I truly enjoy your interviews, Olly! You don’t interrupt, are kind, and listen. Mr. Krashen shows so much passion and humility when he is interviewed too.
I'm really glad they mentioned the monolingual language teacher issue. That confuses me to no end. How can someone who has never learned a language themselves, teach and guide students to learn a language? Its like taking dance lessons from someone who has never danced. I've looked into job postings for ESL teachers and they want a masters degree and jump thru a dozen other hoops...but being monolingual (the most important thing! ) is perfectly ok
It's largely a byproduct of not being able to find enough people that speak multiple languages. On top of that, the methods being used in schools are typically not grounded in sound theory anyways, so it's a bit of a moot point. To make matters even worse, often times the students won't continue coming to class if a teacher does demand things of them that would lead to success because it's boring and difficult. Personally, what I've found works best for me is more or less comprehensible output. I get my comprehensible input by learning it for output and then listening for it around me. Each time I learn a bit of language, that becomes something that I can then pay attention for when reading or listening.
Stephen Krashen is a treasure. I have started putting his methods to work, and I feel I have learned more in this maybe one or two months of casual self learning with reading graded readers and trying to turn the subtitles off on the anime I watch than I ever did in an entire two years of Japanese in high school.
Wow, i thoroughly enjoyed listening to you gentlemen converse about the theoretical and practical aspects of multiple language acquisition. With so much rubbish on the internet, it's refreshing to find interviews/conversations that encourage intellectual growth. Thank you very much!
what an amazing interview! I'm a Spanish teacher and you guys just changed the way I see language learning! Thank you for making me a better teacher. Ana
Dr krashens theory is so comforting and healing, especially he says not to worry about accent and relax and just enjoy the interesting stories or books or contents. I’ve been living in the u.s. for 20 years working as a nurse and still not confident with my English
I moved to Japan about 6 months ago and only started studying the language a couple of months before that. Like almost every other English speaking foreigner I moved here by getting an English teaching job. I'm monolingual and after studying Japanese myself and researching a lot the different ways to study, my limited opinion basically aligns with Krashen. It really makes it hard to care about teaching English since 1 I only plan to do it for a limited time and especially 2 I completely don't agree with the schools teaching methods and I do think it's absolutely insane how easy someone that only speaks one language can get a language teaching job. Anytime I go into a class I just want to tell them go home and read A LOT then listen to tv or podcasts or audiobooks A LOT and save your money then after a while if you want to practice speaking just go online and find some native speakers for cheap or free to practice. I feel like I've learned so much more Japanese in 6 months than a lot of these students that just focus on classes learn in a couple years.
Thanks for sharing this interview Olly. Very, very interesting, I especially related when Stephen said that the best accent is inside of us, it has happened so many times to me that one moment I pass for an English native speaker but then on a different conversation I feel an 'unnatural accent', that but now I know that its more of a psychological thing.
Legendary I cannot count how many times I’ve watched/listened to the pod of this conversation. Anyone learning a language just needs to start here. It’s that simple!
I agree with the interviewer when it comes to music. As a singer/ pianist I am used to changing my mouth shapes and patterns to get the desired result. I picked up my Spanish accent quickly, and the rolled r's were seriously a piece of cake. I am also use to performing with tones of confidence. So when I speak Spanish it feels like I'm putting on a show, I don't care or mind and my spanish comes out great. As a self taught professional musician I know what it takes to become better, so I just spent 9 hours a day learning. Being a musician helps. But it's not the be all and end all.
I agree with the interviewer too. I also happen to have a musical background (albeit not professional) and that guy's argument made a lot of sense. I really think there may be a causal connection between music training and and talent for language learning. I have a friend who's a guitarist and he's understands and speaks english fairly well for somebody who never, never studied the language seriously, like me. Since he was 10 years old he's just been learning the lyrics of the songs he likes to listen to and play, doing some regular listening here and there and this alone got him really far. I'll certainly research the literature on this topic.
Totally agree that teachers should be learners. Teachers are normally fluent in L1, almost fluent in L2 and probably beginner to intermediate in L3 because they've often got to be able to teach a second language to basic level. After a certain level they reach a ceiling to say that's enough and then they forget what it's like to be a learner.
Olly Richards But they are not polyglots because teachers hate learning new languages for the same reason that most people do - it's very difficult. And even teachers are not the meta language learners they want their students to be.
Hey man, I learned about your channel through Matt vs Japan. I already thought so while watching your interview with Matt, but you're an excellent interviewer! I'm so grateful that you got to interview Steven Krashen so we can hear some things no one else has asked him about before.
This was great. My ears perked up when Stephen said “we acquire language”. For me, i think it’s going to be not so much learning, but slowly gathering language over time. Somehow, that’s taken the pressure off and I can get back to enjoying the language journey.
My language learning philosophy is that if I keep studying consistently there is no way I could NOT learn a language. Even if I have to learn it sentence by sentence and one grammar concept a day, it *will* happen. :D
Krashen is the man! Oily, when you asked the question about music and it’s correlation to learning accent, Krashen replies that it’s within us. Yes. I believe music does in fact (perhaps not in the declarative aspect but in the implicit aspect) help the speed of acquiring accent. I listen to language deeply. As I grow musically I find my ear deeply attuned to getting the subtle nuances. I believe accents come from subtle nuances that most of us do not listen to deeply enough to catch. It stands to reason that being strong in one language translates to other related language learning. I used English to quickly acquire Spanish. 3 months of intensive, immersed, speaking and thinking Spanish helped me to acquire very quickly. Much as Krashen mentions about filter, I experienced as he did not being able to speak well in front of Spanish speakers that were extremely judgmental, causing me to lose all competence in their presence. Again going to Brasil (wife is from there) for two months, immersion did not work for me either. I ended up speaking a low level Portunhol, and came away with very little. Determined to speak for my new family, the return was three weeks the next time I went, I found an app which at the time didn’t find as useful but spent several hours each day while I had the radio, tv or family catching up around my ear. I very quickly caught the words I did not understand and picked up and was speaking entirely in Portuguese before returning home. I was very happy, however upon returning I very quickly lost the fluency with no one to speak with beside my wife. I totally understand most of what she says now but having constant conversation with those who do not speak English was a strong motivation while there. Thanks for posting this. Very informative!
