Is everyone WRONG about Stephen Krashen's "comprehensible input" theory?

[@seekthuth2817]

I will die on the hill of "the one, most simple, and by extension most crucial requirement for learning any language is enjoying your chosen method." It doesn't matter what the sciences say about it's efficacy, if you don't enjoy it, you won't be able to learn with it without some Very serious external pressures.

[@juanandresramirez5336]

I completely agree and I think that is very much in tune with Krashen's theory. If you enjoy it, you'll devote more time to it or stick with it long enough to expose yourself to enough input to make some meaningful progress. So basically, your progress comes from exposing yourself to language to acquire, just as Krashen states. Also, it means your affective filter is not impeding acquisition either.

[@quantus5875]

Totally agree "motivation" is king. If you are truly motivated and you spend the time you will learn a language regardless of the method you use. This does back up Krashen quite a bit -- as his method is very enjoyable if you like reading. Also in defense of KZbinrs that back Krashen -- they don't say it's the only method you should use. For example, to learn to speak you have to practice speaking -- so you do need to supplement the comprehensible input method (almost all KZbinrs that I have seen say this). So maybe 70-80% comprehensible input and 20-30% other supportive methods.

[@lennahc1925]

Reminds me of exercise, “the best workout is the one you’ll do consistently “

[@quantus5875]

@@lennahc1925 Yes, good quote.

[@iknowyouwanttofly]

Hehe this is what I tell myself when I watch esperanto scooby doo instead of learning to spell in it 😅

[@thedavidguy01]

I decided to learn French after I retired and finally had sufficient time. I spent the first 6 months using traditional grammar focused textbooks and I did learn French grammar quite well. However I made very little progress on understanding spoken French and on speaking French. I did make significant progress on reading. At that point I watched an interview with Stephen Krashen and switched to focusing on input, primarily listening, but I did continue reading. My comprehension improved enormously and then my speaking followed suit. My speaking really improved greatly very quickly after a lot of listening. I don’t know if my knowledge of grammar was helpful, but I found an input heavy approach sped up my progress substantially. Now 7 years later I’m fluent in French according to several native speakers and my reading is very close to my level in English in both speed and comprehension. Of course I’m sure my vocabulary will always be larger in English. What I am happiest about is that my French friends say that my French is natural, that my way of speaking is native even though I have a foreign accent. I attribute that naturalness to massive amounts of input. On the other hand, my wife is also fluent in French and she learned the language from completely traditional grammar focused instruction. It’s clear that traditional methods work for some people, but I think input focused methods work for more people.

[@4istotak]

such an amazing plan for retirement!

[@johnkirton2534]

The traditional methods help with a basis of understanding how the language is structured, which can speed up progress in adults. However my experience in becoming fluent in several European languages relies on input/repetition, listening, speaking and reading, with some writing. Needless to say, my writing is weaker because of lack of practice. People learnt to speak way before most people could read and write, and that is still the case for swathes of the population of the planet. Nevertheless short bursts of grammar, at appropriate times, can speed up learning in proficient adult learners. As can plenty of reading.

[@davidsutton7914]

Now into my fifth decade of language learning, and currently starting a new language, I'll put my money on A + B + C + D, and not A or B or C or D alone. In other words, combining Comprehensible Input with Structured Analysis of Grammar, combined with Recall Speaking and Translating practice like Pimsleur, combined with working one-on-one with a tutor like on iTalki, is way better than any single method alone. Have fun, everyone!

[@ariellev9185]

100% agree with you. Are textbooks boring? Yeah, they’re not the most fun. However, 30 minutes to an hour a day + tons of comprehensible input and seeing a tutor will go miles. It’ll also help someone learn a language grammatically correct, which I believe is the main issue with a pure comprehensible input only approach. Grammar is annoying but it has to be drilled in 😭

[@zsqduke]

It depends on your objective. For me the point is not simply to master a language. I can always consciously do that if necessary. It’s to learn a language with minimal effort because oftentimes I don’t have to learn a language and putting too much effort will just make it not worth it. If your objective is just to be effective in learning a language I think your summary is perfect

[@gavinstuart6704]

@@ariellev9185 even in our native languages we only started to learn our OWN grammar once we spoke it fluently.

[@EnglishwithJoe]

But why?

[@unknown-otter]

But that's only true if efficacy of A is independent from B. And I don't think there's really something like "sum's greater than the parts alone", it's more like the opposite.

[@Storytelless]

When I discovered Krashen's theory (and I've listened to his full explanation so 5 things you listed aren't new for me) it helped me immensely. I studied english for years in school but barely could speak or understand content for natives. Then with his approach I improved in 2 years to the level when I worked with natives and read books in english with pretty no problems. Then the same story happened for french. In both cases I combined CI with traditional learning but with the emphathis on CI. Finally, as a russified ukrainian I struggled with ukrainian language for a while but large quantities of immersive reading really helped me and really fast to stop falling back to russian when I speak. I do not have ADHD and I do not have it's traits.

[@taurusw87]

Hi. I came across your comment and find it interesting. I think I'm kind of in the same boat and struggling with improving my English speaking skill. If you don't mind, could you share more about the way you've improved your English when working with natives? I currently work at a retail store as a cashier in the US and I find that I have trouble responding to natives in general. I couldn't find the right words to express my thoughts, especially when I was caught off guard by some unexpected circumstances. I get frozen and it takes me a minute to respond.

[@reeeec]

Well, Krashen's SLA hypotheses has major impact in language acquisition. In college, our professor would emphasise it more than Chomsky's theory (well, particularly we are focused on second language English teaching). Your case is good example of natural language acquisition at work.

[@reeeec]

​@@taurusw87 I might not be him, but let me suggest as a language practise teacher. Try talking to yourself and create scenarios in your mind. The reason maybe why your having trouble speaking with natives is that your too conscious in your language use (which fell into the affective filter). If you response, don't be too conscious on your grammar or pronunciation. Just speak what you mean, it is understandable you are still learning. If you have a hard time finding the right word, use a similar one. Returning to practise, talk to yourself or better find a friend who is fluent in English. You don't really need a native speaker, rather someone who has high English fluency. There is too much emphasis on native speakers that in the end it is all about fluency. I mean, in East Asian countries many English teachers there are from the Philippines where English is second language, not first.

[@immersion6105]

massive amounts of input is absolutely recquired to achieve fluency and especially native fluency, and to make this process faster and more effiecient combining input with active learning such as shadowing, flash cards, etc. is definitely advisable.

[@venga3]

Including grammar learning, speaking etc. Do everything. Do whatever you are interested in and reap the appropriate benefits. That's why CI alone is literally crazy. Don't use a dictionary? Absurd.

[@keithkannenberg7414]

People love the idea of universal theories like "everyone learns in such and such way" or "X is the best method of doing Y". In my experience once you get out of the realm of basic physics the world isn't that black and white. I personally find comprehensible input to be a great method for language learning but I also find intensive study to be boring and demotivating in pretty much everything I've studied, not just languages. But I find that short bursts of grammar exploration or looking up specific words and phrases that I haven't deciphered yet from input greatly helps the process of "acquisition" (learning). From exposure to how friends learn things differently than me (in school or otherwise) I am pretty comfortable in thinking that not everyone learns/acquires/studies in exactly the same way. There may be universal principles that apply to everyone but in different degrees depending on one's personality and other experiences.

[@languagejones6784]

Etymologies do it for me. A lot of the time, if I look up the etymology, the story of the word helps me remember both the word itself and what it means now.

[@_gingerale_]

@@languagejones6784 this is one of my favorite things to do, not only for language learning but just in general. Some of my earliest language related memories were of browsing wiktionary on the family computer looking up any word or phrase that came to mind. etymology and cognates were also a huge focus of my latin classes in middle school (thinking back thats probably how the district justified keeping latin in a non-catholic school lol)

[@McRaylie]

This definitely also applies to Physics, most people don’t realize how messy physics is. Any attempt at a truly comprehensive grand unified theory has been frustrated

[@keithkannenberg7414]

@@McRaylie Agreed. When I wrote "basic physics" I just meant things as basic as conservation of energy or momentum, which appear to be pretty much absolute as far as I know. Once you get past that the world is complicated!

[@McRaylie]

@@keithkannenberg7414 the funny thing is conservation of energy is not an absolute law of the universe and is only true most of the time. The CMB and dark energy explicitly violate it

[@byronlopezellington8839]

I'd love to see that video on first language acquisition! Edit: Also the one(s) on universal grammar!

[@languagejones6784]

I'll definitely be making both soon!

[@noahl3681]

It's interesting that when I went to read what Krashen actually wrote, he always seems to point towards that comprehensible input is a big *factor* in acquiring language and that instruction or "learning" almost always helps it along. In the examples he includes it's seems that the learners mindset plays a large role as well, ie. letting yourself make mistakes but not being too loosey goosey with the grammar either. At least that's what I took away from it!

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

Regardless of the validity of his hypotheses the fact that he has inspired a massive research effort into proving him alone makes him an amazingly important figure in language instruction.

[@Paul_Ernst]

Yes, it seems Krashen's work is actually a guide for teachers to help student acquire the language (with responsible guidance), not a guide for students to go off on their own.

[@Asptuber]

But comprehensible input isn't in any way a new thing as a component of learning a language - EasyReaders and the like where a thing 40+ years ago already. So is what he is saying that this component has is under valued in education? It probably is.

[@juanandresramirez5336]

@@Paul_Ernst And the biggest evidence for what you say is the "i+1" hypothesis. i+1 doesn't frequently occur in authentic materials, most of materials for it come from the language learning industry, whether it's graded readers or teachers curating samples or producing their own for students to have suitable input.

[@Nancy-sj7yg]

I am an "everything" language learner. I've been learning German for the past 8 years, on top of two years of high school German a million years ago. I restarted my German by taking formal classes, A2 - C1, which gave me a solid foundation. After that, and being kind of burnt out on grammar, I have been mostly relying on reading and watching videos, along with italki sessions. I do occasionally dive into grammar but spend most of my time on input. Seems to be working. I have noticed over the past few months vast improvement in both comprehension and speaking, so I think this is working for me. It irritates me when KZbin polyglots tell people "don't study grammar" or "don't study vocabulary," or even "only learn vocabulary." We all learn differently. The most important thing for me is to have some fun with it so that i keep learning/acquiring.

[@girogiro-vh5pz]

I agree, studying grammar is one of the fun things about language learning. It’s a matter of balance.

[@jkdog3242]

I've been learning German for over 9 years, probably 5 of those years being semi serious in my pursuit to become better at the language. Memorizing song lyrics has been one of my greatest discoveries towards the advancement of my capabilities. Songs are written generally in the way that people speak. If you're in the car and singing a song that you know every word to, you can easily hear where you pronounce things differently from the artist. This helped my pronunciation so much. In addition to pronunciation help, any word I would learn through memorization of a song stuck in my brain much more than otherwise because of how obsessive I would be with memorizing. Every time I listen to a song I have memorized now, I am reminded of native speaker words/phrases/structures that may have otherwise fallen out of my active recall.

[@KimDammers]

I tried to learn Mongolian (in Mongolia) by singing songs. It didn't work: The music was so foreign that I could only sing once I had learned the language. That is, I wound up learning (the basics of ) the language in order to sort of learn how to sing it.

[@calumoconnor7794]

can you point me in the direction of good german songs / lyrics?

[@Reforming_LL]

Good on you for learning with songs, I do that occasionally too, but there are two points I need to address. 1. While the sentiment that songs are written similarly to how people speak is true for the most part, there are songs where you wouldn’t hear people speak like it in real life. 2. While learning with songs is good input, it’s pretty language sparse compared to TV shows and movies unless the songs you’re memorizing are songs like Not Like Us, which have more language density with their lyrics.

[@franzim6668]

​@@calumoconnor7794 Hey, a native German Speaker here: I guess it would depend on the genre of music that you like. Very basic German mainstream would be Peter Fox, Sido, Herbert Grönemeyer, Cro, Mark Forster or Max Giesinger. I personally think Medieval Folk might be fun for language learners, because the songs tend to be a bit more interesting lyric-wise, often times telling stories rather than the same old love songs/break-up songs. Schandmaul, letzte Instanz, Saltatio Mortis, Subway to Sally or in Extremo come to mind. Maybe Eisbrecher or Unheilig, too. I personally am a big fan of "asp", but that one for sure is a bit of an acquired taste. The album "Zaubererbruder" is one of my favorites by asp, the whole album tells the story of the German Myth of "Krabat", an orphaned boy who gets entangled with a dark wizard. They changed the story a little bit, it's quite dark at times, but I love their version a lot. The songwriter is excellent, you'll find no German band with more artistic lyrics for sure, but that might make understanding a bit harder. I hope that helps! :)

[@ceruchi2084]

I'm finding it hard to learn German pronunciation from songs and videos because everyone's accent is so different. I think I've heard "richtig" pronounced five different ways! At least with French you can just imitate the Parisian accent and know you're in the clear. I have no idea which German accent a foreigner should try to mimic, since the accent of the biggest city isn't always the right one. Bless the heart of any English learner who tries to sound like a New Yorker....

[@markb1082]

There's a video where Krashen (at a polyglot conference) says that if we find people learning language through skills building, then his theory is in trouble. However, there's another way to provide a counterexample: understand a language but fail to produce it. I'm in that category. This has been my project for nearly four years now. I'm up to at least 1600 hours of input. I can understand and read somewhere between B1 and C1, although it's very difficult to determine the level of comprehension because it varies greatly depending on the content. In cross-talk (conversation where I speak English and my language parent speaks Italian) I can understand 95%+ on a variety of topics when my tutor is speaking at a natural speed. Example video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gn3Ro3V3a9unebs This is my level of comprehensible input, near the limit. I will miss chunks because she's speaking so fast, but it's not too bad, maybe 80%. So comprehensible input does work in terms of understanding. I've done no exercises, word lists, grammar study. I can recognize the various tenses now -- I've looked at conjugation tables, but no grammar exercises. BUT despite my ability to understand, I have virtually no ability to speak. I cannot spontaneously produce *idiomatic* Italian. Also, I can barely pass an A2 fill-in-the-blank grammar test. I find this amusing. And when I see people talk about 2 months or 8 months or whatever to fluency (say, going from English to an "easy" romance language) I just think, I have no idea how you are doing it. Krashen is vague about how speaking happens. One might claim that my input is too incomprehensible. But then, how is it that I've acquired the ability to understand? And furthermore, it's impossible to find the perfect "i + 1" material. Also, the input described in Krashen's case studies, and the input described by various people who successfully use the method, is absolutely NOT i + 1. In Krashen's book The Natural Approach he says: "After 100-150 hours of Natural Approach Spanish you will be able to: 'get around' in Spanish; you will be able to communicate with a mono-lingual native speaker of Spanish without difficulty."... LOL!

[@stevencarr4002]

'Krashen is vague about how speaking happens. ' Not at all. You simply haven't done enough comprehensible input.

