#ci method

[rigelmejo]

Mini rant about "learning through comprehensible input" and the many situations it's used to mean somewhat different things:

In traditional language learning, using classrooms and textbooks, grammar guides and flashcards: comprehensible input are the dialogues/paragraphs in your textbook that you get a vocabulary translation list for and grammar explanations for so you can comprehend it. It can also be tutoring sessions, where you talk with the tutor and they use translations and gestures and visuals to make sure you can understand them. Once you reach a decent level of understanding the language, comprehensible input becomes any regular material for native speakers you can understand the main idea of (or more). So if someone who took classes for years is telling you to immerse in materials for native speakers, they probably assume you have some prior knowledge about the language and can understand the materials for native speakers to a degree. If a teacher is recommending you immerse in the language, they probably mean to immerse with content that uses words/situations you've studied in class at some point. These people do NOT mean for a brand new beginner, who knows nothing, to just go sit and watch movies for adults in the target language and magically learn over time.

In Refold/Mass Immersion Approach community, online communities where the study method involves a lot of flashcards/anki/SRS/apps with vocabulary/making word or sentence lists with translations: when they say comprehensible input, they mean material you can understand the main idea of, with the help of looking up word translations and grammar! They usually expect you will at least look up some key words once in a while, or immerse with stuff that uses words you've recently studied (in anki). When they say "immerse a lot and often" sometimes they do mean to immerse with input you do NOT understand, but when they're saying to get mostly comprehensible input, they mean either stuff made for learners to be understandable OR you using tools like word translation to be able to understand the material. There are people who did try to immerse with input they did not understand (maybe because they didn't understand the advice to immerse in materials for native speakers), without looking up words or using any tools to help them understand, and thousands of hours later they still were beginners. The people who successfully have used anki and immersion to learn a language, usually mean using immersion material that you can comprehend the main idea of (with tools/aids if necessary like word translations or word definitions in the target language). Notice that for these learners, comprehensible input MAY NOT BE comprehensible if you're relying on ONLY what you already know, and may require TOOLS to be comprehensible. They're expecting you to USE TOOLS to make the input comprehensible! (Flashcards, definition lookups in target language, word translation lookups, grammar explanation lookups).

Comprehensible Input Method/Automatic Language Growth/Nature Method Learners: By comprehensible input, they mean only materials you can understand the main idea of (without needing tools/aids). This will initially be materials MADE FOR LEARNERS, like the Nature Method textbooks with illustrations to explain the meaning, and Comprehensible Input lessons on youtube where the teacher shows you pictures and uses gestures to communicate the main idea. Then the materials may be graded readers made with a vocabulary a learner is expected to know, and possibly a vocabulary list in the back. And podcasts for learners, that use a limited number of words they expect the learner to know and define new words. Eventually, this can mean cartoons for toddlers where the visuals about what is being said, in addition to the words you already know, makes the main idea understandable. Then eventually cartoons for older kids, and shows, novels for kids, and novels for adults, etc as you learn more words and understand more (without needing tools/aid). So the key here, is this kind of learner usually means MATERIALS you can understand without any tools! This is a huge difference from the Refold learners, who often mean comprehensible input as ANY input if you're using enough tools TO comprehend it.

ALL of these learners usually mean, by comprehensible input, materials you can understand the main idea of - with or without tools. If you cannot understand the main idea - use tools! If you can understand the main idea, cool, you comprehend it enough to learn from it! None of these learners are trying to suggest beginners trying to learn a target language just listen to adult radio in the TL for 2000 hours and somehow 'learn.' All of these learners think a beginner NEEDS either a lot of visuals to allow for understanding (comprehensible input lessons, nature method), so the learning aid is built INTO the materials initially. Or these learners think beginners NEED to use tools to make materials understandable (translations, dictionary entries, anki to memorize words, textbooks), to be able to learn from materials. In either case, the advice to use comprehensible input assumes you are comprehending the main idea being conveyed in the material, and if needed you're using additional tools/aids/resources to figure out the main idea being conveyed.

There's a guy on youtube who keeps making these videos about using input to learn japanese, and I overall agree with him. But he only mentions a few times he uses anki to study (so uses tools to understand more), and he learned a decent number of words before using audio-only as input to study with (so he could comprehend the main idea to a degree), and the impression I get from comments is that some people sincerely think he's saying to listen to regular japanese materials for adults for thousands of hours and that itself will be enough to learn. I don't think he necessarily makes it clear how much initially VISUAL input is better if someone is going to just watch materials in japanese, how much his explicit study with anki may be increasing what he can comprehend, and how much using materials-made-for-learners works better in the beginning (he does recommend learner podcasts like Nihongo Con Teppei and Learn Japanese with Shun). I think the guy's heart is in the right place, and he's got good advice. I just get frustrated with how MANY people are misunderstanding his advice. Especially beginners, who may think when he says immerse in content you only understand 10% of... he is assuming the beginner is looking up key words, and making new anki cards of words they're hearing to study more.