Really an interesting interview. Certainly reaffirms the idea of how necessary finding compelling information in your second language is to keep you motivated, learning, and having fun. Listening and Reading! Listening and Reading!....... Thanks Olly for putting this out.
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Krashan. I love his saying, "silly people never study but try to solve the problem". And TPRF is another new term i learned.
I agree with a lot of this. I'm also a fan of Steve Kaufman. The trouble I have is with this 5-10% unknown words. First of all, it's really, really tough to keep finding new material that is exactly in this pretty narrow "sweet spot," and secondly, if you work only with material that has 5% new words it'd take you a ridiculous amount of time to expose yourself to enough new words. I can't really understand why you'd limit yourself like that. What I tend to do is find anything that's between 50-90% comprehensible, which immediately opens up a much wider range of material. I then work through it, looking up each unknown word, not to memorise it, but rather to aid my overall understanding of the text. Then I repeatedly listen to it and reread it until I feel like I've got out of it as much as I'm going to, then I move on. I find looking up the unknown words helps push the comprehension up towards that 90%+ level, if only for that short period I'm working with the material. So long as you make sure the text isn't too long, and you keep it short, no longer than 5 minutes or so of audio, I feel like it works well and you'll be exposed to more new words than if you kept with your 90-95% known words. That is unless, of course, you put in longer sessions.
Yes, and that’s Steve’s perspective too. You’re absolutely right that practicalities (ie available material) often render much of this moot. The response to your point would be that if you’re working at 5-10% unknown then you’d have to spend less time with the dictionary, due to the amount you can infer from context. This really is picking at straws though, and important thing is to be reading and listening a lot! Cheers!
I'm no polyglot; I'm not interested in learning a bunch of languages for the sake of it. But Krashen's ideas (compelling comprehensible input, distinction between learning and acquisition, etc.) have helped me acquire the languages I have wanted or needed to acquire (Japanese, Korean, and some French). Thanks for doing this interview, you touched on some topics I haven't heard Krashen speak on before.
This is one of the most fascinating/enjoyable interviews I've heard lately. As you know, Olly, I've struggled with motivation in learning Mandarin (IWTYAL episode 151). Maybe the next time I attempt to learn it (probably this winter, since I'm busy with projects in other languages right now, such as reading a lot of Japanese and trying out Benny Lewis' German textbook), I'll seek out a course or resource for beginners that's based on storytelling or a series of dialogs that together tell a story.
The language just sounds strange to my ears--more so than any other language I've studied. Usually, the more I listen to a language, the more I like it, and sometimes I even fall in love with it (for example, the poetic sound of Russian or Swahili). But the reverse happens here: The more I listen to Mandarin Chinese, the more bored I am with it. Also, when I try to learn vocabulary, I quickly forget it. It's very demotivating. I want to learn Mandarin, which is why I never quit completely. I put the language away and try again a year or two later. Many rich Chinese people are buying houses in my city, so I hear the language spoken on the street and at tourist spots a lot. I want to be a multilingual tour guide or use a foreign language in my line of work (IT). If I learn Mandarin, I can use it a lot.
Geza, thanks for your tips. Reading is what I enjoy most in another language, and I can't read what interests me in the beginning because of the many Chinese characters. But I have an idea that I'm going to try next month (starting tomorrow, after gathering materials this evening). I'd forgotten about Alexander's video. I've watched it a couple of times before but it would be useful for me to watch it again, so I'm watching it now. Thanks again!
@@lucasrba bro... Mandarin language is just spoken by Chinese people....and other languages like French, spanish etc is is important for university studies and job criteria in European countries and US.
I have acquired a lot of Dutch just from watching tiktok videos. It's a low stress environment, I can usually figure out what's happening based on content, and they're funny and clever so I'm actually motivated to watch them.
So true for me. Learning French right now. I came across a piece of writing on a French learning website, it was a Translation exercise from French to English. the article was to do with April Fools Day and how it is celebrated in France. I was compelled by the story which made me more dedicated to understanding what was being said. I found an historical error in the article that just could not have been factually correct. But this made me more determined to keep reading and translating. what krashen says is true. Compelling input really helps you learn a language.
Stephen Krashen is one of those, who when I see, I always wish he would have been one of my teachers. Some people just have that gift where they can make anything interesting. Another like that is Irving Finkel
Great interview. I always enjoy listening to Dr Krashan but most of the interviews go over similar ground. You have asked some very intelligent questions and got new information. Thanks.
well I am now struggling with all that torrential rain of material dedicated to IELTS as my exam is approaching really quickly , i came across that RUclips channel Matt Vs japan which in turn lead me to name of Stephen Krashen and his theories about SLA , and to tell you the truth regret all the boring hours i spent studying vocabs which will eventually be forgotten or at least misused .That's because i was learning & forcing myself to study while deep inside i was quite sure that something is going wrong . This is just great & encouraging .... nothing more compelling than the sound of evidence-based tactics
most days I spend at least one hour studying. Sometimes I miss a day with pencil and pad but I do listen to something. In my case either italian or spanish. I believe that listening has a fantastic unconcious impact.
You can and can't. You have to get over the first 500 word struggle, flashcards, reading very short sentences, translating, writing them out, all that every day helps very quickly. Starting with personal vocabulary. Learn the top 20 most common verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc. Write out sentences (Very short: subject, verb, object etc). Eventually you'll pick it up. Sources? RUclips offers a lot for beginners.