[@smorgan125]

Have you tried speaking or grammar exercises?

[@teach-learn4078]

We get good at what we practice. Listening is good, and practicing listening will get you good at listening. If you want to get good at speaking, you need to speak. 1. Journaling- Record or write a text of some length, let's say 100 words on some topic. Put it into google translate. Say it out loud.. 2. Sentence subsitution - Take a sentence (or question) of a certain length with subject, verb and objects or complements. "I went to the store to get some potatoes but they didn't have any." (In italian of course). Then swap in different words at different places in the sentence to the shop, to the hospital, to the post office, and potatoes, tomatoes, bread and vinegar. This is a great exercise, if you can mentally handle exercise. If you recrod yourself you can check pronunciation. With long sentences it forces you to remember a lot in the L2. 3. Practice thinking in L2. When you are shaving or cooking or walking, think (only) in Italian. I suspect if you put in another 100 hours with these, you will see some improvement. To check, you could start with a recording of yourself to use as an iniitial benchmark.Hope these ideas help., Good luck, is that "corragio, capitan"? .

[@ProfesoraVerdura-ch7pc]

Retired language professor. Taught language and language teaching methodology for 41 years using Natural Approach. Tracy Terrell, who collaborated with Krashen before his (Terrell's) death 30 years ago, was my mentor. 40 years ago, I acquired Hebrew naturally by hanging out with an Israeli community and playing with kids in Hebrew. I am now trying to acquire Russian thru comprehensible input. I have a Russian tutor who is my language informant, and I am training her how to give me comprehensible input. I never try to acquire my languages by hiring a teacher. I just find an educated native speake and then I train him or her how to give me comprehensible input. I create most of the activities, using visual aids, props, stuffed animals and other high interest (for me) input. Various Russians have excellent KZbin channels with hundreds of videos at L + 1 and these complement my weekly sessions with my tutor. Thank you for this concise and thought-provoking video. I will share with colleagues.

[@MirrorscapeDC]

Comprehensible input worked very well for me for English. I went from 'can roughly communicate on basic topics to 'it often comes easier than my native language'. That was after maybe eight years of school second language English. And I wasn't particularly bad among my classmates. All that was really needed were some books I wanted to read, a kindle's inbuilt dictionary and lots of reading. But I do have adhd and am very bad at remembering disconnected facts. I am miserable at geography.

[@strong_slav]

So after 8 years of studying English... adding comprehensible input brought you to fluency. But why do you assume those eight years of learning in school gave you nothing?

[@MirrorscapeDC]

@@strong_slav I'm not saying they gave me nothing. I'm saying that a few years of comprehensive input got me a lot farther than eight years of classroom and that I don't think I would have ever gotten to fluency with just the classroom.

[@derpauleglot9772]

Well, you can estimate the number of hours you studied English in school and compare it to the amount of CCI you got later on. For example: -640 hours in school (2 lessons a week, 40 weeks per year, 8 years total) -2,700 hours of input (90 minutes per day on average, 5 years total) (3 hours a day would get you to 5.4k hours) In that case, classroom learning would have accounted for 20% of your study hours, and classroom learning made it easier to find compelling comprehensible input. Studying + input is the best method imho - not sure what the "right balance" is though, and it probably mostly depends on the learner's preferences, strengths and weaknesses.

[@braydencraven3857]

All people are bad at remembering disconnected facts, some people just have the discipline to grind through it regardless instead of finding a way to make the facts more connected. Learning requires making connections, so trying to brute force isolated information into you brain is akin to trying to force a rectangular peg into a circular hole.

[@rinkuhero]

but the input wouldn't have been comprehensible at all if you didn't spend 8 years in school first. like if you just jumped into english with zero knowledge from school, 99.9% of input would have been incomprehensible

[@C4s4ndr4]

As someone who got diagnosed autistic last year and has struggled to find a method of language learning to works for me this video EXPLAINS SO MUCH. Would love to hear more about neurodivergence and language development. My own was pretty irregular, which my parents initially chalked up to me also being bilingual. I apparently started speaking late, skipped over the single words phase and went straight to 3 word sentences. Then later when it came to learning to read I was put in remedial classes for half a year. Somehow I came out of those with an appetite for reading that had me reading above my grade level fairly quickly. I still read faster than most people I know.

[@simonwillover4175]

Yeah. Learning is weird for me (as a neurodivergent too). I learned to walk and talk a year later than most kids are supposed to, but I was speaking with full sentences right out the gate. I don't have any memories of being less than 5, but I remember having a lot of thoughts running around in my head. And those thoughts were always composed of a bunch of complex sentences with lots of ideas linking between them. I also remember having a hard time with math until 4th grade, and then I suddenly leveled up to like 8th grade math. Turns out math is really simple and I just hadn't figured out how to memorize the addition and multiplication table. I was probably just overthinking the task of memorization. It's not like they teach you how to memorize in school. They literally don't, and hardly even can anyways.

[@PunkHerr]

Also interested in learning language as a neurodivergent! I usually refer to myself as way too analytical therefore bad at aquiring languages because they are more unconscious/feely. English is the only second language I could get into after years of immersion (without the goal of gettting better).

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

I (not exactly neurotypical either) like studying grammar as it's nicely defined, but my theory about grammar is that it helps make input more comprehensible, it doesn't directly convert to fluency. Same with learning isolated words in Anki, doesn't tell me how to use them, but I still recognise them later. So at the end I'm again at the comprehensible input hypothesis.

[@C4s4ndr4]

@@Ph34rNoB33r The video is about the idea that comprehensible input is all you need to learn a language. An idea that you'll find all over language KZbin. It's this input only method that I tried several times and never worked for me. Despite many people swearing by it. Ofc you need input and output to fully acquire a language. You can't just read grammar guides and be fluent. For me though grammar guides AND input are both needed to learn. What's fascinating to me is that the Krashen may have ADHD and the comprehensible input method might work best for people with that kind of neurospiciness. The reasons Jones mentions for why the comprehensible input method would appeal to people with ADHD is exactly why my autistic ass doesn't like the method. The lack of structure and analysis just makes me unhappy.

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

@@C4s4ndr4 I'm not convinced you NEED both, at least if you know languages with similar grammar. But I think grammar study can greatly help with making input more comprehensible. Kind of a "soft" requirement improving efficiency of the input for learning. Well, and it helps with grammar tests, but those are rare outside school. I tend to performs way better on this kind of standardised test, you can simply watch for keywords and ignore most of the other words.

[@reggietkatter]

As far as facts about first language acquisition, it's what worked for everyone (with or without ADHD). Anecdotally as adults, it worked for me and a number of friends as well (using a resource called Dreaming Spanish for a few years). I'm able to watch, listen to and read native material and converse normally with native speakers and I achieved this without studying,

[@JS-ir7wh]

As far as first language, a lot is going on, like brain development etc, that cannot be reproduced for adult learners. So, what worked for the first language, may not be what works best for an adult working on their 2nd, 3rd...

[@reggietkatter]

@@JS-ir7wh that’s fine except it has worked for me and many others as adults.

[@ariellev9185]

What is your native language, if you don’t mind me asking?

[@JS-ir7wh]

@@reggietkatter Just because it worked, doesn't mean it is best. Just because it worked for some, doesn't mean it is best for all.

[@reggietkatter]

@@JS-ir7wh sure. As an argument without empirical content your claims are fine. It’s really important to define “best” here (it might even differ for different people). I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to learn a language without exposure to it though, a lot of it being better than a little. Especially if one is interested in understanding the language very well (quickly and accurately). I don’t think anything but input really works for that. I also think that most people would prefer to learn a language without studying as well. Do you have any actual reason to believe this isn’t the best way?

[@thenoblegnuwildebeest3625]

5:40 Would be very interested to see a video on errors children make when acquiring languages and how they compare across languages.

[@artugert]

My son is two and only speaks Chinese. I’ve noticed that he speaks better than most kids his age and almost never makes mistakes. He was mixing up “you” and “I” for a while, but that’s it, and that’s not really even language related. I wonder if this is common for Chinese speakers, since the grammar is much simpler than European languages.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@artugert Chinese doesn't have inflections, it's pretty straightforward in most cases and you add particles to indicate any grammatical change. Adults struggle mostly with pronunciation, not the grammar in Chinese, so that might be the reason why your son does not make too many mistakes in Chinese.

[@blackroses6315]

this is on wikipedia! they make mistakes that don’t work in either language!

[@artugert]

@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, I forgot to mention the pronunciation is also much simpler than in English. At two years old, he can already pronounce every possible sound in the language! That can't be said for any two year old speaking English.

[@spaghettiking653]

@@artugert Nor barely for any adult learning Chinese either, lol, those sounds are hard for us English speakers...

[@lGalaxisl]

When I talk about grammar avoidance I always specifically mean grammar exercises. Finnish is my Target Language and I learn its grammar by first seeing the breakdown of a new grammar topic, and then reading many example sentenced where the grammar part is the only new thing to me. Combine that with spaced repitition and general reading & listening, and I will naturally run into the same grammar structure many times so that I acquire it. Works really well for B1 level and onwards. I also do something similar for new vocabulary Point being, comprehensible input was a complete game changer for me, but it would never work as efficiently if I didn't combine it with grammar study and spaced repitition.

[@barrysteven5964]

Thank you for saying what I was thinking. I am always dubious about people who boast about never learning grammar. I think they just define grammar in a different way. I've heard people boast that they've never read a grammar book in their lives. To me that's as daft as saying you've never read a dictionary. These things are reference books not page turning novels. I have also learned Finnish and just as you said I found I needed examples and lots of chances to practise. Unlike you, however, I quite enjoy grammar exercises. I started out by ploughing through the FSI Finnish course and its crazy amount of exercises but it's just a hobby to me and not for everyone. But as a foreign learner whose first language is English I don't know how anyone could learn Finnish without specifically studying the endings. If the average noun and adjective has about 30 possible forms, including plurals, a foreign learner is unlikely to just pick those up by reading a lot. Especially, when the actual grammar explanation makes what seems impossible actually fairly logical.

[@lGalaxisl]

@@barrysteven5964 Thanks for your reply. I should've also added to my reply that I do plan on doing grammar exercises, or more specifically writing exercises, when I'm happy with my comprehension. Having put so much attention in listening and reading has really paid off, but at the same time things like compound conjugations will still trip me up if I have to form them myself.

[@miguelangellunapalacios1804]

Hi. How do you use spaced repetition combined with grammar? I mean what is your process for learn grammar and How do you apply spaced repetition in your learning. I have probably a B1 in comprehension but when it comes to grammar I have troubles learning it. (Sorry if a don't redact well the message, I still have difficulties with writing)

[@lGalaxisl]

​@@miguelangellunapalacios1804 I have a textbook that has a story of a couple of pages and a new grammar topic per chapter. The new grammar is found in the story. So I study the grammar breakdown, seeing how it conveys the meaning, then go back and forth between the story and the grammar a few times. After that I just occasionally come back to the story and that way the grammar is refreshed in my mind. The goal here is comprehension, not replication. Spaced repetition is often seen as "trying to recall a word" but it works with any kind of material that you can study.

[@TroyLFullerton]

I just stumbled onto your video and I was enthralled by it. I am thoroughly bilingual and have taught Spanish for years. What has troubled me has not been Krashen's hypotheses per se, but the wholesale, quasi-religious fervor with which people have latched onto them to the TOTAL exclusion of everything else. Anything other than CI is considered a demotivating waste of time. When I did my Ph.D. in language acquisition, I discovered that my uneasiness was well-founded. Like with most fads in education, it's not the theoretical framework that's the problem, it's the extremist way that novices run wild with it. The thoughts on ADHD/autism were fascinating as well, and I plan to research that more. Thank you for a fascinating new avenue of thought.

[@Reforming_LL]

I know how it felt to reject literally anything else but CI. I can’t speak for everyone who rejects anything non-CI, but for my case it was because I stagnated with traditional resources despite learning every single day. My younger self was just frustrated with the inefficiency of traditional methods and pushed back at anything that didn’t have to do with comprehensible input, since I was afraid of stagnating and quitting my target language. I’m not as extreme with my beliefs as back then as I am now, since I do occasional output practice here and there. But my younger self in 2021 was rebellious and frustrated with the status quo of language learning methods.

[@Liam-hy8kz]

As an autistic/ADHD linguistics student, I would love if you could talk more about how neurodivergence relates to linguistics

[@jrcenina85]

Yes, I’m interested in hearing more about this too. Although I’ve never been tested for either, neurodiversity runs in my family and I totally geeked out on learning Latin and Ancient Greek grammar in college and then coding languages when joining the work force. Learning how things tick, seems to make things stick (for me and probably [many] others).

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

I think what he talked about ADHD is pure BS. I'm capable and I DO structured lerning for a lot of things but that DEOS NOT WORK WELL for language. Period. My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory. I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it. After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish. So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue. Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands. One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH. I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it. Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did. So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish. Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

Now, why I say it's different for languages? Because language IS NOT a SUBJECT (only for linguists, so the author here is biased). Language is a MEAN, not and END. I was NOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn ROMAN HISTORY. English was just this annoying little thing in the way. I was NOOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn MUAY THAI. English was just in the way. However, I WAS trig to learn SPANISH. And I had NO INTEREST in Spanish whatsoever. so I've failed. So when I've found abut Krashen and Matt VS Japan and the AJATT i just applied the same principle. I was NOT trying to learn JAPANESE (the closest of it was doing ANKI, but also as a MEAN, not an end). I was trying to understand anime in Japanese. Period. And IT WOKS. It's like the difference between a physicist and a SOCCER PLAYER. A physicist can explain how in hell if the player kicks in one way the ball makes a curve. But he cannot do that! That's the linguist in many cases. A soccer player have NO IDEA what are the physics about him kicking a curved ball. But he can do it EVERY FREAKING TIME he wants to. The so called "academic way" is being a physicist. You DON'T NEED it to speak the language. It's cool, may help. But an illiterate dude can learn how to kick th ball that way without understanding the physics behind it.

[@jrcenina85]

@@JohnnyLynnLee understanding physics can help, brother. Look up the skateboarder Rodney Mullen. He is a huge innovator and applied his interests in physics to do innovative things. As for studying a language as a subject linguistically, I found that understanding the nuts and bolts of Latin grammar has allowed me to accurately “acquire” Latin in an efficient way. That is, I believe that having studied Latin as a “subject” in the way a physicist does, I was able to extensively read easy material with accuracy instead of potentially creating misunderstanding of how Latin grammar works if I was to just read a bunch of easy material without having a theoretical overview. Of course, we all operate differently.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

@@jrcenina85 And that's to learn at HOME. There are plenty of uneducated people that go to another country to work and get it. "But there's a lot that don't." Yeah, they liv in ghettos. You need to work to survive, you need to understand you coworkers and boss, you need to make friends to be invited to drink after work, you need to go to that kind of bay were you pay "lady drinks" to get some "relaxation". You find that girl in that shop that seems interested in you and you want to call her on a date. You want ALL of those things. You NEED it in that situation, to function as a human being. So you'll get the language. again as a TOOL to get THOSE THNGS, not the language itself. The language itself is basically MEANINGLESS to your primal brain. ?What that language GIVES you is the key.

