4 ms·

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

AreShoesFeet000 7mo ago
This has worked for me. Just try to enjoy a self bombardment of the foreign language and hope you will catch on eventually.
- duncan_britt 7mo ago
  I'm in progress learning Vietnamese this way. To me, whether it works or not is no longer a question :) Were you trying to learn a language or did it just happen to you?
- em-bee 7mo ago
  15 years in china, with a chinese wife and everyone in my family and my environment speaking chinese with each other did not help me learn more than a few words and phrases of chinese. so just bombardement is not enough, you must be doing some active learning if you want anything to catch on.
  - robaato 7mo ago
    Yes very true. Though exposure is also impotent. But active lessons or trying are vital
cousin_it 7mo ago
Yes! I stumbled on this idea myself (when trying to learn German) and it works very well. I just read books and listen to audiobooks, starting from a very basic level and then gradually higher level. The talking improves almost automatically, without having to practice it.
- aix1 7mo ago
  > The talking improves almost automatically, without having to practice it. I absolutely don't doubt your experience, but find it interesting that mine has been the exact opposite. I listen to a lot of German and read a fair amount. As a result, my listening and reading comprehension got pretty good (at least B2). My writing has also improved significantly (probably also around B2). However, I find that this does not transfer well to speaking, which I need to practise separately in order to see a meaningful improvement. After some targeted lessons I'm just about approaching B1. Perhaps transferability will improve once I reach a certain level of fluency. I think this might have happened when I was learning English. However, this was so long ago that I no longer remember. For the next language I might try to overemphasise speaking from day one just to see how the learning trajectory differs.
mr_00ff00 7mo ago
Curious about any anecdotal evidence about this from people. I have always struggled with languages and have been trying to learn Italian for the past 6 months. Is this 80% listening, 20% active using a good way to do it?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- Barrin92 7mo ago
  well anecdotally from studying Japanese for about a year and a half before moving there, it seems right to me, in particular the part about conscious effort not being able to produce spontaneous speech. I was embarrassed how little I could say after countless hours of flash cards and other methods. I'd literally just comprehend nothing if someone talked to me. But after a few months of just listening it became much easier. I've thrown all the Anki cards away afterwards, it was just a waste of time.
  - robaato 7mo ago
    I realised a step up with going to lunch with Japanese friends where the stream of sounds started to become comprehensible as discrete words. When I understood some of them I at least grasped the topic of the conversation, though not the details. It takes time and patience...
  - jkhdigital 7mo ago
    It definitely wasn’t a waste of time! I passed JLPT N1 back in 2014 after ~6 years of mostly Anki-based studying. Did Heisig’s RtK first and then mostly played old Japanese console games that I was familiar with. Never opened a JLPT study guide and passed the test on my first attempt. Could I speak Japanese at that point? No not really… I even had a Japanese spouse! But we spoke mostly English at home. I could read quite well, but conversation was very challenging. Then we moved to Japan. Despite not having a job that requires me to speak Japanese, I got enough live exposure just from chatting with people at the gym or in social activities that now, a few years later, I’ve backfilled all that conversational fluency that was missing. No special extra effort required, just living in an environment where I used the language reasonably often. Anyways, the point is that all the time spent in Anki laid a rock-solid foundation that merely needed activation in the right environment for active fluency to emerge. Of course I no longer do my daily flashcard drills (and I’ve forgotten how to write quite a few kanji as a result) but the work paid off.
caminante 7mo ago
Per the same wiki[0], the theory seems like pseudo-science: > lacks testability, is conceptually ambiguous, and exaggerates the role of “comprehensible input” in language acquisition. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis#Critiques_of_the_Comprehensible_Input_Hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis#Critiques_of_...
dbbk 7mo ago
This is basically what Dreaming Spanish does right? Just shit loads of comprehensible input videos.

This has worked for me. Just try to enjoy a self bombardment of the foreign language and hope you will catch on eventually.

duncan_britt 7mo ago
I'm in progress learning Vietnamese this way. To me, whether it works or not is no longer a question :) Were you trying to learn a language or did it just happen to you?
em-bee 7mo ago
15 years in china, with a chinese wife and everyone in my family and my environment speaking chinese with each other did not help me learn more than a few words and phrases of chinese. so just bombardement is not enough, you must be doing some active learning if you want anything to catch on.
- robaato 7mo ago
  Yes very true. Though exposure is also impotent. But active lessons or trying are vital

cousin_it 7mo ago

Yes! I stumbled on this idea myself (when trying to learn German) and it works very well. I just read books and listen to audiobooks, starting from a very basic level and then gradually higher level. The talking improves almost automatically, without having to practice it.

aix1 7mo ago
> The talking improves almost automatically, without having to practice it. I absolutely don't doubt your experience, but find it interesting that mine has been the exact opposite. I listen to a lot of German and read a fair amount. As a result, my listening and reading comprehension got pretty good (at least B2). My writing has also improved significantly (probably also around B2). However, I find that this does not transfer well to speaking, which I need to practise separately in order to see a meaningful improvement. After some targeted lessons I'm just about approaching B1. Perhaps transferability will improve once I reach a certain level of fluency. I think this might have happened when I was learning English. However, this was so long ago that I no longer remember. For the next language I might try to overemphasise speaking from day one just to see how the learning trajectory differs.

mr_00ff00 7mo ago

Curious about any anecdotal evidence about this from people. I have always struggled with languages and have been trying to learn Italian for the past 6 months. Is this 80% listening, 20% active using a good way to do it?

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Barrin92 7mo ago
well anecdotally from studying Japanese for about a year and a half before moving there, it seems right to me, in particular the part about conscious effort not being able to produce spontaneous speech. I was embarrassed how little I could say after countless hours of flash cards and other methods. I'd literally just comprehend nothing if someone talked to me. But after a few months of just listening it became much easier. I've thrown all the Anki cards away afterwards, it was just a waste of time.
- robaato 7mo ago
  I realised a step up with going to lunch with Japanese friends where the stream of sounds started to become comprehensible as discrete words. When I understood some of them I at least grasped the topic of the conversation, though not the details. It takes time and patience...
- jkhdigital 7mo ago
  It definitely wasn’t a waste of time! I passed JLPT N1 back in 2014 after ~6 years of mostly Anki-based studying. Did Heisig’s RtK first and then mostly played old Japanese console games that I was familiar with. Never opened a JLPT study guide and passed the test on my first attempt. Could I speak Japanese at that point? No not really… I even had a Japanese spouse! But we spoke mostly English at home. I could read quite well, but conversation was very challenging. Then we moved to Japan. Despite not having a job that requires me to speak Japanese, I got enough live exposure just from chatting with people at the gym or in social activities that now, a few years later, I’ve backfilled all that conversational fluency that was missing. No special extra effort required, just living in an environment where I used the language reasonably often. Anyways, the point is that all the time spent in Anki laid a rock-solid foundation that merely needed activation in the right environment for active fluency to emerge. Of course I no longer do my daily flashcard drills (and I’ve forgotten how to write quite a few kanji as a result) but the work paid off.

caminante 7mo ago

Per the same wiki[0], the theory seems like pseudo-science: > lacks testability, is conceptually ambiguous, and exaggerates the role of “comprehensible input” in language acquisition. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis#Critiques_of_the_Comprehensible_Input_Hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis#Critiques_of_...

dbbk 7mo ago

This is basically what Dreaming Spanish does right? Just shit loads of comprehensible input videos.