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Que bueno, Matt! Cuándo estoy tomando clases de español mi maestro escribe mis errores en la ventana de chat. Si es un gran error podemos hablar de ello. Adiós, amigo!

If you're into experiments, try this one: don't get corrected and have a normal conversation. Then, use ChatGTP or whatever to transcribe the whole conversation, remove anything that you didn't say, send your teacher the entire script, and ask him or her to read your entire chat AVOIDING THE MISTAKES, so you can hear what you wanted to say, but in flawless Spanish. Then try to read and practice the corrected version of your own words, and see how it goes. Since it is your own message, what you really meant to say, it won't feel awkward, uninteresting or boring to repeat. Alternatively, there are free websites like Rhinospike, where people might do it for free. I have no idea whether it will work or not, but it surely can't be nearly as bad as being corrected every few seconds.

This was a very interesting experiment! Most language learning in 1999 would have involved evening classes and short courses. I attended evening classes in Catalan and Greek at various times. A short course was an option also. Having 1-to-1 tuition as you did would have been a luxury option - probably limited to business people about to be sent overseas. The advantage of group classes was that you could build a small community of interested learners. I like the library option - I'm not sure my local library would have any foreign-language materials but the central library in town probably does. Back in the day I used to listen to French radio, but that was in Kent so they were not too far away to pick up! Other than that, London had a French-language radio station and also Radio Spectrum had various language programmes.

In 2010 I was learning by going to the library and borrowing books in german/ English and trying my best to translated it hahahaha

Awesome 👌

I guess hearing in context and hearing and reading in context might be even better than just reading?

Thank you, Maestro 🌟🔥🌹🔥🌟

Thank you 🌟🔥🌹🔥🌟

thx

1971 language learning involved a "teach yourself ..." book. Often tape recordings weren't available.

The thing about learning in the 90s is that while you have the downside of limited audio input, you have a shitton of time in your life because all you have is a tv and radio to distract you. (Yeah, gaming and 1gb internet a month is also a thing).

This is useless. "Comprehensible input" Yeah, but the reason why I'm learning the language is because the input is incomprehensible. If it was comprehensible, I wouldn't need to learn the language because it's already comprehensible. If someone can read and listen and 80% of it is comprehensible, then no one in that position is doing flashcards. They've clearly already had a lot of success in learning the language. The problem is that when you're learning a language, you're just trying to get to the point where you can understand 80% of it. So dumb.

The guy sounds like he's memorized Krashen. Not very original

Very good interview. The question is always where do you get the correct level of material in the goldilocks zone of 90% comprehensible input?

This is the real method not lazy method

Post 1 of 3 on this. Natural language acquisition, done right, takes very little time. Who does it right? Anyone I have taught my system to. (about a thousand people at this point.) Here is how it goes: You get into 3 daily habits. One, at least 3 hours per day passively listening to a story in your target language, which you are working on learning. This takes no time, as passive listening means it is playing as background noise but you are paying no attention at all to it at all, as you go about your normal day. Two, do ear tuning exercises, an invention of mine. I'll use English as an example. Here are 30 seconds worth of ear tuning syllables: "Thu maen was ser preizd too see ev ree wun in such a her ee. But then hee saw that smok wuz cum ming frum the dis tuns. Soon thayr wuz flaymz, then heet frum thu flaymz. Luk i lee, aefter run ning for u bit, hee saw hiz gerl frend wiTH her car aend wuz ay bL too escayp" You listen to the ear tuning syllable 120 times per day (from the audiobook they come from.) Half the time, listen with eyes closed. Half the time, use your eyes to attempt to follow the voice, attempting to keep your eyes on the exact syllable being spoken at any exact moment. After a couple of days, the student's ear is tuned to english. But, the student is to keep doing daily ear tuning exercises, though less and less. And the student never stops the passive listening.

This discussion is the total opposite of how they teach languages in school. The more I look back at my experience in language learning in different schools, the more I see how colossally inefficient it was.

As a kid in the 90s a lot of my English practice was watching movies on the TV and repeating new words over and over until I got them sort of right. I distinctly remember learning the word 'punishment' this way. And in the 80s my dad taught himself basic English with music, library books and a dictionary.

Not terribly informative……. lots of reverberating

One way or another, even before you can read simple sentences, you have to know and memorize new words to understand and make sense of what you're reading

in poland as children in 90s we got our exposure by watching cartoons that were exclusively in german on the TV 😂😂

This is so good. A lot of this stuff I always intuitively knew but it is nice for someone to spell it out for you.

Hi Matt, I love your videos, and I learn a lot of english with you, I reaslly like the way you share content and so on.. (by the way I´m a spaniard, so I can understand you perfecly well), but I wanted to tell you that I'm more focused in learning and moving forward, rather than being worried about my mistakes (wich are a lot I think), specially if we are talking about speaking, the most difficult of all skills.. anyway , thanks for sharing,

Nice observations at the end. I enjoy paper books. I remember spending a lot of time writing out lists of declensions and conjugations.