[@NeichoKijimura]

Comprehensible input -> Me -> Inconprehensible output

[@languagejones6784]

I definitely debated an "incomprehensible output" joke when writing the script lol

[@crepuscularwintersky]

@@languagejones6784 I would have laughed!

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory. I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it. After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish. So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue. Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands. One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH. I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it. Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did. So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish. Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!

[@blubaylon]

​@@JohnnyLynnLeeVery interesting!

[@user-abuser_i_ball_was_wrote]

Lol

[@vladimir520]

This was the best video I've ever seen on this topic, thank you for clearing out a lot of what I've been reading online! This accurately described the work of Krashen and his theory, and helped me understand what exactly it's all about. I would 100% want a video on Universal Grammar, I'm dying to know what it really is! I'm interested in studying Linguistics, and I've seen the concept of Universal Grammar thrown around a lot, as well as... controversies about it? I'd really like to find out what is and isn't known/(un)disputed in the realm of UG, and understand which scientific papers are basing themselves on what, etc. Again, many thanks for the video, it's great to hear an academic linguist discussing these topics in-depth!

[@agaed7676]

As far as I am aware, I am not neurodivergent but I do think having a basis of grammar and vocab mixed with a large amount of input has been the most effective method yet for learning a language for me. The boost I get from enjoying and wholeheartedly engaging with the input, that input being content that I know I already like like books from genrea I like or games who's base gamplay I already like, cannot be ignored. Not to mention the reduced amount of effort that I need to put into motivating myself to learn means I have more energy to put into actually learning which has made language learning much easier. Some things to note are: 1, Some languages benefit from reading considerably more than others, the reasons can have to do with the script or just to do with the way the language fundamentally works. Japanese benefits a lot from reading past the beginner stage but the reading will be extremely slow because you are not only learning the language but a 3 accompanying scripts as well, this makes reading slow and difficult to start with but once you have a base of kanji and are used to reading the kanas, it will become very easy to find new words as they are combined from other pre-existing kanji. 2, lthe further away the target language is from the language(s) you already know the more you will require input because there are some fundamental speech patterns that will be so alien to you that you will have to have them repeated to you many times before you can naturally start using them, from my experience.

[@Alex55455]

I have recently started learning Spanish and when I started looking for ideas on KZbin on how to learn it I noticed a lot of these Polyglots pushing “just do input” or get this app with my discount code in the description and they would proceed to crap talk other language learning apps. I have since been experimenting and have found getting input is fairly useful especially around getting used to hearing how the native speakers speak but it’s only one part of overall language learning process. I find I also need to practice speaking, do exercises and study grammar etc. I had a real aha moment about my suspicion of doing input only when someone in the comments section of a Dreaming Spanish video said they had done 600 hours of input only but then proceeded to ask basic grammar questions why some words end in an A vs an O and what’s difference between a word ending in an S vs not ending in an S.

[@mrs8768]

if someone seriously does not know the a and o and the s and not s after 600 hours, im not sure what to say. Regardless, its obvious that only input by itself is not smart. I think input is very important, and that most stuff will be learnt with input, but you should also learn the grammar but not intensely, and learn the vocab too but not intensely. Input will give real results.

[@unknown-otter]

I think that's the outlier or they vastly overestimated their "starting time". I'm doing input only with DS and other podcasts and I've hit 500 hours yesterday. I still don't know any explicit grammar (besides ser/estar which were taught by Duolingo half a year ago), but I can easily predict the correct form of the verb while watching. My mind has been picking up on se/lo recently. That's "the scariest part" of Spanish grammar everyone has been talking about?

[@cmfrtblynmb02]

CI people don't say don't ever check grammar. They say learning and acquiring different things. Reading a grammar book is actually not more than 5-10 hours for any language. You can have a look at it once in a while. What they are saying is this will not make you acquire the language and it doesn't. And most polyglots are not about input theory. In fact it only recently started to catch up. 5 years ago, I really had hard time find anything on Krashen on youtube. There were a few videos here and there and that was it. Everyone was all about the importance of talking. Even today, just take a random language class. It is all old school teaching. I had 100 hours of polish in the old methods and I have nothing to show for other than my great knowledge of grammar. I did the cards, did the exercises and not much CI. I learned nothing.

[@venga3]

​@@unknown-otterNo, the scariest part is to produce it correctly. The subjunctive seems to not be fun for learners.

[@cidehamete]

El español no es para nada difícil porque es muy lógico. Ahora estudio ruso y yo creo que es más difícil que el chino o el árabe.

[@atfernando1]

So I'm a believer (because I can't do scientific studies on my own) that traditional schooling is failing the entire language learning community. I feel schools, either in language schools or universities, etc, are more worried about behaviour and entertaining rather than actually doing something to make the student improve. I then encountered SK hypothesis and it seemed rather logical to me, an L2 English speaker who learned English by doing KZbin all day (I was in a bad place). So, I started thinking that the amount of content IS a major variable in language learning/acquisition. However, I always felt SK hypothesis fails or at least lacks in several points. 1. Comprehensible Input is HARD to get not only because there not much available but also because each person is different, have different levels and different interests, objectives, etc. So his comprehensible input is realistically impossible or almost impossible to find and you have to do with what you can find, (e.g. a children's picture dictionary). 2. I love reading, and I also think that's what got me my level when reading subtitles in my target language, but there are two problems, reading without knowing how it is pronounced is fatal. In English is almost suicidal. (That's why I recommend listening and reading in the same language so you can discover the sounds you're missing. But it's difficult in other languages apart from romance langauges) So, yeah, I always felt there was more to the story, and this video helped me realized a bunch of other things. I will say, though, that I practice translation, it's great. But, from Target language to Native/Acquired language. Not a single letter translated from native to target because you don't know how the target language works. It's like creating an opera from just 5 notes. And I hate how the entire language community, schools, etc are focused on producing the language. It's just stupid (IMHO). Sure, you WILL be able to communicate, but you will always have this rules engraved that don't allow you to actually share your thoughts. And I THAT'S where SK got it right, there is something else apart from learning rules. His solution, well, as I said it lacks the answer to how actually learn. So what I do is this, translation Target->Native and grammar allows you to read more and more complex sentences or clauses or whatever you want to call it. Then, with copious amount of language exposition (Audio and reading), you'll understand more until at one point you start first immitating, then finally producing with feedback telling you where are your errors. This last part sounds a lot to what they do in schools but the main difference is that WITHOUT understanding the language almost to the point of advanced level, you can't start producing without thinking in your native language and translating native->target, and thinking in rules. I would, like SK, without prove, hypotethise that one will produce the language "without thinking" as it is intended to happen. Well, that's my 2 cents. Thank you for the video.

[@cmboerger]

Would love to hear more about Chomsky's grammar from a linguistic perspective. I'm a computer scientist and we studied them as far as they helped us create compilers. So we always stopped at regular grammars.

[@MrCesarification]

+1 for any kind of coverage of UG - it's a massive topic and I feel so intimidated by its complexity that I've never dabbled. Make it a series!

[@RonaldBradycptgmpy]

Yo dude! First of all, I just wanted to say thank you for your content. From one person who loves languages to another, I love the way you make academic research, practical and accessible to those of us who for whatever reason didn’t want to get a linguistics degree, let alone a PhD. You have no idea how much of a difference that’s made. Second, as someone with ADHD, I can say that implementing some of Krashen’s ideas has helped a ton. I’ve been able to make my language learning a lot more efficient, and managed to learn both American Sign Language, and Spanish with a combo approach. For me, specifically, though, I’ve found that doing both explicit, grammar study and massive amounts of input tends to really speed things up because it allows me to Internalize my understanding of a certain structure in a language much much faster. I usually do this by looking up specific structures or words that I hear as I go along. I have a feeling your “reasons“ are kind of similar to mine. Lol. Again, thank you so much for all the work you do in making this stuff a lot more accessible.

[@netsystrom4569]

Could you maybe clarify on your learning process with the asl and Spanish because I’m trying to learn both as well and would love something to base my study off of

[@marilyn8490]

I have taught Spanish starting 40 years ago....so right when Krashen´s theories were really being put forth for secondary teachers. I have found that comprehensible input is indeed better for that casual learner who wants to "get by". Phrases come out much more naturally using this method so kids can speak and express themselves. However, that grammar component cannot be totally ignored! Interesting that I would often get kids in class whose parents/relatives spoke Spanish at home. Some were super fluent, some less so. Most of them would remark at some point in the year "Now I finally understand what my uncles and aunts are saying at Christmas parties". Or "Wow, now I understand why people say (insert phrase)....I never knew what it meant!" They didn't get that without the grammar component. So somehow, the brain needs the 2 learning methods, it seems.

[@smorgan125]

When you say grammar component do you mean verb conjugations, vocabulary or something else?

[@marilyn8490]

Grammar includes a lot...gender, verb conjugations. Perhaps most important, idiomatic phrases...words that have to be used together and don´t translate directly "tengo sesenta años"..."hace tres años que visité Madrid". Word order can be really different, like using pronouns before verbs.

[@servantofthetruth8203]

​@marilyn8490 what do you think about pairing madrigal's magic key to spanish book with dreaming spanish?

[@elias7819]

You have an intriguing House-like quality (one of my favorite TV characters) I think a bit in your facial expression, some of the deep vocal fry, and being Dr. who isn’t shy to dissent. Like if House was a doctor of linguistics 😄

[@Limemill]

As an ADHDer, the most effective learning method I’ve used has had three aspects. 1) intensive (4 hours a day) group study relying heavily on the communicative approach where some grammar is explained, but not in too much depth, and the rest of the class consisted of various fun activities. Key was that I was slightly better than most of the group, which relieved all of the stress. 2) Getting the accent right to the point of sounding native-like through Pimsleur and songs. Then, outputting actively. Depending on the situation at hand, I would prepare a list of vocab of 20-30 words and expressions and would then activate it in real life to solve real situations. That vocab stayed with me forever. 3) Listening to and watching local content (not so comprehensible input) picking up things here and there even when I did not understand 30 per cent of what was being said. So, in sum, as ADHDers like to talk activating stuff by outputting it (on purpose) was key for acquisition. To reduce stress, in-depth accent and prosody training was key. Real-life content input helped pick up new things

[@PL-lt3wz]

Comprehensible input is part of immersion. That's why living in a community that speaks the target language is the quickest way to pick up a language. There is no perfect way or only one way to learn a language.

[@ettinakitten5047]

Immersion typically involves a mix of comprehensible and *in*comprehensible input, with the proportion of each depending on both your ability level and the patience of your conversation partners.

[@ronlugbill1400]

I have read tons of research on language acquisition. I have learned 4 languages and taught languages. What the research is saying is that explicit vocabulary learning is very important. Combine explicit vocabulary learning using a flashcard app such as Anki or Quizlet with input- lots of reading and listening. If you only do comprehensible input, it works, but it is slow. Over half your time should be vocabulary learning, mostly quizzing yourself using sentences or phrases, and doing listening and reading. Add in some speaking, some writing, some pronunciation practice, and some grammar. But vocabulary is king. Grammar should only be a very small part of what you do. You have to learn a lot of vocabulary, both active and passive vocabulary. At least 3,000 words, probably more like 4,000 or 5,000. If you use a combination of explicit vocabulary learning AND comprehensible input ( listening and reading), you will be on your way to getting there. It takes years to acquire and retain that amount of vocabulary so you can understand the language and start to produce it. Comprehensible input works, it is important to do lots of reading and listening. But add in some explicit vocabulary learning using a flashcard app. Good luck.

[@Vincent89297]

Most advocates of immersion learning also encourage the use of vocabulary study with something like Anki. Where their viewpoint (and my personal experience) diverge from your viewpoint is that explicit vocab study should only take up a relatively small (up to 25%) of the total time spent on the language. The first reason for this is that vocab study becomes much easier and more efficient that way: words are much easier to remember if you've seen them a bunch of times in your immersion. By increasing immersion you can therefore study more words in less time. The second reason is that a lot of words have meanings that are difficult to describe or difficult for non-natives to understand. By seeing those words used thousands of times in their appropriate context you can acquire an intuition of their meaning without having to study it explicitly. What do you think?

[@ronlugbill1400]

@Vincent89297 Agreed. Yes, a combination of explicit vocabulary learning and comprehensible input works best, according to most research I have seen. Yes, you have to see words in context. I like to do the explicit vocabulary learning using sentences from an authentic text or dialogue. That helps put it in a context. I think learning sentences and phrases works better than learning single words. Bilingual sentences. The exact percentage? Yes, probably a little more comprehensible input than explicit vocabulary learning. Up to 25%. Sure. But if you do zero explicit vocabulary learning as a beginner, it will take a long time. Intermediate or advanced learners can go full immersion, and that works well. I would still do a little explicit vocabulary, but concentrate more on reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

[@joshuacantin514]

I find the overemphasis on comprehensible input odd myself. I would say that, usually, the best way to learn something, particularly something complex like a language, is to approach it from different angles. The more perspectives and "hooks" one can put into the material, the better one can obtain both an explicit and an intuitive functional knowledge of the material. I sometimes wonder if the seemingly outstanding outcomes that appear from people who claim to use pure comprehensible input, or simply never learned grammar explicitly, are because of the amount of time they spend with the language. Whether one just learns the grammar, does CI, or both, if you don't put in the hours to make the material "part of you", you won't have a good ability in the language. CI can often be more interesting than grammar-translation, leading to it being easier to put in more time. I would expect that lots of time with grammar-translation would help with language acquisition, as you will get lots of exposure to the language anyway. Though, ultimately, to have good abilities in a particular skill, you need to practice that skill. If you only read but never practise speaking, you won't be able to speak well. Maybe, yes, you can speak to an extent, but pronunciation, prosody, register matching, etc. are likely to be off significantly. Adding listening to reading will help, but still would not be enough. Krashen himself does a lot of shadowing, which involves a lot of practice producing the language. Looking from the opposite end, just because someone can have native spoken fluency in a language, does not mean they can write, or even read, it. This was true throughout most of history and is only perceived as odd now because of how much effort society has put in to increase literacy rates. I think a good analogy may be music. Many people listen to music a lot. How many of them, without ever having touched an instrument, can just pick up a guitar and play well?

[@keithkannenberg7414]

I agree with a lot of what you wrote but it's the internet so of course I'll poke a little at your final analogy. I think a lot of people can sing a song fairly well after listening to it repeatedly. Input won't help you know where to put your fingers to make those sounds. But one usually has a good idea how to do that with the vocal "instrument". Also, I think people who are very accomplished at playing a musical instrument can often reproduce what they hear on that instrument.

