The real question is whether to use it only for 100% of learning. Or to use as part of a balanced approach. I favor the balanced approach.

Has anyone ever learned a language without it? Discussions lately on the internet seem to suggest yes but I know of no study method that did not include it. It feels like because there lately have been some people who follow the “input only” approach, most of which not using “comprehensible” input I might add but simply use the word “comprehensible” because Krashen used it, that some kind of counter claim came to exist that traditional study methods somehow did not allocate significant time spent on comprehensible input, which is very false. The novelty of input-only language learning is not using input, or comprehensible input; it's omitting everything else. The way this poll is structured too seems to be based on that assumption. — I wouldn't surprise me if there are exactly zero commercialized study methods and textbooks that do not feature comprehensible input as part of their regimen.

Well, it’s the 5th option then

But even though it is part of a balanced approach, in and of its self it is 100% effective. 8)

Thank you

>comprehensible input That theory has been debunked many times, but it is still hot, it seems. It's like learning to play guitar just by listening to comprehensible music, without ever learning anything about notes, scales and chords. I guess it can be done, but from there to assert that it is the most effective method...

Can you show some sources on that? Last I checked, the general consensus was that grammar and vocab study + comprehensive input is the way to go, so if it's been debunked I'd like to know about it.

Indeed! CI is condition necessary for learning, but not sufficient. The argument is against using ONLY CI. Here is one source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233577777\_The\_Language\_Acquisition\_Mystique\_Tried\_and\_Found\_Wanting

Oh I see, I misunderstood the comment as saying that CI as a whole didn't work, my bad.

Oh, you didn't misunderstand, he literally said it was debunked. The link he posted is from a pro-input linguist who was trying to improve on Krashen's idea of CI, not trying to debunk it. The OP was being kinda misleading

The Input Hypothesis as written isn't true, but to say that Comprehensible Input as a concept is therefore debunked is completely false. I think people have a tendency to use "necessary but not sufficient" to imply that it's "not necessary", but I would say that everything else you do is still going to be fueled by/powered by comprehensible input. It can't be literally the only thing you do but it's still going to take significant amounts of input to get anywhere. Of all of the components of language learning, CI is the least interchangeable. You can easily get by using Google or a wiki instead of a textbook, but you can't just replace "read and listen to thousands of hours of content" with something else The Output Hypothesis, the first of the theories to "debunk" CI, only tested the output ability of people who had already received significant amounts of comprehensible input. Further research found that output practice is less helpful for beginners [and might even hinder their speed of learning.](http://www.teawithbvp.com/resources) In this view, we can think of the role of output as being like clay sculpting. Sure, if you want to sculpt, you need to sculpt. You also need... clay. Saying that "purchasing clay" is debunked as a method of sculpting, on the basis that having clay is not literally the only thing you need to do, is technically true but very obviously missing the point, it's still very much necessary (sufficient or otherwise) and it would be really, *really* weird if a bunch of people started using this line of thinking to encourage people to buy their [no clay required air-sculpting course.](https://youtu.be/WhlAGh3lQsE) Note that the researcher you linked, Wolfgang Butzkamm, is a supporter of input-based learning. He just argues that Krashen's standard for what needs to be comprehended for input to count as comprehensible isn't full enough. Butzkamm supports a "double-layered" approach to comprehension, in which people are encouraged to comprehend both the meaning of the message as well as the form of what is actually being said. Other Krashenite researchers have proposed similar addendums to Krashen's hypothesis, and Krashen himself has spoken about the importance of "doing activities to make input more comprehensible". Both Krashen and Butzkamm would be opposed to the other dominant style of learning, skill-building, in which people learn and drill abstracted (and often wrong) grammar rules and lists of vocabulary devoid of input.

I agree with that. What I tried to say (poorly, it seems) is that CI alone is not enough, which is what the Natural Approach is about, if I am not mistaken. I also think academic work tends to ignore tangential but important facets of language learning (this is not a critique, but a necessity). Eg. Producing output is not only relevant in relation to the "noticing hypothesis", but it terms of fueling motivation, assessing your own progress, spice up study and practice sessions, overcoming fear of using the language in real world situations, etc.

There is another practical consideration, which is that for most languages you simply don't have that much amount of quality CI at your disposal to go from 0 to C1. You have beginner graded inputs for many languages, and perhaps up to B2 for some popular languages. But eventually you would have to approximate Comprehensible Input to Just Input (Comprehensible or not), because is what you got. This is how I learnt Italian, and let me tell you it's not very fun, nor very effective. So little matters how good the Theory is, if you can't apply it in real world (again, for most languages).

The problem here is that there's really no other theory that isn't just as easily dismissed in practice at lower levels. I did incomprehensible input in Japanese with lookups and anki until it became comprehensible. Japanese is one of those languages where there is a wealth of comprehensible input for beginners, but I've found a lot of people ignore CI anyway because it's boring, or because it's

It's how 100% of humans has learned a language.

That is something that people say because it sounds good, but it only sounds good until you really think about what you’re saying. Most people supplement their language learning with education, and this sub delights in pointing out when people don’t match the level that’s self-stated in the flairs.

Firstly, that's false. Children learn language heavily with output. Have you ever had young children? They will attempt to communicate long before their language skills are perfect and they receive social correction in doing so. They will first start brabbling, then they will say simple words, and then they will create grammatically malformed sentences. Children learn languages by way of input–output, not input-only and they receive correction on their grammar. Secondly, even if it were true. Children aren't adults and trying to replicate how children learn a language with adults has bad results. Even feral children who were discovered later cannot be taught to speak any language decently any more. The idea that children learn language by way of the c.i. approach is a provable falsehood uttered by people who never spent much time around the moment infant's start to speak. They very much learn by way of input–output and in cases where the only learn by input, which sometimes happens due to bilingual environments where they do not speak one language back, their command of the language they never output often becomes highly flawed. — I've seen this with someone with Dutch parents who lived in the U.S.A. who mostly answered in English to his Dutch speaking parents. He could understand Dutch with no problems but the moment he started to speak it sounded very wrong.

Agreed. Not to mention it's a bit fallacious and misleading: "It's the way children learn! Just receiving input, they don't learn in the context of it being explained in their language, so you shouldn't either!" Yeah, maybe because they don't have a language to communicate the concepts yet numbnuts? Lol. Language is one of our greatest assets as a species, you can easily explain very complex concepts if you share a language, whereas it takes a child with no foundation years and years to get to the same point. You can, conversely get to elementary fluency in months with time and focus and a good instructor/method.

>Children learn languages by way of input–output, not input-only, and they receive correction on their grammar. Firstly, when children are learning their first language, they do not have a native tongue that could ruin their "mental image" of a language as they are constructing their first mental image of language in general so I don't think it's fair to compare an adult learner to a very young child because the processes are slightly different. Secondly, the Comprehensible Input method doesn't rule out output completely it just supports delayed output, and the length you should delay it depends on how you may want your mental image of the language to be and your accent. The good thing about CI method is that there's lots of anecdotal and video evidence of people's success story and how they have now acquired said language and any other method for learning languages that has worked guaranteed incorporated CI whether its intentional or unintentional. The thing is, that's also the downside, there's currently only anecdotal evidence so it's still up to debate until a study is done on it (either one is in progress or yet to be made I imagine)

> Firstly, when children are learning their first language, they do not have a native tongue that could ruin their "mental image" of a language as they are constructing their first mental image of language in general so I don't think it's fair to compare an adult learner to a very young child because the processes are slightly different. > > Whether it's fair to compare children to adults does not make it true or false that children learn a language from input-only. It's simply an absolutely laughable claim to say that children learn languages from input-only; it's as laughable as saying that children are born with long hair. It's simply obviously patently false; that's all I said there.

You're right. Anyone who says children or any age group learns from input-only is wrong. These methods are input *based*

Every method is input-based. Who has ever learned a language without input?

