Language Learning Methods: Top-down or Bottom-up?
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- Hi everyone!
This is one of my most important videos so far, because it’s about a topic I really care about: language learning approaches.
I’m not sure if there’s a universal approach (even though I’m starting to convince myself that there is), but I know that people have preferences when it comes to language learning.
Some like starting with grammar, others with vocabulary lists or flashcard decks, other people like just plunging into content and figure things out along the way.
I think all techniques and methods can be grouped into two main approaches: the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach.
Let me know what approach you belong to!!! I’m looking forward to your comments.
By the way, have you noticed?? We’re ALMOST at 100 subs! I’m thinking of doing something special for this milestone...
If you want to know what that thing is, follow my Instagram!! I’m @theindlang
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I am definitely a bottom-up person. I don't know why, but I love having a clear structure or path to follow when learning a language.
It’s good that you know your learning preferences, most people go for what’s available in a language without questioning whether or not they like what they’re doing!
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner That's true.
Great video! Really helps me with work. Spanish tutor here. Yes, you're right! Top down does require more time to show results, but it pays off. Yes, it definitely has a natural feel to it. It definitely makes you grasp the syntax faster too.
Bottom up deals with dots. It reduces choice. It reduces learning curve.
Top down deals with connecting the dots in multiple ways to give different meanings. It increases choice. It increases learning curve.
When I'm writing a blog post I constantly switch modes between thinking and writing. I write a little, review a little, rewrite and re-review. 10-30 iterations later the essay is done.
Agile Programming uses a buddy system of coding with a driver and a navigator for the code (DIY and TIY).
Barbara Oakley in her book on Learning methods for Maths and Science talks about switching modes between focused and diffuse mode ie bottom up and top down modes.
I love how you speak with a slower pace for your non fluent viewers 👍
OMG!! I love the background of your video.
Thanks!! Appreciate it ❤️
Thank you for the video. The information is very clear. A little tip though is to remove the background music. Although I enjoy the genre, I find it rather distracting and it doesn't add anything extra. The content of your video is sufficient. Thanks once again.
I use both , because I am learning for my leisure as well as aiming at passing a certification each year. At the beginning of the year I buy the grammar book of the level I want to pass and I will review all the grammar points and do the exercises throughout the year so I have at least seen them once and know what it means. I also search for new words. Aside of this I daily listen to podcasts, read native content and watch youtube videos from natives on the subjects I like so now I understand very well those and the native way of speaking and explaining ideas. The only thing is I don’t necessarily learn the vocabulary needed for the specific level so I need to learn a lot of new words while practising with mock tests for the exam a few months before. For next year the level will be advanced so I plan on more top-down approach for new grammar structures and words, and more reading of comprehension texts made for the exam since the beginning of the year so I can grasp easily the kind of subjects and vocabulary that will be necessary.
I think for the majority of people, the discovery of top-down language acquisition comes as a liberation from the grammar focus of traditional language learning in school which is really contrary to the lived experience of language. I'm so pleased I came across Steve Kaufmann on here to first realise this and you are just as insightful as he is.
Very informative video on the subject. Thanks!
Definitely top down! I jump in and find out later and find patterns to figure the next based on that. I moved to a foreign country an began picking it up rapidly. I never connect details the other way around! Need big picture first. But I may have practiced the hybrid jump in refine a bit the go back top up.
Thanks for your sharing!
Please turn on subtitle. It will be helpful for foreigners.
I like your work and also the work of Gabor Maté. In almost every podcast or workshop Gabor Maté would ask someone: when was the last time you felt anger? The person describes that situation and Gabor asks: how does it make you feel? In other words: what does it mean about you? Then he would challenge that perception with other possible explanations of what happened. Finally Gabor would ask when was the first time you had this perception of not being good enough, coming from childhood. Maté says your brain jumped automatically to that explanation/perception.
So it seems to me that Gabor Maté considers a trigger as a top-down approach where thoughts create an emotion, when in fact it’s stored material which comes up first (that was once in the past created by a perception).