[@joshuacantin514]

@@keithkannenberg7414 That was why I mentioned a guitar :P Even if the person can sing the song, it doesn't mean they can play the guitar chords that are part of the music; and, this is even if they knew exactly what the chords were. And, yes, if someone is well-accomplished on an instrument, they can probably play by ear. This is like someone who already can speak a language at C1+ just paraphrasing what someone else has said. If someone has never touched that instrument before (i.e. never played it before), they can't, no matter how much they listen to the song, just play it immediately. This would be like trying to paraphrase in the target language what was said in that target language (which they never spoke before). Even knowing the words to say does not mean they can say it. Take Mandarin as an example of this last point: someone may know the written form of the reply but if they can't produce the tones, they can't say the sentence without causing either significant strain to the hearer or complete misunderstanding/lack of understanding. A language you know is like an instrument you know how to use. A language you don't know is like a new instrument (whole new sound system, new ways the muscles in the vocal tract need to move, new set of allowed ways of putting "notes" together, etc.). To extend the analogy to cover what seems like a loophole: a sister language to a language you know would be like an instrument close to what you know how to play (like harpsichord to piano, or from acoustic to electric guitar, etc.); playing it well won't take nearly as long to learn as it took for the first instrument you learned, but you likely won't play well immediately.

[@Hofer2304]

CI does not mean it is forbidden to learn vocabulary and grammar. You just don't aim to be perfect in these areas. If you understand the text, it is enough. Of course you should strive to speak as perfectly as possible. But who do I prefer: Speaker A, who speaks perfect German, but speaks very slowly, or speaker B, who speaks in normal speed, but makes many grammatical mistakes? I would prefer speaker B.

[@keithkannenberg7414]

@@joshuacantin514 I see what you're getting at now. Your analogy works pretty well.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

​@@Hofer2304 "You just don't aim to be perfect in these areas. If you understand the text, it is enough. " - well, isn't that a lazy approach? " speaker B, who speaks in normal speed, but makes many grammatical mistakes? I would prefer speaker B." - I work with four languages on a daily basis and I prefer person A, every single time, because I don't have to make corrections in my mind, guessing what the speaker had in mind and trying to make out his intentions out of grammatical mistakes that lead me nowhere. Auch, glaube, du niemals hast sprechen zu jemand wer viele sich irrt und ihn Grammatik sein sehr schrecklich :P (I speak German quite well, this was just an example of how people can speak by your definition).

[@blankb.2277]

I've been using comprehensible input for Spanish for four months (I started from scratch, I'm almost at 400 hours) along with Pimsleur and some unstructured grammar study. It's been so amazing and I can understand movies and full conversations and I can spend hours a day in it without feeling tired. Though I've had a few convos, since I love socializing, and I'm very bad at output so far. So thanks for giving me a more detailed rundown of the hypothesis I've been putting blind faith in lol.

[@dezmodium]

What was the first month like for you? I'm just starting on my Spanish comprehensible input journey. I got some Story Learning books for it and have been watching Dreaming in Spanish and Spanish with Alma videos. I also have the beginner Olly Richards course for story learning. I'm not seeing a ton of results yet and that's frustrating but it's strange because my material all gives me something I can understand through context but the words are still all so unfamiliar.

[@blankb.2277]

@@dezmodium That seems like a good list of content. In the first month, I kind of jumped around material to find what worked best but my overall routine was Dreaming Spanish, Telenovelas with subtitles (1 per day), and then the Anki most common word deck. I had the same experience where I could understand very little but could follow things pretty well. I think it provided a good foundation and comfort with the sounds. Acquiring vocab has gotten a lot easier in the past two months.

[@dezmodium]

@@blankb.2277 Thank you, that's very encouraging. 4 months and you understand a good bit of the words in normal media? That's fantastic! I'm sure in 4 more months you'll be speaking so much better. Thanks for the reply, I'll trust the process.

[@LearnEnglishwithBilly]

@@dezmodium For me, doing comprehensible input practice in combination with Rocket Spanish was the key to faster progress. I was able to "learn" the structure of the language (in still an input-heavy way since they do audio lessons) while also getting plenty of input from Dreaming Spanish. I think you could probably do just Rocket Spanish 1 and 2, and not worry about 3, and be just fine. After about two months I started speaking practice with italki and Tandem (free), and that definitely helped as well.

[@cmfrtblynmb02]

Output will follow. Try to speak Spanish to yourself. Four months is beginning. After 12 months things will change.the lock in your tongue will be gone. But just immerse yourself. Krashen talks about this. How kids listen and observe for a long time. Then they utter their very first few short sentences. You will be like that too. It is normal. Reading and listening comes far earlier than production

[@KC-vq2ot]

I think a lot of people don't realise that it takes children literal years to master their first language to the point where it is a versatile general-purpose tool Learning a language (or "acquiring" it) is nothing more than learning to recognize patterns and "error correct" to the nearest valid pattern That's how you know that I speak about my past and not your future when I say "I worked there" and that I probably meant "I have been studying English since I was 5" even though I said "I been studyinglish since-eh was 5" And it is a lot easier to master this skill when you know these patterns beforehand. So while there is a lot to be gained from "comprehensible input " at B+ levels, nothing beats a good old conjugation table and a grammar drill for a beginner

[@cidehamete]

👍

[@aaronecook]

@@cidehameteNope. You’ll lose me at grammar drills and tables. I want to SEE them to notice the patterns, but put me into that repetitive school framework and I have no desire to continue. Put me in front of a friendly human who wants to communicate about literally anything? I’m hooked.

[@Dylan-oy3ch]

I would say just about anything beats memorizing a conjugation chart. As someone who has learnt verb conjugating heavy languages with zero grammar lessons. and As someone who has also done the opposite. One is clearly more motivating, efficient, and fun. At least to my brain, I guess were all wired differently. Cheers friend

[@Philoglossos]

I feel like you're leaving out that pretty much the entire literature at this point agrees in the non efficacy of grammar translation, and that while Krashen's particular model is controversial and unproven in many ways, the importance of input is not controversial. Some people might watch this video and come away thinking that it's not settled whether 'traditional' textbooks/classes are better or worse for acquisition, or that it greatly depends on the student, and that's just not reflected anywhere in the literature. I also think the discussion of ADHD is a bit misleading - while it's true that non engaging content/study is particularly difficult for many people with ADHD, it's not as though it isn't also more difficult for neurotypical people as compared to more engaging content/study. You almost make it sound like the 'ideal' study method for someone with ADHD might be categorically different than for someone without it, and there's just no evidence that's true.

[@saintsalieri]

Every GOOD language classroom I've been in has implicitly used comprehensible input - acting, relating, drawing while narrating, etc - in addition to grammar explanation. I think the situation is that with our state of technology we can finally develop a massive corpus of material for self study (eg Dreaming Spanish) without needing a qualified teacher present. And people doing self study likely emphasize the skill of comprehension over others at first, due to being in a country where the TL isn't spoken or because it's hard to justify the cost or fear of speaking until you have a decent understanding of the TL to begin with (unless you're in a very expensive class that probably meets while your working anyway). As for the question of avoiding grammar explanations and other forms of study, I think it's moot because I can't imagine anyone interested in learning a language forgoing these things. Curiosity and need to confirm would be too strong. We also don't want to take as long to acquire as children do, and we worry more about making mistakes. But it is obviously good to have CI materials exist since they replicate the one part of classroom teaching that used to be impossible outside the classroom.

[@quantus5875]

Great post! Yes -- I thought the whole topic about ADHD was a little misleading as well.

[@AmyThePuddytat]

I am very neurodivergent and medicated for ADHD since 2019. Language learning is my special interest on which I used to hyperfocus when I should have been earning money or something. I read a list of rules (inflections, word order, conditions for allophones...), ponder them, and don’t need to hear about them again. I apply them to my production and comprehension of the language. I become more fluent over time as I put the stuff into practice many times and it becomes second nature and I’m not needing to pull the rule out of my mental textbook as much, although I do always do that too, as though a teacher is checking my work over my shoulder. My main problem is getting tongue-tied randomly or around certain combos of sounds (as much in my native English as in other languages, to be honest -- I’m just inherently not very good at speaking) and acquiring vocabulary, since there isn’t really a quick way of learning thousands of words and I get bored very easily. I pass for a native when I speak or write in French, Spanish and Italian (not so well in CA/PT/DE/NL/NB/SV/DA/ZH/JP/EO/LA) but I’ve never read more than a couple of books in any of them. In Italian in particular, I just had the hobby of translating little dialogues back and forth for 15 minutes every day for a year (when I was 16) to learn vocab and generally practice, then didn’t think about Italian again till I went to Milan when I was 23 to teach English, had a social life in Italian for a few months, then fell into a job as an Italian-English translator. I got accreditation by examination as an (EN-FR/ES/IT) interpreter in 2010 and have been doing that ever since, although with my ADHD I always find I need to have several other side-hustles or life is too monotonous. To me, learning a language is like learning to code, or draw, or sculpt, or dance: you must memorise or look up some rules/principles/techniques/moves/structures, then you use this firm theoretical foundation to create your art, which is clumsy at first. When I teach, people find the way I explain things very novel and engaging, but I don’t notice them actually learning particularly well. I’ve decided that this is because my brain works very differently from most people’s, and so when I try to make them learn like me, I’m foolishly attempting to run Linux software on a Windows machine. I should let them just download a native application from a Windows developer.

[@shrill_2165]

Sorry, there is simply no way I can understand what you've written here on my Windows brain. We are fundamentally different and the avenues by which we reach understanding have obviously completely diverged. I can imagine it now: fumbling your way through my comment desperately attempting to parse that which shall always and forever remain incomplete - but only for people like you when engaging with people like me. There is obviously no way that you could possibly understand what I might mean by my comment. Neither on this occasion nor on any other.

[@AmyThePuddytat]

@@shrill_2165 Haha, bit of an exaggeration. I just think my method isn't optimal for most students and it's a mistake for me to push it. After all, you _can_ run Linux commands on Windows using WSL, but stuff works better on the system it's designed for.

[@DominoPivot]

Oh, I can already tell you that when I'm stressed or overwhelmed, I code switch a lot more. 😁 It's like some ideas are easier to say in English than in my first language? Interesting video, I was definitely out of the loop on this topic, yours is the most academic linguistics channel I watch. And I have been diagnosed with ADHD recently, and now you got me thinking about the way I learned English versus the way I learned or rather am still learning toki pona. I guess this is as good a place as any to mention that I decided on a whim to go back to university for one semester and take a bunch of linguistics classes, and finding your videos a couple months ago was probably the final push I needed to convince me this was a passion worth investing into. I started my classes yesterday and I'm excited 😁

[@DLusby]

It seems like some people have some slightly different ideas of what comprehensible input is judging from some of the replies I skimmed here. Anyhow, no need to get into that too much... If I describe it instead as input activities where I am actively engaged with target-language material (audio or written) or spoken language with other people, then I would say that spending a lot of time on practicing understanding that is crucial for me. Will I do other things, too? Yes? Do I think that speaking helps? Yes. But if I don't put in a lot of time trying to understand material or spoken language as often as possible, I'll stagnate. A lot of Krashen's theories seem to me still as quite solid but there were always details here and there that bothered me. For example, I never liked the wording of learning versus acquiring. I think acquiring language is learning. Would we say, "No. You didn't learn to ride a bike. That isn't conscious recall of rules. You acquired it." It always seemed like unnecessary hairsplitting. I was most interested in your video when you started discussing neurological differences with regards to this topic. I don't have an opinion on this at the moment but this was an intriguing topic. I am late-diagnosed ADHD. Although ADHD some say is on a spectrum of it's own, and there can be a great deal of difference in how this condition/neurological difference can manifest from one individual to another, some of your ideas did ring true for me. I was always interested in language learning but struggled in school as taught. I can enjoy discussions about differences between the grammar of different languages, or short bits of 'pop-up' grammar for a language I'm learning, but I simply can't focus on 'typical' grammar exercises. I've been able to use flashcards in short doses, but soon I simply can't stand them anymore. Input activities, that is if...if I can keep them interesting... These are things under my control that I can turn into a daily habit. I love to talk to people when I get a chance, but interesting input is something I can do for its own sake, and it keeps the habit going with minimal organization. You can always do it with fewer things to overcome to get started. And whether it's the most efficient thing or not (even though it seems to be what works for me as a main activity), keeping a habit going like that is so important for me. Still it seems like an interesting idea that maybe... Maybe comprehensible input activities might tend to be even more important for those of us with ADHD...? I have no idea but it's an interesting idea.

[@antiquelady60]

This makes so much sense! Comprehensible input alone has never gotten me very far. The academic approach is much more satisfying to me. I have many other characteristics consistent with autism, so that makes sense. Don't worry, this is not "Jones says I should study grammar because I'm autistic". This is, "someone who studies language suggested that when choosing a language-learning method it might be helpful to consider neuro-divergence, so I'm going to do what seems to work for me even if 'experts' say it's wrong." :)

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

My case is an anecdotal evidence for Krahen's theory. I already knew English (I'm Brazilian). If someone asked me I couldn't explain how. We had English at school but it was horrible and though I was the stereotypical best student in class I only got bad grades IN ENGLISH. So it wasn't it. After knowing English I was told that for being a Brazilian and be surrounded by Spanish speaking folks I SHOULD learn Spanish. Spanish is the closest language to Portuguese, so it should be easy. I've FAILED. For TEN YEARS. Going in and out. Way mor OUT than in. Because I HATED it. I didn't want to learn Spanish. So I spent DECADES just assume that, although I see myself as a pretty smart person, I was just BAD AT LANGUAGES. And as for how I've learned English? No clue. Then I had a very serious surgery. I had to be laying down, belly up, 24/7, for 2 months straight! I desperately need something to occupy my head and I had just my laptop. I though on learning a language. How, if I was that bad? I searched on the internet. I've found Matt VS Japan and through him AJATT and Stephen Krashen. I had nothing to lose and LOTS o boring time ahead of me. I started Japanese and Italian at the same time! One of the reasons was, "Even if all of that is true if I've failed SPANISH, being BRAZILIAN how could I dela with Japanese?" If I were to fail with Japanese I'd keep trying with Italian, less of a challenge. And also because learning Spanish was an EXTREMELY BORIG experience to me. So If I got tired of one, I could try the other one and keep alternating, with other things like reading oks, playing video games and fighting my way through those 2 months immobilized, using mostly only my hands. One thig that at that stage gave credit to the theory for me was that it finally explained HOW THE HECK I HAVE LEARNED ENGLISH. I was (and still I'm) poor and couldn't afford books. But most books i wanted to download (sorry, yeah, piracy) were in English. I remember I was on this phase of wanting to learn about the ROMAN EMPIRE and there was this sweet book about it. For free. Tried to find a Portuguese version to download, couldn't. I downloaded the English version anyway and went through it even being frustrated by only understanding 5% of it. I also did martial arts, have done kung fu, for instance, wanted to learn Muay Thai and couldn't in my little town. I'd watch those tutorial videos in English over and over again trying to guess by the image the instructions, and practice it. Well, what Matt and Krashen were saying did explain how I knew English. I never tried to LEARN English, like I did with Spanish. I tried to UNDESTAND English only. I had NO GOAL of being able to speak even. But I did. So I tried. For decades (even if mostly away from Spanish) I couldn't learn Spanish and couldn't remember even how to say "hi' in Spanish. In 2 months I saw immense progress, and when I started to move about again I kept doing it. I was functional Italian in 2 years. 5 in Japanese. I'm now learning Vietnamese for 3 yeas and even started Mandarin. In one year and so i was watching and reading things in Italian FOR FUN. Not to learn. And in more than 10 years I knew nothing of Spanish. Krashen and ANKI. Do this! It works!