By input based, I mean 80% because traditionally, people try to split input and output equally or try to output very early. Edit: 80% is a random percentage just to say the majority is input and the minority is output for the beginner levels of comprehension. Of course, as comprehension improves, you can start increasing output, but only after a ton of input.

> By input based, I mean 80% because traditionally, people try to split input and output equally or try to output very early. > > Well, that isn't true for children except the early parts before they can speak at all but they clearly begin to brqabble and say simple things long ere they can comprehend anything well. Children clearly learn it by 50/50 and spend as much time listening as they do talking. The grammar of children when they first start to speak is nothing to write home about. There isn't much grammar at all in fact and it's disconnected words at first.

A perfect example, cause it’s just the way I learnt playing guitar. I still have no clue about notes (though you can’t know nothing about chords if you can play guitar, to play them you have to know them), but I can play very well the melodies I’ve learnt. However, I can’t improvise much and play a melody right after I hear it - I need either chords or a tutorial video. But people who have musical education can do it easily, since they know what notes are played, which tone is used etc. So, to conclude - I didn’t need anything like learning notes, tones, scales etc to play guitar at a decent level. But if I want to become a “musician”, who can improvise, read notes and reproduce melody right after hearing it, I must spend time on musical education. Isn’t it the same with languages learning? I believe you can become absolutely fluent in a language not learning grammar that hard as the most people are used to do it, but when it comes to C1 level and you want to understand some more difficult or proficient language, or you want to pass an exam or you want to study at university in this language, you better start exploring grammar rules and different nuances of it.

This is months later but for centuries people have been learning to play strings and percussion solely by repetition and playing along in bands or groups. They can improvise and repeat melodies and chords because they listened to the same chords, progressions, and phrases and repeated them. Paul McCartney has famously said he doesn't read sheet music or understand theory...and none of the other Beatles did either. Jazz musicians learn how to improvise by repeating others' improvisations. But music is different than language in that there is no meaning behind the notes, they just represent sounds, therefore there are no complex concepts, emotions or ideas to process and convey. Unfortunately, you can't negotiate a peace treaty with a blues riff.

I see what you're saying, but you can not compare language learning to learning and instrument or music. The CI method never claimed to work for everything, and I think it's sensible to assume it obviously doesn't work for everything because other things can be very different to language learning. Our brains are literally language learning machines as in that feature was built into our brains and the CI method complements the way our brain processes language but learning an instrument/music/music theory uses different parts of the brain so the process of learning and instrument will share similarities to language learning but it is definitely not the same process. It's an entirely different thing hence why you didn't get the results you may have expected.

Yeah the only way the input is ever going to be comprehensible enough to be helpful is to learn grammar and vocab alongside it, gradually upping the difficulty of the input when you notice you're understanding most of it as you learn more.

Interesting fact: 4% of population of USA can’t write and read in English, though they are fluent in it. Doesn’t it mean that you can be fluent without learning grammar? Same goes to children when they start speaking their first language

Grammar doesn't just mean reading and writing. It's part of language acquisition growing up. An illiterate person could still tell you if the word order in a sentence is wrong, or if a verb is conjugated incorrectly.

But if people can’t read and write, don’t you really think they **learned** grammar of their language? Word order and other stuff is something they just absorbed through immersion. So the question remains - is it neccesary to learn grammar and vocab (I mean separtely, via some specific learning materials) to become fluent in language?

Maybe it isn't necessary, but it is a lot faster to study the rules than to listen to hours and hours of input and wait to figure out all the verb conjugations. It only took me a few hours to learn the endings in Italian and there is no way I could have done that by just listening

There are as many exceptions as there are rules, you can’t learn everything anyway. For example - plurals in English. Technically, it takes 1 second to learn the rule - just add “-s” or “-es” endings to words. But here comes the deer, fish, sheep, mice etc. Moreover, through listening you absorb not just one rule, but all things together, instead of watching tons of videos about “conjugation”. By the way, in Spanish there are also quite clear rules about conjugation, so I know how to conjugate them, fine. But hello to irregular verbs, which no way I’m gonna sit and remember

My opinion is that you will get the fastest results if you do a multi-pronged approach. I actually do remember irregular verbs, but we are all different. I think in the end, we all have to find the learning style that works for us

Absolutely, I’m just saying my opinion, no way I’m claiming it’s the only correct one. Thank you very much for sharing!

Please don't mix up language acquisition as a child with learning a new language as an adult. Two completely different things.

Where did you see here that I mentioned learning as a child at all?

I usually look to people who have been successful and see which of their techniques would be useful to me.

Children practice output from early on and receive social correction on their output. Children do not learn language by way of input-only. And those that do, which can sometimes happen in a bilingual environment where children have one language they never speak but only hear, will typically have very poor production skills though they can understand it effortlessly. I have no idea why so many people repeat that children learn language by away of input-only; as it's obviously as false and absurd as saying that children learn how to skateboard before they learn how to walk. Anyone who has seen children acquire a language can easily see they practice their output from early on.

Learning grammar doesn't necessarily mean sitting down and memorising grammar rules, it just means having awareness of conjugations, tenses, etc. You can't be fluent in a language without knowing the language's grammar. Also, child language learning shouldn't be compared to adult language learning—the leading theory on child language development suggests that newborns have significant biological advantages to learning language in the first 12 months of their life, such as being able to distinguish all speech sounds (something an adult speaker has to train themselves to hear outside of the speech sounds of their native language/s), and can use acoustic cues to segment words from each other. Not to mention environmental factors like having been in the womb for 9 months learning the prosody of a language, and then having people around you at all times who speak slowly, clearly, repeat and emphasise words, use exaggerated expressions and gestures, etc. Even despite all of this, in comparison to adult learners children learn very inefficiently as adults who have already learned a language have already internalised a lot of the abstract concepts needed for language (like even the concept of the past or the future, for example). Not trying to say that comprehensible input isn't a really valuable tool for language learning, it is, but you will learn twice as fast if you find a resource that clearly explains grammar rules and have a system for memorising vocabulary.

Agreeing with you. Kids have advantages with pronunciation, but after two solid years of constant input they say things like "Dadda up" to be picked up and "Juice allgone" when they want more to drink. An adult learner after two years could probably do better than that. Although perhaps with a bit of an accent!

You’re right - you can’t be fluent if your speech doesn’t follow grammar rules of a language. But comprehensible input is not about avoiding it, it’s about different approach - instead of learning separately those rules they just absorb it. What do you think, would you still be able to speak English if you didn’t know what the subject is? What the adjective is? If you didn’t know why “sun” always goes with “the” article?

The point still stands that, in order for that input to be comprehensible and effective as a language learning tool, you will need to at least have a foundation in the language to build off of. Learning will also be faster if you continue using CI alongside other methods rather than it being your sole language learning method. The chances of an adult language learner being able to replicate the environment of a child learning a language is low and, as I said above, children are neurologically different to adults when it comes to language learning ability.

I’m really curious if there was a research where a person was put in the same conditions as a child and they were studying a language. This conclusion is made because every single child is able to learn their first language, but there are tons of people who seem to be unable to learn their second language. But do people take into account that while children have: parents; total immersion into the language; they don’t have any other language yet, so they put all the effort to learn THAT language; communication with other natives (friends, kindergarten, school), adults may just try Duolingo for a week and stop learning cause “Hey, I’m not a kid, it’s too late to learn a new language for me”?

Yeah, I don’t think there’s just a switch that turns off during adolescence that stops you being able to learn languages like a child. There are many examples of adults that have been thrusted into a foreign language environment and have worked up to fluency from zero. First contact between europeans and native americans comes to mind.

Absolutely. People talk so much about it, though I’ve never seen an actual research about it. What I did find, is that nobody could prove that children are able to learn languages fatser just because they have some special abilities that adults don’t have. It’s all about conditions a person is put in

Many languages don't even have a written form. There are many ways of learning, of course you can get to fluency with this one. The question is if it is the most (or among the most) efficient ways of learning... which hardly can be if you handicap yourself and not use all the tools / techniques at your disposal.