As a learner... please don't bash your head into content you don't understand the main idea of for hundreds of hours. I am begging you, do something like look for materials MADE FOR LEARNERS to be understandable (comprehensible input lessons, graded readers, textbooks, sentences with translations, dialogues, or even cartoons with clear visuals about what is going on), or USE SOME TOOLS to make things understandable to you! Please...

[tempo-takoyaki]

Listen, I love the "XL helps HC to see how beautiful he is" scenario as much as the next person... But I also see it like this.

[potatosaresweet]

Homura Akemi: I watched the love of my life suffer so much and even die and so i bent the laws of nature itself and turned myself into a powerfull being people call evil to protect her and created a safe space for her where no one will hurt her again

Hua Cheng:...you get it

[unblissfulawareness]

Jasper was just trying to dress up in his own home in peace, Piper.

[talk-danmei-to-me]

It's you Xie Lian. The answer to what makes Hua Cheng, Hua Cheng is Xie Lian.

Like honestly, this boy is so dumb sometimes.. I know Hua Cheng has lost his game this book with his special person and joking about marriage, but my dude, seriously?

[corneredcopia]

While I draw I like to have a little bill cipher staring at my work to motivate me

[yeonslayjun]

MXTX WHY?!?!?!?

AFTER TRAUMA DUMPING ALL THAT SHIT YOU'RE TELLINH ME HUA CHENG WAS KISSING XIE LIAN DEEPLY?!?!!??!?!!

i am not okay

IDK WHETHER to scream cry laugh or just die.....dying seems easier

[hiddeninthe-veil]

(squinting at myself Real Hard:) what.... are emotions. what is feeling things. am i feeling emotions right now. what

[rigelmejo]

Picking up a second language from television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning

I deeply appreciate this experiment one person did with their own language learning, Picking up a second language from television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning, and it's free to read if anyone else is curious.

The writer did the following: attempted to learn French by watching TV shows in French with no subtitles, and no word lookups or translations, for 1200 hours. They started with shows for adults, and realized children's cartoons were much easier to learn new words from initially as the visual context and slow speech helped them figure out word/phrase/grammar meanings, and then watched children's cartoons for a while until gradually increasing difficulty of shows again. While in the first several hundred hours, they watched some cartoons by repeatedly watching certain sentences and scenes over and over, attempting to understand as much as they could, such as with the cartoon Calliou. After 1200 hours, they started reading French, talking to people in French, and reading some grammar explanations at that point. They passed a B2 test at the conclusion of 1500 hours, with the first 1200 being watching French TV with no tools/explanations and then the last 300 hours including speaking and finally looking up some explanations and seeing french writing.

This account of their experience is incredibly interesting to me. It shows a few things which (at least for me) can be learned from.

1. That a goal of aiming for over a thousand hours spent trying to understand materials in your target language is useful.

2. The time they spent engaging with French is (very roughly) similar to FSI estimates if you include the hours of outside-class study recommended, 750 class hours plus time spent studying outside of class (2 hours outside of class per class hour is the FSI recommendation - which would be 2250 for French). The time it took him to pass B2 is in the 1000+ hour range, which is similar to classroom time plus outside study time expected. Automatic Language Growth type courses tend to suggest 1000-2000 hours to speak on an adult level and understand others, with 1500 being the suggested study length Dreaming Spanish suggests and ALG Thai programs recommending 2000 hours. Some learners who've done DS and ALG Thai programs suggest they feel they can understand people and discuss things on a basic level at those hours, but feel they need more hours to really be 'fluent'. I think that aligns well with the 1500 hour French study linked above, where he felt 1500 hours felt intermediate and capable of talking with others/working/understanding others but by no means fluent. So my personal thoughts on this is... the French 2250 hour estimate (FSI class-hours estimates added to 2 outside-class hours per hour as FSI suggests) is probably roughly in line with people's experiences.

And the earlier goal of 1500 (1000-2000 depending on the individual, and the target language) being a good initial goal for basic ability to do all things in the language (but not necessarily well and not mastered). Perhaps this number could be several hundred hours, and less than a thousand, if your target language is similar to one you already know or you have experience learning languages already. But the thought I am concluding from all of this is: expect 1000 hours or more trying to understand stuff in your target language if you wish to be able to understand the main idea (or more) of most things, and communicate your main idea with others.

(And for the sake of curiosity, FSI estimates 2200 class hours for Japanese and Chinese, so 6600 hours total, for an English speaker. So probably...at minimum 1000 hours to start speaking, like ALG Thai learners notice, at minimum 2000 hours to start understanding the main idea of most things, and based on FSI estimates... perhaps 3000-3300 hours minimum to start feeling similar to that level achieved after 1500 hours studying French or Spanish).