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

language IS NOT a SUBJECT (only for linguists, so the author here is biased). Language is a MEAN, not and END. I was NOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn ROMAN HISTORY. English was just this annoying little thing in the way. I was NOOT trying to learn English. I was trying to learn MUAY THAI. English was just in the way. However, I WAS trig to learn SPANISH. And I had NO INTEREST in Spanish whatsoever. so I've failed. So when I've found abut Krashen and Matt VS Japan and the AJATT i just applied the same principle. I was NOT trying to learn JAPANESE (the closest of it was doing ANKI, but also as a MEAN, not an end). I was trying to understand anime in Japanese. Period. And IT WOKS. It's like the difference between a physicist and a SOCCER PLAYER. A physicist can explain how in hell if the player kicks in one way the ball makes a curve. But he cannot do that! That's the linguist in many cases. A soccer player have NO IDEA what are the physics about him kicking a curved ball. But he can do it EVERY FREAKING TIME he wants to. The so called "academic way" is being a physicist. You DON'T NEED it to speak the language. It's cool, may help. But an illiterate dude can learn how to kick th ball that way without understanding the physics behind it.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@JohnnyLynnLee Tried it - doesn't work for me.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

@@marikothecheetah9342 False. It works for EVRYONE. Because we are HUMANS and that's a basic function of a HUMAN BEING. We are not that different when it comes to basic BIOLOGIVAL needs. You did it wrong. did you use ANKI for instance? Because the hardest part of this of "comprehensible input" that people don't talk as much is the word COMPREHENSIBLE. It's hard to find content that is comprehensible. and even harder to find content that is comprehensible and ENGAGING. Gr5aded readers are BORIG as hell, for instance. So, the challenge is really to make content that is cool, made BY NATIVES FOR NATIVES comprehensible! ANKI, Sentence mining, intensive reading and extensive reading. Many things there to use. And LOTS of pausing and dictionary. Using Lingq and importing content there looking up words, each and every if needed. A good E-reader with pop-up dictionary, or in your PC with copy and paste. But the GOALS is always, as Krashen states, understand WHAT'S being said, no HOW they are saying it. The "how" you acquire in a unconscious manner, mainly. If yo need some explanation, do it when you i find it I TE CONTENT. Then look it up. And move ahead.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

@@marikothecheetah9342 Because to simplify it there's only one thing you should really care about: WORD COUNTING and mileage. You need to come across around 30 thousand words and come across them over and over again, understanding them. No secret1 but easier said than done. Then you can understand the language. ad if you can understand it, you can use it. The goal is UNDESTANDING, not speaking. That's a rsult.

[@jimnicholls2911]

I would definitely be interested in a video on Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. I stumbled on an old book a long time ago based on Transformational Grammar and I really like it. I’ve looked briefly at Universal Grammar and it seems the trees have gone berserk. I would love to hear your thoughts.

[@Foxhound_Maisey]

I have come across your channel recently, and watched several videos from it, thank you so much for the work you do, I have been learning Japanese for roughly 3 months now 30-60 minutes a day every day without fail, I set myself a path of Genki 1, Genki 2, Quartet 1 & Quartet 2, I use Anki every day for vocabulary and watch some easy Japanese videos on KZbin to flesh out a separate Anki deck for the odd new words here & there, and after having a little dabble in KZbin for a while I thought everything I was doing was a waste of time and inefficient, your videos have given me a fantastic motivation boost to continue my journey, if you haven't heard this today I want you to know I am thankful for your videos.

[@pseudoNAME1979]

This is eye-opening to me. As someone with AD(H)D, I have always found the input-focused method frustrating because as soon as I find something I don't understand, I become demotivated and go and do something else. Give me a big ol' grammar book any day.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

I have similar approach. I am very analytical person, I like to take things apart (not physically, but rather in an abstract way) and figure out stuff. I like grammar because it is given, it doesn't change so quickly and it allows me to establish the way people of another language perceive time and world, subjects etc. Also, I love lists, thus I create lists of words and learn them. It's nice to mark that list with red ticks for "I know this word" :D

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

Grammar is a lot less useful than people generally think. Grammar is about making the communication more efficient and less taxing on the brain, it's ultimately using the wrong words that are a much bigger issue and that's where the comprehensible input is arguably at it's best. People don't generally decide that they want to speak with a vocabulary of 20-25k and then just go through the dictionary. That corpus will be built up over the course of a couple decades. Personally, I've been a fan of what I like to refer to as comprehensible outputs ever since I live in China. At the time, the resources for reading were pretty limited, we didn't have Pleco that could do OCR or accept our finger tracings of the character to tell us what it meant, for those of us at a very low level, the only confirmation of whether what we said was right or not was what we got in return. I remember asking for what I thought was a receipt, only to learn that a fapiao is a formal receipt related to taxes, not a normal receipt to show what you paid. Two separate things and I figured that out after just one mistake.

[@ramonek9109]

But you are supposed to understand it. It is called comprehensible input.

[@pseudoNAME1979]

@@marikothecheetah9342 Exactly. There's no better feeling than learning a verb conjugation and instantly being able to apply that to anything. Much more satisfying in my eyes than listening to hours and hours of material in a hope that eventually you'll correctly guess the grammar rules.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@pseudoNAME1979 Indeed! Also, it's easier to recognise the pattern you already know than recognising the pattern that you see at random intervals and only after a long exposure the brain goes: aaah... It's a waste of time, in my opinion, especially with languages with complicated grammar structures.

[@modalmixture]

Krashen's learning vs acquisition theory matches how I've noticed that I learn best. With any language topic, I like to explicitly learn the grammar first and practice it in an intentional, self-monitoring way. But that's the easy part - once I've learned it this way, it is still cognitively demanding to produce. So then I need to go listen to many many (many) examples of the grammar in context in order to internalize it enough that I can produce it somewhat automatically. And this learning vs acquisition mirrors my experience with theory vs muscle memory as a musician - you can learn a scale, but until you practice it enough to get it into your unconscious muscle memory, you haven't really acquired it. But I guess where I disagree with Krashen is that, since our brains are no longer very plastic as adults, you really do need to explicitly study the grammar in order to prime your acquisition and 'notice' what to listen for. Like a lot of people, I was very impressed by those old videos of Krashen teaching German using only comprehensible input. But the more I watched it, the more I realized that it works so well because he is teaching German to English speakers, and it happens that the sentence structures of these languages map onto each other very well, and also there are many cognates and similar sounding words. If he were teaching Korean, Hungarian, or Welsh, would it work so well?

[@HoraryHellfire]

_" If he were teaching Korean, Hungarian, or Welsh, would it work so well?"_ Yes and no. Yes, it will work well. But not, because it won't work as well. This is because the more different a language is, the more input is required to reach "X" proficiency level. In order to understand German as an English speaker, your starting point is NOT zero. English is similar to German that it is naturally more comprehensible due to said similarities. To apply to a language like Japanese or Mandarin (Level 5 language to a native English speaker), his speech should be more simplistic than what he uses as an example in German. Slower paced, too. But it does work well. The channel "Comprehensible Japanese" has some good ones. The one titled "Face 顔 - Complete Beginner Japanese 日本語超初心者" is the closest you'll get to Krashen's German example. I think it's even better than Krashen's because the slower speech, and the clearer context than Krashen, imo.

[@Blank-qf6ui]

An episode about dyslexia and language acquisition would be appreciated at least on my end

[@derpauleglot9772]

I think the learner's native language is a huge factor as well. A monolingual German speaker could probably get a half-decent level in Dutch just by reading and listening a lot, English would already be more difficult. I'm studying Japanese at the moment and I had to learn a lot of grammar and vocab to understand, well, anything. *Nothing* is compelling and comprehensible when you start learning Japanese^^ Combining studying, practicing and input is probably the best way to learn any language though.

[@saidecia]

Since I'm a Linguistics major and love analyzing a language's phonology, syntax etc., it seems like I learn the best by looking at the language from a linguistic point of view. For example, I'd rather read a paper that explains the exact phonology of a language rather than reading an online article that attempts to approximate the sounds to English. This, of course, would not work with everyone since it probably requires a bit of experience in the Linguistics field, but this method seems to be the way I learn a language the quickest, at least in the early stages.

[@DoughBrain]

Lol, I was wondering why I was able to stick to this method better than any of the other ones I’ve tried. I barely understand what people are saying in English so not completely understanding everything in my target languages never bothers me as long as it’s fun. I love this way of learning, but completely understand that it’s not for everyone. 😂

[@DavidHWatson]

Is there any research on different learning approaches and the efficacy or speed at which a learner mentally goes from formulating ideas in their native language to formulating them in their target language? In other words, do different learning approaches influence how long it takes to go from "translating in your head" to "thinking directly".

[@franzim6668]

Thank you for this in-depth video on the comprehensible input theory! I personally think the best way to learn is a combination from "classic" methods and comprehensible input. I think the comprehensible input REALLY shines when it is added to "years of language learning in school that didn't quite seem to work that well". At least that's what my persona experience and the comments I see online suggest. You see a lot of people in the comments praising Krashens theory, saying, "I studied language X for Z years, and never really learned it. Now I studied with his method for [very short amount of time] and I am fluent!" I had a similar experience with learning English. I had studied English for probably 6 years+ in school, and my English still was on a level where I had trouble to express myself or even read books for native speakers. Then I signed up for more advanced English classes and had a not-so-great teacher, so I realized I'd have to put in some serious amount of self-study if I wanted to do well on the final examen. So I started to watch a bunch of English TV and started to read for pleasure in English as well. My English level skyrocketed, and I did exceptionally well on the final examen. On the other hand, learning primarily with comprehensible input doesn't seem to be NEAR as effective - at least for me. Around the same time, I also started to learn Spanish in school. I was doing okay, but only had lessons for two or three years before I was done with school, so my level was still very basic, I believe A2. Fast-forward ten years and I thought, "well, it would be cool to brush up on my Spanish, wouldn't it?". But "real learning" is hard, right? So after two months of "actual" self-study, I bought my first Spanish book and since then, pretty much all my self-study has been reading and listening to audiobooks. That was two years ago. What I will say is that I have gotten WAY better at understanding the spoken language, and my passive vocabulary has improved massively. However, I am barely able to express even the most basic things in Spanish (even in writing, let alone speaking). My active vocabulary is minute, and I still have pretty much no idea about grammar. To give some perspective about the amount of hours I have put in during the last two years: I have read/listened to 18 books during that time, including beasts like the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter 1-5 (volume 5 alone consists of 30+ hours audio!), as well as listening to podcasts and watching youtube videos in Spanish. I also started TV series a few times, but they were always too hard to follow, so I dropped them and went back to books. That being said: Do I think comprehensible input is effective? In combination with structured learning: Yes, very! On its own: Not exactly. Do I think that I, a self-learner with no external motivation to learn another language, would have made better progress with the "classic" approach to language learning? Honestly, I don't think so, because I probably would have stopped studying altogether. That being said, I am inclined to believe that, moving forward, I would hugely benefit from studying in a more structured manner -- just as I did the other way around when I was learning English! That is all very anecdotic of course, but thanks for coming to my TED talk, anyway!

[@chaddavidson3742]

I wonder if KZbinrs also love Krashen bc that is basically the only thing KZbin can give--comprehensible input--it cannot actually in-real-time tell me when I say something wrong, how I said it wrong, etc., etc. (although KZbinrs can promote tutoring websites, etc. that can provide more). Also, a video on what KZbinrs get wrong about Chomsky would be awesome!!!

[@strong_slav]

There are a ton of KZbin channels that teach grammar though, and that doesn't mesh with Krashen's hypotheses.

[@chaddavidson3742]

True! Hence, those channels don't usually promote comprehensible input like the other channels@@strong_slav

[@languagejones6784]

@Alesti5 doesn’t stop people from trying. Like Story Learning, for example

[@mrk7397]

​@@languagejones6784 Aah. Story Learning. The Turkish course is the perfect antidote to insomnia.

[@SiKedek]

@@languagejones6784 Throwing shade at OR, I see. 😝

[@saulgoodmanbodypillow]

Your last section about language learning strategies and neurodiversity was really interesting. I'm autistic, with language learning as one of my special interests, and, for pretty much every language I've delved into, studying grammar, analysing sentences and picking up patterns have been THE most crucial parts of learning, followed by vocabulary drills. I can't really pick up much from auditory input unless I have a good grasp of the grammatical structures used, and I struggle a lot more with the social/communicational side of language than with grammar, pronunciation or memorising vocabulary. This brings me to language acquisition -- according to my parents, I went from not saying a single word to speaking with near-perfect grammar and pronunciation at around 15 months old, but it was extremely challenging for me to have a conversation that didn't consist of just one-sidedly stating facts about things I was interested in (it's still challenging now, even with support and years of therapy). I don't personally know any other people who went through this kind of development, even though I'm sure they're out there, and I would love to see a large-scale study about language learning/acquisition and autism.

[@joshuasims5421]

Great video. I find that learning and acquisition are not at all dichotomous, but instead support each other. Explicit study can help with a huge deal of important vocab and structure knowledge, even though you'll indeed need a great deal of input in order to obtain a high degree of competence.

[@LeoListening]

EFL teacher here: I've seen grammar-translation work, I've seen CI work, I've even seen the Silent Way work incredibly well (definitely out of fashion these days). When I studied TESOL at uni, we got an overview of the different methods and I think many teachers do a bit of mixing and matching. In terms of my language learning I dabbled in a bit of Norwegian recently via "CI" and found it very boring, although I can see how it's helpful for listening and pronunciation. I can go a lot faster by explicitly learning some grammar rules/vocab. But I am one of the weirdos who learned languages quite well with crappy school methods. And then we go onto teach languages and perpetuate the cycle! Where input has worked for me is when I already had a pretty good grasp of the language. But I do wish I'd known more about input at school - I would have done more of it alongside memorising conjugations. And I'm sure I would have become more fluent faster (fluenter faster?). The neurodivergent angle is interesting. I consider myself HSP and there are some interesting overlaps with ADHD and ASD. The middle of the venn diagram (in my mind) is HSPs, ADHDers, and ASDers having a meltdown in the supermarket yoghurt isle due to too many choices, colours and neon lights! Anyway, I bring this up because I studied linguistics at uni along with French and TESOL. At school, I enjoyed learning language for the sake of language mostly although it was fun to talk to people too when the time came. So I'm intrigued by this idea of autism and academic linguistics. But maybe I enjoyed languages at school too because I was good at them, especially French. Nothing like being good at something to motivate you, well me at least!