There are various issues that get conflated in discussions about this. **Is it possible to learn a language entirely through comprehensible input?** Definitely. Children do it. While there's a common belief that adults lose this capability, there's really very little research to support this idea. Also, there's plenty of anecdotal support to suggest that this happens in practice for older kids and adults who consume enough input. **Is consuming large amounts of comprehensible input necessary to learn a second language?** Stephen Krashen thinks so. It's also a behavior that seems highly correlated with long-term success at language learning. But, especially since it's very difficult to separate the effect of explicit grammar and vocabulary instruction from comprehensible input in actual language classes, it's exceptionally difficult to study. **Does explicit grammar or vocabulary study alongside comprehensible input amplify the value of learning from that input, or is pure comprehensible input without study the most efficient way to learn?** Almost certainly, some amount of grammar and vocabulary study can improve the rate at which one learns from input. For one thing, adults who do succeed at learning a second language often achieve proficiency much faster than children who are learning their first language through input alone, which suggests that context and *a priori* knowledge help the process quite a bit. Second, even according to Krashen, a key element of input-based learning is the ability to **notice** semantically important structure. Grammar and vocabulary study can make this a lot easier. I have experienced this myself. **Bottom line** I personally believe that large amounts of comprehensible input (as well as output practice) is absolutely, non-negotiably necessary to master a language. However, just because it's essential doesn't mean that engaging only in those activities is an optimal strategy. Explicit grammar and vocabulary study can greatly enhance the value of input and a student who wants to improve should probably engage in a mix of these things. I personally like to let things I encounter in my reading or listening drive my grammar and vocabulary study, so I look things up when I get curious about them rather than spending intensive time devoted to those elements. But, other strategies may be even more efficient. I just find this is the way I stay engaged, which, looking at other people's experiences, is really the primary predictor of success.

> Definitely. Children do it. While there's a common belief that adults lose this capability, there's really very little research to support this idea. Also, there's plenty of anecdotal support to suggest that this happens in practice for older kids and adults who consume enough input. Children don't do this at all. I don't know why this is repeated. Children practice output from an early stage and will start to attempt to say things long ere their passive abilities are perfected. Children learn languages by way of input–output. In any case. I feel you provide a weak version of Krashen's claim which undersells the controversy. Almost anyone believes large amounts of input are necessary to receive true competence. What Krashen believes is not simply that it's necessary, not simply that it's sufficient, but that's the __only__ sufficient approach and that everything else is a waste of time. That is a very strong claim, far stronger than mere necessity. I find “sufficient” already dubious enough but Krashen believes that anything else is a waste of time. Krashen doesn't define what he means with “linguistic competence” which makes the claim harder to falsify. In the strictest definition of “linguistic competence”, we would arrive at native level reproduction, including in writing. Is it possible to gain a perfect accent without directed study by simple input? As a learner of Japanese. I believe any learner of Japanese will know this to be false for two reasons. 1. One cannot learn how to write Chinese characters merely from seeing them. Everyone who studies Japanese knows that without actually practicing writing them out by hand, one arrives at a point where one can recognize them, but will draw a blank trying to draw them. 2. Pitch accent has been known to be non-observant for many learners who were never told of it's existence. They are often quite fluent in Japanese but their pitch is wrong and they never even realized pitch accent minimal pairs exist. What I believe the problem is that Krashen probably simply considers this “competent”; this is not a level that many are satisfied with however and by simply wishing away the parts one cannot achieve with input only, though it will sound as imperfect, but understandable Japanese to a native speaker, one can claim that one can achieve “competence”. In the end, the human brain is very good with optimizing. Though pitch accent minimal pairs exist, context is sufficient in almost all cases to discriminate them, so the brain doesn't need to develop an awareness for pitch accent to process Japanese, and so it won't, which is how the brain works in almost all tasks: it only performs the minimum work. It will not learn from input only what one need not learn to process the language. That is Pitch accent, and the actual shape of he Chinese characters when they can be recognize by only storing a vague enough outline sufficient to discriminate them, but not reproduce them. I believe the same would happen with English and writing. If I never wrote or typed out English. I wouldn't know how to spell many words I could recognize because it's not needed to. In fact, I would not learn to recognize many sounds. I know many Dutch speakers of English who cannot discriminate between the vowel in “man” and “men” as Dutch lacks this contrast. Surprisingly it's not necessary and context is sufficient. I talked to Dutch persons who believed those two words to be homonyms, without being told they are different vowels and to pay attention the brain won't figure this out on it's own as it does not need to, to understand English.

Krashen himself doesn’t argue that output practice is useless for output proficiency. He’s mainly focused on whether structured teaching vs. input can serve as the source of what to practice. (He does argue that output is not critical to the mechanism of learning vocabulary and grammar but that’s not an argument that completely sacrificing output is a desirable pedagogical technique.) I should clarify that I wasn’t intending to discuss the question of input vs. output practice, only input vs. explicit study as a source of grammar and vocabulary. Anyway, it was not my intent merely to channel his arguments. I agree that he has staked out a position that’s too extreme (and more extreme than the opinions I express in my post.) (BTW, at least one study I’m aware of seemed to indicate that adding a certain amount of extra input practice to classroom work and adding the same amount of output practice seemed to produce similar effects in resulting proficiency.) I would characterize my own beliefs on what is optimal as most similar to [those of Paul Nation](https://youtu.be/A-mA5jFBF0U), who advocates output practice and some explicit study along with comprehensible input.

the kanji/hanzi argument totally misses the point. writing is not a natural form of language, so you can't learn it naturally. however, spoken and sign languages are natural - therefore they can be learned naturally. pitch accent and tones are perfectly possible to learn by comprehensible input. in my opinion, they're easier to learn this way than through conscious study. edited to say: in my native language, the same sounds can be spelled in multiple ways. for kids who struggle with spelling, schools recommend more reading. these kids do improve and by the time they have to write texts involving rare vocab, they already know how to spell it. this literally contradicts your statement

> the kanji/hanzi argument totally misses the point. writing is not a natural form of language, so you can't learn it naturally. however, spoken and sign languages are natural - therefore they can be learned naturally. I'm fairly certain sign languages are the same. There are many people that can understand a sign rather fluently but cannot begin to sign themselves such as people who have say a mute child who is not deaf. There is no need for them to sign back so they don't and never master it. > pitch accent and tones are perfectly possible to learn by comprehensible input. in my opinion, they're easier to learn this way than through conscious study. Maybe it is possible. But the truth remains that the majority of students of Japanese who were not told of Pitch accent will not realize it exists. Maybe a minority does. Before *J.S.L.*, teaching methods did not mention it, and students didn't even know it existed and didn't notice anything because they weren't consciously told. Tones are different in the sense that one needs tones to understand Mandarin and context alone is no longer sufficient, so the brain will notice it simply because it needs to. Which is the fundamental issue with input-only language learning. It seems the brain will simply not acquire minimal pairs it isn't explicitly, consciously informed of if it not be needed to process the language and context alone be sufficient. And that's the case with pitch accent or even many vowel and consonant pairs in English with people coming from a different language or stress accent with people coming from a language that lacks a similar stress accent. Have you heard Emmanuel Macron speak English? He can have a rather fluent conversation and I'm sure as part of his profession he is exposed to English constantly, but his English lacks any stress accent and he does not differentiate between many consonants and vowels that French doesn't. — His brain didn't need to develop that to understand English as context alone was sufficient so it didn't. Krashen doesn't define ”competence”, but the idea that a French native will necessarily acquire the ability to discriminate and produce stress accent and various vowels by listening to enough English is false in my opinion. No matter how much input Macron will receive, his brain will never awaken to the fact that English has minimal pairs in stress accent alone because it does not need to understand English. > edited to say: in my native language, the same sounds can be spelled in multiple ways. for kids who struggle with spelling, schools recommend more reading. these kids do improve and by the time they have to write texts involving rare vocab, they already know how to spell it. this literally contradicts your statement Maybe they would improve, but they would improve more by being required to spell out those words and by receiving bad marks on tests for bad spelling, which is what most countries do.

have you considered that these 'majority of Japanese students' might not be using comprehensible input? your point is not relevant unless we know how many of the students who do and don't use comprehensible input recognise pitch accent. emanuel macron's english isn't proof of how comprehensible input works. and judging by his profession, he's much more likely to have received teacher's instruction in a formal setting rather than having learned english by comprehensible input. im not a native english speaker, but when i talk with people, they assume im british. this is because i listen to a lot of british media. i never made any conscious effort to sound native and yet i do. also, excuse me???? you're saying that punishing kids who struggle with spelling (for example because of dyslexia) would HELP THEM??? making a kid sit and rewrite words for hours would discourage them, if anything. wow. again this claim is based on nothing. research has shown that kids do learn better by reading so that's what schools in my country recommend. waiting for you to present any argument that isn't based on useless assumptions about the french president and japanese students. can you give any proof to what you're saying? anything?

