Chunking: the secret to fluency?

[@Thelinguist]

📲 The app I use to learn languages: tinyurl.com/3nw6j46h 🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: tinyurl.com/mn4c2nrw ❓Have you heard of or tried chunking before? Share your experience in the comments!

[@yonairissantoscepeda5682]

@@Thelinguist thanks

[@remaguire]

Steve, where's the link to the Cambridge article on chunking? Also, did you use this technique for Russian? If so what is the Russian version of something like Audible?

[@remaguire]

Thanks. See the link to the article.

[@bozenasawa3490]

I will share my experience if you give me enough , clear EXAMPLES of chanks in a few basic languages. As far as I am concerned you have not done it here.

[@Tama2024plus]

I think the most valuable method in learning a language is by immersion and reading, focusing mainly on vocabulary . It works for me. Thank you, I look up to you in my multilingual journey.

[@fersay777]

Do you usually use a bilingual or monolingual dictionary?

[@Tama2024plus]

@@fersay777 I always use bilingual

[@user-hu4tx6fu6z]

How many books have you read? Just in curious, because I am reading my first second language book these days but I can only remember a few words I read.

[@fersay777]

@@user-hu4tx6fu6z it's normal stuff, that's a slow process, I myself have read 5 books, and I'm able to remember only 50% , of the new words I bumped into . If I re-read those books again in a foreseeable future, say it 8 months later, I'll remember only 10 % of the same words I've studied. Don't sweat, just go on, let it flow, free flow works along the time.

[@user_t9732]

@@Tama2024plusexplain more, was immersion in the context

[@granthamwizard4590]

After watching this last night I realise how important this chunking method is. As I do it myself. The only way to truly learn is immersion and exposure through these digestible pieces. Good video, LingoSteve.

[@gabriellawrence6598]

That's why memorizing song lyrics, poems and quotes is a good way to acquire vocabulary. I find it difficult to remember verbs outside of an exemple sentence, who else finds verbs to be the hardest type of word to remember?.

[@margett__]

For me adjectives are the hardest! I often find my descriptions to be boring and lacking because of how few adjectives are at my disposal in any given situation. So I’m actively trying to memorize more descriptive phrases and words.

[@ancientromewithamy]

About 24 years ago, I had a Sony Minidisc player and would go jogging while listening to music in German from bands like Rammstein and Megaherz while majoring in German in college, it probably helped a lot more than I gave it credit for, because songs also tend to have repetition, little chunks like this that you can get the meaning of, and they get stuck in your head a lot more than random passages from books do. Working on Arabic now and my knowledge of verbs is terrible at the moment. I know lots of adjectives, a fair amount of nouns, some adverbs. But I watch some documentaries and I know when something is being described as "large" or "pretty," but have no idea what action is taking place, haha. I'm sure it'll come eventually.

[@anak_kucing101]

For me, specialized nouns are the hardest. In Japanese, 自治体 means municipal authority, 頭取 means bank president, 出演者 means performer, etc.

[@NemoNusquam-mz2zh]

I don't focus on remembering words anyway... I just immerse and with time I understand more and more stuff.

[@peterwright837]

One of the first things I noticed when I started using Lingq sentence mode was groups of words together that had a slightly different meaning than the individual words, i.e. chunks. So I started making links for the chunks. It’s a great feature.

[@InappropriateShorts]

I’ve noticed this in my translation

[@FranG1214]

This makes a lot of sense. If you pay attention to English speakers, especially those with a small or limited vocabulary, it's easier to decipher the chunks than with a well-spoken person with a sophisticated vocabulary.

[@tommybinson]

Yes, many people speak in stock phrases that need minimum thought and linguistic skill. Hence the proliferation of cliches. It's like a builder substituting pre-fab timber frames for sections made on-site by carpenters.