[@mister_betechkin]

I have really liked comprehensible input stuff, but I've only ever tried it with languages I've already studied in classroom settings (Spanish, German, and Russian). My already-existing familiarity with either basic or intermediate-level grammar means that comprehensible input has worked pretty well to try acquiring new vocab or refreshing my language skills when I'm about to go traveling. Didn't stop me from buying a Spanish grammar textbook a couple weeks ago, though. I would love to start a new language in the next year or two, but I think I would start out with more intense grammar study before anything else.

[@RonaldBradycptgmpy]

This is just my personal experience, so take this with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to say that in my observation, both as a language, tutor, and a student of languages, this is when it works best… When you have a foundational familiarity with the language and are able to Consciously and subconsciously I guess? Map what you already know onto what you’re listening to, and then gradually expand. I think parts of the KZbin community have kind of distorted his original theory. Turning it into something he probably never intended lol. I hope you’re having a great day and having fun learning languages.

[@zerosysko]

Yeah, I've used Assimil (which is light on grammar) for Japanese before and liked it, but if I hadn't already had a good grasp of the grammar I would have become frustrated. It's hard for me to focus on the message if the basic structures are tripping me up and distracting my focus. Even just having a vague familiarity helps a lot. But I have a low tolerance for ambiguity and Japanese is very different from from English (and a high context language). I'm also apparently one of those weirdos who just loves grammar, so reading tomes on the subject is not dry or boring for me. It's like reading spell formulas that make the language come alive, or like I'm breaking a secret code. To me, words without grammar are boring and inert. I have to actively stop myself from "studying" a language (esp. grammar) too much and force myself to practice/use it.

[@RonaldBradycptgmpy]

@@zerosysko I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’m working on Japanese right now and it is very different. Low ambiguity tolerance is definitely difficult. When Japanese is highly context dependent where the context is not always stated. However, liking grammar isn’t all that weird. I actually really like studying grammar, but also have a decent tolerance for ambiguity so the grammar study actually in riches whatever immersion type stuff I’m doing in Japanese. The thing about Japanese grammar is that there’s not always a one-to-one translation for a given structure the way that a lot of textbooks presented versus when you hear it out in the wild. That’s the only thing to keep in mind. But there are definitely ways for you to work through that if that’s something you’re still doing. Best of luck!

[@RonaldBradycptgmpy]

@@zerosysko I also wanted to ask you what you might be using now, since you found assimil didn’t really fit with your personal preference for how you learn

[@stefanhansen5882]

Bravo! Glad I found you channel. It's a wonderful antidote to all the "polyglot linguists" (who are not linguists). I've been a language coach for almost ten years, and Krashen's comprehensible input seems overly simplistic to me.

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

I think lot's of comprehensible input is a huge part of how most of us who grow up here in Norway and other places where we generally use subtitles for all foreign movies pick up English. I do vaguely remember a time before I knew English in kindergarten; and I do remember getting taught English in school at age 8 (or something) and finding it really boring (I have ADHD, btw) but also very easy. But I had probably started acquiring English through watching subtitled English that my parents were watching. And after all, quite a lot of basic grammar and vocabulary is closely related and similar to Norwegian; so even without any preparation any Norwegian speaker will understand a bit of English through pure similarity. And once you can read subtitles you understand what is being said through the subtitles, and after a while you stop reading everything and only look at the subtitles when it's a new word (or today; mostly when the audio is terribly mixed and the actors are mumbling as apparently is the fashion these days).

[@cidehamete]

Is Norwegian similar to English? I really doubt that is correct. 🤔

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

@@cidehamete Yes, they are both germanic languages, and English borrowed a lot of vocabulary from Old Norse in the Viking age. It's not very superficially similar, especially not in spelling; but if you look past the great vowel shift and French loan words, there's a deep "genetic" similarity between all the Germanic languages including English. Unlike more distantly related languages such as comparing Germanic languages to Romance languages; you can usually find single word translations for 90% of the words, and a direct word for word translation mostly makes sense, at worst it sounds a bit old fashioned or "poetic". But English and any Scandinavian language (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, which could be seen as just 3 major groupings of a single dialect continuum) also have basically the same fixed word order with very few exceptions. The main exceptions I can think of is the do-construction in English which we don't have, were English will say "Do you have any wool?" we say "Har du noe ull?" (which word for word is "Have you any wool?", which interestingly is exactly how that question is phrased in the song, and is used in some English dialects too); and we strongly prefer compound words over of-constructions: English prefer "house of cards" while the literal translation "hus av kort" would be understandable (though sounding foreign) we prefer "korthus" i.e. "cardhouse". Even when English usually prefer a French loan word, there's usually also some lesser used synonym that has a cognate in Scandinavian; and we have also borrowed a lot of French/Latin terms which we also use as less frequent synonyms. English have "horrible" from French/Latin and we can also use the loan word "horribel" but we prefer "grusom" which is a cognate to "gruesome". Maybe I consciously notice more of these since I'm a bit of a language nerd, but I'm sure it makes learning English much easier for us than for speakers of less closely related languages.

[@iknowyouwanttofly]

Same. But adhd+ dyslexia. I did not only have english lessons in scholl I also had french spanish and german. I did not learn to understand them at all. 😅 My english is far from perfect and alot worse than the average in sweden , but alot better than not understanding anything at all.

[@iknowyouwanttofly]

What I learned in school was that I was to dumb to learn languages. But now I am slowly picking up esperanto 🤷💪

[@teddy41ful]

Thanks for this video. I was diagnosed with ADD in high school and really struggled with languages throughout high school. My school actually gave me a waiver from having to complete my 3 year language requirement, which was very rare as it was a graduation requirement. Ironically my father spoke fluent Mandarin as a second language, while I remained hopeless throughout adulthood. I've recently started working on Mandarin myself and videos like this are helpful in trying to devise successful strategies that will help me learn and avoid all the frustration I've encountered in the past.

[@Vincent89297]

I have ADD and have had great success so far learning Japanese using comprehensible input. Kinda cool to realize I might have stumbled upon a learning style that's tailor made for me. I've never learned a language to a high level using a structured approach, and I've been wondering about a certain aspect of languages that doesn't seem to be taken into account with that approach. There seem to be countless little set phrases and details present in languages which are almost invisible to native speakers until someone makes a mistake with them, at which point it jumps out as sounding weird. Personally I simply come across those details on a daily basis and when I see people discussing them on Reddit I can only say that the correct wording 'feels' correct to me, even though I've never consciously given it thought. It seems to me that using a structured/grammar heavy approach you might be able to produce sentences that are technically grammatically correct, but you'll easily overlook set phrases and details that make your speech sound unnatural or even incomprehensible. How does a structured approach deal with this? To me the amount of information required to speak a language in a natural way simply seems too much to process consciously one by one. If you're looking for examples, I think Matt VS Japan has a video that touches on this problem titled "Language Isn't Math".

[@japanese2811]

What comprehensible input do you use for Japanese, if I may ask?

[@Vincent89297]

I started with slice of life anime to build a basic vocabulary, then transitioned more to audiobooks and podcasts to strengthen my listening skills. I currently just watch and read whatever I feel like since I'm not in a hurry to reach fluency. @@japanese2811

[@captainpugwash2317]

Hard language to learn ,all the best in your Japanese learning journey 👍👍👍

[@Vincent89297]

@@japanese2811Started with simple anime, eventually moving on to podcasts and light novels. I currently spend almost all of my time listening to audiobooks, which I mainly focus on just because I like them.

[@Vincent89297]

@@captainpugwash2317Thanks!

[@SamothIorio]

Great video as usual! Very tactful, considering how the language learning community might get worked up over discussions about the effectiveness of Krashen's theory. I learned quite a lot about the "rock star of SLA" in college. What I got is that his ideas are reasonable in principle, but somewhat short-sighted and not really testable in practice. One teacher even went as far as to say that it is a bit academically irresponsible to get his ideas out so effectively without acknowledging the shortcomings of his theory. That, and the affective filter is a bit hard to describe in scientific terms. I've been following your channel for a while (although not interacting much), and I'd love to see a deeper dive into the topic, and basically all the SLA topics you mentioned! I know that field is a bit of its own thing, but I'd love to know your opinion (as somebody who is acquainted with the science in 2024) on topics such as whether there is evidence for an order and sequence of acquisition in L2, that other sequence of acquisition (going from non-verbal responses to single words, single clauses, and then more articulate sentences linking multiple clauses), whether interleaving applies to the study of a language, and how neurodiversity might impact language acquisition. Oh, and I'd love to hear what you thing about the most recent theories for language acquisition competing with UG! In any case, I'll try to watch your streams on how you learn Persian for now.

[@idontunderstandjokes8308]

i have a very good question, is that hat cgi or it just looks like that normally?

[@ncpolley]

1. Absolutely want a breakdown of Chomsky, if you could. The way I understand Chomsky's theory in my own words is: -Humans have an innate sense of Grammar (the potential of all possible real human grammars) -This Grammar may be expressed as grammar (of any given language) -Because of this, humans can intuitively recognize the real grammar of any given language they acquire (not necessarily learn) because any specific grammar will be an expression of the many potential grammars we already "know." -basically, we dont have to build an awareness of a grammar map from scratch, we have premade puzzle pieces we can assemble together that can create that map for us much faster. My understanding is that Chomsky attempted to define the limits of this hypothetical grammar but failed because he didnt account for real world language diversity. 2. When I was in High School, I remember doing a teach-yourself latin workbook that basically just taught me one word at a time, gave a simple explanation, and put it into a sentence. You then had to translate 10-20 sentences. Genuinely one of the best experiences Ive ever had with language learning. Ive never forgotten those 100 words, and the basic grammar of a latin sentence (SOV) was etched into my head. I'm here watching this now because of it.

[@JM-kj3dx]

as a hopefully polyglot with combined type ADHD (diagnosed by a psychiatrist) this explains so much of why i struggled to stick to and use old-timey, neurotypical methods honestly, Stephen Krashen's ideas and all the methods that sprung up from them have worked wonders for me, I'm working on getting my 6th language to B1 right now.

[@polymath6475]

I'm confused. how does one get diagnosed? you said a psychiatrist did it, which begs my question, what prompted you to see the psychiatrist? is it because you thought you might have it, or that you wanted a diagnosis. in my busy life I cannot fathom how or when I would prioritise going to see a psychiatrist over such a thing. the second question is, now that you have this diagnosis, what do you do with it? is it an advantage or disadvantage? is it a source of pride or shame? I'm honestly confused, but seriously curious too, because all of this jargon started to “suddenly appear” sometime after I was 30yo and I've yet to meet somebody in real life like this.

[@JM-kj3dx]

@@polymath6475 well it started online, I was told I was diagnosed Autism as a child years after the diagnosis, and that got me to do some research, that then just made me want to look more into the topic, and I ended up mostly stumbling across ADHD content (How to ADHD, ADHD_love, etc) and I found that most of what they were saying across tens of videos applied to me then remembered that a psychiatrist had seen ADHD symptoms in my sister, so I asked my mom about it and she told me that she did have ADD (internalized ADHD) so I brought it up with my therapist, who agreed and from there I asked my mom to take me that psychiatrist who thought my sister had it and gave her medication for it keep in mind that all of this took months from I think May of 2023 to December 2023, and I'm working on getting an official diagnosis with that same psychiatrist now and I'm sorry I got you confused, but I said I have a diagnosis for simplicity's sake but I am still sure that i do have ADHD as to whether it has a positive or negative effect on my life I'd say it depends on the context, it makes me good at learning and getting deep into topics fast, tho I do tend to abandon them after a while, in terms of academics it makes them worse because of, forgetfulness (for example for getting there was homework), executive dysfunction (struggling to do what I need to do and breaking down tasks effectively, avoiding overwhelm, procrastination), in terms of social relationships, it would be generally more of an advantage if there wasn't anxiety and masking (hiding one's natural state of being to socially accepted or mirroring other people's behavior or personality to be accepted)

[@annas3059]

There are lots of videos on KZbin about ADHD, eg How to ADHD. How you get diagnosed depends a lot on what country you're in

[@Simon-ts9fu]

It seems underestimated how much raw input is actually needed to even exemplify everything that is to be learned. A normal textbook cannot even begin to cover what you really need. Sure, a small dictionary and a grammar might seem like all you theoretically need to learn a language, but a language is so much more than this. Even if you had a perfect memory you would still need millions of words of input to cover everything that a C1 reader knows. So it’s not just that comprehensible input is a better way, in the end it is the only way. Glossaries and grammar may be useful to quickly reach an elementary level, but they absolutely cannot take you to an advanced level by themselves, and ultimately they are not necessary.

[@paulwalther5237]

I’ve felt I should read his theory with all the hype it would be good to know from the horse’s mouth what’s up. My first foreign language I learned was German around age 21. I learned mostly from reading books and listening to a radio channel on the internet. I had a small grammar book I flipped through once in a while and found this helpful but mostly I did immersion. No flash cards although I wrote down words in a notebook for a couple years without studying them at all. I think that experience matched theory well? I didn’t get native speech or pronunciation but I was very happy with my German for someone who never lived in Germany and had no German friends. Are 34 I started learning Japanese. This hodgepodge of reading listening and skimming a grammar book didn’t work. I had to take formal classes. I used tons of flash cards and Anki. After six years or so I think I was ok at speaking. It took a lot of awkward conversations to get there and moving to Japan. I have no idea how his theories applied to my Japanese learning experience.

[@bobboberson8297]

The US state department trains diplomats for 900 hours in german but 2200 hours in japanese so if anything it would be surprising if you experienced any other outcomes. Japanese is just very difficult for english speakers

[@derpauleglot9772]

@@bobboberson8297 It used to be 750 hours, I wonder why German got "promoted". I'm also surprised that Romanian and Portuguese are apparently easier than Spanish: www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ At any rate, as a German teacher and Japanese learner, I can confirm that learning Japanese (including reading and writing) takes *much* longer.

[@bryan143]

I'd love to see more on Chomsky. This video (on Krashen) is excellent. When I see too many true believers I get skeptical. There are so many ideas here worthy of their own video.

[@TransPlantTransLate147]

I tend to find myself moving back and forth between wide comprehensible and compelling input, then falling back to studying structure and memorizing more difficult vocabulary, then back to the comprehensible input. I do think the general idea of Krashen's hypotheses are spot on in that they are necessary and sufficient conditions, *but*, I think that on their own they can actually take awhile to set in. Grammar study and vocabulary memorization, along with practice producing output and especially speech, can speed up language acquisition by a lot. And of course, you do have to practice what you want to get better at.

[@rebeccahicks2392]

Exactly. And it can depend on the language too---for instance, one of the languages I'm working on is Ancient Greek, and I have to focus on grammar because it's very different from English and not knowing the different grammar means not understanding. With Italian I could move on quickly to listening and reading, but part of that was that the grammar was already very close to English. And also, there's a difference between a dead language that you want to read philosophy or theology in, and a currently-spoken one that you want to have everyday conversations in.