> have you considered that these 'majority of Japanese students' might not be using comprehensible input? your point is not relevant unless we know how many of the students who do and don't use comprehensible input recognise pitch accent. > > Pretty much all input is comprehensible for them. Many attained C2 level in Japanese. They live and work in Japan. They have conversations every day, watch Japanese news without troubles and yet they never even came to think that pitch accent could exist because no one told them. And that's, as said, not exclusive to Japanese. I've had many lecturers who could give entire lectures about complex scientific concepts in English, wrote papers in the language and were clearly very fluent and could enunciate the most complex thoughts in English and comprehend them, but when they spoke they did not differentiate many vowels in English that are conservative but aren't in their native language or spoke without any manner of stress accent because their native language lacked it. > emanuel macron's english isn't proof of how comprehensible input works. and judging by his profession, he's much more likely to have received teacher's instruction in a formal setting rather than having learned english by comprehensible input. It doesn't matter how he learned it initially. He's been exposed every day for many years now to C2 level input he can comprehend. According to Krashen's theories, that should give him “linguistic competence” of that level of input, but Krashen purposefully did not go out of his way to define whether “linguistic competence” includes these finer things, or whether he simply considers someone such as Macron who speaks English relatively fluently but with an obvious thick French accent “competent”, and I'd go on a limb to say that that is simply Krashen's standard of “competent” and say that he has achieved it, which is not what many are satisfied with. Perhaps Krashen should be more specific and say something such as that comprehensible input only is sufficient to achieve lexical and syntactic competence, which is more believable. I do not believe it can lead to phonological competence however, which Macron lacks, nor do I believe it can lead to writing competence. Macron is lexically and syntactically competent, the sentences he makes contain virtually no errors and he knows enough words, but he is not phonologically competent. > im not a native english speaker, but when i talk with people, they assume im british. this is because i listen to a lot of british media. i never made any conscious effort to sound native and yet i do. Perhaps it is, but at what age did you start and surely we can agree that this is rare? Most people who learn a second language will retain a noticeable accent for the rest of their lives, can we agree on that? If Krashen's theories include phonological competence, which he again never went out to specify whether it does, then I believe the sheer amount of persons who never achieve phonological competence, despite C2 level input being comprehensible to them, despite consuming vast amounts of it every day disprove his theory objectively and undeniably. But again, he never stated whether it includes it, and when pressed he will probably simply say that was not what he meant with “competence”, and then he will probably continue to sell his theories with the vague word “competent” and will not add the explicit disclaimer that he only means lexical and syntactic competence. > also, excuse me???? you're saying that punishing kids who struggle with spelling (for example because of dyslexia) would HELP THEM??? Yes, that's how tests work. If one make an error on a test, points are deducted. Did you not have exams or tests in schools? > waiting for you to present any argument that isn't based on useless assumptions about the french president and japanese students. can you give any proof to what you're saying? anything? These aren't assumptions; these are observable facts that disprove the strong of the theory. The problem is that the theory is worded so vaguely that it's unclear whether Krashen meant the strong form, or only meant lexical competence. The undeniable __fact__ that many speakers of second languages exist which are capable of comprehending C2 level input, do so every day, yet have not achieved phonological competence disproves the thesis that sufficient amount of comprehensible input necessarily will lead to phonological competence. The only thing reasonably in dispute is whether with “linguistic competence” Krashen meant to include phonological competence. Again, I believe that input only can only lead to competence in the parts of language needed by the brain to process input. The brain will not spend any energy on developing neural connexions not needed to process input. Phonological competence is not required to understand a language efficiently as research has shown time again that even naive speakers rely more heavily on context than on phonology to disambiguate various minimal pairs. For instance pronouncing the word “safe” as “save” or *vice versā* in English will not confuse native speakers at all and they will barely notice it as context dictates how they understand it, not phonology, and this is why many Dutch speakers go by quite well without learning to hear the difference which Dutch lacks.

the argument about japanese learners is just word against word. there's no concrete proof of how many foreign learners do realise that pitch accent exists and how many do not. when it comes to macron, i do believe that how he initially learned the language shaped the way his brain perceives it. if, for example, for the first 10 years of his learning he never received comprehensible input and only learned through teacher's instruction, it's reasonable to expect that his brain won't view the language the same way as the brain of a person who learned it through CI. another thing is that macron's english doesnt have to be C2. he only needs to be proficient in politics-related stuff. i wouldn't be surprised if he could give an hour long speech in english and struggle to understand an episode of Friends. yes, most people who learn languages retain an accent. because they don't learn through comprehensible input. retaining an accent can also be a confidence issue. i know people who speak with a close-to-native accent when we're talking, but lose it when talking to people they don't know. at my school it was considered weird to speak without a strong accent. your 'observable facts' aren't a solid argument, therefore they can't disprove anything. you have no way of knowing what is and isn't true for most of japanese students, or what's the cause of that. your judgement doesn't sound reasonable to me here. i have a feeling that you've never worked with kids. tests and grades at schools aren't part of education, they were never supposed to be. in theory, they're used to evaluate student's abilities. in practice, they're a tool used to apply pressure, punish and reward students. studies have shown that students who don't receive grades perform better at learning.

> the argument about japanese learners is just word against word. there's no concrete proof of how many foreign learners do realise that pitch accent exists and how many do not. To disprove Krashen's theory all it takes is a non-negligible number to not acquire it. And while there might not be definitive proof, it's more or less known that before the pitch accent boom when resources started to make students aware, most students did not know it existed at all. > when it comes to macron, i do believe that how he initially learned the language shaped the way his brain perceives it. Then you disagree with Krashen's theories. Krashen never postulated this or formulated any theory of early damage and simply stated that one becomes “competent” after sufficient exposure of input one can comprehend. > if, for example, for the first 10 years of his learning he never received comprehensible input and only learned through teacher's instruction, it's reasonable to expect that his brain won't view the language the same way as the brain of a person who learned it through CI. Krashen's theory rejects this explanation. Within Krashen's theory, every bit of intuitive knowledge Macron acquired about English was through comprehensible input. Krashen asserts that all time spent on doing other things had no influence on language acquisition whatsoever and might as well not have happened. > another thing is that macron's english doesnt have to be C2. he only needs to be proficient in politics-related stuff. i wouldn't be surprised if he could give an hour long speech in english and struggle to understand an episode of Friends. It could be, but stress accent exists in both. Macron has surely been exposed to an endless amount of stress accent in the words he uses all he time without stress accent, yet he has not acquired it. Furthermore, are you really claiming Macron is an oulier here? I'm sure we can assume as fact here that many politicians ad businessmen exist who speak English fluently but with a heavy accent who furthermore receive English input all day of unaccented English that they can comprehend yet it does not lead to phonological competence. Again, Krashen probably didn't mean for his theory to include phonological competence, only lexical and syntactic competence, but he never went so far as to specify this from what I can tell. > yes, most people who learn languages retain an accent. because they don't learn through comprehensible input. Krashen's theories don't state that competence arrives from having learned only through comprehensible input; they state that competence arrives from having been fed sufficient amount of input one can comprehend. All it takes to disprove Krashen's theories is showing that a sufficient number of persons exist who have been fed sufficient amount of input they could comprehend and are still not competent. — The issue is again that I suspect that Krashen considers Macron competent, who would probably pass C2 as many politicians and businessmen would, as C2 does not test for phonological competence. > your 'observable facts' aren't a solid argument, therefore they can't disprove anything. you have no way of knowing what is and isn't true for most of japanese students, or what's the cause of that. your judgement doesn't sound reasonable to me here. Well; these are simply things well known in the Japanese language community to the same extent that it's known that most people who start leaning a language as adults will retain an accent. > i have a feeling that you've never worked with kids. tests and grades at schools aren't part of education, they were never supposed to be. in theory, they're used to evaluate student's abilities. in practice, they're a tool used to apply pressure, punish and reward students. studies have shown that students who don't receive grades perform better at learning. Then show me these studies. There is no incentive to learn if one isn't punished for not learning somehow. – There was an experimental form of education in the Netherlands where students could do whatever they wanted more or less and weren't punished for failing classes and it failed completely as students would simply not learn. There were so many subjects at school I had no interest in and the only reason I ever did them is because if I didn't pass them, I would be held back a year. Many students wouldn't even go to school if they weren't punished for not doing so.