[@johnalmberg7512]

I’m also a big Krashen fan and input has got me through DELF B1 in French, but I’ve gotten tired of not really having a grip on verb conjugations and have recently been using Anki to memorize all the conjugations that I feel I need. I’m tackling one verb at a time, but learning present, simple future, conditional, subjunctive, simple past, imparfait, and imperative, as well as the past and present participles. I really felt like it was time to learn these conjugations for the most common verbs and it’s already helping my reading and oral production. I live in France and being able to produce the right verb changes the way French natives look at me. It’s great. What prompted this comment was your remark about the massive input required to learn a lot of chunks. I came to the same conclusion about verb conjugations. Yes, eventually I might read enough French to acquire enough conjugations to become fluent, (I currently read about a million words of French a year (thank you LingQ for that data) but just sitting down and memorizing a bunch will get me there quicker, I hope! It only takes a few minutes a day, but it’s a long term project. I figure it will take about 6 months to cover the most important irregulars, and the most important conjugation patterns. Hopefully after that, I will be able to make intelligent guesses about the other 10,000 verbs! Whatever’s fun, right?

[@annel2875]

At school in France we learn verb groups. Then present, future then the main past tense. And later subjonctif. Even we need to practice conjugation to get it right 100%, which proves acquisition via input is not enough, but if you read a lot as a kid (like I did) there will only be minimal effort involved. Many French people still don't even get the future right (they add an s, which is actually the conditional tense, like 'je ferai'), because it sounds the same and they don't read enough.

[@kuge5694]

​@@annel2875 I think the more important question is "how much" you can get right with only input, not whether you can get 100% right. If you can get to 95% accuracy with ONLY input, I would consider it good enough. I'm not dismissing the value of explicit studying entirely, but I think it's an oversimplification to just say "nobody gets it right 100% of the time" to make the case that input isn't enough. If I was able to output and most of the mistakes I made were those that natives made, I wouldn't consider it a failure and would probably be quite satisfied with the results.

[@johnalmberg7512]

@@kuge5694The question for me is, how long it would take to learn to conjugate the most important verbs by input alone. If I was a French kid, getting many millions of words per year in my daily life verbally, that would be one thing, but even living in France as an retired adult, with several good French friends, my input rate is much lower. Even reading 1 million words a year, it seems a very slow and haphazard way to acquire a firm grasp of conjugations. And since my quality of life in France depends on this knowledge, I’m happy to invest the time in other methods. We shall see if it pays off! I must say I got a compliment just the other day in a shop in Dijon from a shop owner who was shocked to learn that I was an American. So something is working 🎉

[@ingela_injeela]

That sounds like a good long term strategy.

[@bozenasawa3490]

@@kuge5694 Learning a foreign language correctly by acquisition alone is as impossible as building a brick house on a soft ground with no foundation. BASIC GRAMMAR is a necessary foundation for learning any languague in order to use it (speak and write) correctly. Intensive reading and writing is of course necessary and must follow or being done simultaneoiusly with some studies of the grammar ( regular though for some more, for others less).

[@tonyaltass8290]

Language learning should be similiar to learning any other subject. Start off small with the basics and then gradually build upon what has been learnt. The issue with languages is the subject is enormous. Myself being a native speaker of English of more than 50 years i can still learn more about the English language. There is no end point.

[@atrumluminarium]

I had no idea Lingq had the option to save entire phrases. Thanks for the info Steve :D

[@ancientromewithamy]

Good points here. I've been working on Arabic for about 6 months now, and I'm certain I've learned more from watching the news and documentaries than I have from all the textbooks so far, though I do refer to those for grammar and vocab. And learning new alphabets is an additional hurdle, of course. I also used daily planners to memorize days of the week, month names, and numbers, I just write those below the English day names every month until it starts to stick. But in general, listening to things has helped me progress faster in understanding things than just going through grammar books and only watching videos teaching Arabic, partly because of (as Krashen says) I can pick out content I'm interested in, and I get more words in different contexts and chunks when it's people speaking naturally and at length.

[@jtee5957]

Stick with it. I've been studying Levantine Arabic on my own for 8 years. If you haven't already, I'd suggest switching to a dialect because Modern Standard Arabic is pretty useless for conversation. And learn the 10 forms of root words at a certain point. It's a shortcut to acquisition. You'll also find that you understand 80 percent of what one person says but a minute later understand 30 percent of what another says. Frustrating as you advance in your learning.

[@ancientromewithamy]

@@jtee5957 Yes, I have heard about the root forms, whereas I also have books that say "there are no patterns!" haha! It depends on what you're learning Arabic for, as to dialects and MSA. I don't really travel anymore and I have more interest in just reading books, watching documentaries, watching the news in Arabic.

