So true and so good to hear someone voice this. Krashen did a great job at describing the input hypothesis in a very compelling way. But I think people have this idea that because he is a famous academic, everything he says is true. Recalling the meaning of a word or grammar structure when you hear or read it does not at all mean that you can produce it in the right context in the way a native speaker would. Although it's fairly obvious that you're not going to be able to produce it without first hearing or reading it lots of times, hearing or reading it alone is only a first step towards producing it. It's very possible to have great comprehension and poor output, and just doing more input in that case is extremely inefficient because you won't have any knowledge of where to focus your attention without doing output and getting corrected to know where the problems with your output are. Thanks for the video!
I agree. You get good at things by practice. You get good at basketball by playing basketball. You get good at skiing by skiing. Maybe skiing can increase your balance, which would help with playing basketball, but mostly it's from actually practicing the thing you want to get good at. If you want to get good at comprehending audio, listen a lot. Comprehending text? Read a lot. Speaking? Speak a lot. Writing? Write a lot. Skills in each one will help somewhat with the others, but the most progress will come from practicing the thing itself. If you always focus on just listening, you will mostly only get good at listening. If you focus only on speaking, your comprehension will be lacking. I don't understand why that isn't obvious to so many people. That's like going skiing every day, and wondering why your basketball skills aren't improving. Of course, that's an exaggerated example, since the relationship between the four language skills is stronger than that, but you get the idea.
I appreciate you making time to respond to all the comments, make videos, and do interviews on your process and beliefs to learning Mandarin. You’re truly a master of your time, to be able to do all that while being a Med student. As I know with medical.. you have so much terminology to learn alone in your native language. I aspire to be able to absorb information like you - I’d say I have “undiagnosed ADHD” since I have extreme attention issues, even with things I am extremely passionate about i.e. learning music theory, read sheet music (but find myself constantly distracted.) I’ve lived in Guangzhou in 3 month increments (for 9 months total, last trip was canceled due to Covid): Working as a model in many cities around China - never did I acquire the language, because I thought it’d be impossible to learn. I highly regret not taking the time to even attempt to retain what I was hearing or seeing. However, now I am dedicated to learning Mandarin and plan to branch off into learning Cantonese when I get to a HSK 5/6 level. (At the moment, this is my 2nd week trying to get an understanding of this language and I do see a lot of patterns, like in music.. I’m doing it self taught. I do have a plethora of Chinese friends and clients that I could’ve talked with, but got locked out of WeChat after losing my Chinese #. My main goal is.. I wanted to surprise my agents at the agency in Guangzhou next year - by being able to take care of the transport to my jobs, book my own flights in mainland, not needing a translator at jobs, etc. I want to expose myself to the language as much as possible with the intentions of acquiring it this time. I love the culture, and I plan to use this language for life. ALSO I can’t wait to see what you plan to do next!) How do you approach studying and balancing your time.. when you have so many responsibilities? Truly a 🐐! Thanks again for the content 兄弟！(: - Chris V.
Thanks so much for the comment Chris I really appreciate it. In all honesty, I still find it really hard to balance my time. I think there's a lot to be said for having some fixed habits that you do everyday to help with this. I wish you all the best with learning Mandarin and Cantonese (I might consider trying canto after spanish :) ). Keep me updated with how you get on and lmk if I can help at all!
Hey Will, I completely agree with you. And by that I mean, if I were writing this video, I'd probably write it the same way. Where I think that this is so so hard to talk about without people going insane at you and calling you a charlatan etc etc., is that to take this stance, you have to say "I agree with this... but I also agree with this." and people often can't handle that you can agree with someone without agreeing with them WHOLLY. I am exactly the same in that I failed to learn German at school, because we just didn't get input. Sadly, had we have had even 400 hours of German input, along with class, we actually all would have been quite capable BECAUSE we were doing class as well. I was also not great at Swedish for almost 3 years before I started getting large amounts of input. But then people hear me say that and conclude that I'm a hardcore Krashenite, and that I believe in nothing but comprehensible input, which is ridiculous. For the last two years or so, my Swedish has barely moved because of a LACK of anything else (practice speaking in sentences etc etc.) Gah, there is tonnes more I could say... but I'll leave it for now. 😅
Thanks so much for the comment! I never expected you would comment on a small channel like mine haha. Totally agree, I think there is a need to have a more balanced approach where we accent the importance of input, but know that there are other things that will help like speaking practice etc. I hate how polarised the language learning community is and hope that can be changed ahha.
