestimating the value of those years and years of studying a mandatory language in school. I've had French classes in school for over 10 years and I can not speak French. I am now trying to learn French by immersion and reading ... so if/when I do manage to learn French I will not give credit to all them ... in my opinion ... wasted years of *studying* French in school.
Great video Olly Richards! The question: "What would Matt do differently if he could relearn Japanese from scratch," was great content. That really helps the beginner community in terms of the bigger picture.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for having Matt on again Olly. Always a good interview.
Matt could come on every week as far as I’m concerned!
This is one of the best CZcams interviews I’ve seen. Not only is it very interesting and engaging with a wide range of topics covered but it is also well-produced and well-regulated interview. Your skills as an interviewer really come though. Thanks for the excellent content.
In the last year of taking my language learning really seriously, one thing I've discovered is how many opinions there are out there about the best way to learn - and how passionately people often hold those opinions. Sometimes I feel like a sail boat trying to get from one destination to the other, but constantly being buffeted off course in all different directions by the wind every time I encounter advice that contradicts other advice. The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that I have to try and find what works for me and disregard what doesn't.
It's already too late in terms of reading ability getting ahead of listening. I read much better than I listen. I've been trying to improve my listening - with some success - but it remains way behind my listening. I don't mind this too much as being able to read and understand is quite motivating and keeps me going.
In terms of speaking, I've encountered the opinion that you should be speaking right from the start, as well as the idea that you should wait and build up some base knowledge at first. I began speaking with little more than Duolingo knowledge, but for me, it was the right decision, because speaking (and listening, of course) is why I'm doing all this. Much as I love reading, I'm principally learning to speak a new language, and I'd rather stumble through a basic conversation about myself and what I do for a living and what I'm having for dinner than sit around getting hundreds and hundreds of hours if input but fretting about whether it's the right time to start using it. And there's nothing more motivating than expressing yourself in a foreign language and having a native speaker understand it and respond to it. That's just my point of view. And for what it's worth, Story Learning has been really useful for me both as a motivator and as a form of input.
Thanks for the insightful comment Michael. Like I always say... once you figure out what works for you, you can completely disregard what I or anyone else thinks! I think the main role for people like me and Matt is to encourage and inspire people at the beginning of their language learning journey.
@@storylearning Cheers Olly. I just wanted to add that I agree with most of what was said in the video, and I would definitely recommend both your website and your Short Stories books.
Thank you for splitting the interview up! I can jump to the parts I want to hear.
Glad it was helpful
Matt has this calm awareness about him. I wonder how much he meditates. I would guess pretty regularly.
He said he does a lot lol you are spot on
It's interesting how much he's changed. Being blunt, he used to be a bit of a douche, going around calling people idiots and criticizing everyone... Then he became really cool. Watching his first video that went big (where he speaks Japanese) still makes me cringe.
But now he just seems calm, focused and just all around great as a mentor.
@@keithws2779 Well I was just a little disappointed in his discussion with Steve Kaufman. I haven't seen the first videos of Matt though.
@@Ryosuke1208 what went wrong with the interview?
@@pm0913 Hmm heavy disagreement about pitch accent utility in Japanese if I remember.
Yay. More Japanese stuff.
Edit:
Also glad you're talking about refold. I've been using it along with your Japanese courses.
It's a wonderful combination.
That’s great to hear!
Thank you Olly and Matt! You guys are great
"Total Immersion" is great and should be done if possible once you can speak the target language. But for normie students you are not magicly going to go from zero to master by doing so.
Thanks gents, this is the motivation I needed for today
Awesome interview. Loved your guys back and forth! 👍🏾
Matt always lends to an interesting video! Cheers for getting in contact with him Olly
Really interesting conversation! Thanks to both of you
Thanks Shane
Loved the interview! Great questions and interesting conversations
Cheers Gintare!
That is absolutely what I needed ! I was doubting about my immersion approach and that discussion helped me a lot. Thank you both !
Really glad it helped
Or finding an interest that makes motivation a second level thing so independently on how motivation fluctuates you'll continue pushing for it.
An interest can be as simple as "anything that interest you that you can reach through your target language", it can even be "language learning" but it needs to be a real interest of yours. Once you have that, motivation and even the language per se become bi-products of your interest, and as far as you keep interested in it it won't matter how motivation waves from that point onwards.