[@ingela_injeela]

​@@jtee5957Yeah, having a grip of the ten forms is a great help. Once you know them, it helps you in placing any three letter root into the grid, and having a fair idea of its meaning.

[@ingela_injeela]

​@@ancientromewithamyThe Ten Forms grid is a great help for beginners, I find. Because it gives a convenient overview, and helps you get an initial understanding of how the verb root is formed to create different meaning. I personally love this feature in Arabic.

[@Oler-yx7xj]

I actually haven't heard of chunking before, interesting to know

[@jtee5957]

I started learning Polish by mastering its complex grammar and memorizing a couple thousand words in a few months. I could barely understand a thing until I was immersed for a couple years in "chunk phrases" living with a Polish spouse. I guess what I'm saying is that chunking unlocked the language treasure chest that I'd already filled with the grammar and vocabulary. Also, I've spent years studying colloquial Arabic part-time and reached intermediate stage using mostly Krashen's acquisition methods. I can speak pretty well BUT my listening needs improvement. So in a reversal of the normal learning pattern I'm enlisting grammar late in the game to improve my listening since Arabic is based on root words that are altered slightly to form new but related meanings. Identifying the roots helps identify the meaning, even in conversation.

[@ancientromewithamy]

Working on Arabic while specifically thinking of Krashen's methods right now and just picking things I'm interested in and watching a LOT of KZbin videos. Mostly things like documentaries, rather than grammar videos (these were nice at first for specific concepts and pronunciation of certain letters though). I have textbooks and dictionaries but I focus less on those, at least after I got better at reading. Meanwhile I know so many people who learned German or Latin via a lot of grammar and never got any good in it. I majored in German but also studied in my spare time, watched Werner Herzog movies, listened to German music, did an immersion course in Germany and didn't speak English while there, have worked part time as a translator for 15 years, DE>EN. But I minored in French and am terrible at it, can't speak really at all, can understand while reading and watching documentaries for the most part. With Latin, I studied that in the 90s and forgot it, but I appreciate the Latin language youtubers who just talk about their day in Latin rather than only quoting Cicero or something, it's more engaging and accessible most of the time.

[@siasea_lang]

I find learning languages in chunks really useful. It helps you really speak the language and not translate it in your head . Great video 😊

[@bozenasawa3490]

Please give some examples in the most popular languages: English, French, Spanish and German. I have not found any here.

[@siasea_lang]

@@bozenasawa3490 English: you know what/ you’re welcome/ see you soon/ I know what you mean German: keine Ahnung/ herzlich willkommen/ wie viel kostet… Russian: большое спасибо/ ничего страшного / береги себя

[@mervyncawley6795]

Great advice for us language learners out here

[@draugami]

Thank you for your insight. I would like some examples that you found by"chunking."

[@alextchap99]

0:55

[@coelhoazul6493]

Seu canal está sendo minha salvação ❤❤❤❤

[@tahall5646]

It would have been nice to have some concrete examples of ‘chunks’.

[@figgettit]

Raphael Nadal is *without a doubt* the king of chunks.

[@jasondads9509]

he did eg. blond hair. Lean meat

[@tahall5646]

The point is that he didn’t give a single example of a chunk in the video.

[@rilkeman4787]

@@tahall5646He did, right at the beginning, and then he showed a slide that contained a few more (you’d have to pause it to read it though, as it was only shown briefly)

[@alextchap99]

it would have been nice to have watched the video

[@shamu5943]