Olly, as for your question what's the connection between music and language acqusition- the answer would be: activity within the brain region called ganglia basales ( nuclei basales). Really neuroscience latest discovery from this year proves we do learn natural languages the same way we do learn other activities, relying on old parts of brain which were developed before humnas became humans, so long before we have developed the modern version of prefrontal cortext. In other words, as a person has to practice playing a musical instrument by repetition we do have to learn any natural language by repetition, by doing. After a while our unconscious brain gets a grasp of the patterns and use them almost "instinctively" you could say. This is why SRS systems make a lot of sense in foreign language learning and why comprehensible input matters a lot too. And why immersion alone might not work if it doesn't provide enough of regular repetition and practice. So much from a neuroscience nerd who happens to be multilingual too. ;-) Btw, thank you for creating short stories for learners of Spanish.
I agree with the Professor’s conjecture. When I was in Rota Spain I was talking to locals with a terrible accent with some vocabulary. Over the months I got better and I had a wonderful time communicating with the locals. Coming back to San Diego, unfortunately, I no longer speak Spanish. First, I’m always afraid of making mistakes with my friends and second they speak English. Sighhhh. Great topic. Thank you Professor and Olly!👍🏽🙏🏼
This is a really excellent interview. It's always a pleasure to listen to thoughtful people discuss their passions, in this case the conversation was free & relaxed enough to expose valuable context but also skillfully directed and shaped by insightful questioning. Much appreciation for the effort and the sharing!
Thanks, Olly for the interview with Steve. I've always been influenced by his theory of comprehensible input when I evaluate language courses, teachers and materials, but it has taken me over 50 years to finally discover your website and the vast resources available on the Internet. This has taken my language learning to a new level. I'm no longer stuck with meaningless grammar exercises, and instead can find lots of RUclips videos in the languages I'm learning with content that is inherently interesting and made accessible through captions, dual texts, and facilities to both slow down and repeat spoken language. As a native English speaker, I have also discovered that translations of popular American novels and dubbings of American movies are a treasure trove of comprehensible input. After starting from zero one year ago, and using leads from your website, I am now having weekly conversations, totally in Italian, on topics that are unpredictable but always engaging. I've just started Mandarin so Steve's tips on TPRS and his experience with good teachers is really timely. Thanks for all your efforts and valuable insights on how to learn languages. It's working.
Great interview! Probably the best Krashen interview out there, so well done, Olly! I wonder how Krashen feels about the Gold List method, which has been making a lot of positive noise in the polyglot community...
I am starting to think that most language classes are really backwards, they should not ty to teach you English (or French or whichever language they try to teach). They should teach you how to learn another language. There is so much that other learners have disovered, so we should learn from that.
This is one of the reasons why it's a useful use of time to start with a few weeks of a constructed language like Esperanto before moving onto your main language. The experience of hearing yourself speaking a foreign language cuts down on resistance to the possibility.
Olly Richards There are some great polyglots I think you haven’t interviewed yet. I like Moses Mccormick, Robin Macpherson, Alberto Arrighini, Felix Wang and Tim Doner.
This has been a very inspiring interview. Thank you so much for sharing it. Please keep up the good work!!! I probably will come back for listening this interview over and over.
Just a short defense of having an accent in a foreign language: It betrays you as a foreigner immediately, which immediately makes you interesting to a lot of people. People are often interested in foreigners, where they came from, why they're here, why do they speak my language, they want to tell you fun things to do there, etc.
Comprehensible input language acquisition method definitely works. I'm à polyglotte too native Romanian-German bilingual speaker, professional English and French, Italian working skills, basic Dutch, some Hungarian, some Finish and some Thai. I teach German, French and learn Italian exclusively by Comprehensible Input.
that accent conjecture actually makes sense, or that's exactly how I feel with my german. The accent is acquired but I can't perform it without feeling akward.
You may not see a correlation. But my first major was music and I switched to linguistics. My dad had a music minor and he went to DC after college to work as a translator for German and then recruited to work with computers (another profession where you usually are a polyglot, with computer languages) and went on to help invent one of the first touchscreens back in the early 70s. I do tend to pick up new sounds easily. And both of you happen to be musicians and linguists. It seems worth exploring. It may have nothing to do with being able to learn a language but it could be correlated with the interest. Oh. My dad also spent his old age learning some Norwegian and then studying Koine Greek to the end.
"Other times I'm told I speak French without a trace of a French accent", hahah. I think the accent conjecture makes sense too. Great talk! Thank you!!
Language is Music: -- Music has rhythm, timbre, pitch, flow and "all that jazz" -- Language has rhythm/syllables, intonation, melody and flow Language is Music, no doubt about that. There is no language mastery without a sense of rhythm and flow. You don't need to have musical training, but you still need to have an ear for rhythm, melody, accents and melodic flow. Language through Songs/Music is something completely different (and inefficient) and that's not the direction I thought the conversation/interview would take.
+virtuallyNATIVE yes I think we were talking at cross purposes a bit at that point. I was trying to get at the link between musical and language ability.
while in theory musical ability should aid language acquisition, in reality it doesn't seem to matter all that much: -- As a language teacher I've had over 100 ESL students who had musical background (music professors, piano teachers, orchestra musicians, singers, etc.) and none of them showed any "special talent" for English; -- As a language learner I was able to master English not having any musical abilities -- don't play any musical instruments, not good at singing either ...
This was such an interesting and insightful interview. This came exactly at a time when I needed to hear it in my language learning journey in Japanese. Thank you so much for doing this. These theories are incredibly encouraging.
This was a very interesting interview. I think you did a very good job of asking questions, which elicited some very informative answers. Even though I accept his basic thesis, that CI is key, his methods and comments leave me with a lot of questions of my own, not that I have anything like his knowledge and experience of course. I have a good B2 level in French, and I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. As a result my comprehension of native level French (in a formal register) has rocketed, which confirms for me the benefits of CI. However, my spoken French is at a much lower level, grammatically it’s okay, but I struggle to find the right words, even when I should know them. I can only hope that CI will also improve my spoken French. French seems so easy, it has a similar sentence structure to English and shares so much vocabulary. The two languages are almost like dialects. I am also learning German, and I am now at an A2 level. It has a weird word order, a case system and words that I struggle to learn such as die Ausbildung, and anfangen. How on earth does one find CI at that level? I use Babbel (I tried Duolingo, it is dreadful), which I enjoy. I suspect native German books for German children would be useful. As I said, this was a fascinating interview. Thank you.