Gabor explores other explanations, so questioning the belief, but it’s stored material (that was once created by a perception, but that already happened before). Now it’s already in the body, so isn’t that what you work with? (bottom-up approach of Somatic Experiencing)
Fantastic job! I am studying for my degree in how to teach English Language Learner's and your explanation and reasons--and your English is excellent! Subbed :)
Very helpful,,, unbelievable,tnks alot
that was great very helpful , well done!
Now i now how to top-down and bottom-up
Thank you so much you're really amazing
Thanks Dear
When talking about approaches to acquiring your native language as a child, bottom up is called the phonics approach where you learn to build words by sounding them out. You use pieces of words ("st" "o" "p" said together gives you "stop") to decode entire words. From there you build short sentences and then eventually more complex and adult-like sentences. The top down approach is called whole language. What I was taught is you mostly want to work in whole language with some targeted phonics instruction at strategic points. This is because this is how you naturally acquire language starting from a baby who creates nonsense strings of verbalization to a young child who learns to ask for his mother or for more cereal and so on. They aren't sounding out "cereal" or "mother." They learn these as chunks of language from hearing them in context rather than building them from isolation.
How exactly to apply that to language learning as an adult I'm not sure of.
Thank you for your comment. I believe that you can imitate this way of learning as an adult by using mostly comprehensible input or input in general and then slowly moving to output (if the learner wants to/needs to).
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner Not clear what you mean by that. You mean the learner should read and listen to content in their target language, and then slowly move to writing it and saying it out loud?
@@genesisPiano Exactly
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner Ah. Well, the way I was taught, this can't be a "if the learner wants/needs to" thing. Each of these four modes informs the others, so they each have to be exercised for best effect. But I think you and I are in agreement here
When people learn a language independently, it is not necessary to follow the rules :) there are people who learn a language because they want to be able to read books, but don’t want to speak it. They just read books and are happy with it.
I hate bottom up, it is way harder because I don't understand anything when I start from the bottom.
Nice video 👍👏👌
Top down but also using Duolingo and Memrise. Would that make make it some where in the middle? Another great video. I have had to keep reminding myself that the languages are going no where when I feel the strong urge to get to the others I want to learn. Btw I am Smith from Instagram who told you about my use of Beelinguapp and and reading French news after watching your videos and subscribing.
Hi Smith! Nice to hear from you here as well. Yeah technically that would be some sort of mix between top-down and bottom-up. Nice to hear that you are switching between different resources/tools is your language learning. I think it helps bring some kind of variety and prevent boredom. Good luck!
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner Thank you very much and all the best to you too.
I am in the middle also. Hope your studies are going well!
Another great video! Great explanation! You're so close to 100 subs! Super exciting! We should definitely do a collab in the future! 🧠
Hey! Thank you for being so encouraging!! ❤️❤️ and yes, I’d love to interview you here sometime 🧠
When i started reading foreign books, i could read only one page of adapted text with great difficulty. Now i can read 10 pages of original text at once. I don't understand somewhere 5-10 words on page. I feel progress. But in my opinion, things are going slowly. I stiil can't understand 50% of the speach.
Question: when will I understand better and when will the breakthrough happen.
You mean you don’t understand 50% of the TL when it’s in spoken form, right?
If so, I can tell you that listening proficiency is one of the last things people master, because it takes more time to train your ear than your eyes.
In order to answer your question accurately, there are some things we need to assess first:
- how far is your target language from your native one (the further it is, the more time it’ll take you. To give you reference, in my case I’m feeling Korean will take me roughly 3/4 times more the amount I spent in Portuguese)
- how much time you’re spending with the language (steady progress can be felt if you spend at least 30min/day in my opinion) and how frequently (again, 30min/day is definitely better than 3,5h/once a week)
- how much time you’re dedicating to listening
- what kinds of activities are you doing when listening (are you just listening passively or are you doing things like shadowing?)
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner I mean i don't understand 50% of audiobook or movie.
I'm a native Russian speaker and my target language is English.
i spend no less 1 hour (sometimes 2) reading nearly every day. 25-28 times at month.
Listening is not easy. I hardly understand the book I have already read. Podcasts from CZcams are much easier for me. Perhaps this is due to the art style of the audiobook.
While listening, I do sports (cycling) or cook.