God dammit, I spent 6 hours yesterday writing something like an article to post in a japanese community and one the idea that I had was something close to that. And after finishing that, I discovered the existence of that concept of chunking in this video. But in addition to that (or before that), I wanted to argue that learning "common words", as in frequency list from newspapers, are the most inefficient way to learn. First, because, at exception of the most common ones, they will not be the same for everyone. Everyday's life vocabulary are really frequent, yes, but I don't live in an english country and I already forgot half of them simply because I still don't use those words. And I'm not exposed to them too. I learn, or perhaps relearn, the word "curtain" the other day because I learn the word カーテン (curtain but in Japanese). So yeah, there is that. And secondly, because of that idea of chunks. Which I may be extending to "very specific vocabulary" or group of word that often appear together which may not be at the same level (for example all the words for may appear more often with the verb eat than with other verb). I'm not sure of the exact limit of the concept of chunk with this video alone. Need to check that later. But anyway, I did no "try" chunking but I certainly did learn chunks simply by immersing myself on very very specific subject. Like for an internship during my master degree where I read about 400 research paper about some mathematical models for a specific problem in biology. It was a very specific subject and even an advance one too but because it had the same vocabulary and the same "chunk" that often appear in slightly different context, it gave huge boost both in confidence and capability to read English. And after that I nerver studied English actively again. I just immersed myself. Or not even immersed, just consume content in english. And right now, I'm at a similar stage in Japanese but with japanese youtuber (mainly about gaming). And one experience was really meaningful in that regard. I watch multiple stream of the same game which was very very repetitive and I got a lot of "chunk" from that because each time, it was the exact same context with similar vocabulary, expression but with slight variation/reaction. The thing that surprised me the most how I learned and memorized the variation of one chunk which was なにもない ("there is nothing"). And all its variant, なんもない, なんもね, なんもないな, ない, ね, ないな along with all the variante in tone/emotion. Also, I don't if there a name for that phenomenon but it's crazy how we can jump from one chunk to another and how it can "aggregate" into bigger chunk when immersed in a same specific and delimited environnement. I'm probably not really talking about chunk anymore (still not sure about the definition, it seems like both a general and specific concept) but oh well. I'm not versed enough in linguistic to put more of my though into word but anyway, it feels great to be at this stage where I'm starting to learn and memorize new word or grammar simply by immersing myself. Well no, I need to correct myself. To learn and memorize "chunks". Anyway thanks for the video! Happy to have learn about this concept even I may stretched it a bit to adapt it to my own personal experience and though.

[@spinnettdesigns]

I thank you for your video. I want to have fun and I may not be at lightening speed right now but I do diversity of reading and listening "...all the while, enjoying my language learning..." I totally resonate with your opinions.

[@wesleyoverton1145]

Why will LingQ no longer input videos from youtube even though they have subtitles? Please fix

[@David.Eng.]

How do you upload audiobooks or books into LingQ?

[@piotrwachowski4841]

I respect you, Mr. Steve. I'm from Poland. I really like your channel and your methods of learning foreign languages. I learned two languages ​​communicatively without any courses. I had English and Russian at school. I know English quite well. I also know Russian quite well. I also know a little Latin. I learned Spanish communicatively for half a year, studying about an hour a day. I'm currently learning Greek. My next goal is Persian, because I'm interested in this country and I plan to visit it as a tourist. I always start my adventure with any language by learning the indeclinable parts of speech (in Polish, which is my native language), these are adverb, preposition, conjunction, exclamation mark and particle. This is my language learning base (I'm talking about European languages, I don't know how it is elsewhere. Then there's learning (usually memorizing) 20-30 most frequently used verbs in different conjugations, then the most frequently occurring nouns, finally adjectives and adverbs. Knowing this, I start to put together whole sentences from all these parts of speech. And it's worth reading a lot, even if we don't understand most of the text, these words and sentences are fixed in our head. And after reading, a good method is also to write these sentences by hand (no keyboard or computer required, just a piece of paper and a pen). I start with simple sentences like: This is a horse. The horse is nice, big, strong and fast. The horse likes to eat grass and corn. The horse is brown. I really like this horse. This is a template that you can substitute for any other animal. Once we master this, we can build complex sentences.

[@benwoodward]

a lot of linguists now believe our brains conceptualise of language as a system of chunks (and constructions) rather than an algebraic system of grammar, so it makes a lot of sense to learn this way

[@beyzad1]

exactly 2 months ago when I decided to learn German, I had zero prior knowledge of the language. First day I listened to news, zero words that I can understand or recognize, now two months later I recognize a lot of words, even though i don't know what is being said exactly. But yes I do pick up those chunks too. I don't like to study the language. I hate studying grammar without having a sufficient vocabulary. I just read mostly on lingQ and memes on social media, watch some cartoons, tv series and listen to news. I will chech the grammar after I reach 10,000 known words on lingQ, I am sure by then I will have picked up some grammar too, naturally. After two months I have passed unofficial A2 exams online. (which are tests mostly arbitrarily prepared and I don't think they are that good of determining your level of skills in a language).

[@thiagoxaviersoutricolor8260]

Hello Steve how's it's going? Good afternoon see you next.