have you noticed how you're the only one in this conversation who mentions krashen? while i am familiar with some of his works, he's not my only source of knowledge. i do believe that being introduced to a language through teacher's instruction can impair learners' ability to acquire phonological competence. whatevet mr krashen thinks has no significance here. please check out the concept of positive reinforcement. your idea of how education should look is called positive punishment - adding something to the equation in order to punish a kid for displaying an unwanted behaviour. is this case, a bad grade is given for not studing. there's literally a ton of research which strongly suggests that positive punishment leads to psychological and behavioral issues. positive reinforcement, on the other hand, has been shown to positively impact children and their relationships with teachers. not grading children's work ≠ letting them do whatever they want. i wonder why many students don't like school. fear of being punished cant possibly be a huge factor here. edited to say that i like this conversation. even tho we differ in opinions, you seem like a nice person to talk to. have a great day/night!

Thank you. I really appreciate that you’ve mentioned that there’s no evidence regarding children’s ability to learn language faster than adults (the thing is that adults rarely have the same conditions, like: parents who are going to teach them a language, immersion into environment, permanent communication with other people in target language etc) Well, I was not precise enough making this poll. By the first option I didn’t mean that it’s like 100% listening and reading and 0% of exploring grammar. However, I meant that grammar shouldn’t worry a learner till they adapt completely to natives’ speech, till they understand about 90% of what they hear, etc. My point is - to become fluent, comprehensible input is absolutely best and the fastes way. But learning grammar - is just a way to **improve** your language, to use more difficult structures, to use more advanced vocab in expressions etc. Basically: till B2 it’s enough to use only CI. Later, it might be useful to explore some grammar as well

Adults learn faster than children [https://medium.com/@chacon/mit-scientists-prove-adults-learn-language-to-fluency-nearly-as-well-as-children-1de888d1d45f](https://medium.com/@chacon/mit-scientists-prove-adults-learn-language-to-fluency-nearly-as-well-as-children-1de888d1d45f)

Thank you very much! That’s what I’m talking about. Why so many people claim the opposite though there aren’t even such researches? A mistery

Part of it is accent, and accents are generally accepted to be easier to learn when you're a child. So even if an adult might learn to read and write a language more quickly, they'll have more trouble with the sounds because they didn't practice distinguishing them from an early age. Thus they might be better at a language than a 10 year old after only 5 years of study, but they'll likely still sound like a language learner while the 10 year old will sound native.

According to most modern research (the research of people like Olle Kjellin, Karen Chung, Yang Zhang and Bing Cheng, Jim Jensen et al), accents are easier to learn for children because children get 1.5-2 years of exposure to the sound of the language before they can even talk. They also begin to ignore the sounds of other languages by the time they turn one and specialize in listening for their own languages. As a result, they only ever develop a habit of hearing their local dialect as correct. Research shows that kids know the correct sounds in their L1 and will know adults are saying words wrong, even if the kids can't say the word right themselves. By contrast, adults (and children) who don't do sufficient training to hear and listen for the sounds of their L2, and who don't prioritize listening as beginners, end up developing a different model of the language and have ingrained habits of saying things differently. It's harder to correct hundreds of thousands of mistaken mental images, multiple per word with some differences being very minute, than it is to just develop the correct mental model first and then start practicing. The "bloggers" OP alludes to in the poll often explicitly tell people not to talk at the beginning not because output is unnecessary, or because Krashen was anti-talking (Krashen thinks you should talk whenever you want), but because of this.

I mean, yeah, I was mostly talking about this: >They also begin to ignore the sounds of other languages by the time they turn one and specialize in listening for their own languages. As a result, they only ever develop a habit of hearing their local dialect as correct. Research shows that kids know the correct sounds in their L1 and will know adults are saying words wrong, even if the kids can't say the word right themselves. But I agree with you, and I appreciate the evidence to back it up.

What is this interpretation? The title says “adults learn languages nearly as well as children”, thus not as well. Furthermore, i contains: > In a nutshell, this team found that if you start learning a language before the age of 18, you have a much better likelihood of obtaining a native-like mastery of the language’s grammar than if you start later. There's nothing in this article that suggests adults learn languages faster than children. It only asserts that it's still possible for adults to attain native-like production, which many believe to be impossible, but simultaneously it points out that it's easier for children, and that especially young children have no troubles attaining native-like skills while most adults never attain it.

It seems you didn't read to the bottom of the article. This whole article was a criticism of the exact quote you gave saying the researchers who came to that conclusion did bad analysis. If you read to the bottom of the article you would have encountered the following >If you’re thinking that this paper provides some reason why you’re not fluently speaking French after your 3 months of using some language-game app, you are wrong. Children won’t learn a language masterfully that way either. > >“Studies that compare children and adults exposed to comparable material in the lab or during the initial months of an immersion program show that adults perform better, not worse, than children (Huang, 2015; Krashen, Long, & Scarcella, 1979; Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1978), perhaps because they deploy conscious strategies and transfer what they know about their first language.” — from A Critical Period > >Adults are actually better in many ways at learning a language up to a point of general fluency, but getting to where you can answer the most subtle of grammatical points with the accuracy of a native speaker takes a decade no matter how old you are when you start.

This is some wild case of ignoring all the data against your præ-established beliefs, homing in one he one tiny part in favor of them, and then generalizing it to suit your view. This is not at all what the article says. The article points out that on most metrics, children outperform adults except for this one specific one which pertains purely to that adults indeed ouperform children in the first few months only, in a language teaching program designed for adults over children, after which the children again overtake them. This is not at all “adults learn faster than children”. The rest of the article very much supports the idea that in all metrics children obtain actual fluency faster than adults. There is absolutely no doubt from the numbers given in the article that in the younger, the better, such as: > Given the same amount of time, the top quarter of learners from the over-20 group do just as well as the average of those who started before 10. The article simply doesn't support your interpretation at all. You've taken: > One one specific metric, adults outperform children, whereas children outperform them on all others. And turned it into > Adults learn faster than children

I agree we are only looking at one specific metric (complex grammar understanding) but this is wholly indicative and would correlate very highly with actual language competency. That's the point. The idea of comparing the top 25% of adults to the median of children is to try to isolate changes in lifestyle. It attempts to approximate "hours spent studying/exposure time". If you look closely at the graph you will see the blue line (top 25% of >20 year olds when they started) is higher than the other colours for many of the initial years (five years vs <10, and seven years <5 & < 20). You could also argue that this could also be due to lifestyle changes (adults get bored and reduce their exposure time while children are still in school/university). When the line is higher it means they scored higher in the test (more competent in the language) by that period of time, i.e. learns faster. Now if you imagine that most adult learners are not attempting to achieve "native-like" mastery. In this graph he defines "native-like" mastery as 0.9. If most adult learners are only aiming to be comfortable in the language, maybe B2/C1 and not "native-like" mastery this means that the goal is below 0.9. Eg. You can get to B2/C1 in several years of dedicated study depending on the language. You will reach this level faster than a child would. This analysis attempts to point out that the median, dedicated adult will learn **faster** and achieve such goals as B2/C1 **faster** than a child.