The way I tackle it, I'll spend time learning, say, 1000 new words over a month or two, then spend a few weeks rewatching the content I learned those words from and using the words to do speaking and writing exercises to better cement them into my active vocabulary instead of just my passive comprehension. These activities are usually going on simultaneously as I'm usually actively trying to use vocabulary while also building my vocabulary comprehension. My favorite way to practice active vocabulary is to write out a description of my day in as much detail as I have the vocabulary for, then record a short video of myself summarizing what I wrote down. Then I'll get a native speaker to check for any errors like once a week during a conversation in the target language. It's my best method I could come up with for practicing comprehension, written and spoken output, and grammar.

I learned the rules of English grammar when learning German in 9th grade. It seems to me that grammar is a meta-language and doesn’t make sense until we have begun to use the language correctly or not. E.g. in MIchigan English many people use the object pronoun for the subject especially in compound subjects: Tom and me went to the store. Good grammar is about “sharpening the sword”, i.e. using it more powerfully. Using the language powerfully is the real point. That’s what makes Huckleberry Finn so great. Twain knew how to break the rules.

Does anyone have any recommendations for people who grew up speaking a language but had no formal school training (reading and grammar) I find it hard to stick with programs like duolingo because the vocabulary and phrases are so basic that I just get bored.

French comprehensible input - this is a great youtube channel

I don’t know if I’m missing something, but the thing that never makes sense to me is if you just have no clue what’s being said at all in the target language, how do you work out any of the meaning? Surely you need to have a somewhat decent base to build from before just diving into random videos/podcasts otherwise how is any of it going to sink in? For me, I’d be getting lost multiple times per sentence because I’ve no idea what’s just been said, but while I’m there trying to let that sink in, the video/podcast has already moved on to the next sentence which I don’t understand!

My japanese teacher still uses zero technology (book and CD listening) and bit conversation in class, but unfortunatly if you don’t use YT or other apps and teqnichues, your japanese level soon be stuck and basicly non usable besides controlled speaking situations (in my opinion)

Fun fact: this works for programming languages too

While I am certainly not famous, I do consider myself the top expert on language learning. Why? Mostly by accident, I stumbled and bumbled into natural language, back in late 2018, early 2019. Each thing I stumbled upon, I first repeated what I stumbled into to prove it was no fluke, then experimented to optimize it. In the end, I had a perfect system - then while switching my current students to that system, I began reading up on natural language acquisition. I found that while others had figured out things right here and there - nobody was correctly using natural language acquisition. Nothing I read helped me improve my system any. First step is to do exactly what any baby does; get the ear to translate the noise coming into it as distinct syllables. For most languages, this takes about four hours, over a two day period. This is done by a combination of two things: One, surrounding the learner with the language (passive listening). Two, do ear tuning exercises for an hour per day. Ear tuning exercises go like this: Someone has broken down 60 seconds of speech in the target language into individual syllables. These syllables are written using the English alphabet, accompanied by a key that relates those letters / combinations of letters to the sounds in the target language. The learner listens to these "ear tuning syllables" 120 times per day. Half the time, the eyes are closed. Half the time, the learner is attempting, as best they can, to follow the ear tuning syllables with their eyes; always trying to have their eyes on the exact syllable being spoken at any exact moment. The learner may never get good at following the ear tuning syllables with their eyes in the first two days. This is not training. It is data being fed to the speech center. Every single time, these ear tuning exercises result in the learner being able to easily follow the ear tuning syllables. This happens, for most languages, at the end of the second day. Lets say you are a brand new learner of Korean. You try listening to an audiobook telling a story in Korean. It sounds like a buzz in your ears, nothing you can make out as language. Two days after starting the ear tuning exercises, all the sudden the buzz becomes, very clearly, language. (This assumes you are surrounding yourself with Korean, like playing that audiobook for passive listening for several hours per day.) Now, its time to learn what those nice, clear words mean. I'll do more of the system as replies to this comment.

4:10 This "nada, eh!" was a great "nada, eh!".

Love the video! Love the channel! You've got a framerate error on this video. Also, with all of the linguists you have interviewed, would it be possible to ask the next one this question: "What's the **exact** best method (with current scientific knowledge) to sound, think, and function like a native?" I seriously can't seem to get a straightforward answer to this question. Maybe it's natural sounding native input from a select region? Any information would be greatly appreciated! You have one of the best language RUclips channels!

Honestly? I make errors in every language. My husband teases me that I don't have a "native" language since I cannot speak in any of the. 😅 I think we all make errors. Language is hard.