Olly: Your Russian reader fit my level well; I understand probably 85-90% of it and so it's perfect. It is so hard to find the right level of reading. It was great to find it.
Ace interview..... All language teachers should language learners....absolutely, to paraphrase Kipling (which may be a first!): “What do they know of English, who only English know?”
@@bozenaszulc4815 okay obviously yes that's true, I think what Stephen was getting at was what separates those who just mindlessly study from those who then APPLY that by solving problems using what they've learned. Learning in context of solving problems also often sticks much more and highlights gaps in your knowledge too. So a combination is best. Problem solving without study is needlessly difficult and study without problem solving is less efficient and doesn't make you a master at that skill :)
Think music learning helps to language learning, in similar way learning many languages helps one to learn new language. Music is kind a language, though in music, pronunciation is on creating meaningful formation of sounds, whereas in language, pronunciation is more on information exchange, where today's music is more of a one way exchange, language is two road lane. Learning to play music creates new pathways in our brains, and some of those can facilitate learning new language as well, and it's the same vice versa, learning new language, helps to learn to play music as well, especially if part of learning new language is typing on a keyboard
Oh, also, LanguageCon is a fantastic language learning conference co-sponsored by Italki and NYU that happens in Shanghai, China once a year in Sept: I recommend it highly.
Hello, Mr Richards, thank you so much for all the info you have shared on this video. I just have a question and I hope you reply back to me. The question is: Can the natural approach method be used to teach all languages tenses or does it have a limit in which the students must study Grammar? Good regards I am from Nicaragua.
I've almost always, as a language teacher, had class groups who tackled comprehension by translation, most often a common mother tongue, not matter how comprehensible, didacticized etc. etc. the input is. Most of those learn almost nothing in language classes - except than somehow dealing with upcoming exams. It's maddening. In China, as in many developing countries, the inofficial standard approach to learning/teaching foreign languages is CONSTANT TRANSLATION. Literally, the number "eins" (German) has to be tranlated - in the mind but often for the entire class or a certain in-group - as Arabic "wahed. Foreign words are treated like mospuitos on the wall - CLAP: GONE.
Can i acquire language just by myself ? I mean... without any language teacher. Because i am learning French. And there is no french people live in my place. Can i still acquire language by just listening and reading ?
I just come across with this character and you could find a lot of deep knowledge in him 28:32 Great video Olly I hope that many more people that love languages get watch this video and also a couple of more info about this great linguistic Master
Can you learn language by listenning or do you have some rules to learn for my opinion can you learn language by listenning why because new born i just listenning and can speak very well
The "Noise" issue is interesting, I actually did 99% noise, over and over and over till I'm now maybe at 20% when listening to podcasts/tv series and I feel like it's amazing, 20% is awesome :D And than I hear people saying that 10% is max, 20% is max they can handle. Seems little weird.
Yes....I think you always get _something_ out of such exercises, even if it's only a little each time. But as Stephen says, it depends on your individual tolerance for noise. Mine seems to be quite high.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I truly enjoy your interviews, Olly! You don’t interrupt, are kind, and listen. Mr. Krashen shows so much passion and humility when he is interviewed too.
Thank you! A lot of people thought I asked too many questions here.
@@storylearning Nah! Those are probably the same questions I wanted answered too.
I'm really glad they mentioned the monolingual language teacher issue. That confuses me to no end. How can someone who has never learned a language themselves, teach and guide students to learn a language? Its like taking dance lessons from someone who has never danced. I've looked into job postings for ESL teachers and they want a masters degree and jump thru a dozen other hoops...but being monolingual (the most important thing! ) is perfectly ok
It's largely a byproduct of not being able to find enough people that speak multiple languages. On top of that, the methods being used in schools are typically not grounded in sound theory anyways, so it's a bit of a moot point. To make matters even worse, often times the students won't continue coming to class if a teacher does demand things of them that would lead to success because it's boring and difficult.
Personally, what I've found works best for me is more or less comprehensible output. I get my comprehensible input by learning it for output and then listening for it around me. Each time I learn a bit of language, that becomes something that I can then pay attention for when reading or listening.
How did your mother teach you your first language ?
To paraphrase Kipling (which may be a first!):
“What do they know of English, who only English know?”
Everyone learns a language.
@@TheCompleteGuitarist you might want to look into that... Learn/aquire... 2 different things
"If you are a language teacher, you have to be a language learner".
Of course; you wouldn't trust a fat personal trainer
Krashen is the man.
He is indeed
Definitely!
"Smart people never study. They try to solve problems."
Stephen Krashen is a treasure. I have started putting his methods to work, and I feel I have learned more in this maybe one or two months of casual self learning with reading graded readers and trying to turn the subtitles off on the anime I watch than I ever did in an entire two years of Japanese in high school.
Wow, i thoroughly enjoyed listening to you gentlemen converse about the theoretical and practical aspects of multiple language acquisition. With so much rubbish on the internet, it's refreshing to find interviews/conversations that encourage intellectual growth. Thank you very much!
What a lovely comment, thanks D!
You're welcome!
what an amazing interview! I'm a Spanish teacher and you guys just changed the way I see language learning! Thank you for making me a better teacher. Ana
Thanks Ana, really glad you enjoyed it!
¿Trabajas en Instituto Cervantes acaso?