It is based in science, it is not bull or mysticism.
Interest is much more powerful than motivation.
@Gytis Stankevičius follow your instinct then...😉
Great interview, Olly. And great website, Matt. I'm currently shifting from output based learning to input based, and the refold roadmap (and your books, Olly) is really good.
What is output based learning?!
For me, there’s good things to be taken from a lot of sources. I love the way immersion works and I’ve been reading books in my target languages and purposely not looking up too many words (if any at all) for the sake of just staying immersed. However, I do love using textbooks and there’s some languages where I don’t feel like I can get a firm enough grasp of the grammar without being explained explicitly (Finnish, looking at you).
Yeah, I love immersion, but with Russian you absolutely do need to learn some grammar. I don’t think anyone is mastering the cases and verbs in motion solely through immersion
What a great video.
I’m Japanese and learning English .
I uploaded Japanese life.
Your video is good help for me.
You uploaded Japanese life? Where can I download it, lol, I'm learning Japanese
What Matt suggests at 10:07 "will come, perhaps in the next 10 years, maybe sooner", i.e. "use artificial intelligence to generate custom-made comprehensible input to individuals" is what I've already been doing in recent weeks, asking Chat GPT to create various short texts in a foreign language using only the most commonly-used 500 words of that language. It does it very well, with very occasional imperfections. Just this last two weeks it's given me a bunch of stuff that I can manage to read and repeats a bunch of language in various contexts again and again, and I'm picking a bunch of it up and noticing the repeated grammar aspects and getting some idea of their meaning too. Also I make sure the texts are about things that interest me, plus simply the creative process of thinking up your own requests to the AI makes it more interesting, and you can try again and tweak your instructions if you don't like what you get. And if I start losing interest, then I think of something that will stay reasonablyrelated to what I've done so far but is about something new, or has some new interesting angle at least. Even getting it to write the same thing various ways is possible and can be good, and makes reading about the same thing a few times more interesting. Each text basically gives me ideas for the next. I got a ton of stuff just 2 days ago by simply asking it to give more detail about certain parts of the previous texts. Generating audio for the same text is not a big thing either, though that is harder for rarer languages, and will get easier and easier in the near future. Maybe Chat GPT #2 too will create audio too. And, well, I guess I'll metion that I've been doing it for Ukrainian, and all the features that LingQ has are free for Ukrainian right now, so I can just import this stuff as lessons on there and get it to generate audio for it, then also do the other activities with it on there, though mostly I just listen and read, and look at the meaning of words occasionally.
Thats so turee. It really helps
My daily input routine is 50/50 reading and listening. I was thinking that maybe I need to devote more time to my reading, however Matt's feedback has changed my mind. Maybe a 50/50 split is better in the long-run.
The advice on how much to read vs listen being dependent upon how much you want the language being "more formatted" like a native speaker (which is more listening oriented) was INCREDIBLE! I am in month 3 of learning Spanish with the goal of moving to Spain. So I will keep more focus on listening even though I struggle with this. I can understand written Spanish much better and see I need to spend more time listening. Thank you, thank you.
Hola que tal continuaste aprendiendo español? Cómo va eso?
I really enjoyed this interview!
Thanks!
The full immersion Olly talks about... I think it is possible, but in certain circumstances. After having learnt 5 languages with different methods, I tried DVD immersion with Korean. Horribly inefficient. After 2 years of watching the same drama series every day, I had learned greetings, some family members, and 2 verbs. Lol. Then I read somewhere that you cannot learn solely by watching tv. If you are going to learn solely by immersion, you need interaction. I fought with that for a while, but I kind of get it now. If someone points to the salt and says, “Pass me the salt,” you know what they mean even if you can’t understand or even hear them. So Olly’s friend having that kind of interaction with people whose objective was to have him understand, would be a giant help to him learning without other study. Content for native speakers, isn’t trying to make itself understandable to you, so you’re going to have to meet it halfway with grammar or subtitles or translation.
Tl;dr: I think learning entirely through extensive input might be possible, but it's risky business.