[@flightwithtools]

STRATEGIES 1. Learn some of target language, enough to make a few sentences, then get drunk with people who speak target language (advice from someone who had learned Chinese in China. Bennett said get drunk and talk fast) 2. I also implement the strategy of Be Baby. So instead of trying to communicate at the level of my thoughts, I just babble or repeat words over and over, etc. Also read kids books with native target language speakers as if they were an adult helping a kid learn to read. 3. Maybe it is taken as a given, but motivation to communicate with other human beings is missing from at home study strategies. And I don't mean just talking to people who speak target language but be required to learn it on some level to get by.

[@bricklebox2099]

First time hearing about language acquisition and ADHDers... I have Inattentive-type ADHD and have acquired levels of fluency in both French and Welsh, mostly from exposure and not so much from structured learning. Thank you for introducing me to this theory, Imma bout ta head down a rabbit hole for sure

[@rebekahblesi7526]

This is a really good explanation-I had no idea how nuanced the whole theory was. Now that I know more, it explains a lot about my language learning journey-both my successes and my failures! Thank you for this!

[@joshuacantin514]

I would love to hear more about Noam Chomsky's theories!

[@angelareed225]

I have so many thoughts about this i almost dont know where to start!! Thanks so much for putting this together, especially the asterisk at the very end! I have always been compelled by the comprehensible input idea but had no idea about the rest of the nuance or prerequisite assumptions. Even in the absence of its intended context, it seemed highly plausible because it felt so profoundly intuitive. After all, how does anyone ever learn a first language? Nobody's mom was reading a bedtime story out of the dictionary, balancing a merriam webster in one hand and rocking the crib with the other... Likewise, vocabulary alone =/= a language, and yet, nobody's mom was rocking them to sleep crooning a lullaby about verb agreement. Or, at least, I don't think anyone reasonable is arguing this is how kids actually internalize the fundamental rules of grammar. Presumably, most native english speakers are reasonably proficient at speaking long before taking our first english class. All of this feels pretty self-evident. Comprehensible input also neatly reflects my personal experience of studying 2nd, 3rd, etc languages, success and failures alike... but then again, looking back on all the approaches and conventional wisdom I have tried out and come to regard as either helpful or unhelpful, not to mention my barometer for what defines a "success" in the first place... as much as my language learning toolbox has been lovingly and painstakingly curated at great expense of time over many many years, there still can be absolutely no question whatsoever that any cluster of assumptions and guiding principles I may have eventually arrived at will have been profoundly informed by the prevailing influence of 30 years spent with undiagnosed, unsuspected adhd. It's been such an overwhelmingly pervasive and simultaneously invisible force in my life for so long that even now, after diagnosis and treatment, I'll probably never be able to unravel that knot completely, or conceptualize the extent to which I've just been unwittingly collecting adaptive strategies to self-accommodate for my entire life, like building a fortress out of toothpicks. And you mean to tell me not only has everyone else been working with popsicle sticks this whole time, but also hot glue guns...? Dude, it's been thirty years! Even if you give me my very first popsicle stick today, a hot glue gun and an apology, the fact remains that at this point, I have to figure out where you would even put a popsicle stick in a toothpick castle. Like, I guess for a start I could shore up the drawbridge, or something... I should quit while I'm ahead before this metaphor gets away from me, but you get the idea. I already built a whole life on this foundation. It's never too late to improve things, incorporate new and better tools and materials, but I can't exactly start over after this long. Behind my popsicle facade there will always be toothpick studs and joists. Anyway, somehow, none of that makes me any less fascinated with how brains work, how language works, how adhd works, and always wanting to learn more!!! If anything, it just pours gasoline on the fire that was already lit. I hope it's a topic you'll continue to make content on. Thanks so much for this :)

[@skullclutter953]

I disagree that children don't get instruction when they're first learning language. Parents are constantly demonstrating, correcting and instructing their children in language from the moment they start making their first sounds.

[@HoraryHellfire]

For the language ability that children have, they are corrected only on a FRACTION of the stuff they say. Especially as sentences get more complex.

[@victoriab8186]

The separation of learning and acquisition has been something I’ve been thinking about lately. In school, I was better than average at languages but found it hard to concentrate on and I found it really hard to constantly be getting stuff wrong. It took so much time to be able to acquire enough language to actually be useful that I essentially gave up. In my university literature degree, I did one semester on Old Norse (specifically Icelandic) literature, where we did two hours a week studying literature in English translation, and one hour a week of language classes, for 11 or 12 weeks. By the end of it, we had an exam on translating a short passage and analysing grammar, and (for a larger portion of the grade) an essay about a text we had studied in translation, but in which we were expected to quote from in the original Norse, analysing the Norse text rather than the translation. And by the end of the semester, I could do it. I had only truly ‘acquired’ a very small amount of vocabulary, but understood enough about how the language worked to be able to figure my way through with a dictionary. It was incredibly rewarding to find that even if I hadn’t spent hundreds of hours on memorising vocabulary and grammar, if I understand how the language is/was structured, I can engage with it in a meaningful way. When I learnt languages in school, dictionaries were treated as cheating. But now I understand that there are different ways of engaging with a language, and different modes of engagement require different focuses to learning. I might not be able to talk about killing anyone in Old Norse, but give me a dictionary and I can read about someone else doing a whole lot of killing, and give me a translation that I can use to find my way around the text and pick out the important sections and I can write an essay on the cultural construction of community/law relationships that does significant analysis of the original language. And that’s a whole lot more than I was ever able to do with the languages I spent years learning for acquisition in school. It depends what you want to do with the language, but having had this experience with Norse, I wish that the ability to work with a language with aids was more recognised as useful im addition to productive fluency.

[@thevilmoron]

As an autistic linguistics grad student, I've always been super turned off by the trend of rejecting explicit instruction and wanting to mimic 'natural' language acquisition. It's kind of a fad, not always practical, and I have also found more traditional models (e.g. grammar translation) to be really helpful for me in learning new languages.

[@saulgoodmanbodypillow]

Same here! I'm also turned off by the fact that some (obviously not all) of the people pushing the hardest against learning any sort of grammar seem to either mistake basic conversational ability for fluency or deliberately misrepresent it as fluency in order to sell books/courses.

[@DavidJames-v1y]

7:42 He definitely seems, at times, to endorse the translation and lookup. For example, he recommends using nativetarget language dictionaries, rather than single language dictionaries (with the entry words and definitions all in the target language).

[@LucTaylor]

Is there a different video of the effect on autism on language acquisition?

[@stevewalsh5479]

Thought provoking and worthy of a sub. Watching my grandchildren develop language skills renewed my interest in learning a new language well into my senior years. Their ability to form complex sentence structures, with near perfect grammar by 3 or 4 amazed me. Children though, are not hampered by translation as adults are. It's a challenge for me as an adult thinking in one language and attempting to make translations of vocabulary and word order on the fly.

[@DonkeyPopsicle]

Definitely think you're on to something with the ADHD digression; comprehensible input is practice, and if you've finally found a way that gets you to practice (and, naturally, you improve from practice), then it will seem revelatory. And there will be quasi-spaced repetition in there too, since familiar and novel words will come up at irregular intervals (and without the negative affect of your Anki deck telling you how many cards you have to review today).

[@Nicolethelinguaphile]

I agree with Krashen. Language acquisition is the most natural way to become good at a language. But, it takes a lot of time. I have been experimenting with this. Doing a lot of listening . But also, I am looking up words because the input I prefer, that is engaging, is not understandable to me. Yet. But, I am willing to look up the words because I want to understand the series I watch in Burmese. I am starting to understand bits and pieces as I get used to the rhythm of natural speech. But, I am also drawing on 7 years of learning grammar here and there. It is a bit of a messy process depending on the language and how different it is from your mother tongue. I can relate to adhd tendencies. I don’t have very much patience for textbooks. The language needs to live in my everyday life in order for me to stay interested. Connection to people is even better. Like Krashen, I also learned quite a bit of Ethiopian Amharic from new friends I made when I moved to a new city. I love learning languages dynamically.

[@jillvslangs]

Huge fan (and successful "user") of language learning based on Krashens Language Acquisition Theory (aka using massive amounts of interest based comprehensible input) over here. I also happen to have rampant ADHD which I got (finally) diagnosed with only in April last year (2023). I found this video incredibly interesting and slightly mind-blowing because this makes perfect sense to me. It just fits. The coffee story is indeed textbook ADHD (though we may never know if your suspicion is correct) hahaha I love it. XD Anywho, what you say here fits not only with my personal experiences (I have my own version of using CI that involves mostly ridiculous amounts of listening material rather than reading) but also my "philosophy" of giving language learning advice. I know that the massive CI method works for ME specifically (and since my diagnosis and hyperfocus deep-dive into everything ADHD I also know WHY it works for me) but as much as I'm a fan of "the Krashen way" I've always been of the opinion that each individual language learner needs to go on a journey of self discovery in the sense that they need to figure out what works best for THEM specifically. And I've never fallen into this weirdo camp of people who say "throw all other methods out the window! this is the only way!" because this intuitively just always felt wrong. I know from experience as well as fellow language learning enthusiast anecdotal evidence that different things work better or worse for different people AS WELL as different languages, and, like you said in a different video, different language learning goals (comprehension? conversation? academics?). For example: Firstly, I'm more interested in consuming media in the various languages I study and speaking is secondary for me, so long "silent periods" as it's often called in the CI community, where you mainly work on your comprehension and not on production, is perfectly fine with me. Hence no speaking or writing practice. Secondly, my approach will change depending on the language. In my Korean journey so far I looked at a LOT of grammar because A. I find it fascinating and B. it's so far removed from any of the languages I already speak that it was necessary to get to grips with at least basic grammar first in order to understand even the most basic input. It took me 2 years to get to lower intermediate (ish) comprehension in Korean, and I honestly don't think it's possible to "Acquire" Korean without at least looking up the grammar occasionally, and helping your brain figure out those patterns. I then burned out on Koran a bit and took a break to start Spanish. For Spanish, I never once looked at a grammar explanation (and likely never will) because I'm already fluent in French, so I went straight into massive amounts of input (lots of it translated and dubbed btw so that works JUST fine. I know there's lots of weirdo "purists" out there in the Input learning community who are super against anything translated, which is just stupid in my opinion but whatever) and I reached incredibly high comprehension in only 5 months with literally no other studying of any kind. Only Audiobooks, KZbin videos and occasional reading or reading along to the audiobook. I still can't speak much (duh) but I can understand native speed youtube videos in a lot of Spanish varieties with no problems, pretty much any audiobook (as long as it's not highly academic, scientific, or otherwise specialised), reading is no problem either and short written conversation (aka twitter) is also no issue. (I'm quite honestly still a little freaked out by how fast that happened. haha) I took a single italkie conversational lesson just to test the "output comes on its own with enough input" theory and though I have an atrocious Spanish and thick accent, I (and my teacher after I told her this was my first time EVER speaking) were surprised by how much (though broken) Spanish I could produce, and how much very specific vocabulary I used, without ever having practiced output AT ALL. So there's sooome truth to this "output will come automatically" thing, but I still think you gotta practice if you want to speak well. (duh) I still believe (with zero scientific evidence but plenty of anecdotal, admittedly potentially biased, evidence) that no matter the "methods" you end up using, massive exposure to/consumption of your TL is a must. It just makes sense, no matter how you look at it. exposing yourself to lots of the language whether that's reading or listening, is natural spaced repetition essentially. I mean even from my (admittedly limited and amateurish) knowledge of cognitive neuroscience it makes sense, given that our brains are basically incredibly sophisticated pattern recognition machines. You gotta give it enough data to work with. Anywho sorry this got a bit rambly and thought-vomity but HO BOI was that interesting! Lots of food for thought :D And you made me see a new connection I never realised! yay! Today I learned. :) Thank you for that. And thank you also, just in general for all your amazing content, I come back every now and then to binge a few videos, especially now that I've also fallen head first into the endless rabbit hole that is Linguistics in general. (What an ADHD thing to do to go from language learning hobbyist to deciding to start a bachelor in Linguistics at the age of 36, with a full time job in a completely unrelated field and no plans whatsoever of making a career switch.... ) Toodles!

[@alexandriatempest]

I'm following on the Acquisition model using LingQ, and I'm finding that I am making progress. I'm actually remembering and understanding bits of my target language more now than I have on other tries. It's nice actually. I haven't started studying grammar, seriously, but when I have a question about what I'm seeing, I can look it up and it makes sense. It's more connective. I do have ADHD-I though, which kinda negates any Special Interest bonuses I get for being on the spectrum.

[@evanpartidas4624]

I hate when people say children aren't taught grammar, they "just acquire it" magically. Children ARE taught grammar repeatedly! You mentioned parallel structure, something I have distinct memory of being taught in a classroom by my English teacher at a young age. Also things like double negation get taught, which many native English speakers "get wrong" all the time. Acquisition isn't the whole story, Americans spend 13 years of their life (forced into) studying grammar, reading books, doing vocabulary tests. To say we all just acquired the language is ludicrous. YOU have to actively try to make up for those 13 or however many years of education a native speaker got if your goal is to speak like a native.

[@khyberw]

The difference is that native speakers who go to school have already acquired most of the language before they start explicitly learning rules. I teach both foreign language and also English grammar to native English speakers at elementary and middle school level. My experience has been that most native English speakers infinitely understand the rules, even if they can’t explain them. That said explicit grammar instruction does help ‘polish’ language that’s already been acquired. This is also true for students who’s native language is not English, although they are likely to make more mistakes. But they can still converse with me in English without having any explicit grammar knowledge.

[@EpicGamer-ye4nr]

How do you think people learned the correct grammar of their native language before public schools?

[@evanpartidas4624]

​@@EpicGamer-ye4nr People who didn't/don't get schooling don't speak following the grammar rules of standard English. Linguists (including Dr. Jones in prior videos) argue that other grammars are not incorrect. I won't dispute that. My original statement needs that clarification. Most of us speak standard English. The rules of standard English are taught in schools and (I'd argue based off of anecdotal experience, but don't have proof) many kids do NOT just know them growing up. That includes me, too.

[@randerhaywood1163]

We definitely want that Universal Grammar video.

[@camelbro]

On my third language, and I know everyone is different, but all I did was pimsleur and clozemaster, and then time spent with native speakers. Literally just those three. No journaling or books or movies or podcasts etc.

[@languagejones6784]

I can see that working. Personally, clozemaster makes me want to pull my hair out, because of the complete randomness of it.

[@camelbro]

@@languagejones6784 I kind of agree with you here, CM was very random at times. It really helped me with the grammar and the explanations of words helped so much in the beginning. Being around a lot of different language speakers has helped too, I know many people don't have access to native speakers of their target languages that are their close friends

[@jaysterling26]

Which language was that? I just tried Mandarin and it isn't working for me - I started trying to phonetically write down the words to remember (!).