Dr krashens theory is so comforting and healing, especially he says not to worry about accent and relax and just enjoy the interesting stories or books or contents. I’ve been living in the u.s. for 20 years working as a nurse and still not confident with my English
I moved to Japan about 6 months ago and only started studying the language a couple of months before that. Like almost every other English speaking foreigner I moved here by getting an English teaching job. I'm monolingual and after studying Japanese myself and researching a lot the different ways to study, my limited opinion basically aligns with Krashen. It really makes it hard to care about teaching English since 1 I only plan to do it for a limited time and especially 2 I completely don't agree with the schools teaching methods and I do think it's absolutely insane how easy someone that only speaks one language can get a language teaching job. Anytime I go into a class I just want to tell them go home and read A LOT then listen to tv or podcasts or audiobooks A LOT and save your money then after a while if you want to practice speaking just go online and find some native speakers for cheap or free to practice. I feel like I've learned so much more Japanese in 6 months than a lot of these students that just focus on classes learn in a couple years.
Thanks for sharing this interview Olly. Very, very interesting, I especially related when Stephen said that the best accent is inside of us, it has happened so many times to me that one moment I pass for an English native speaker but then on a different conversation I feel an 'unnatural accent', that but now I know that its more of a psychological thing.
He has a great way of putting difficult ideas into words!
Music for me is a powerful tool to help me work on my pronunciation and I love it.
Legendary I cannot count how many times I’ve watched/listened to the pod of this conversation. Anyone learning a language just needs to start here. It’s that simple!
I agree with the interviewer when it comes to music. As a singer/ pianist I am used to changing my mouth shapes and patterns to get the desired result. I picked up my Spanish accent quickly, and the rolled r's were seriously a piece of cake. I am also use to performing with tones of confidence. So when I speak Spanish it feels like I'm putting on a show, I don't care or mind and my spanish comes out great. As a self taught professional musician I know what it takes to become better, so I just spent 9 hours a day learning. Being a musician helps. But it's not the be all and end all.
I agree with the interviewer too. I also happen to have a musical background (albeit not professional) and that guy's argument made a lot of sense. I really think there may be a causal connection between music training and and talent for language learning. I have a friend who's a guitarist and he's understands and speaks english fairly well for somebody who never, never studied the language seriously, like me.
Since he was 10 years old he's just been learning the lyrics of the songs he likes to listen to and play, doing some regular listening here and there and this alone got him really far.
I'll certainly research the literature on this topic.
Me encantaría escucharte cantar en español y tocar el piano al mismo tiempo...
Listening to Stephen just fuels you with energy and remind you why are we teachers ❤
30:14 making a comment so can find this gold later when I come back to this.
Thank you both so much!
Totally agree that teachers should be learners. Teachers are normally fluent in L1, almost fluent in L2 and probably beginner to intermediate in L3 because they've often got to be able to teach a second language to basic level. After a certain level they reach a ceiling to say that's enough and then they forget what it's like to be a learner.
Agreed entirely!
Olly Richards
But they are not polyglots because teachers hate learning new languages for the same reason that most people do - it's very difficult. And even teachers are not the meta language learners they want their students to be.
Hey man, I learned about your channel through Matt vs Japan. I already thought so while watching your interview with Matt, but you're an excellent interviewer! I'm so grateful that you got to interview Steven Krashen so we can hear some things no one else has asked him about before.
This was great. My ears perked up when Stephen said “we acquire language”. For me, i think it’s going to be not so much learning, but slowly gathering language over time. Somehow, that’s taken the pressure off and I can get back to enjoying the language journey.
Jackie C. That was my takeaway too!
My language learning philosophy is that if I keep studying consistently there is no way I could NOT learn a language.
Even if I have to learn it sentence by sentence and one grammar concept a day, it *will* happen. :D
Krashen is the man! Oily, when you asked the question about music and it’s correlation to learning accent, Krashen replies that it’s within us. Yes. I believe music does in fact (perhaps not in the declarative aspect but in the implicit aspect) help the speed of acquiring accent. I listen to language deeply. As I grow musically I find my ear deeply attuned to getting the subtle nuances. I believe accents come from subtle nuances that most of us do not listen to deeply enough to catch. It stands to reason that being strong in one language translates to other related language learning. I used English to quickly acquire Spanish. 3 months of intensive, immersed, speaking and thinking Spanish helped me to acquire very quickly. Much as Krashen mentions about filter, I experienced as he did not being able to speak well in front of Spanish speakers that were extremely judgmental, causing me to lose all competence in their presence. Again going to Brasil (wife is from there) for two months, immersion did not work for me either. I ended up speaking a low level Portunhol, and came away with very little. Determined to speak for my new family, the return was three weeks the next time I went, I found an app which at the time didn’t find as useful but spent several hours each day while I had the radio, tv or family catching up around my ear. I very quickly caught the words I did not understand and picked up and was speaking entirely in Portuguese before returning home. I was very happy, however upon returning I very quickly lost the fluency with no one to speak with beside my wife. I totally understand most of what she says now but having constant conversation with those who do not speak English was a strong motivation while there. Thanks for posting this. Very informative!
Really an interesting interview. Certainly reaffirms the idea of how necessary finding compelling information in your second language is to keep you motivated, learning, and having fun. Listening and Reading! Listening and Reading!....... Thanks Olly for putting this out.
John Sohmer thanks for the support John!
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Krashan. I love his saying, "silly people never study but try to solve the problem". And TPRF is another new term i learned.
I agree with a lot of this. I'm also a fan of Steve Kaufman. The trouble I have is with this 5-10% unknown words. First of all, it's really, really tough to keep finding new material that is exactly in this pretty narrow "sweet spot," and secondly, if you work only with material that has 5% new words it'd take you a ridiculous amount of time to expose yourself to enough new words. I can't really understand why you'd limit yourself like that.
What I tend to do is find anything that's between 50-90% comprehensible, which immediately opens up a much wider range of material. I then work through it, looking up each unknown word, not to memorise it, but rather to aid my overall understanding of the text. Then I repeatedly listen to it and reread it until I feel like I've got out of it as much as I'm going to, then I move on.