Just for context, the idea that "you cannot learn solely be watching tv" comes from observations made with young children (IIRC under age 3) in the context of first language acquisition. It's part of a larger set of evidence that seems to show that first language acquisition is inherently social, i.e. that the language acquisition and socialisation processes in young children are intertwined.
But as an adult who has already acquired a language and already gone through that socialisation process, it's not necessarily the case that when learning another language you'd need interaction in the same way a child would, i.e. that you just wouldn't acquire at all without that social component.
That said, if for whatever reason you wanted to learn only via extensive input, forgoing everything else like grammar, subtitles, interaction, etc., I think you'd have to start with very low-level content, i.e. content made for very young children. Whether that would be efficient or not, I don't know. My guess is that the issue for extensive input is that you don't just want content that is comprehensible, you want content that is compelling. And I don't know many adults who find, say, Peppa Pig particularly compelling ^^
So, in theory it might be possible to do extensive input only, provided you have access to material at the appropriate level and you manage to find it compelling.
Personally I wouldn't recommend it though, because there's a risk of letting bad habits develop and go uncorrected. To take your "pass me the salt" example, if you had it wrong and for some reason you believed "salt" actually meant "pepper", then that would correct itself very quickly with interaction. Somebody says "pass me the salt", you hand them the pepper, they say "no not the pepper, the salt", and that interaction will correct the misunderstanding you had pretty much instantaneously. But without interaction, who knows how long those misunderstandings can stick in your head without being corrected. In first language acquisition, that happens around 17-18 months of age: children actually get worse at comprehension for a while. The reason is that they're starting to develop their predictive abilities, and for a while they tend to "hear" what they predict will be said rather than what is actually said. That gets corrected through interaction, and they gradually learn to better balance their predictions with the actual external stimulus. So yeah, all of that to say that I think it might be possible to use only extensive input, but it seems difficult to find the right kind of material and it also seems unnecessarily risky.
@@bofbob1 I know this comment is 10 months old, but just came to say that once you join the Refold community (which is free), there are tonnes of immersion resources for all levels there
I know this is an old comment, but what you said about native content not trying to make itself understandable to you really helped clarify some of the ideas in my head surrounding immersion learning. I recently started going deep into immersion, and I had the idea that just spending time with the language without stopping to look anything up would be enough because that's how I learned my first language, but it's not how I learned my first language! I learned my first language by adults directly interacting with me, teaching me new words and doing whatever they had to to make sure I understood what they were saying. I'm sure it could be done eventually, but if I want to make progress with any reasonable amount of speed, I'm going to have to be the adult making sure I understand things, because I can't rely on the content to do that for me (not that just letting the language wash over me is a waste of time. I just need to be doing other things in addition to that)
@@bofbob1Right now I'm doing input with your message, I am a Spanish speaker
Great video! Just want to quickly point out that you get the best sound out of your Blue Yeti mic if it's pointing up and you speak into the front face above the mute toggle button
Thanks for the tip. That’s always how I used to do it before I got a boom stand, but I thought the point of the omnidirectional settings was that you didn’t have to be in that exact position... no? Either way, I’ve realised that it’s no good for video as it blocks your face! Might need to trade down to some AirPods or something!
totally agree with Matt. Yes, it's strange when methods claim you don't need to speak to learn how to speak. You need input to have language to use to speak. True. I belong to a professional speakers' association and guess what? Both myself and all the speakers spend hours and hours speaking and refining our speaking ability in our own languages as well as others that we speak. You go running to get better at running, you play the guitar every day to improve your playing, and you need to practise speaking to improve your speaking skills. Case closed!
Thank you so much
Matt was right about AI coming and being able to generate comprehensive input!
Lots of great ideas! Looking forward to the 2d video. IMHO spoken Chinese has a huge amount of homonyms. I use Chinese subtitles to understand spoken Mandarin, and will need them until I'm fluent enough to recognize words in context. Japanese has some of that too. I agree that reading is easier: no tones, no phrasing, no sentence intonation, no syllable timing, no missing or blurred words...not even pronunciation. But reading doesn't teach those things, which must be learned eventually. Reading teaches grammar and vocabulary.
Great interview. How would you apply the immersion approach to ancient languages like Akkadian and Sumerian or to languages where there are not a lot of resources? There are not of lot of texts that are comprehensible and often graded readings do not exist.