I've been studying languages going back to the late 90's by myself and I was really big on reading and listening. Later when the Internet blew up and this input hypothesis became well known I thought yeah! that's what I'm talking about. But then you started hearing weird things like early output is bad for you! Which I completely disagree with. I used to talk to myself and this was very helpful. I don't feel like I'm part of the group anymore. I'm back to being a loner again like before.
I completely agree with you, as a beginner I’ve had a lot of input for about a year (mostly passive) and I can still barely speak at all. Still having tone issues and chinglish sentence structure issues like you said
Will, your youtube video making has come a long way... the trolling is so much more subtle these days. I admired all the carpentry B-role you used in the previous two videos... this time, even an iPod shuffle sighting, truly unexpected.
Totally agree with you, I also think that people are immersing way way above their comprehensible level. "I can understand 80%" is a lie, and even if it's true the 20% you're missing is critical to the message, so on the whole you understand zero. I'm still only able to understand peppa-pig or CI youtuber content; any anime/movie/tv dubs, or native content are near impossible for me to understand. I also get my grammar from YingChinese HSK videos which are absolutely goated, and am practicing with native speakers to construct my own sentences from the lesssons. Like all things, the truth about input hypothesis lies somewhere in the middle. Personally, I think I need a lot more feedback before I can start doing any self-speak - like your very patient friend was able to give you. Comprehension goes through the roof, even with only 20 days of comprehensible input, and gives you the context to actually remember vocab (where anki fails, anyone else agree?? haha). Then you actually have the tools to communicate with people and take advantage of the social process to use the language, get feedback (that you can now understand!), and hopefully get to the point where your self-speak actually works. I'm curious how early you started to speak to yourself, because even now if I tried to do that I would not be saying it like a native would. Luckily I have a few friends who work with me on this right now everyday so I hope within 12 weeks I'll be doing just that
In my opinion anki or flashcards or any other rote memorization tool, is a way to retain vocab long enough for you to encounter them in the wild. Anki without input is just spinning ones wheels.
@@vanessathomas9641Totally agree. I kept it up since I wrote this comment. Anki is only an hour or so in the morning, the rest of my freetime is on podcasts, dramas, novels, and chill conversations with natives
Great video, Will. I am probably in the same position as you when it comes to this. I think the main thing is that historically language teaching methods have just vastly underestimated how much input you need and that's why the spread of Krashen's work has been important. But yes, there are a number reason why it's not the be all and end all of learning a language. The thing is I have tested the input method out a bit for Mandarin and now I am too lazy to want to do the traditional study methods again 😅But here are some of the points I reflect on often about CI: Pronunciation - how can you train the muscles in your mouth to say sounds you've never made before if you don't ever speak them? High Comprehension, Low Output Speakers - I have meet many, many native Chinese speakers who understand me completely in English (even with my relatively unusual Kiwi accent) but their speech is very slow and with a strong, hard to understand accent - I have also experienced this with Te Reo Māori (NZ's indigenous language) where people can understand a lot, but barely speak. Direct Context - speaking in conversations has the powerful effect of putting you in the context which I feel deeply enhances learning and retention (rather than being a third party observer all the time when watching videos). The World Has Changed! - the world is very different from the 70-80s where we now have access to an almost infinite amount of content in many languages and so you can conceivable keep only listening until a very advanced level - I wonder if back then Krashen's ideas were theorised and tested on a beginner set of input and naturally would have lead to just real world input soon after (not just being at home with 10000 videos to choose from), but I'm not 100% on that as TV, movies and self help tapes all existed back then too. Anyway, just my 5 cents. Thanks again!