Thank you very much for your atencion
No problem!
In your case it might depend on the subject of the book, or the kind of syntax used that can confuse you.
If you can, try to listen to the audiobook either while reading (for better comprehension), or try to alternate between passive listening and active listening.
I also found that listening to something once, letting some time pass (like 3 weeks) and then going back to it and listen once more really helps (it’s also a good progress check)
I am in your same situation with Russian, actually ))
Желаю вам успехов!!
I remember my reading my first book in German. It was really hard to understand. I think until today, I still don't know what happened in the book. 😂😂 But today, I buy a lot of books in German and read them just like they were in English or French.
great presentation, helped a ton, however, sorry, but music is annoying.
stop music .it is disturping
You rock! I've been using exactly the top-down approach for Spanish. I usually spend 80% of my time listening and 20% reading, do you think I should spend more time on reading?( I'm beginner)
Great! It really depends on what you want to do in Spanish.
For example: I rarely read in Spanish, I mainly listen (first of all because I don’t have enough time to read, and also because I mainly use Spanish when I’m speaking), but with Korean I mainly read (65% reading 35% listening).
There’s also another
important aspect to consider: we can call it “instinct” or “gut feeling” in a language. What it means is that we should notice those kinds of moments when we feel like we need to do some kind of activity over another and follow that feeling.
If you feel like you want/need to read more, that’s okay. If you don’t, then go ahead and listen.
The most important thing is that you’re doing enjoyable activities and that those activities bring you closer to your goal in your TL.
Hope that helps!
Understand words? Are you kidding? I like to take a text with no knowledge- just examine it like an archeologist. do statistical analysis. I call this decoding- go into a text with no knowlege and just observe like you were on a planet or something. Then you go Bottom Up approach. Now top down may not work so well with commando conversation method- one needs some Bottom Up prep to even begin speaking, because one usually hasn't the luxury of slowly examining a conversation- it happens in real time. But I might assert that the conversational method is inherently top down, as one never controls what the other person says...
How do you apply these approaches to enhancing or learning speaking ??
I'll be honest, this was somewhat confusing to me. It wasn't clear what you meant by "top-down" exactly. It sounds like the "top-down" approach could refer to any of using (comprehensible?) input/intensive reading/translation based methods.
You also seemed to be saying that "top-down" methods are input heavy and "bottom-up" methods are output heavy. So maybe that's the distinction, but in that case I'm not sure why grammar or vocabulary study are exclusively "bottom-up" methods then.
I also don't really understand how a beginner method could be "top-down" in the sense described here. How do you engage with a text in a language you don't understand at all yet?
I agree with everything you said, but I am pretty sure you swapped top-down and bottom-up.
If you read this, expect to find the opposite being said by other people.
Best Content You deserve more subscribers and views ! Can We Be Friends.
Thanks so much for this informative video. How can we keep in touch with you dear teacher?
Hi and thank you for your comment! I really appreciate it ☺️ you can reach out on Twitter or Instagram @theindlang ✨
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner
Thank you for replying. I started following u on Instagram.
Poi fare un video dove fai vedre come si fa intro. Perfavore 🙏🙏🥺🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Hi there. I am a little bit confused as to which of the two approaches is synthetic and which one is analytic. Hope you can enlighten me on this.
Hi! You could think of the top-down approach as a synthetic or deductive kind of thinking (you extract patterns and rules from the language), and a bottom-up approach as an analysis or inductive type of thinking (you start from the blocks of language in isolation and then form sentences). Hope that helps!
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner In that case, is it correct to say that in top-down approach, the structure goes like this: sentence-clause-phrase-word-morpheme? And in bottom-up, morpheme-word-phrase-clause-sentence?
Yeah, you could also add higher forms of structure like ‘paragraph’ and ‘text’
@@TheIndependentLanguageLearner That helps. Thank you very much for the response.
You’re welcome! Glad that helped. Let me know if you have other questions ☺️
I would argue top down opens the door to misunderstanding. Its reading by assuming patterns to ease the load in the brain instead of training the brain to make the effort to decipher clear and specific meaning. Its training for lazy, blocky thinking in my opinion.