[@mwenengofero]

@springspanish - Learn Spanish with Chunks

[@AJBonnema]

You said you listen to some audio service on internet and (as I understood it) you "automatically" get the e-book. I have been listening to storytel for Finnish for a while now and I never get the e-book. So there is nothing to import into lingq. Besides, I would like the audio as well. Could you elaborate on how to do this?

[@tedc9682]

Thank you. Very insteresting ideas and examples. Turkish verbs? I'm still learning to understand them when I see them in LIngQ. I'll leave saying them to you, at least for now.

[@stepheng9607]

Very interesting video. Thanks. I have been working through various KZbin video stories and the mini stories and I do have quite a few known words. However I feel that I am just learning odd words rather than connecting them together. From what you say, am I correct in thinking that there is benefit in listening to longer pieces as well as going through the texts sentence by sentence?

[@gringoenespanol]

I've never liked the term "chunks". It reminds me of vomit. These groups of words are so common that you learn them naturally with comprehensible input.

[@NemoNusquam-mz2zh]

That's exactly the argument.

[@joedwyer3297]

​@@NemoNusquam-mz2zhwas just thinking that

[@gringoenespanol]

@@NemoNusquam-mz2zh Yes indeed.

[@silentbullet2023]

Teşekkürler! Şarkıların sözlerini dinlemenizi öneririm. Ben İngilizce öğrenirken çok yararını görmüştüm. Barış Manço, Birsen Tezer, Bülent Ortaçgil, Sezen Aksu, MFÖ gibi sanatçılar söz bakımından çok iyiler.

[@paulwalther5237]

I think I learned most of the chunks in Japanese through trial and error. Many Japanese people simply didn’t understand me if I got the chunks wrong. If they didn’t understand then I went back to my resources to figure out why. I assume I got some chunks through immersion but there were a lot of gaps. My brain isn’t the sponge it once was when I was a kid.

[@yonairissantoscepeda5682]

I want to learn English But sometimes I forget what I have to do sthepen soy dominican Greetings

[@jonathanland5073]

Hey Yonairis I happen to be learning Spanish and I saw your video on your page about useful words in English and you have great pronunciation. I was curious to know if you wanted to do a language exchange with me?

[@yonairissantoscepeda5682]

@@jonathanland5073 thank you

[@jonathanland5073]

@@yonairissantoscepeda5682 Quizas la respuesta sea no en el caso del intercambio de idiomas jaja. Aún así te deseo suerte en tu camino hacia la fluidez en ingles

[@MrBrunoMi]

Hi Steve, one question that I've been wanting to ask you for some time. Acquiring languages is great, but what is your method for maintaining them alive afterwards? My own experience of it is that the more languages I learn, the more time I have to spend doing maintenance to make sure I don't forget them. It seems to me that the result is that at some point more time will be spent on maintenance than on learning. All the more as, in fact, it is always possible to continue learning a lot of stuff in the languages I already master. Is there something I'm doing the wrong way?

[@Salah_-_Uddin]

Speaking is difficult in a foreign language.

[@tommyhuffman7499]

I like this video. It wouldn't take much effort to perform statistical analysis/machine learning on a text to pull from it words that commonly appear together - chunks.

[@manfrommars340]

that picture of the Portuguese phrase book @ 1:34, was that your book? if so, do you have the name? thanks!

[@IdiomsFrench]

Chunks are quite important, and equally fun & relatively easy to learn/remember. That's why I opened my channel that gathers basic everyday expressions in French. Feel free to check it out if you are learning the language- it is quite new, but I aim to make it the biggest collection of French chunks in KZbin :)

[@ingela_injeela]

I watched a few of your shorts. Great idea! I hadn't heard 'flotter' before, only "il pleut".

[@satchycollins3985]

Thanks

[@LanguageMaus]

What about using flashcards to get familiar with chunks, in addition to comprehensible input? that may speed up the process

[@EdwardLindon]

I have no idea whether *learning* chunks is effective, but I am quite certain that practicing pronunciation by repeating chunks is pretty much the only way to acquire effective and natural speech.