3. He studied French with zero aids like grammar guides or translations or even the French alphabet and a pronunciation explanation. He mentions in his paper, that being able to look up translations, or even see French subtitles on the TV shows, may have potentially sped up his progress. (Or perhaps not, as he didn't try those tools until 1200 hours in). Many of us learners HAVE used such tools already. The lesson I take from his experience is...even if you use NO tools or aids to learn, if you dedicate 1000+ hours to attempting to understand visual-audio situations (videos or classes or your life experiences in a country) you will make progress and increase your understanding of the language. If you initially focus on more-visually understandable things, like children's cartoons or ALG teachers who visually attempt to explain or a person helping you through a situation (like a native speaker talking to you as they help you grocery shop), then your initial progress as a beginner will be FASTER. And it may well be necessary to understand a certain amount, as a beginner, for the target-language input to be useful. You don't need to understand 100% or even 90%, but you do need to understand enough to hear at least 1 word or phrase or grammar piece every couple minutes that you can GUESS at the possible meaning of. At least, to learn in a timely manner.

So as a beginner, visual-audio input is much more useful than audio only - especially if you don't have cognates to use to make guesses. And visual-audio input where the speaking is ABOUT something in the same scene/experience/event so it's easier to guess what bits of the language mean. And if you choose to use tools like a translation app/site, if it's helping you figure out meaning of bits of language then it may be particularly useful as a beginner. (There's certainly language learning camps that think using translations lessens your actual learning of the language, but based on his paper... I at least think, what I take from it, is that those beginning few hundred hours it's most important you find a way to UNDERSTAND the main idea of the target language material. My take is that, even if that involves translation tools for 300 hours initially, it's worth it. You can abandon translation tools once you understand enough stuff in the language - like a few hundred key words or pronunciations etc - to start understanding really basic main ideas from kids cartoons. But if you can't even guess "cartoon character is pointing to bike, seems to want bike, even though I have no idea what words they're saying, maybe one of those words was bike..." then you aren't going to comprehend enough to guess word meanings. It seems like after the first few hundred hours, the need for translations and/or kid cartoons is less. Once you have some small base of words/phrases you've guessed the meaning of, then it's possible to start guessing the meaning of conversations even when there's no visual context to indicate what's going on - such as adult shows where they discuss off-screen abstract topics, and audio only materials).

4. There is no huge need to pick the 'perfect' study method or materials. After the initial beginner stage of learning some key words/phrases from visual context (a few hundred hours), you WILL continue learning and make progress as long as you keep engaging with the language and trying to understand the main idea. So study/watch/listen to whatever you like that, that you can get yourself to engage with for 1000 hours or more. Some people will want to keep looking up word-translations, do that. Some people will love cdramas or anime or shows and just want to watch tons of shows. Some people will feel more comfortable watching/doing easier things like a tutor that matches your comfort level (like crosstalk), immersion with someone helping you navigate, watching cartoons, watching stuff for learners (like Comprehensible Input youtube channels). Some people want to jump into the deep end and go for audiobooks or podcasts. If you are able to even just GUESS a word/phrase/grammar point meaning every 1-3 minutes (or more often) then you'll likely keep improving your understanding. No need to be perfect, just figure out a way to keep yourself engaged. Because it'll take a thousand hours or more.

5. I hate to say this because I love reading... but to develop listening comprehension... you need to listen. Having visual-audio materials as a beginner is critical. Even if that means graded readers you read paired with an audiobook. And you'll need to keep listening for at least 1000 hours to build good listening comprehension - it takes time to get used to hearing the pronunciation, to mentally separating it into phrases/words, to adjusting to various speeds, to emotional meanings and implications, to adjust to understanding various accents. His paper indicated he struggled with understanding faster speech until he'd studied enough hundreds of hours, and then struggled with slang and accents much longer. Listening comprehension is critical to: conversing with others, speaking and being understood, listening to shows and audio. So it must be worked on. That is not to say you can't study by reading - I sure did! And still do! But that the hours spent reading WITHOUT audio will not contribute to some of those critical listening and speaking skills.

Reading on it's own will help prime you to pick up vocabulary when listening faster, help with increasing vocabulary, help with getting used to word usage and grammar. But based on his paper... for him, at least, it seems reading skill was picked up Extremely Fast after already having a good ability to listen and speak with people. He picked up reading skills within months! From my own experience... I mostly studied with reading ONLY activities, in French and Chinese, and improving in my listening skills takes A LOT of hours. It will not be as good as my reading within a few months. I think I may pick up listening skills Somewhat faster than someone who's read less, since I am primed to learn listening comprehension of words I understand in reading faster than trying to comprehend brand new words. But so many listening skills are lagging significantly. My Chinese listening skills are much better than my French listening skills, since I did often listen while reading when I studied. But there's still so many key aspects of words that I don't have natural ability to simply verbalize without thinking, like instantly saying the right tone, or instantly knowing the right pronunciation for some words I can read fine. And comprehension of listening to people is way lower than my ability to read and comprehend.