Yeah this is tricky, and often we have to compromise on the method in the face of reality. I would probably focus on making my own materials or trying to get in touch via forums with people who have made their own.
It just doesn't work the same way. You can do sentence mining and use anki. Especially with latin and Sanskrit there is relatively a lot to read and even a few CZcams channels. But for Egyptian, Sumerian and old Norse you will find a limit for input-content pretty fast. These languages kind of live from grammar study.
Great video. Matt definitely needs to do a follow up with Luca.
I'm learning German and I have only 1 to 3 hours a day. I love learning grammar, I want to listen to podcasts, I want to do exercises, I've bought Olly' books, I'm also using apps on my phone, I have a self teaching books, :D as you can imagine you can't do any of it in 2 hours a day. I wish I had at least 5 hours a day or whole day.
I think there is a much more simple logistical reason as to why immersion-based methods of language acquisition don't catch on. Simply put, immersion is a highly individualised process. Most people's experiences in learning a second language first occur in a classroom setting which cannot accommodate an immersion process. Classroom settings are uniquely restricted in terms of both time and resource availability. Effective immersion techniques require individual motivation and commitment. Furthermore, due to the nature of immersion, it is near impossible for teachers to accurately determine the level of proficiency with the target language of the students, as each student learns things in different ways and at different paces, and this is even ignoring any potential complications of invoking a grading process. Thus, more traditional methods of language learning are employed since they can:
A) Be standardised
B) Ensure that each student is learning the same basic skills with the language
C) Allow for easy identification of areas of difficulty per student for the teacher
Therefore, in order to employ language learning classes in a school setting, it is probably best practice to create a standardised process which can be demonstrated to create certain results. While this is probably not the most effective method (in my opinion) for any particular person to learn a language, it most likely is the most effective method, when applied to a large population, to ensure a certain level of proficiency within learners. Now, since language learning is so proliferate within a classroom setting, and most people begin to learn their target language within such a setting, it is only natural that when people begin to learn a second language they naturally will gravitate towards to methods employed by educational institutions. Thus, causing immersion techniques to be the less preferred method of language acquisition.
Possibly the two best language learning promoters at reaching superior language levels here in CZcams. Their love for languages is also palpable. I have loved this video.
Amazing interaction and a pleasure to be able to watch them chatting about languages. I have really lost the sensation of time passing, so good this one, with so much interesting and condensed content.
It paid my attention how Matt touches so much into interest but does it indirectly as he still channels it through 'motivation', and how Ollie described perfectly the Split Attention Effect (SAE) when he explained how we usally learn by chunking things and then trying to put them together but that instead of identifying that is exactly the problem because by doing that we overwhelm our senses at cognitive level he went into another question. Avoiding SAE is one of the main reasons why immersion is so powerful curiously so everything was there (ready to go).
After watching it I have the feeling we all intuitively know what is wrong with the way we used to learn languages but we still seem to miss the doors to speak out loud the "why" and finally connect the dots for everyone to see them. The terminology is still going on just at research and academia levels, that could be one of the reasons why immersion never got mainstream.
Thanks for your comment. I think immersion never became mainstream because frankly it’s a lot of hard work!
@@storylearning I have to agree to that Olly 😉
I'm trying to learn Chinese through immersion this time. I'm already speaking 3 languages but I want to be fluent in Chinese too. So, I watch dramas I like, watch them first with English subtitles, then if I like them, I re-watch them without subtitles. It keeps me from wasting too much time on looking for content and there are plenty of dramas I enjoyed even if I watch them 10 or even 20 times. I also try to read Chinese children's book but I use dictionary at hand and re-read things 5 to 10 times before moving on to new stories.
what you're doing is translating and that takes hella alot longer actually to understand a language because you're constantly translating and you're not thinking in chinese but hey if translating works for you then go it lol
Input is key and enjoyment as well. Great video by both of you. 僕が日本語を楽しく勉強するコツはコメディです。Laughter makes a lasting impression! ;)
Loved the video. But would have loved a more in depth discussion about listening vs reading. Matt seems to be advocating for solely listening in the beginning (may it be with subs in the TL). But your/Olly's method is about reading a lot right?