Very interesting thoughts, I totally agree with conversations enhancing learning and retention so much more than just watching videos! All the best with your Mandarin, let me know how you get on!
wondering if you've looked into the newer research(ers) that builds off of Krashen, like Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis, Butzkam's Dual comprehension hypothesis, VanPatten's Input Processing hypothesis etc.
Man I wasted years achieving nothing with CI. Imagine learning to swim using CI. Its ridiculous. Once I quit CI I made huge progress using purely traditional 3000 year old methods.
Hi Will, very much agree with your observations. I have had a similar path to you - first learning Japanese while at medical school, now studying Mandarin as a doctor. Comprehensible input is very important - and I think especially so for improving your understanding of real language. But deliberate practice and skills-based learning has a role, too, especially when you need to practice output skills (say, trip to China coming up in next 6 months and you don't have time to fire 3000 hours into smashing CI). I think even the most ardent CI proponent / AJATT / Refold-style learner would benefit from a good grammar by their side also.
Comprehensible Input theory is excellent it just forgets to mention the fact that it only works when paired with almost equal amounts of output haha. I find that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Start speaking as soon as you start immersing yourself and thank yourself 6 months down the line when your speaking and comprehension have both improved at a similar rate.
Not sure about 'almost equal amounts of output'--that seems unrealistic even if you aspire to be a great chatterbox with native-speaking friends. The most likely case is that the vast majority of your engagement with the target language in any real-life situation is going to be through listening (as w/ your native language), which happens to be the aspect least prioritized by language courses. You can get by speaking even with a very narrow active vocabulary if you know how things are supposed to sound, but you cannot be asking native speakers to simplify their speech to cater to your needs. I ran into this problem when I moved to France after college. I had put a great deal of effort into my accent and pronunciation, and spoke the language well, but seriously struggled to understand what native speakers said to me.
So true and so good to hear someone voice this. Krashen did a great job at describing the input hypothesis in a very compelling way. But I think people have this idea that because he is a famous academic, everything he says is true. Recalling the meaning of a word or grammar structure when you hear or read it does not at all mean that you can produce it in the right context in the way a native speaker would. Although it's fairly obvious that you're not going to be able to produce it without first hearing or reading it lots of times, hearing or reading it alone is only a first step towards producing it. It's very possible to have great comprehension and poor output, and just doing more input in that case is extremely inefficient because you won't have any knowledge of where to focus your attention without doing output and getting corrected to know where the problems with your output are. Thanks for the video!
I agree. You get good at things by practice. You get good at basketball by playing basketball. You get good at skiing by skiing. Maybe skiing can increase your balance, which would help with playing basketball, but mostly it's from actually practicing the thing you want to get good at.
If you want to get good at comprehending audio, listen a lot. Comprehending text? Read a lot. Speaking? Speak a lot. Writing? Write a lot. Skills in each one will help somewhat with the others, but the most progress will come from practicing the thing itself. If you always focus on just listening, you will mostly only get good at listening. If you focus only on speaking, your comprehension will be lacking. I don't understand why that isn't obvious to so many people. That's like going skiing every day, and wondering why your basketball skills aren't improving. Of course, that's an exaggerated example, since the relationship between the four language skills is stronger than that, but you get the idea.
Very good points, definitely agree with your views there!
I appreciate you making time to respond to all the comments, make videos, and do interviews on your process and beliefs to learning Mandarin.
You’re truly a master of your time, to be able to do all that while being a Med student. As I know with medical.. you have so much terminology to learn alone in your native language.
I aspire to be able to absorb information like you - I’d say I have “undiagnosed ADHD” since I have extreme attention issues, even with things I am extremely passionate about i.e. learning music theory, read sheet music (but find myself constantly distracted.)
I’ve lived in Guangzhou in 3 month increments (for 9 months total, last trip was canceled due to Covid):
Working as a model in many cities around China - never did I acquire the language, because I thought it’d be impossible to learn. I highly regret not taking the time to even attempt to retain what I was hearing or seeing. However, now I am dedicated to learning Mandarin and plan to branch off into learning Cantonese when I get to a HSK 5/6 level.