Really a good content to watch to, congrats, but I have a question. In your actual Spanish level, do you consider yourself fluent in this language?

I love the way evry one has a better way of doing something bascly playing on human beings natural treit to find a short cut to doing anything and some one with some jargon to make ye pay them attention evry one learns differently so shove it 😂

15:58 can you not write them down during the lesson? Or even type them in the italki chat. Maybe just the corrections? And tranacribe them on paper maybe as a type of review.

Hey Matt, Another great concept for a video! I actually think that the "knowing you'll get corrected means I make more mistakes" thing is not due to pressure (at least with me), but due to the anticipation of being interrupted. You can sense this in English: When you're talking to someone whom you know has something they want to say, your thoughts tend to drift of what you were saying and you're more likely to say something that isn't what you meant or go back over things or something... You don't make language mistakes because it's nigh on impossible in your native language, but yeah, that's happening for me in a second language. I don't like being corrected because I just don't feel that it's helpful... I'm not going to remember that, and that's not how we learn languages. My guess is that what happened during your experiment was that you got better at monitoring yourself and avoiding saying things if you were at all unsure about them... that's my guess, but I spent 20 minutes looking at it and not 30-50 days like you (assuming a few weeks to make the video). BTW, we continue to buy the same types of things... I have the Rode Pod Mic, except the XLR version... and yeah, it's a great mic. Like everything from Australia, it's hefty haha.

Nosotros los hispanohablantes tampoco hablamos un español perfecto así que..todo bien 😅 Felicidades por tu avance Matt

I prefer it if my teacher makes a note of the biggest mistakes and goes through them at the end than constantly interrupting the flow.

I chat weekly with someone in French. He pops in corrections occasionally but I have to say they go in one ear and out the other. For Spanish, I’ve started crosstalk on iTalki with one of your tutors actually and it’s working well. I was worried that my level of comprehension wouldn’t be high enough but so far so good. PS The iTalki ad with Ralfie (?sp) was very entertaining.

Se nota muchísimo tus avances, enhorabuena 🎉 sonaste tan nativo cuando dijiste “joder”

I’m a native English speaker and still mkae mitsakes. Great work, Matt-and thanks for looking at this. Pablo has been saying this for years (correcting mistakes isn’t helpful), but it’s great to see someone else put this to the test. Definitely happy to stress less and use the language as best I can since the point of language is to communicate-not to master. After all, every language is just a bunch of sounds people agree mean things. None of it is as solid as we sometimes think.

When I first came across the theory that correcting errors was ineffective or counterproductive, it sounded very counter intuitive to me. I’m not really at the stage of any of my languages that I can put it to the test, but I think the evidence behind it is quite sound. Most experienced teachers i know generally minimise corrections, they prefer to let things develop naturally.

Gran avance en tu español. Muy bien!! He visto algunos de tus videos, son muy buenos! De paso yo tambien trato de mejorar mi ingles consumiendo muchos canales de RUclips y leyendo libro de interes de mi nivel. Otro idioma que estoy aprendiendo actualmente es el ruso.

I have used my phone to learn almost all of the Japanese I've learned over the last few years from Anki, watching RUclips and TV, to dictionary look ups. I actually own an original Japanese textbook from 1952 I got from a friend of my grandfather who lived in Japan after WWII. I can't imagine learning as much Japanese as I do now without living in the country with just books like that.

My preferred is judicous soft correction. This means the listener might use the unerroneous phrase either straightaway or later on in the lesson. In the event of a repeated error the teacher can deliberately add in sentences of correct usage in their own speech. That means repetition of the sentences used as a conversational strategy. In rare occasions corrections can be done (in my case the German pronunciation of Athen). If the student is struggling with a construction then this can be added by the teacher regularly so there is more exposure, and more chance of getting it right eventually. At the end of the session I am not against adding one or two feedback points but not more than that and geneally not during speech. Fluency of self expression is an important goal in itself and the trade off is some errors will get made. If you are on the look out for your errors all the time you'll be fairly self conscious.

I only speak perfect in my first language about 90% of the time. My Japanese is lucky to get half of that.

As someone who started with Italki first before I learned about CI, I was used to corrections. In the early days they were really hard to handle, and were I to start over, I'd avoid that. But, now I find them far less intrusive because I've now done Italki consistently for 2 years and it's just become a way of life. But, now we don't dwell on them. My teacher corrects me, and we move on. If I remember it, good, if not, no worries. I actually think the biggest key with lessons is almost that you fall in love with doing them. When your Spanish lessons are a part of the week you look forward to most, it almost doesn't matter what you're doing, so long as you're getting interaction with the language. Early on, though, I think it can cause a lot of harm. I didn't learn about cross-talk in time to really give it a try. I think I heard about it from you first and by then I was having full, hour long conversations. But if I start a new language, cross-talk will certainly be how I go about it.