めっちゃすごいコラボよ！
20:20 what Matt said about know being able to understand a word sometimes without seeing the kanji I've felt myself too. I was at the dentist earlier today and my nurse was talking about one of my teeth and she said 「ふち」but I thought 「淵」which didn't really make sense. Took me a second to realize she was saying 「縁」.
I have been wondering recently about learning the sounds, meaning and spelling of words at the same time. As natives, we learn the sounds first, then the meaning and then we learn spelling of the basics maybe years later. Once we are old enough to read on our own, then maybe we learn multiple things at once. So maybe, it would be good to develop a basic fluency and then get into writing. I will be thinking about it.
I think you can learn the three at the same time and invest more time in the area that you need the most.
💙💙💙
Hi Olly, I've been following you for a long time, and truly enjoy your high quality content. However, this one I'm a little puzzled about, since Matt's Japanese level to my knowledge is quite low considering how long he studied the language. If I am correct, then why interview him about language learning? Do you know his level of Japanese? Thanks.
30:00
Immersion works great with languages with simple grammars (no conjugations, no declensions) => Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, Chinese, Burmese, Esperanto are all extremely well suited for this approach... Pablo is no big deal!
Different story for French, Russian etc...
I've learned french that way. So.. I guess it really depends on what's your native language to begin with. If your TL has less things in common than your NL it's going to take a lot more time.
I do feel this since Spanish has tons of conjugations and that makes it a little difficult sometimes, but if you watch with subtitles (if they match the speech of course) you can tell that the word is similar to one you already have seen/already know. Definitely easier with languages with less conjugations I'm sure
@@aydenzinter2849 Yes, I think memorizing conjugation squares for regular verbs in Spanish (ar, er, and ir) can help one pick up the ending for the necessary verb. In my opinion it is more important to learn the vocabulary and conjugate it after you know what you want to say, at a certain point it will become habit.
For TTF my suggestion is using humor. I was surprised how quickly I was able to remember Japanese dad jokes. Aside from jokes humorous scenarios should work too.
Now I'm curious to hear Japanese dad jokes...
@@fryloc359 same🤣
I have to see I like the ".la" Looks somehow fancy. :)
TTF for me was 5 seconds when I started watching anime as “studying”
Got your Russian intermediate book, great learning material. Btw any advice on learning Urdu script? Don’t know where to start, want Urdu as my third language because I live in the U.K. I’m sure you can appreciate. Many opportunities for speaking Urdu in the U.K.
many more hindi sources, the languages are the same at conversational level
Hey I may have some pdfs for you
10:08 ChatGPT can do this already, what a visionary man.
I think immersion is the best way to approach foreign languages, you're not learning the language but rather acquiring the language.
@Чёрный Волк You look up words with a dictionary. Turn on subs and look them up. Eventually you will know the meaning of each word. Raw listening to get used to the sounds.
@Чёрный Волк Well possibly because you haven't got enough vocabulary. I always learn as many words as possible from the very beginning. But that takes the most time. So immersion doesn't work when you're a beginner.
@Чёрный Волк
Well from the beginner's stage, I go bit by bit. I aim to learn a few new words every day by focusing in on a handful of lessons in a week.
It's better to learn slowly but consistently. And just use one resource to learn vocabulary.
@Чёрный Волк that’s why Matt says that u need to sentence mine. Sentence mining is where u learn a word through context in a sentence instead of learning the definition of the word u learn how the word is used in a sentence. But ofcourse at first u will just have to get a broad definition at first that kinda matches what the word means but that’s unavoidable just learn vocab and immerse
Same here if i cant see the kanji i don't even know what it is.
4:52 Honestly, I know this cuts against the grain in this community, but I think it's largely just the byproduct of students not understanding what the purpose of classes are.
You're a musician Olly, right? Did you ever seriously question what the point of classes were where you broke everything down, teacher corrected even smallest details, etc.? And next to that, did you ever think that you would get anywhere if all you ever did was attend class and nothing else? Dunno. My experience of music learning is that pretty much everyone understood the role of those classes within the larger context of the learning process. And pretty much everyone also understood that you wouldn't get anywhere if you didn't spend a considerable amount of time outside of class listening to music, jamming, etc. etc. It's not that the "immersive" practices weren't popular. It's just that it went without saying that you had to do that. It also went without saying that there was no point doing that during the classes themselves, which were essentially just there as checkpoints to make sure you were headed in the right direction and steer you back the right way if you'd strayed way off, but the "immersion" was something to do on your own time. The weird thing is just that for some reason this isn't obvious at all to a lot of language learners at school.