I find looking up the unknown words helps push the comprehension up towards that 90%+ level, if only for that short period I'm working with the material. So long as you make sure the text isn't too long, and you keep it short, no longer than 5 minutes or so of audio, I feel like it works well and you'll be exposed to more new words than if you kept with your 90-95% known words. That is unless, of course, you put in longer sessions.
Yes, and that’s Steve’s perspective too. You’re absolutely right that practicalities (ie available material) often render much of this moot. The response to your point would be that if you’re working at 5-10% unknown then you’d have to spend less time with the dictionary, due to the amount you can infer from context. This really is picking at straws though, and important thing is to be reading and listening a lot! Cheers!
I'm no polyglot; I'm not interested in learning a bunch of languages for the sake of it. But Krashen's ideas (compelling comprehensible input, distinction between learning and acquisition, etc.) have helped me acquire the languages I have wanted or needed to acquire (Japanese, Korean, and some French). Thanks for doing this interview, you touched on some topics I haven't heard Krashen speak on before.
Robin how did you learn the languages?
This is one of the most fascinating/enjoyable interviews I've heard lately. As you know, Olly, I've struggled with motivation in learning Mandarin (IWTYAL episode 151). Maybe the next time I attempt to learn it (probably this winter, since I'm busy with projects in other languages right now, such as reading a lot of Japanese and trying out Benny Lewis' German textbook), I'll seek out a course or resource for beginners that's based on storytelling or a series of dialogs that together tell a story.
The language just sounds strange to my ears--more so than any other language I've studied. Usually, the more I listen to a language, the more I like it, and sometimes I even fall in love with it (for example, the poetic sound of Russian or Swahili). But the reverse happens here: The more I listen to Mandarin Chinese, the more bored I am with it. Also, when I try to learn vocabulary, I quickly forget it. It's very demotivating.
I want to learn Mandarin, which is why I never quit completely. I put the language away and try again a year or two later. Many rich Chinese people are buying houses in my city, so I hear the language spoken on the street and at tourist spots a lot. I want to be a multilingual tour guide or use a foreign language in my line of work (IT). If I learn Mandarin, I can use it a lot.
Geza, thanks for your tips. Reading is what I enjoy most in another language, and I can't read what interests me in the beginning because of the many Chinese characters. But I have an idea that I'm going to try next month (starting tomorrow, after gathering materials this evening). I'd forgotten about Alexander's video. I've watched it a couple of times before but it would be useful for me to watch it again, so I'm watching it now. Thanks again!
Why people learn Mandarin ? I don't understand.
@@Gaurav.P0 For the same reason that people learn all the others languages, I guess? Lol
@@lucasrba bro... Mandarin language is just spoken by Chinese people....and other languages like French, spanish etc is is important for university studies and job criteria in European countries and US.
I have acquired a lot of Dutch just from watching tiktok videos. It's a low stress environment, I can usually figure out what's happening based on content, and they're funny and clever so I'm actually motivated to watch them.
So true for me. Learning French right now. I came across a piece of writing on a French learning website, it was a Translation exercise from French to English. the article was to do with April Fools Day and how it is celebrated in France. I was compelled by the story which made me more dedicated to understanding what was being said. I found an historical error in the article that just could not have been factually correct. But this made me more determined to keep reading and translating. what krashen says is true. Compelling input really helps you learn a language.
Thank you so much Olly!!! That was such an awesome interview!!!☺️✌️
Glad you liked it!
Stephen Krashen is one of those, who when I see, I always wish he would have been one of my teachers. Some people just have that gift where they can make anything interesting. Another like that is Irving Finkel
Great interview. I always enjoy listening to Dr Krashan but most of the interviews go over similar ground. You have asked some very intelligent questions and got new information. Thanks.
Stephen Garbett glad you enjoyed it Stephen!
well I am now struggling with all that torrential rain of material dedicated to IELTS as my exam is approaching really quickly , i came across that RUclips channel Matt Vs japan which in turn lead me to name of Stephen Krashen and his theories about SLA , and to tell you the truth regret all the boring hours i spent studying vocabs which will eventually be forgotten or at least misused .That's because i was learning & forcing myself to study while deep inside i was quite sure that something is going wrong .
This is just great & encouraging .... nothing more compelling than the sound of evidence-based tactics
most days I spend at least one hour studying. Sometimes I miss a day with pencil and pad but I do listen to something. In my case either italian or spanish. I believe that listening has a fantastic unconcious impact.
Nice to have come across this interview by chance after having read and enjoyed your Spanish stories, Olly
Thanks William! That’s quite a bit of luck given the billions of videos on RUclips! :)
Good stuff (despite the majorly disruptive interferences of so many mid-sentence commercial breaks!) Thank you, Olly. I’ll check out your podcast 🙏🏼
19:11 how to get input at a beginner stage
thank you so much!!! im here for this
You can and can't. You have to get over the first 500 word struggle, flashcards, reading very short sentences, translating, writing them out, all that every day helps very quickly. Starting with personal vocabulary.
Learn the top 20 most common verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc.
Write out sentences (Very short: subject, verb, object etc).
Eventually you'll pick it up. Sources? RUclips offers a lot for beginners.
"In language anything you know is good" Agreed... :)
One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen!!! Great interview! Thank you!
Olly, as for your question what's the connection between music and language acqusition- the answer would be: activity within the brain region called ganglia basales ( nuclei basales). Really neuroscience latest discovery from this year proves we do learn natural languages the same way we do learn other activities, relying on old parts of brain which were developed before humnas became humans, so long before we have developed the modern version of prefrontal cortext. In other words, as a person has to practice playing a musical instrument by repetition we do have to learn any natural language by repetition, by doing. After a while our unconscious brain gets a grasp of the patterns and use them almost "instinctively" you could say. This is why SRS systems make a lot of sense in foreign language learning and why comprehensible input matters a lot too. And why immersion alone might not work if it doesn't provide enough of regular repetition and practice. So much from a neuroscience nerd who happens to be multilingual too. ;-) Btw, thank you for creating short stories for learners of Spanish.