(At the moment, this is my 2nd week trying to get an understanding of this language and I do see a lot of patterns, like in music.. I’m doing it self taught. I do have a plethora of Chinese friends and clients that I could’ve talked with, but got locked out of WeChat after losing my Chinese #. My main goal is.. I wanted to surprise my agents at the agency in Guangzhou next year - by being able to take care of the transport to my jobs, book my own flights in mainland, not needing a translator at jobs, etc. I want to expose myself to the language as much as possible with the intentions of acquiring it this time. I love the culture, and I plan to use this language for life. ALSO I can’t wait to see what you plan to do next!)
How do you approach studying and balancing your time.. when you have so many responsibilities?
Truly a 🐐!
Thanks again for the content 兄弟！(:
- Chris V.
Thanks so much for the comment Chris I really appreciate it. In all honesty, I still find it really hard to balance my time. I think there's a lot to be said for having some fixed habits that you do everyday to help with this. I wish you all the best with learning Mandarin and Cantonese (I might consider trying canto after spanish :) ). Keep me updated with how you get on and lmk if I can help at all!
Hey Will,
I completely agree with you. And by that I mean, if I were writing this video, I'd probably write it the same way.
Where I think that this is so so hard to talk about without people going insane at you and calling you a charlatan etc etc., is that to take this stance, you have to say "I agree with this... but I also agree with this." and people often can't handle that you can agree with someone without agreeing with them WHOLLY.
I am exactly the same in that I failed to learn German at school, because we just didn't get input. Sadly, had we have had even 400 hours of German input, along with class, we actually all would have been quite capable BECAUSE we were doing class as well. I was also not great at Swedish for almost 3 years before I started getting large amounts of input. But then people hear me say that and conclude that I'm a hardcore Krashenite, and that I believe in nothing but comprehensible input, which is ridiculous. For the last two years or so, my Swedish has barely moved because of a LACK of anything else (practice speaking in sentences etc etc.)
Gah, there is tonnes more I could say... but I'll leave it for now. 😅
Thanks so much for the comment! I never expected you would comment on a small channel like mine haha. Totally agree, I think there is a need to have a more balanced approach where we accent the importance of input, but know that there are other things that will help like speaking practice etc. I hate how polarised the language learning community is and hope that can be changed ahha.
I've been studying languages going back to the late 90's by myself and I was really big on reading and listening. Later when the Internet blew up and this input hypothesis became well known I thought yeah! that's what I'm talking about. But then you started hearing weird things like early output is bad for you! Which I completely disagree with. I used to talk to myself and this was very helpful. I don't feel like I'm part of the group anymore. I'm back to being a loner again like before.
Yes, brother
Fuck yeah
Agree.
I completely agree with you, as a beginner I’ve had a lot of input for about a year (mostly passive) and I can still barely speak at all. Still having tone issues and chinglish sentence structure issues like you said
Thanks for the comment and all the best for your mandarin journey!
Will, your youtube video making has come a long way... the trolling is so much more subtle these days. I admired all the carpentry B-role you used in the previous two videos... this time, even an iPod shuffle sighting, truly unexpected.
Totally agree with you, I also think that people are immersing way way above their comprehensible level. "I can understand 80%" is a lie, and even if it's true the 20% you're missing is critical to the message, so on the whole you understand zero. I'm still only able to understand peppa-pig or CI youtuber content; any anime/movie/tv dubs, or native content are near impossible for me to understand. I also get my grammar from YingChinese HSK videos which are absolutely goated, and am practicing with native speakers to construct my own sentences from the lesssons.
Like all things, the truth about input hypothesis lies somewhere in the middle. Personally, I think I need a lot more feedback before I can start doing any self-speak - like your very patient friend was able to give you. Comprehension goes through the roof, even with only 20 days of comprehensible input, and gives you the context to actually remember vocab (where anki fails, anyone else agree?? haha). Then you actually have the tools to communicate with people and take advantage of the social process to use the language, get feedback (that you can now understand!), and hopefully get to the point where your self-speak actually works.