So, my take: the issue isn't so much how languages are taught per se, but rather how students conceive of education and classes in the first place. The tweaks required in the educational system to get students to understand the importance of immersion go far beyond just switching grammar exercises with immersion. I mean, I did the math and I had a total of 750 hours of class per foreign language in all of secondary school. 750 hours over 6 years. Even if you replaced that entirely with immersion in class, students would still be pretty much beginners when they graduate, because that's just not much time at all.
It's cool 'n all that new branding is coming out around it and making people realise the importance of immersion. And what all of you do is great if it gets people to engage with the language they want to learn. More power to you. But in all honesty it all feels rather bizarre when you went through the old traditional system and it worked for you because it was already just right on the nose that you had to do that. I don't mean that as a diss on anyone. Not at all. It's just really surprising. Like, wait, people really thought all you had to do was go to class and do the fill-in-the-blank exercises and you'd become fluent? It feels like having to tell someone to breathe in because apparently they've forgotten to do that.
Hope that didn't come off as confrontational or anything. Just trying to offer a differing perspective. It was a great interview, and great conversation between the two of you. :)
Thanks for the interesting comment. I know exactly what you mean and the point you’re making. However, my experience is that few people do actually think on the level that you’re describing. When I first began teaching, I was very idealistic and expected students to want to engage with the “meta”, but I’ve since realised that most people simply won’t. In the video on Matt’s channel we discuss this issue in some detail.
I think there's a bigger problem (at least in most of my experiences of language classes) which is that most of them are really inefficient. My experience is that in a class you'll learn a grammar point, and then you'll practice making sentences using that grammar point, then rinse and repeat next class. So in a year of classes (about 120hrs in my case) you're exposed to the same content that you could get in a weekend of skimming through a grammar guide. And the second year is even less useful because you're doing the same thing but with more complex grammar points which is a total waste of time because it's impossible to consciously know and use complex grammar points in real time and the only way you're going to acquire them is through input.
not to say I didn't get anything out of some of my classes but efficient learning of the actual language was not one of those things.
@@keitepie That's just it though. I guess the question I'm raising is whether that would really be inefficient if students got large amounts of immersion outside of class. I suppose a corollary of that is whether classes in the native tongue are worth having or not, or are we suggesting that if you live, say, in the US, UK, Australia, etc., that English classes should be scrapped from school schedules?
There would still be some inefficiency, but it would be essentially the same kind of inefficiency you have in any other class: namely, because you have a group of students and they're not all progressing at the same rate, the grammar points you present will be relevant to some but not to others. AFAIK, right now the consensus on grammar instruction is that it works when it's relevant to the student, i.e. when it answers a question she might have. And it doesn't work when it's taught in isolation, when you just present a grammar rule that the student doesn't see as relevant because it's not something she's encountering anywhere else outside of grammar exercises.
Whether they're right or wrong, the idea behind a skill-building approach isn't that you continue to use these grammar rules consciously. It's that by spending time on them (hence the need to do more than just read through it over a weekend), you gradually start to automate them and they become unconscious.
Whether that's correct or not, I don't know. I'd just say that, if there's any truth at all to the concept of "learning vs acquisition", the last 2 decades of cognitive linguistics paint a picture that is very complex, and where, if we are to keep those concepts at all, we'd have to acknowledge that they both influence each other in a wide variety of ways. Even though they may not say so in so many words, that is acknowledged by the proponents of "acquisition", if only because they all promote reading as an important tool to acquire language, and literacy is "learned", not "acquired". From there, I think it's a fair question to ask what else can be "learned" that is a big help then in "acquisition".
20:00 I also need to see the Kanji to understand the word. In English I need to know the root of the word.