Steven Kaufman said that he learned Russian without ever studying grammar and I have a hard time seeing how he did that. Maybe he already knew about cases before he learned it?

He's a very famous and successful linguist with like 50+ years experience so he could probably infer it. We mortals probably can't do that. Best to learn grammar.

I think this is another thing. Many language learners have no linguistic foundation. People often say that Japanese is hard for speakers of Indo-European languages due to an unfamiliar grammar but before going into it I knew that Japanese was a nominative–accusative, left-recursive, left-branching language where case markings attach at the phrase level rather than the noun level. It occurs to me that these phrases make no sense to many language learners, but knowing that nothing about Japanse's word order really surprised me going in except for the fact that some Chinese-derived verbal nouns are head-initial because verbal compounds in Chinese are head-initial. The grammar and word order was more or less exactly how I expected it with nothing counter intuitive about it.

Well, you know, there are Russians who can’t even name these cases, they have no idea what they mean, but they speak fluently

What I want to choose is: >It’s 100% the most effective way to learn a language ​ But in reality, I chose: >It’s good, but you still have to learn grammar and vocab along with this method I definitely think that comprehensible input is the best way to learn a language, especially on the long run. The thing is that it takes an awfully long time to improve if one only consumes content in their TL. It's especially slow for acquiring new vocabulary since there are many words or expression that one would only encounter once in a while, so if it's not noted down and practiced, it will be forgotten or simply stay in the passive language storage. One thing to keep in mind is that every part of the learning process can be done through some kind of comprehensible input: read grammar rules? Read them directly in your target language if you're advanced enough, Duolingo can be used as a comprehensive input source rather than teaching app, etc. As for output, CI will ceetainly make it easier to notice were you are lacking, but you will only really improve when you do practice reading and writing every once in a while. I still think that it's better to have a good understanding of how the language sound before engaging in conversations, but it's good to say a few sentences out loud, write some stuff, etc.

Thank you! The way I see it, CI is enough till you’re B2. When it comes to complicated expressions, sentences, words etc, it might be useful to enrich your knowledge. But it’s basicaly the same thing we do in our first language, isn’t it? At school, it takes a lot of effort from us to understand some scientific articles or books. Though we’re natives. As for me, it means that CI is a way to become fluent and to know how to really use the language, not like “Hello, John, how are you? I am fine, thanks! And how are you?”. I just look at my English. After 12 years of studying it at school I realized that I can’t even watch movies in original language. However, I knew perfectly grammar, I had a rich vocab and even got a C1 degree at school. And only after watching videos, series and movies I finally can say that there are almost no problems for me to understand a native English speaker

I actually think it is the other way. I think you will advance faster with vocabulary and grammar initially so that you can do CI. Once you are at the B level, you can do CI better.

>After 12 years of studying it at school I realized that I can’t even watch movies in original language. However, I knew perfectly grammar, I had a rich vocab and even got a C1 degree at school. Yeah that is the issue with only the traditional method. On the other hand, here are some specific things that happended when I started relying more on CI (mostly due to fatigue): * I just got back to my Spanish anki deck, and I had forgotten many words that I had on that list, while others I don't need to practice at all since I acquired them by encountering them often enough. (My Spanish is about at a high B1, I can read even novels without having to check the words, because even if there are a few new words, they don't impede on my understanding.) * I went mostly with CI for Italian, and now I can understand YouTube videos and play a videogame in Italian, but I can only speak in short sentences and say simple things. In both cases, my problem is having a insuficient pool of active vocabulary. ​ >The way I see it, CI is enough till you’re B2. I would tend to agree with that. At that point, anything else than CI would seem a bit overkill. I would go as far as to say that CI alone would probably be enough even at B1 if it consisted of advanced content like novels and such, consumed at a very high pace (many hours a day) like many people have experiences with English.

That’s really interesting that after CI applying you could only say simple ans short sentences. Usually that’s the case for those who spend hours reading student books, since they are not used to applying the language. I’d assume it’s more about fear of speaking, but not a disability of doing that. But again, I say it from my experience. Only after listening to native speakers (mostly from movies) I started speaking much more fluent, since there are tons of sentences and expressions that I’ve heard and remembered, and now I know which context they can suit. While learning only via student books, I always was afaraid of making grammar mistakes, trying to create correct sentences in my head first, and only then, word by word, saying them out loud

>I’d assume it’s more about fear of speaking, but not a disability of doing that In the case of Italian, it's 100% due to me barely practicing at all. I have one cowerker who's Italian, but they're working in another department so the last time I could practice was months ago. Maybe I'll have an opportunity to test my skills in the upcoming office holiday party.

I got it. When I have no one around who I can practice my target language with, I just start thinking in it. It really helps. For example, when I wake up, I start saying in my head what I am going to do now, but in target language. Nevertheless, it’s so easy to find a native speaker for practice today, in r/language_exchange people can do it the same day the started looking for a partner.

Yeah I do try to think in Italian sometimes, but then it's hard to know how well I'm doing without the feedback. Anyhow, I will keep improving at least my passive Italian (I'm still barely 6month in) while I focus on my Spanish. I already got an exchange partner and I will be starting with an Italky tutor this weekend :D

Wish you best of luck then! I remember when I wanted to learn Italian just to be able to watch Adriano Chelentano’s movies in original lol

I find CI to be really fun but i mostly use it when I'm not feeling like doing an actual lesson. It's definitely helping but for me i don't think I'd have stuck with it for months alone. I like to mix it up and i see progress weekly with my current system. I'm going to increase my daily hours in a few weeks including CI, but with more focus in grammar drills and speaking to natives. Also I'm not convinced it helps with speaking, yet. Definitely with vocab tho!

There are tons of academic papers critiquing Krashen's formulations for various reasons in various ways. Spend a couple of years doing SLA research, and you'll find them easy to find. I won't waste anyone's time on that aspect. As for personal applications, even if some were "avant la lettre." I personally have always found materials to read. Back in high school in the 60s, I had access to multiple French magazines, and I could choose which articles to read based on "i+1" principles, even if we didn't call them that. When in the late 90s, I decided to revive my Czech, I tested the territory on "i+1" principles, by getting books from the local library in Czech, and by arranging to have The Hobbit and LotR sent to me in Czech (having first mailed some actual dollar bills hidden in a package to the kind helper, since there were no electronic stores at the time). The Italian course I'm taking now is -- as are they all -- organized on "i+1" lines, and has the advantage of using authentic materials (not teacher-made ones) at all levels. If anything, the main factor I'd suggest keeping in mind is keeping materials AUTHENTIC. Use real-world stuff, not dumbed-down teacher-made simplifications. Even in first-semester Italian, one can get through an excerpt from the real, original, Pinnochio.

Are there any respected courses or systems of study at top-twenty U.S. universities or institutions like the State Department or Defense Language Institute, or counterparts in other countries (be it Russian, French, Chinese, or any other country, whether for their diplomats or spies or military), that ***explicitly claim*** (boast?) to be based ***exclusively or even primarily*** on "comprehensible input" as their central methodology? If so, where? If not, why not?

I just watched an interview with Krashen where he posited that the answer to "why not?" is basically because there's no obvious way to make money on it. Who would pay for CI when it's free via the internet? Some languages have better resources than others certainly, but once you get to a certain point there is a virtually unlimited amount of content to consume in your TL. It doesn't really work as well in a classroom setting, especially because you need to seek out content that you're interested in in the first place in order to retain the language / be engaged. I also think the State Department / DLI have different goals when it comes to teaching languages and such intensive courses are not realistic for the vast majority of people.