[dudelynxx]

he/she hunter toh (crowd cheers)

[tiercel]

Once again asking when the T pellet will be available for men that are not cis & old

[nowtoboldlygo]

AVOID These MISTAKES When Getting INPUT - Superbeginner Spanish

[konanigari]

West Coast Shit 👌🏾

[beautifulsummersunsets]

China: OMG! Do you watch our shows!? Wait, let me share with you the full episode with english subtitles on our official youtube account so you can enjoy it properly 💗

Japan: Not Japanese? Then fuck you 🙃

[invisiblyvisiblejay]

letting people pick if they're trans or cis or nonbinary or binary separately is great bc like accurate and representative of gender and stuff but HELL to like. count. like i have 146 cis women, 33 cis men, 9 trans men, and 7 trans women which is fine but then there's 12 people who are just nonbinary and 12 who are trans and nonbinary and one who's cis nonbinary and one who's a trans nonbinary woman. and that's like okay why's that an issue well.

my data says i have 221 participants but 183 are cis and 26 are nonbinary and 31 are trans (which is 240) and then also theres 42 people who are trans and/or nonbinary (but 26 + 31 = 57) and 178 who are just cis (soo 5 cis and nonbinary/trans) AND i have 44 men and 10 nonbinary people and 154 women and 13 who picked multiple genders (but 10 + 13 = 23 so 3 unaccounted nonbinary people) (and 44 + 154 = 198 so should be 23 not men or women). do u see the problem. if u think that sounds confusing that's because it is and way too many people are in multiple groups 😭😭😭😭

[rigelmejo]

I think a weak spot for Refold/Massive Immersion Approach, and Comprehensible Input type approaches to study, is that since they recommend not speaking until you have a good foundation in the language... there's not a lot of advice for how to learn to speak in a structured way.

I think the advice itself is fine - wait to speak, you might have a better pronunciation and might ingrain less grammar mistakes in your speaking.

But once people do start speaking, so few people have gotten to the point they have, and so little guidance has been given to them from the method's resources/guides, that they kind of have to figure out for themselves how the fuck to improve their speaking skills.

Being in an ALG class like AUA Thai helps, because since it's an actual class with teachers, when it is time to learn to speak, you have people to practice speaking with and guidance on how to improve. If you use a tutor and have been doing crosstalk with them, then once you start speaking IN the target language the same tutor can now continue conversing with you and give you guidance for speaking.

But if you're using comprehensible input alone? Studying on your own with videos? Well then it seems like signing up for a tutor or a group conversation class is the thing most people do - things that require other people, and a teacher, to start practicing speaking.

If you're doing refold on your own, with SRS flashcards and immersion? When it's time to speak... you can practice with writing journals and correcting yourself, and shadowing audio. But eventually you also may seek out a tutor to practice speaking with, who will give you guidance.

And that's all fine - speaking involves other people, it makes sense it would need other people to improve.

What's frustrating is that I wish there were some guidance shared by refold and CI methods on their roadmaps/guides on what to do to improve speech when it's time. Especially because many people WILL try to improve by speaking with people for free like friends, language exchange partners, people who do NOT want to spend much time correcting and teaching them and probably won't give much guidance on how to improve unless asked. Something like:

Shadow audio, relisten to yourself and see where you made mistakes so you can work on identifying and correcting.

Particularly do shadowing of audio like podcasts, conversations, situations you'd like to be able to talk through easily

Read aloud, so you get used to saying sentences with correct grammar

Write journals, find writing correcting websites that will make corrections on any grammar mistakes you're making. Read the corrected journals aloud, to practice correct form

Find language exchange partners on X sites and apps, ask that you talk half the time in the language you're practicing and half the time in the language they want to practice in, have a list of topics so you two don't flounder saying hi how are you/good and not much else. Ask language exchange partners to please correct you in X ways. Like repeating a word or phrase you said wrong, in the correct pronunciation, when they respond to you. Or mentioning to you 'hey X is usually said like Y' if you word something with weird grammar. It would just be nice to have SOME advice of what to ask language exchange partners to give a you guidance on, instead of having no idea WHAT to ask them to correct or help with.

Find tutors on X sites, and ask them to give you Y feedback at the end of sessions, or Y feedback in response when you say something weird. Again, it'd be nice to have SOME advice of what guidance to ask a tutor for! Instead of floundering and having no idea what help you should be asking for...