[@originaldanman]

As I slowly aquire more of my target language, I see the importance of learning short phrases or "chunks". Because just looking up a definition of a word won't do any good to help you understand what it means in a particular phrase. The definition of many words will mean something other than it's definition when translated by itself, or it will have no meaning at all when you translate the phrase word by word. In Spanish "nos vemos" usually means "see you", but "nos vemos con freqcuencia obligado" means "we are often forced" (at least in the context of what I am reading). There's no way I would have gotten that meaning by translating it word for word.

[@fersay777]

Do you guys always use bilingual or monolingual dictionaries?

[@Thelinguist]

bilingual. In my view, monolingual dictionaries only work if you are very advanced in the language you are learning.

[@fersay777]

@@Thelinguist thanks for the feedback. I use both of them, making the most of each one.

[@bozenasawa3490]

Could anyone give me some useful and popular examples of Chunks in --separately: English, French, Spanish and German. I have found none here. Too me this video is too theoretical and therefore not helpful at all.

[@lucyfromsiberia]

Fluency is beyond me! I speak slowly in my native language. And in a foreign language I am really slow.

[@thiagoxaviersoutricolor8260]

Bahasa terhubung dengan orang orang

[@EnglishVid2]

👍

[@squaretriangle9208]

Learning Turkish right now, I don't think chunking is very helpful with Turkish and studying grammar is really important especially if it is your first agglutinative language. If you cannot identify verbs ( most importantly but this is also true for other word forms) and the various suffixes you're lost. It is only with phrases and sayings that the chunking works Öğrenmede iyi şanslar!🎉

[@placebo_7505]

Trying to memorize words and sentences is useless. After a while, they are forgotten. I think it is best to talk, then it is not forgotten.

[@adamvoid555]

how to talk if you dont know any words?.. logic

[@placebo_7505]

@@adamvoid555 Did you really ask this question? Of course you will memorize the words but I mean if you don't speak the words are forgotten. It is not useful to study the words alone. Studying the words first and then trying to speak if you have someone to talk to at the same time helps you to remember the words and sentences. If you don't have anyone to talk to, you can study by yourself. I think it is more effective than memorizing the words by reading.

[@abbylafey]

Learning Pre fabricated phrases feel so formulaic and robotic. The beauty of learning languages is finding new ways to express yourself and it feels so hard to "feel expressed" if we speak in pre-approved, pre-determined chunks. Maybe it ends up happening naturally anyway but doing it purposefully feels so unappetizing.

[@DrabOk]

Chunks are leading to thinking in the language, not making constant translation

[@shutterchick79]

Chunking gets you conversational fast enough to be able to expose yourself to native content, and learn the nuances of the language naturally....

[@abbylafey]

@@DrabOk that happens through exposure alone

[@justaname1837]

I don't think it's wrong to learn phrases in the early stage of your language learning journey. It can be very helpful in fact to have some kind of template. I mean what is language learning? You imitate words and phrases that native speakers use in certain situations. That's actually how children learn languages. If you gain a deeper understanding of your target language, you can be more creative -- but at the beginning, it's just copying and trying to understand the language.

[@abbylafey]

​@@justaname1837I didn't say it was wrong to learn phrases at lol that's dumb. I was talking specifically about only learning phrases rather than learning words which is what he was talking about around the first minute (which he also said he doesn't like doing so I don't know why people are coming at me for agreeing with him lmao)

[@Reines3]

3:07

[@davidbrisbane7206]

It is clear that chucking works. Imagine if you only learned how to pronounce letters in the alphabet and rules about how to pronounce them in a word so that you could then pronounce the word correctly. So, how long would that take to learn a language? Forever, unless you are an AI application 😂.

[@AhmedHayous]

شكون دخل يتعلم 😂

[@paulaandreafernandezchavez1132]

🇨🇴☕

[@figgettit]

this man is nothing if not consistent in his message

[@opsharma4951]

I am 6 years old I am from India I want to talk to you on Google meet app i like your video

[@JoshPecks500lbDad]

"Secret?" But havent you previously stated there is no secret to language learning, rather it takes massive amounts of reading/listening input? Shame you have to resort to clickbait titles like this Steve. Would have expected better from you

[@alextchap99]

relax

[@JoshPecks500lbDad]

​@@alextchap99😂

[@mansionbookerstudios9629]

Steve do you know Jesus

[@camelbro]

No

[@JaN-nh2fo]

Know Jesus. A good example of a chunk;-)

[@EnglishVid2]

👍