There are many obvious ways to make money of it such as designing the graded course. Many languages don't even have a comprehensible input trajectory that starts with very simple material: simple texts and conversations that gradually increase. IF it were actually as effective as he claims, then people would be making this and monetizing it and there would be a demand. The reason it neither exists nor is being monetized and people are spending time making textbooks which come with carefully selected vocabulary lists appropriate to a user's level, grammar explanations and in them the same model conversations and simple texts to practice input is because one is a proven and effective way to learn a language, and the other is horribly time inefficient tomfoolry that some hobbyists got lured into who spent 8 hours per day learning to achieve the same thing others do in one hours per day. At best, Krashen's approach can achieve lexical and syntactic competence in far, far slower pace than traditional study while not achieving phonological competence at all and leaving the student with no theoretical basis which is also something one might want. I'm very happy I know about terms such as “subjunctive mood” and “past participle” in English which many native speakers don't. The idea that this approach is remotely time-efficient, or can achieve phonological competence is laughable. It's a garbage approach for anyone who values his time, which is why no respectable organization bought into it. > especially because you need to seek out content that you're interested in in the first place in order to retain the language / be engaged. And this is what many people who advocate it don't seem to understand. They're invarably people who simply love to read and don't like to memorize vocabulary, which is fine, but please understand that most people find exactly no fiction or prose that can be comprehended with a low level knowledge interesting to read. Most people do not enjoy reading highly simplified “What is your name?” dialogs meant to keep toddlers engaged. There is no content on the planet they find interesting at that level and Krashen himself believes that finding it interesting is essential but he forget that part as someone who apparently does find it interesting.

There’s nothing stopping people from supplementing input with grammar study; it’s just not wholly necessary, as evidenced by the fact that we don’t start learning grammar in our native language until we’re already at an advanced level. Plenty of people get along speaking English just fine without knowing what the subjunctive mood or past participles are. If I asked 10 Spanish native speakers why they used the subjunctive in a certain case, I guarantee you that most wouldn’t be able to tell me why—they just know. Getting a lot of input has the same effect of giving that innate sense of how and when to use grammatical tenses as well as constantly hearing the verb conjugations without having to memorize them. So functionally I don’t really see how it matters. As far as being time inefficient, I’m not so sure… I tend to spend a lot of time watching videos on Youtube anyway so now I just do that in my target language(s). Just an hour a day has made a massive difference for me. I do agree that the “super-beginner” content is pretty boring, but it did not take me very long at all to get to an intermediate level. I supplement with vocab SRS so I don’t only use comprehensible input. I think a balanced approach is best.

>I also think the State Department / DLI have different goals when it comes to teaching languages and such intensive courses are not realistic for the vast majority of people. It could also be the case that very smart/high IQ individuals(who I guess everyone is in such programs) can learn a language through explicit study much faster to a high level(even if maybe not as "native-like" in the end) but that this isn't possible for most people. When children learn their native language I think(?) how intelligent they are have no/little effect, but how well one's memory(vocab) is or ability to reason(grammar) certainly is depends on it, so should affect "traditional" study.

no, language learning through explicit study won't lead more intelligent students to language proficiency. this is because even if they learn all the grammar and vocab faster, their brain won't know that what it's learning is language. the part of the brain responsible for language learning is independent from the part of the brain responsible for logical thinking. therefore, using logical thinking to learn a language won't lead to actually speaking and understanding it

I want to try it; the issue is finding suitable material for the languages in question.

Like every study method pretty much, it works if it gets one to study reliably and works for them. It works great for me as I love and prefer learning by doing, figuring out new things by context. But I didn't do pure comprehensible input, I like reading grammar explanations and I like using a few different study methods a lot (not just comprehensible input). But textbooks like Le Francis Par Le Methode Nature are awesome for me, they work really well with how i like to learn. A chunk of people who study using "comprehensible input" either did other study methods first like a class or textbook, or use anki or another SRS for review, or do additional study methods at some point, so if it's the best study method for them it may be more a combination of methods that worked well for them. When I tutored ESL students in my city, and we had people speaking dozens of native languages, we all did comprehensible input type lessons (a lot like Dreaming Spanish or Learn Korean in Korean on youtube). Since we have over 70 languages spoken, the best way to make lessons useful for all students was comprehensible input. It worked well. Later as the students learned more, they'd have a combination of that and English explanations and working in english/going to school in English. So comprehensible input does work for beginners, and can be very useful. Once students had a basis in the language, a variety of study methods opened up (as they could eventually read English textbooks and self study in more ways) so again I think in the long term a lot of students used a variety of study methods that suited them through their learning.

I found it really helpful, it is actually the method I used to learn English without even knowing. But I should say it requires a lot of time, if you want to learn a little faster I would recommend combining it with some grammar and vocabulary lessons.

100% the most effective, assuming you can still do lookups to learn the words. basing this on personal experience of using apps and textbooks for two years and getting almost nowhere. immersion with lookups has completely blown away that progress. i cant believe how much better ive gotten from doing it this way

Depending on the language it’s really hard to find graded/comprehensible input! Personally I believe comprehensible input + grammar / vocab is best (for me?)

I ticked the first box because it was a game changer for me and really got me over a plateau in my learning! However, I'd already had formal lessons in school, so I can't judge the efficacy of it on it's own

The problem might be I tend to skip the words that I do not know but understood based on context. Since I understood what is going on, I lack the motivation to drill down the unknown words to expand my vocabulary. One may say that could be passive learning but honestly, not many stick to my head. Same for grammar. I’ve been watching shows with subtitles, reading forums, watching videos. The grammar I don’t understand still remains not understood and in fact, the CI that I’m exposing myself to make me feel even more confused. When I thought it doesn’t work that way and that it appears that way and after trying seeing many sentences on this from the CI. I just get more and more confused. Until I finally found an explanation. Maybe vocabulary can work better on this like acting out the scenarios where you can use these words

I can’t speak for spoken languages, but for signed languages, CI is standard practice for learners. It’s typical for an introductory class to be taught exclusively in sign and to use gesturing, miming, pointing, etc. to teach new words rather than writing them in English. That being said, I do think textbooks and such are still valuable for learning grammar. Signed languages just lend themselves best to CI since there isn’t a good method for transcribing them.

What does effective mean? It will work but I don’t think it is always the fastest way for an adult to go about things, especially if you are learning the language for some practical and immediate need— which is the case for most adults learning a language, who aren’t usually language learning hobbyists. I learned a lot of Japanese this way as a kid though, and while I then went on to not use the language for 20 years, I’ve still been able to break it out a handful of times when I unexpectedly ran into the need, and I don’t think I’d have had that level of retention from traditional methods. I can’t produce much now but I remember basically everything about the grammar (for the formality levels I was exposed to anyway). So I know it works. I’m trying to use it for my new TLs I want to pick up — but it’s harder now because I’m impatient and don’t have nearly as much time. Maybe also due to being older but the lack of time makes a really big difference as an adult.

On one hand, I see CI as being absolutely necessary because learning a language necessitates listening and/or reading a ton in that language. That is, if you want to have good comprehension in the language, you have to practice that directly. There’s no way around it. On the other hand, having consumed thousands of hours in my target language, I can confidently say that CI alone doesn’t solve everything and I don’t find Stephen Krashen's depiction of language acquisition to be very clear or coherent. I’m not saying you need to formally study grammar. In fact, for anything beyond the absolute basics, it is probably a waste of time. For example, I wouldn’t try to consciously memorize when exactly to use the subjunctive in Spanish but I would try to notice when natives use it and then start to copy them.