I'm curious how early you started to speak to yourself, because even now if I tried to do that I would not be saying it like a native would. Luckily I have a few friends who work with me on this right now everyday so I hope within 12 weeks I'll be doing just that
In my opinion anki or flashcards or any other rote memorization tool, is a way to retain vocab long enough for you to encounter them in the wild. Anki without input is just spinning ones wheels.
@@vanessathomas9641Totally agree. I kept it up since I wrote this comment. Anki is only an hour or so in the morning, the rest of my freetime is on podcasts, dramas, novels, and chill conversations with natives
Great video, Will. I am probably in the same position as you when it comes to this. I think the main thing is that historically language teaching methods have just vastly underestimated how much input you need and that's why the spread of Krashen's work has been important. But yes, there are a number reason why it's not the be all and end all of learning a language. The thing is I have tested the input method out a bit for Mandarin and now I am too lazy to want to do the traditional study methods again 😅But here are some of the points I reflect on often about CI: Pronunciation - how can you train the muscles in your mouth to say sounds you've never made before if you don't ever speak them? High Comprehension, Low Output Speakers - I have meet many, many native Chinese speakers who understand me completely in English (even with my relatively unusual Kiwi accent) but their speech is very slow and with a strong, hard to understand accent - I have also experienced this with Te Reo Māori (NZ's indigenous language) where people can understand a lot, but barely speak. Direct Context - speaking in conversations has the powerful effect of putting you in the context which I feel deeply enhances learning and retention (rather than being a third party observer all the time when watching videos). The World Has Changed! - the world is very different from the 70-80s where we now have access to an almost infinite amount of content in many languages and so you can conceivable keep only listening until a very advanced level - I wonder if back then Krashen's ideas were theorised and tested on a beginner set of input and naturally would have lead to just real world input soon after (not just being at home with 10000 videos to choose from), but I'm not 100% on that as TV, movies and self help tapes all existed back then too. Anyway, just my 5 cents. Thanks again!
Very interesting thoughts, I totally agree with conversations enhancing learning and retention so much more than just watching videos! All the best with your Mandarin, let me know how you get on!
wondering if you've looked into the newer research(ers) that builds off of Krashen, like Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis, Butzkam's Dual comprehension hypothesis, VanPatten's Input Processing hypothesis etc.
Great point, I've looked a bit into Swain's work, but I definitely need to try and look into the other two thanks!
Man I wasted years achieving nothing with CI. Imagine learning to swim using CI. Its ridiculous. Once I quit CI I made huge progress using purely traditional 3000 year old methods.
I have been watch Chinese dramas 3 hours per day everyday for 4 years and can only understand about 30%
Hi Will, very much agree with your observations. I have had a similar path to you - first learning Japanese while at medical school, now studying Mandarin as a doctor. Comprehensible input is very important - and I think especially so for improving your understanding of real language. But deliberate practice and skills-based learning has a role, too, especially when you need to practice output skills (say, trip to China coming up in next 6 months and you don't have time to fire 3000 hours into smashing CI). I think even the most ardent CI proponent / AJATT / Refold-style learner would benefit from a good grammar by their side also.
Totally agree, the best combination is a ton of CI + lots of deliberate practice. Best of luck with learning Mandarin!
Comprehensible Input theory is excellent it just forgets to mention the fact that it only works when paired with almost equal amounts of output haha. I find that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Start speaking as soon as you start immersing yourself and thank yourself 6 months down the line when your speaking and comprehension have both improved at a similar rate.
yes definitely!
Not sure about 'almost equal amounts of output'--that seems unrealistic even if you aspire to be a great chatterbox with native-speaking friends. The most likely case is that the vast majority of your engagement with the target language in any real-life situation is going to be through listening (as w/ your native language), which happens to be the aspect least prioritized by language courses. You can get by speaking even with a very narrow active vocabulary if you know how things are supposed to sound, but you cannot be asking native speakers to simplify their speech to cater to your needs. I ran into this problem when I moved to France after college. I had put a great deal of effort into my accent and pronunciation, and spoke the language well, but seriously struggled to understand what native speakers said to me.