I agree with the Professor’s conjecture. When I was in Rota Spain I was talking to locals with a terrible accent with some vocabulary. Over the months I got better and I had a wonderful time communicating with the locals. Coming back to San Diego, unfortunately, I no longer speak Spanish. First, I’m always afraid of making mistakes with my friends and second they speak English. Sighhhh. Great topic. Thank you Professor and Olly!👍🏽🙏🏼
Were you in the military? I live close to Rota.
This is a really excellent interview. It's always a pleasure to listen to thoughtful people discuss their passions, in this case the conversation was free & relaxed enough to expose valuable context but also skillfully directed and shaped by insightful questioning. Much appreciation for the effort and the sharing!
Thanks, Olly for the interview with Steve. I've always been influenced by his theory of comprehensible input when I evaluate language courses, teachers and materials, but it has taken me over 50 years to finally discover your website and the vast resources available on the Internet. This has taken my language learning to a new level. I'm no longer stuck with meaningless grammar exercises, and instead can find lots of RUclips videos in the languages I'm learning with content that is inherently interesting and made accessible through captions, dual texts, and facilities to both slow down and repeat spoken language. As a native English speaker, I have also discovered that translations of popular American novels and dubbings of American movies are a treasure trove of comprehensible input. After starting from zero one year ago, and using leads from your website, I am now having weekly conversations, totally in Italian, on topics that are unpredictable but always engaging. I've just started Mandarin so Steve's tips on TPRS and his experience with good teachers is really timely. Thanks for all your efforts and valuable insights on how to learn languages. It's working.
That's great to hear, Raymond, and I'm full of admiration for all your efforts too!
Great interview! Probably the best Krashen interview out there, so well done, Olly! I wonder how Krashen feels about the Gold List method, which has been making a lot of positive noise in the polyglot community...
I think he would probably criticise the isolation of vocab from its context!
I am starting to think that most language classes are really backwards, they should not ty to teach you English (or French or whichever language they try to teach). They should teach you how to learn another language. There is so much that other learners have disovered, so we should learn from that.
I completely agree!
This is one of the reasons why it's a useful use of time to start with a few weeks of a constructed language like Esperanto before moving onto your main language. The experience of hearing yourself speaking a foreign language cuts down on resistance to the possibility.
Thank you very much for the interview Olly! Keep up the good work :)
Thanks Lucas, any requests for interviewees?
Olly Richards There are some great polyglots I think you haven’t interviewed yet. I like Moses Mccormick, Robin Macpherson, Alberto Arrighini, Felix Wang and Tim Doner.
very good and inspiring video. It's the contrary of what being taught at school in the 90s. I am not familiar with the school system now to be fair..
This has been a very inspiring interview. Thank you so much for sharing it. Please keep up the good work!!! I probably will come back for listening this interview over and over.
Great to hear!
He's an absolutely enthralling speaker...
Just a short defense of having an accent in a foreign language: It betrays you as a foreigner immediately, which immediately makes you interesting to a lot of people. People are often interested in foreigners, where they came from, why they're here, why do they speak my language, they want to tell you fun things to do there, etc.
Collecting languages is LITERALLY A HOBBY and I will never stop finding it funny
Comprehensible input language acquisition method definitely works. I'm à polyglotte too native Romanian-German bilingual speaker, professional English and French, Italian working skills, basic Dutch, some Hungarian, some Finish and some Thai. I teach German, French and learn Italian exclusively by Comprehensible Input.
that accent conjecture actually makes sense, or that's exactly how I feel with my german. The accent is acquired but I can't perform it without feeling akward.
You may not see a correlation. But my first major was music and I switched to linguistics. My dad had a music minor and he went to DC after college to work as a translator for German and then recruited to work with computers (another profession where you usually are a polyglot, with computer languages) and went on to help invent one of the first touchscreens back in the early 70s. I do tend to pick up new sounds easily. And both of you happen to be musicians and linguists. It seems worth exploring. It may have nothing to do with being able to learn a language but it could be correlated with the interest. Oh. My dad also spent his old age learning some Norwegian and then studying Koine Greek to the end.
"Other times I'm told I speak French without a trace of a French accent", hahah. I think the accent conjecture makes sense too. Great talk! Thank you!!
I love Stephen Krashen!
Language is Music:
-- Music has rhythm, timbre, pitch, flow and "all that jazz"
-- Language has rhythm/syllables, intonation, melody and flow
Language is Music, no doubt about that. There is no language mastery without a sense of rhythm and flow. You don't need to have musical training, but you still need to have an ear for rhythm, melody, accents and melodic flow.
Language through Songs/Music is something completely different (and inefficient) and that's not the direction I thought the conversation/interview would take.
+virtuallyNATIVE yes I think we were talking at cross purposes a bit at that point. I was trying to get at the link between musical and language ability.
while in theory musical ability should aid language acquisition, in reality it doesn't seem to matter all that much:
-- As a language teacher I've had over 100 ESL students who had musical background (music professors, piano teachers, orchestra musicians, singers, etc.) and none of them showed any "special talent" for English;
-- As a language learner I was able to master English not having any musical abilities -- don't play any musical instruments, not good at singing either ...
Yep. Like with any field, success is always 95% hard work, 5% natural ability (or something like that).
This was such an interesting and insightful interview. This came exactly at a time when I needed to hear it in my language learning journey in Japanese. Thank you so much for doing this. These theories are incredibly encouraging.
Thanks Dennis, glad you enjoyed it!