I learned Hungarian to a native level as an adult. I still don't know how, but over and over again, people tell me that what I did is simply not possible. I'm able to learn other languages to a decent level, but only Hungarian clicked that way. Maybe we're overthinking all of this? Maybe some people are predisposed to learn certain languages, by virtue of how their brains work, and not able to learn others...?
@@jazmine9570 I'm not trying to discredit this or other videos that give good advice about trying to learn a language you want or have to learn, but I do feel that certain natural factors are routinely left out of the conversation, as if they didn't matter. One is personal taste. (I found in other languages that I could learn to say the words well enough, but only Hungarian gave me literal delight to pronounce.) Another is the way your mind works. I have a distaste for certain word orders in certain languages because they feel like they force you to think of unimportant information before you think of the important information, and it makes my brain hurt. Others put words in an order that just makes sense to the way my brain comes up with the information. Oddly, the ones I manage best are farther from my native language than the ones I struggle with. This tells me it's more something I was born with than something that I learned and can't unlearn. Anyway. Every time I watch a video like this, these things come to mind and I was just curious if others had similar experiences.
no.
@@Jess-737 The motivation angle pretty much falls apart when you factor in that I couldn't learn my own husband's language as well, even living in his country. You'll just have to take my word for it: I liked Hungarian culture well enough, but not that much. When people ask why I did so well at one language only, all I can say is that I instantly clicked with its beautiful, logical, symmetrical structure and immediately found I could almost express myself better when using it than I could in my own mother tongue, because it suited my mathematical way of thinking.
To understand we need some sort of grammar but studying grammar itself don't use ful to speak...if we get way to understand grammar in a good way that we need.....
I think I've been "reading dominant" in my native language since about age 10....
Immersion is scary and usually expensive so its hard to get new learners to agree to it. Its also not a neat, tight product that makes it profitable. Thats why 99% of advertised methods are marketed as miraculously easy and quick.
Watching this in my third language..
For Matt: At the beginning you sounded like you supported listening to target language material even if you didn’t understand much of it. Later you sounded like you didn’t agree with that but rather recommended using subtitles etc. Online however in different places at least you again seem to suggest that you can listen to material that you like even if you don’t really understand it. My impression is you actually take a middle ground, but just so you know, your materials confuse this issue.
Sorry if I wasn't clear about this. *Exposure to your target language is always more beneficial than no exposure.* Even if you understand nothing, there will still be some benefit. That said, the more you comprehend, the more you will gain. So, I support listening to content you don't understand, but I also encourage people to, when possible, find content that you enjoy *and* is comprehensible.
Additionally, you have take into account that in order to not burn out, it's important to not force yourself to do things that you hate. Watching target language content with English subtitles can be a good way to begin building the habit of regularly spending time with your target language, so it can be helpful for people who have a hard time jumping straight into the deep end. It's important to remove the subtitles after you have the habit established if you actually want to learn the language.
My only criticism to Matt is that he says things like "we believe at refold..." or "because in my experience" when really actual research has been conducted on those issues, that most of the time supports his views. He should be saying either: a) research shows b) according to author-year c) research isn't clear on blah, but I believe...
Thanks for your comment, but I disagree. Research into language acquisition is woefully unhelpful when it comes to informing people what to do. At best, academic research offers vague suggestions, and more often than not sits firmly on the fence. Academic language is also often impenetrable, and entirely unhelpful for letters. Approaches such as Matt’s are needed in order to bring some clarity and direction into the picture, which your average learner really sorely needs.
@@storylearning I agree with how helpful and most of all accesible he is. But I disagree with the view that research is that obscure or unhelpful, if you look at Bill Van Patten's work on outreach to the general public and look at his books on general SLA theory you'll quickly notice the research is there, it's been made accesible, it's consistent where it matters and it can serve as a foundation to what you guys do. Yes even BVP agrees most research misses the mark, but you can find enough data to where there is no doubt input is king. At some level if you don't use academic sources you're either commiting plagiarism or promoting dogma. Matt used Krashen as a source quite often and yes that's kind of enough to get results but many of the additional things he claims have been studied. When the data backs up your claims that can only make your messege stronger. For example, using audio with subtitles in Netflix vs just audio, there is research in that which proves Matt is right about that. When it comes to how comprehensible input has to be when reading, Paul Nation has an exact percentage of words needed for that, which would make the whole thing about tolerance to ambiguity be more informed, because now you know what comprehensible is to most people and can thus calculate how remarkable or unremarkable people are at tolerance to ambiguity. Hell, you can even set a concrete goal for tolerance to ambiguity with mathematical precision.
