4 ms·

Internet gurus are hacking language learning and the consensus is moving towards the importance of a steady diet of "comprehensible input" versus grammar instru

Internet gurus are hacking language learning and the consensus is moving towards the importance of a steady diet of "comprehensible input" versus grammar instruction. That was always the expert opinion I think but the internet has accelerated it. One important factor is that the early content you consume be translated from your native language into the target language. For instance Latin learners should start with something like Harry Potter latinus. It's interesting to think about why translated-from-native material is the best for beginners; it probably reduces the mental overhead and focuses the learner on learning the language instead of learning the language & content at the same time.

bravura 5y ago
Do you mind sharing some links or references where I can see language hacking discussion?
- dymk 5y ago
  It's not a new idea being discussed in language learning circles, and 99% of the recent online discussion about this is based off of this youtube video [1] of Stephen Krashen (a linguist) talking about comprehensible input in the 80s. If I had to guess, most of the recent discussion has started again in the Japanese language learning community, as Japanese is a notoriously difficult language to acquire for anglophones. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUc_W3xE1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUc_W3xE1w
  - soniman 5y ago
    You really think that grainy video from forty years ago is driving the discussion? It's unwatchable.
    - dymk 5y ago
      I realize how it sounds, but yes. It's the source of "comprehensible input" discussion that is cited again and again in online Japanese language learning circles if you dig through the rabbit hole of citations people make.
- soniman 5y ago
  This guy who learned Japanese from anime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG9kpqTRmU&t=681s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG9kpqTRmU&t=681s Learning Latin with Harry Potter latinus. http://indwellinglanguage.com/reading-latin-extensively/ http://indwellinglanguage.com/reading-latin-extensively/
NoahTheDuke 5y ago
I love that “hacking language learning” turns out to be “mostly do what babies do”: consume as much content as possible. Babies take it one step further by trying things without embarrassment or any attempt at “getting it right”, only focused on raw communication. Not to denigrate the efforts of folks who study and practice “the act of language acquisition”, I’ve just been surprised and delighted to watch my now 2 year old daughter learn to speak, which has made me think about how different her experience of “learning a language” is from all of my poor attempts at learning foreign languages.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  The places that have a track record of actually getting people to speak languages like the Mormons' Missionary Training Center, Defense Foreign Language Institute, or Middlebury all use methods similar to the comprehensive input method and have for a while. The problem for self-learners is that most languages don't have the right materials to do that easily.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
It's interesting to me that that Japanese language learning community seems to take the opposite approach to what I think is the view you're describing. For example, they focus very heavily on memorizing a lot of kanji early, without as much grounding in the spoken language or in reading simpler texts and building up fluency. It always seemed like these learners were going about it the hard way since you have almost no context when learning kanji you don't know from the spoken language.
- dymk 5y ago
  I don't think what you're describing is actually different from the popular approach of comprehensible input. There's just a step that needs to happen before most input is comprehensible, and that's understanding the meanings of the most common kanji. One simply cannot read most Japanese content online without understanding at least a few hundred kanji. It's like if you wanted to learn the English language but had no understanding of the alphabet (ignoring kana for the sake of the analogy). You've got to bootstrap with some rote memorization first, then go start learning new kanji / grammar in context. Lucky, this doesn't take much time at all, and one can memorize the first few hundred kanji and vocab meanings / readings with a spaced repetition tool. And in parallel, there are resources one can start with knowing only the kana / furigana, such as these graded readers: https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    For comprehensible input you shouldn't need to learn the meaning when learning kanji. You should already know the meaning/sound from spoken language. There is definitely memorization required to learn to map the kanji to the words they represent, but the way most learners do it is not comprehensible input. There are textbooks that follow a CI approach, e.g. Eleanor Jorden's. John Defrancis's textbooks are similar but for Chinese. If you look at the reviews the main complaint people have is that they are not learning kanji from the start, despite Jorden explaining exactly why she's not doing that. Maybe CI is not the best way to learn languages like Chinese and Japanese, but the approach most learners take is definitely not CI.

bravura 5y ago

Do you mind sharing some links or references where I can see language hacking discussion?

dymk 5y ago
It's not a new idea being discussed in language learning circles, and 99% of the recent online discussion about this is based off of this youtube video [1] of Stephen Krashen (a linguist) talking about comprehensible input in the 80s. If I had to guess, most of the recent discussion has started again in the Japanese language learning community, as Japanese is a notoriously difficult language to acquire for anglophones. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUc_W3xE1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUc_W3xE1w
- soniman 5y ago
  You really think that grainy video from forty years ago is driving the discussion? It's unwatchable.
  - dymk 5y ago
    I realize how it sounds, but yes. It's the source of "comprehensible input" discussion that is cited again and again in online Japanese language learning circles if you dig through the rabbit hole of citations people make.
soniman 5y ago
This guy who learned Japanese from anime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG9kpqTRmU&t=681s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG9kpqTRmU&t=681s Learning Latin with Harry Potter latinus. http://indwellinglanguage.com/reading-latin-extensively/ http://indwellinglanguage.com/reading-latin-extensively/

NoahTheDuke 5y ago

I love that “hacking language learning” turns out to be “mostly do what babies do”: consume as much content as possible. Babies take it one step further by trying things without embarrassment or any attempt at “getting it right”, only focused on raw communication. Not to denigrate the efforts of folks who study and practice “the act of language acquisition”, I’ve just been surprised and delighted to watch my now 2 year old daughter learn to speak, which has made me think about how different her experience of “learning a language” is from all of my poor attempts at learning foreign languages.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago
The places that have a track record of actually getting people to speak languages like the Mormons' Missionary Training Center, Defense Foreign Language Institute, or Middlebury all use methods similar to the comprehensive input method and have for a while. The problem for self-learners is that most languages don't have the right materials to do that easily.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

It's interesting to me that that Japanese language learning community seems to take the opposite approach to what I think is the view you're describing. For example, they focus very heavily on memorizing a lot of kanji early, without as much grounding in the spoken language or in reading simpler texts and building up fluency. It always seemed like these learners were going about it the hard way since you have almost no context when learning kanji you don't know from the spoken language.

dymk 5y ago
I don't think what you're describing is actually different from the popular approach of comprehensible input. There's just a step that needs to happen before most input is comprehensible, and that's understanding the meanings of the most common kanji. One simply cannot read most Japanese content online without understanding at least a few hundred kanji. It's like if you wanted to learn the English language but had no understanding of the alphabet (ignoring kana for the sake of the analogy). You've got to bootstrap with some rote memorization first, then go start learning new kanji / grammar in context. Lucky, this doesn't take much time at all, and one can memorize the first few hundred kanji and vocab meanings / readings with a spaced repetition tool. And in parallel, there are resources one can start with knowing only the kana / furigana, such as these graded readers: https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/ https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  For comprehensible input you shouldn't need to learn the meaning when learning kanji. You should already know the meaning/sound from spoken language. There is definitely memorization required to learn to map the kanji to the words they represent, but the way most learners do it is not comprehensible input. There are textbooks that follow a CI approach, e.g. Eleanor Jorden's. John Defrancis's textbooks are similar but for Chinese. If you look at the reviews the main complaint people have is that they are not learning kanji from the start, despite Jorden explaining exactly why she's not doing that. Maybe CI is not the best way to learn languages like Chinese and Japanese, but the approach most learners take is definitely not CI.