This was a very interesting interview. I think you did a very good job of asking questions, which elicited some very informative answers. Even though I accept his basic thesis, that CI is key, his methods and comments leave me with a lot of questions of my own, not that I have anything like his knowledge and experience of course. I have a good B2 level in French, and I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. As a result my comprehension of native level French (in a formal register) has rocketed, which confirms for me the benefits of CI. However, my spoken French is at a much lower level, grammatically it’s okay, but I struggle to find the right words, even when I should know them. I can only hope that CI will also improve my spoken French. French seems so easy, it has a similar sentence structure to English and shares so much vocabulary. The two languages are almost like dialects. I am also learning German, and I am now at an A2 level. It has a weird word order, a case system and words that I struggle to learn such as die Ausbildung, and anfangen. How on earth does one find CI at that level? I use Babbel (I tried Duolingo, it is dreadful), which I enjoy. I suspect native German books for German children would be useful. As I said, this was a fascinating interview. Thank you.
Olly: Your Russian reader fit my level well; I understand probably 85-90% of it and so it's perfect. It is so hard to find the right level of reading. It was great to find it.
A riveting conversation. Thank you!
Ace interview..... All language teachers should language learners....absolutely, to paraphrase Kipling (which may be a first!):
“What do they know of English, who only English know?”
Does Stephe have a website or blog, so we can go to look for more about the language aquisition?
"I'm sorry, I made you suffer" 😂🤣
Indeeed!! On the contrary, thank you, thank you, thank you!! :-)
I am using covid to pick up more languages. Learn to listen for the vowel sounds or their equivalent.
Great interview Olly. Well done!
Cheers Tom
Thanks. You are amazing.
"Smart people never study; they try to solve problems"
One of the best interviews I've heard. Massive respect for Stephen!
Smart people always study! According to neurolinguistics, nothing can be achieved w/o a tremendous effort of your brain.
@@bozenaszulc4815 okay obviously yes that's true, I think what Stephen was getting at was what separates those who just mindlessly study from those who then APPLY that by solving problems using what they've learned. Learning in context of solving problems also often sticks much more and highlights gaps in your knowledge too. So a combination is best. Problem solving without study is needlessly difficult and study without problem solving is less efficient and doesn't make you a master at that skill :)
This Kinda clarifies everything that I've been wondering about. Thanks a lot! Couldn't be better :) Cheers
Great to hear!
Thanks Olly , I recommend this interview to my language friends.
Cheers Allen!
CI for animal language is very interesting. I often watch dogs interreacting and have learnt much about their complex interplay
Think music learning helps to language learning, in similar way learning many languages helps one to learn new language.
Music is kind a language, though in music, pronunciation is on creating meaningful formation of sounds, whereas in language, pronunciation is more on information exchange, where today's music is more of a one way exchange, language is two road lane.
Learning to play music creates new pathways in our brains, and some of those can facilitate learning new language as well, and it's the same vice versa, learning new language, helps to learn to play music as well, especially if part of learning new language is typing on a keyboard
Oh, also, LanguageCon is a fantastic language learning conference co-sponsored by Italki and NYU that happens in Shanghai, China once a year in Sept: I recommend it highly.
This video is so compelling for me so I am listening to this without any thinking, im trying to improve my English to higher level lol
Very interesting conversation , learned a lot thank you
"The two most important days of your life: the day you are born, the day you discovered why" - Mark Twain
Hello, Mr Richards, thank you so much for all the info you have shared on this video. I just have a question and I hope you reply back to me.
The question is: Can the natural approach method be used to teach all languages tenses or does it have a limit in which the students must study Grammar?
Good regards
I am from Nicaragua.
I've almost always, as a language teacher, had class groups who tackled comprehension by translation, most often a common mother tongue, not matter how comprehensible, didacticized etc. etc. the input is. Most of those learn almost nothing in language classes - except than somehow dealing with upcoming exams. It's maddening. In China, as in many developing countries, the inofficial standard approach to learning/teaching foreign languages is CONSTANT TRANSLATION. Literally, the number "eins" (German) has to be tranlated - in the mind but often for the entire class or a certain in-group - as Arabic "wahed. Foreign words are treated like mospuitos on the wall - CLAP: GONE.
Can i acquire language just by myself ? I mean... without any language teacher. Because i am learning French. And there is no french people live in my place. Can i still acquire language by just listening and reading ?
I just come across with this character and you could find a lot of deep knowledge in him 28:32
Great video Olly I hope that many more people that love languages get watch this video and also a couple of more info about this great linguistic Master
Fantastic!!!!!! Thank you 🙏
bookmark: 23:47
this man is my hero
Yep, he wrapped the debate between music and language learning up in a nutshell. There’s a correlation but it’s not causal.
Is anyone aware of Krashen’s opinion on the critical period?
8:52 Comprehensible input > Immersion when one isn't an intermediate language-user yet.
Good interview. Several gems in there.
Cheers Jason!
He says...about the reading strategy: "Don't worry...you'll see those words again!"
I wonder if he ever met Lomb Kato? She said very similar things.
Ooops, he mentions her at the end!
Great interview!
Great interview
Thanks Nerve
Krashen is King!
Can you learn language by listenning or do you have some rules to learn for my opinion can you learn language by listenning why because new born i just listenning and can speak very well
Have faith in your brain. Yes, this is the truest truth. It's just a matter of time. Once it comes out, it will hard to undo.
I want a video of Olly and Krashen jamming out on piano together
"Listen and read, find what you're interested in".
I speak four languages fluently. This is the only way.
Brilliant interview, where can I find the transcript of this interview?
Sorry we haven’t done a transcript.
5 commercial breaks in the first 16 minutes???????? 👀
The "Noise" issue is interesting, I actually did 99% noise, over and over and over till I'm now maybe at 20% when listening to podcasts/tv series and I feel like it's amazing, 20% is awesome :D And than I hear people saying that 10% is max, 20% is max they can handle. Seems little weird.
Yes....I think you always get _something_ out of such exercises, even if it's only a little each time.
But as Stephen says, it depends on your individual tolerance for noise. Mine seems to be quite high.
Did you speak Amharic Sir ??
15:14 No accent course has ever worked
There’s probably stuff that can help... especially around raising awareness. But it’s not my thing either.
William Lucas I remember themimicmethod guy
We need not look up every word... what is it that you do understand about what was said or written?
I think I just found a role model
26:55