Ultimately, I agree and I know it's a benefit to have his outsider's perspective, it's kind of exciting actually to see him arrive at where research is sometimes, and of course without data just by going all in on immersion, but he and you for that matter can only benefit from well guided scientific knowledge on the matter. Krashen is still working but he's also really old news. We're a bit more sophisticated now and this will only improve in the future.
By the way, for context: I'm a Mexican Japanese language teacher in Mexico City I wrote my 100 page bachelor's dissertation on the validity of the use of SRS through a psycholinguistic lens. I was shocked to see my exact same discussion in Matt's mouth haha 😂 me after 2 years of research and him after five years of immersion, arriving at the same exact place. I've been following him ever since, I majored in Foreign Language Teaching.
@@kliudrsfhlih "Because linguistics is only indirectly applicable to language teaching, changes in linguistic theory or arguments amongst linguists should not disturb language teachers". - Chomsky (1970).
Though I suppose you're not so much talking about the larger theoretical models as you are about targeted research. The problem there is that there's pretty much evidence for everything and anything. What's really problematic is that the research on group outcomes (so "classroom studies") are so short term that one can reasonably wonder whether they tell us anything at all. As someone who has been involved academically in linguistics, I don't think there's much at all that I could provide that would be helpful to teachers/learners. We're just not there yet. I'd recall that not all that long ago, the journal "Nature" listed the biological basis of SLA as one of the top 100 mysteries to solve in all of science combined. We're really not there yet...
As to the examples you mention, all findings should be taken within the limits of the conditions in which the study was conducted. You're right that there's evidence that using subtitles + audio can lead to better gains than just audio. The conditions of that are still quite limited, and there's not much reason to conclude either way about that in the larger context of a language learner's journey from start to "finish". The other issue is applicability. Nation's research in extensive reading is really interesting. Pretty hard to know how to apply that in practical terms though. You'd have to have detailed knowledge of the lexical base of each student, to then compare it to the total vocabulary used in any piece of media, and determine a percentage from there. Determining the exact lexical base of any given person is nigh impossible. Furthermore, Nation is only concerned with vocabulary. Grammatical structures aren't considered, and I'd imagine those would have to be taken into account when determining what is "comprehensible" or not.
So yeah...dunno. In the end, the sheer volume of variables makes most of these studies, erm..., well let's just say they're best taken with a grain of salt. Especially when trying to determine how you yourself should go about learning a language. I don't exclude the possibility that sometime in the future SLA practice could be much more reliably informed by the research, but for the time being, personally I value the intuitions built up by teachers and learners over the years more so than anything the research provides.
Hi all - to what extent can you use Matt’s method as an intermediate learner? In other words - at what stage in his refold process do you start? For example, I would be loathe to cut out speaking now!
Refold is designed to take people from 0 all the way to native-level fluency (if you want to take it that far), so it can 100% be used by intermediate learners. If you already have strong comprehension in your target language, then you would likely fall into Stage 3 of Refold, where output practice is actively recommended. If you don't yet have strong comprehension of your target language, then Refold wouldn't recommend spending a lot of time on speaking, but there is no need to being all-or-nothing when adopting Refold. You can read the Refold roadmap, apply the advice that sounds helpful, and ignore everything else!
How many people have learned their "fun" language at home better than the language they were supposed to learn in school?
Americans spend on average 11 hours a day consuming content? Does no one work in America?
LMAO
Now hold on a minute. Even when we're working, we *are* consuming content. Reading memos, taking orders at the drive thru, studying documentation, listing to the radio as we drive a truck across the country, etc etc etc. We consume "content" in one form or another all day every day.
Watching your vids I realized something was so unique. At first I thought you looked half asian, but now I realized you're trans! Can't believe I didn't see it before. When did you transition, Matt?
Are you joking? Matt isn't trans. That's such a weird thing to assume about someone.
@@coolbrotherf127 He used to be a woman. Look at his feminine face and body.
Glowing.