[@five-toedslothbear4051]

KZbin suggested that I watch this again, and thank you for the detailed analysis. Without going very deep into it, ran into one of those KZbin influencers and went to their free webinar with an attitude of skeptical curiosity. After hearing "don't learn to read", my skeptism went way up, and I ended up switching to a livestream with someone I respect. All I can say is that I got more Japanese in the first two weeks of class than I did in 1000+ hours of watching anime with subs. And now, with some knowledge, when I listen to Japanese language, my brain gets some of it and I have nice "aha!" dopamine hit moments when I realize I understood it.

[@a910]

After 200 hours of pure Dreaming Spanish I have gone from knowing nothing to B1. That's all the proof I need that it works EDIT: I haven't spoken a word out loud yet, and I know it's a different skill, but I can definitely form my own sentences in my head and recognise when Spanish 'doesn't sound right'

[@gavinstuart3446]

same 170 hours and i have progressed so much more. Than ant text book could probably take. Learning new words and also training your ears toi actually pick out the words that is being said. Language is meant for cummincating and you find more meaning in it when eatching and using it

[@fhornet3123]

Hasta que no empieces a hablar, no puedes opinar. Poder entender si te hablan como si fueras un niño no es el gran logro que piensas.

[@a910]

@@fhornet3123 of course I can. I can do what I like. Cope

[@gavinstuart3446]

@@fhornet3123 clown response.

[@Maidaseu]

I've 3000 hours of CI received and I can't speak like a native yet. Can't speak at all as I never practiced it. I still think it's the best way to comprehend the language but speaking practice is essential.

[@alexandrafisher3614]

Fantastic! I will be watching all of your videos and liking them all. I am not sure if you already made a video about Chomsky's UG, but I would definitely like to watch that. Thanks!

[@frugal10191]

I wonder how this impacts people who have both Autistic and ADHD tendencies. Asking for a friend ;)

[@languagejones6784]

Hope your friend's hyperfocus fixation is language? I don't think anyone has done a study, even though some of the most famous hyperpolyglots were known to be autistic.

[@undekagon2264]

yes, that video I would also like to see, haha. and mix some synaesthisia for script learning in please. for me the new scripts dancevery colorful in front of my eyes after a while.

[@beirne]

I tried comprehensible input with Polish and it didn't work at all. Looking back, while the material was said to be CI, it was really just immersion, so the jury is still out for me. Having said that, some language knowledge can speed up the acquisition. For example, learning how many genders a language has, and how to recognize and use them. Why try to figure out that a language like Polish has three genders when you can learn the basics in one class? Why not learn the conjugation rules for tense, which are relatively easy in Polish? (I'm not including aspect here). For most languages there are easy parts and hard parts, and I see no reason not to learn the easy parts and then using them to help acquire the language faster.

[@stevencarr4002]

Yes, gender is a doddle in Polish, so why not spend 20 minutes learning it? There are a few exceptions of course 'sól', 'noc', but not many.

[@kliudrsfhlih]

1.- On the Hebrew stuff, I love to hear your experience. I had a similar problem with Catalan, because a lot of e graphemes sound either schwa or all the way /a/. Like, a lot of them and you never know which. So my solution was to use Glossika in audio only mode to give me a sort of aural-oral bias. Now when I read I just know how those words are pronounced, they only look weird. I can only do this because my first language is Spanish though. I have to admit... 2.- When it comes to Krashen... well. I'm writing a thesis about consensus building in SLA. People do not know the main contemporary theories and the main theorists, but the field has moved on in many ways. I would say if someone only knows about Krashen, they basically know nothing about SLA. They know like 0.05% of what they should know to even begin to talk about SLA. 3.- For the ageing/critical period hypothesis issue and for the implicit/explicit debate, the most illuminating theory in my opinion is the Declarative/Procedural (DP) Model by Michael Ullman. He defines the DP memory systems in terms of regions in the brain, rather than the faculty of explicit or implicit memory. This is because while procedural memory is only implicit, declarative memory is more tricky. The dominant memory in childhood is procedural (pattern recognition, implicit) then it decays and the dominant memory in adulthood is declarative (idiosyncratic, irrational, pattern breaking). There is not interface between memories, but this may be irrelevant for language learning because procedural memory is always working at the back and through repetition things become proceduralised. All of this deduced by extensive neurological research that then is used to theorise how it could be applied to second language learning. 4.- For linguistic, pragmatic and cultural learning, the best theory in my opinion is that of Nick Ellis (not Rod Ellis), through his usage-based approach. He proposes "constructions" are everything from words to phrases to sentences, we accumulate them statistically largely but not uniquely based on how frequent they are, and then our brain starts to recognise patterns which leads to a grammar system. Or as they say it: grammar emerges. 5.- For philosophy of science and metascientific works, in my opinion the best authors are Phil Hiver&Ali Al-Hoorie and Lourdes Ortega. Hiver and Al-Hoorie are on top of all the problems in science that prevents it from being good, including advocating for very important revisions as to what statistics can and cannot say about acquisition. ORTEGA is key, because she tells us a lot of the categories we use are biased. Firstly, grammar is not a monolith, its variable and what we understand as grammar is an idealised version of what a multilingual native speaker of a prestige variant should sound like. This is not a precise scientific concept, but more of the same clumsy accidental discrimination we see in many scientific theories. A lot of native speakers are multilingual and they speak differently from monolinguals, the fact that this is not typically addressed points at a monolingual bias in linguistics. Nativespeakerism is also a bias, because if you already have a rich system of symbols, your first language, there is no reason to turn all that off and speak in your second language as if you did not have a richer system that just that second language in isolation. Then there is the prestige variant bias, for example: why is AAVE not the standard that structuralists and chomskian generaativists use to analyse language? because clumsy accidental racism. Further, similar to the so-called 'WEIRD' problem in psychology, in SLA we almost exclusively study privileged multilinguals: a small list of countries with people using language to develop themselves personally or to find better job opportunities. Very different from minoritised multilinguals, a larger list of countries, including people who cannot read or write yet are trilingual, people who are forced to move regions and learn a language (unintentional learners), and whose learning of a language is not even well received by the target community. There are many routs to multilingualism outside of the realm of education, but the focus on pedagogy as the "applied" stuff is the first world bias the field has. The application of SLA is rarely framed in terms of important social needs in diverse sociolinguistic contexts. 6.- Sociocultural theory (SCT) in SLA is another trippy ride, I talked to prof. Jim Lantolf, its most prominent representative, and he made me have a wow moment when he posed the question: what is the brain without culture? could you have free will without culture? Wow... free will is a spectrum depending on the mental tools you have gotten through your experience!? wow. Thus the field has moved to more sociological and anthropological-neurological understandings of SLA. 7- But it is still quite fragmented, there is no one SLA science, but more like inconclusive research about everything, people not coordinating, etc. It is a "young science" in Kuhnian terms, where the fundamentals are still unsettled. Even the word input is controversial, with others preferring "ambient language" (Larsen-Freeman) and yet others "linguistic experiences" (Lourdes Ortega). The learning-acquisition division is considered old-fashion by many, who simply use "learning" in the psychological conception of learning, or in the same way neurologists use the word learning (regardless of implicit or explicit). They do not do this because they are stupid and do not know about Krashen, they do this because the original terminology "learning-acquisition", has by habit and tradition now transitioned into implicit and explicit learning in the psychological front, and declarative vs procedural in the neurological front.

[@frechjo]

I think completely ignoring grammar is counterproductive. Focusing on lots of practice, more than grammar and vocabulary memorization is good. But guided practice is a lot more productive than random unguided practice. It's true for any other activity, why should it be different for languages? Draw all you want, and see all the drawings you want, you might eventually learn how to do it reasonably well, sure; but if you know a thing or two about how people draw, about what to practice (the meta-knowledge), then you'll learn a lot faster and better. Grammar is just meta-knowledge of the language, and I find it very helpful in a proportionate dosage.

[@kongspeaks4778]

I have a master's degree in applied linguistics and am about to start a PhD in linguistics, and if I had a nickel for every time random KZbin commenters repeated anecdotal beliefs about language learning, I'd be Jeff bezos

[@Darren_S]

My wife became fluent in English solely through watching movies and reading. So I know comprehensible input works.

[@dvepps6780]

How is her writing? Krashen is broadly on the mark with language acquisition & the order of acquisition - I think that his concept of learning is not as rich as others when you narrow in on supporting that acquisition (eg ZPD).

[@Darren_S]

@@dvepps6780 Her writing is on par with an English native speaker.

[@cmfrtblynmb02]

​@@dvepps6780 you need to acquire to produce. Any language teaching method that forces you to write and speak before acquisition is mostly setting you for failure except very motivated people.but these people will learn no matter what.

[@venga3]

And you or others never corrected her once, she never even once looked at a dictionary, certainly not a guide of any kind, correct? She was just suddenly able to form full sentences with perfect pronunciation and discuss politics and, no doubt, linguistics. With such a talented person, had she taken some classes she would likely be mistaken for a native speaker! (Then you realise that her English is not great, she spoke already a language near to English and actually was taught it in school while taking decades, only improving with a dedicated personal teacher, perhaps a husband...)

[@Darren_S]

@@venga3 My native language is not English, and I acquired the language via TV shows and movies.

[@Ronlawhouston]

Wow! I just found your channel and you have a new subscriber. I write a lot on nutrition and diet. My theory is there is no one diet that is best for everyone. You are the first linguist I have heard talk about neuro divergent. I think people ignore this at their peril. I never thought of Krashen's theories as being ADHD friendly. I just know I am highly ADHD but I adopted the "throw it up against the wall and see what sticks" approach. I did so many different things and self selected what seemed to work. So keep thinking outside the box. You are onto something by looking at neurology and language learning. I use the "forest and the trees" analogy. We try to prescribe for the forest without considering it is filled with diverse individual trees.

[@thisismycoolnickname]

As far as I've understood, it's suggested to just guess the vocabulary from context and never use a dictionary. If so, I find that extremely ineffective. You can guess things wrong and it can stick for a long time. And it could take ages to realize that you've had it wrong this whole time. On the other hand, if you look up the translation of a word, even though translations aren't perfect, it immediately gets you 90% closer to understanding the term. The rest 10% is achieved by the comprehensible input.

[@Reforming_LL]

Highly agree. I recommend looking up unknown words, as it will significantly make immersion easier.

[@Tstep45_qr]

U can't know until you try it 👍

[@friedeyeball]

Adding in case others are curious - he himself did not suggest never looking up a word. In the studies I read about, they would provide students with a list of words either before or after the comprehensive input session, and reviewing those words was proven to aid in the ability for the students to acquire those words. However, it wasn't an Anki-level approach - simply reading the list before/after the input was enough.

[@stevencarr4002]

More questions about Chomsky's UG. One of his main talking points is that people in the same 'speech community' converge on the same grammar. In English, there are many different grammars that different people employ. For example, British people of my generation never use 'gotten'. To say nothing of AAVE So is Chomsky's claim simply circular? You use the same grammar if you are in the same 'speech community' and the test of if you are in the same speech community, is do you use the same grammar?

[@cpnlsn88]

The beauty of Krashen is that he articulated hypotheses that can be tested. That means his ideas can be tested. The main test is to put different approaches against each other. Put another way, it's fairly well established people can maefairly good progress with a comprehensible input approach. The question is does grammar translation do better, either overall, or in specific areas (learning the subjunctive.....). Grammar translation is pretty dreadful for learner satisfaction and achievability. Pick up a traditional Latin textbook and you can see the problem immediately. This increases nearly 100% drop out. Every nowand then a learner loves it - fine, these books are always available. My approach to grammar is akin to a child asking 'where do babies come from?'. The child asks a question that has arisen - they need an answer. But theyr need an answer that meets thier immediate needs, knowing they can come back for more detail when more is needed or they are more curious, and at each point more info can be given. One can get a simple answer or if more is needed a more in depth answer and if more is needed you can loo it up in a grammar book. Your interest is taking you there and you can go in depth if needed, you can return to it at different points. To that extent I favour comprehensible grammar. Grammar should be offered and sought after rather than imposed. I am not against some rote learning. This is anti-Krashen in its purity. I think Paul Nation makes a good point about thisregarding vocab and I lean to his point of view here. I am more sceptical about n+1 or i+1. Firstly this can be misunderstood. It really means learning at your level not above your level. On accasion you may read at n-1, eg if you have a good story or you want to establish fluency in reading. Equally there are occasions where the level of comprehension is lower but the experience is meaningful, though of course you can't plough through if you understand less than 90%. It is easier to grade reading input than,say, KZbin videos - the key is more likely compelling input than 100% comprehensibility. Paul Nation spoke a lot about extensive reading. It seems a very potent tool. In extensive reading you would require understanding of at least 98% of the words and preferably 99% of words and you are likely to acquire the unnown words in the course of reading. Obvioulsy for smaller texts there are ways of making the text more comprehensible - pictures for example (filmss/videos can have substitles). A couple of really good ideas are out there - graded readers, for instance. I really like the idea of taing a known text with a good story and taking out the more unknown (and sometimes obscure or obsolete words (I haven't seensimplified texts around but I think it's a really great idea, and could really help as a step to authntic materials (novels). I have no data on this but rashen is a bit wild about reading and novels. Now I love and adore novels and reading. I just have a feeling that younger people today are less into books and more into other media. With Netflix, podcasts and KZbin, video games etc there is a lot of language media out there that can be used as input. I might be wrong on that and that could be pessimisim about media consumption (novels) in a younger generation.Krashen makes other claims for reading and reading novels for pleasure (as well as comic strips etc) so I don't know for sure, it's a wider debate than language acqusition.

[@venga3]

And Krashen has been found lacking for decades in the linguistic consensus.

[@simonwillover4175]

Actual learning advice here: * combine acquisition (with comprehensible inputs) with conscious learning (ideally with imcomprehensible inputs) in one step: *Internalization* Internalization is all you need. What I mean, is make language a part of your being, both in the conscious and the subconscious. As a secondary goal, challenge yourself to learn multiple things at the same time. You mind and body have more than 1 part after all. If your mind only had a single part, you wouldn't be able to imagine {an apple on a table}, since you would then only be able to understand / imagine 1 of the 2 objects at once, and the idea of {an apple on a table} includes 2 objects, not 1. Challenge yourself to learn as many things at once as you can, and still remember that you are human and you do have some real limits.

[@ffelegal]

I'm convinced that the best way to learn a language depends on the target language. The tricks I used to learn English didn't work for Japanese, because ordering of sentences, concepts didn't match, writing and reading were much harderd. Spanish was extremely close to my first language Portuguese so some of the grammar was natural for me, input was very easy to understand. However for German a deep dive on grammar was necessary, because of cases and conjugation. That's why there's so much discrepancy about tips for learning langugage. I don't believe there's a universal method for learning any langugage. If the one you are trying to learn is too different from the ones you know you'll have to dedicate much more in the process.