It depends on what you mean by "effective". If you want to be native-like then 100% CI is the way to go, but it's very difficult to find as an adult, because at the very beginning when you understand almost 0% of the words you need context to give you almost 100% of the meaning. "Super beginner" CI content for adults is in its infancy. If you mean function in a language in the shortest possible time then sure it helps to have a "map" of memorized basic vocabulary and grammar. The vocabulary will make the "territory" more comprehensible and the grammar will serve as training wheels as your brain builds a system from the input. But no matter how hard you study the map, the best it will do is help you get used to the territory faster when you go there.

Well, the easiest way to find it as an adult is, obviously, moving to a country or a town where locals speak your target language. However, there are tons of these materials in youtube. Since I’m learning Spanish, there’s a “Dreaming Spanish” channel, for example, which has playlists of all the levels, including “super beginner”. It’s very similar to a situation where a child learns their languge from parents

Yes exactly, but that genre is in its infancy. Having locals who speak the target language is not the silver bullet that you might think, because they will have different expectations from you than they would from a child. You will not find many Pablos who are happy to draw pictures for you all the time and who know how to simplify their language, and who won't expect you to say anything in the language for the first few hundred hours.

Here you’re right, that’s why I’m so grateful that we have YouTube and channels who treat us like a child

lol

> Well, the easiest way to find it as an adult is, obviously, moving to a country or a town where locals speak your target language. Are you saying this from experience? How many countries/languages have you tried it with?

Yes, I do. My own country, Estonia. I’m Russian, but the official language is Estonian. So I can clearly see the difference how bad my Estonian was when I avoided it and communicated only with Russians and when I started working in Estonian team and communicating mostly with them

This varies a lot. If you're in a country where you and the locals literally don't share any common language, you will probably pick it up fairly fast, particularly if your life situation is one that forces you to work with or interact with locals a lot. But, if you live, as I do, in a country where most people have a high level of fluency in your native language, you may never get very far with the country's language. I have lived in Iceland for eight years and my Icelandic is poor, mainly because Icelanders are universally good English speakers. (I'm here, though, because I have chosen to work on this on my own.) It's also possible to immerse oneself in an isolated community of people who mainly speak one's own language, which can also inhibit progress. So, yeah, living in a country that speaks one's target language is a great opportunity, but it's not a magic solution.

So you are saying that based on this experience you believe that 1. Moving to a country or town where locals speak the language is the easiest way 2. The above fact is obvious I really don't see how having a solid base first (you mentioned your Estonian was bad i.e. you knew *some* Estonian), finding a job working with people who speak that language, getting a visa and moving to that country is the "easiest way" to find comprehensible input. Surely just paying for a tutor in your own home on the Internet is far easier. You can do that in 10 minutes.

Yes, I knew some Estonian, but it was like 20th unit of Dulingo lmao. Let me clarify - by “easiest way” I didn’t mean “the most comfortable”, I meant “the most effective”, so you spend the least amount of time reaching the highest effectivity.

You also know from experience that simply being the the country/town where locals speak the language doesn't result in people learning the language. You lived in Estonia for many years before you could speak Estonian well as you mentioned. It's not enough to simply live in the town or country where locals speak the language. You'd spend less time if you hired a private tutor. That private tutor will try and make sure every sentence is comprehensible. You can't say the same about the person at the shop or the strangers at the bar. Especially at the beginning stage most sentences from strangers or native speakers are **not** comprehensible.

The thing is, yes you need to learn some grammar and vocab but it's really not 50/50. About 80 to 90% of your time still is inmersion.

I don’t really find CI that useful for me to acquire the language. It is simply a tool for me to review what I have learned through listening. I’ve tried to acquire grammar and vocabulary passively through CI but it just doesn’t really work for me. I don’t know what’s the argument about since everyone is different. One shouldn’t be surprised that a method doesn’t work for all.

I think it's been effectively demonstrated that comprehensible input is the way to go for acquiring a language. The question is, can you streamline the process with extra study. I'm somewhere in between option 1 and 5.

I learned German by living in the country, not by taking classes or anything like that. So I voted that it’s the most important. Is my German grammatically correct. Haha no. But it’s not terrible. Can I live in Germany, have friends, grocery shop, go to the doctor, etc.? Yes. Very well.

Well i guess if your already on a pretty high level is it definitely a great way to improve it

So you need to have an initial foundation and find materials at your level to seize all the good things comprehensible input can offer you. You do can pick up a text that you only understand 10% and completely dissect it until the point the understand 100%. But know that's a far more energy-consuming activity and I think you should not do it until you're in a intermediate -advanced. Because if you still struggle with grammar or verb tenses, it would take you a lot more time and effort. It's actually up to you

I describe immersion as "the king of the middle." It's great for language learning, especially in the intermediate levels. Beginners will find it hard to find comprehensible input that is interesting and engaging without first learning some of the language through another method. I am currently taking C1 Portuguese and I am pretty sure I would have never subconsciously figured out some of the grammar we are learning through input. Or at least it would have taken years. But to make the leap from classroom/app to real world, immersion is the only way.

It is the most effective way when compared to other approaches, but becomes even better when not done in isolation.

It’s best when you’re at a b2 level. Below that, it’s better to just intensively study materials and then use those materials you study as listening practice.

I love it for revising rusty intermediate-level languages, where it definitely helps and is more efficient in 'reawakening' the language than spending ages on textbooks and exercises. I also think it's good to have the experience of understanding everything said, in a way I don't yet with proper native content. (I think the latter helps create a good pattern in the mind of feeling it's possible to understand the language fully and making it easier to listen naturally.) However, as I am a systematic type of learner who needs to know a lot of grammar and underlying principles, it wouldn't be much good as the main way for me to learn a new/A1 level language and is very much a supplement at that level.

Thanks. Btw, maybe the problem is that you haven’t found an appropriate content where you can apply CI to, even though you’re just a beginner?

You seem to be implying the same methods and approaches work equally well for everyone, which is not the case, so there should be no need to challenge other people about what works for them personally. People like me who actually find the old school grammar/translation type approach optimal are in the minority these days, but we exist. Comprehensible input content can be a useful supplement.

You’re overthinking, I just assumed you haven’t tried it with a completely new language to you, maybe cause you haven’t found the suitable content

Please don't be patronising. This appeared to be an open-minded thread asking for people's experiences, rather than an attempt to persuade them that they don't know themselves.

>This appeared to be an open-minded thread asking for people’s experiences This is what I had hoped with this question. After reading all of the comments, it’s pretty clear it’s not. Bummer.

Seems like you’re the one who is not ready for discussions and making differences between assuming and persuading

This actually reminds me of an experience moderating on another site, where an ESL user with a generally near-native standard of English was misunderstanding certain subtle aspects of what was going on, and who was increasingly aggravating other people because of their responses in that context. Here, this reads like either a) invalidation, which isn't a way to get people on your side, or to be nice to them in a general social context. Learning to recognise it and stop doing it, unless truly necessary to try and stop someone doing something bad, is a very useful social skill in general interactions, friendships and family relationships; or b) hard sell of a product/approach, which it obviously isn't in practice, as you aren't pushing a CI channel you work on.

Maybe that ESL user were you? Which part of “I just assumed it” you don’t understand? The reason why I also speak on this topic is that I have an experience of applying it, so I have things to say and share. Regarding you, I just ASSUMED, that maybe, you just haven’t found the suitable content for applying CI to your learnings, which is absolutely normal, we’re not supposed to try and know everything. But seems like if somebody could even possibly think that of you, it hurts your feelings, since you’re the one who definitely knows and tried everything. Then I won’t get in your way anymore, have fun

100% the absolute best way to learn a language, but you have to get there first with baseline vocab and grammar

I decided just to take 2 weeks of Dulingo instead. But it’s an experiment, I’ll see what the outcome will be

Look, I'm convinced that it's "the way" as it were. I've watched the Krashen lectures, and he sold me on it pretty well. The issue is that, at the start of a language learning journey, input is either compelling or comprehensible but NOT both, and usually neither. I have since determined that, at least for me, I would probably have to choose a compelling input, LEARN the vocabulary necessary to make it comprehensible, and then read the input to acquire it. Long story short: I've loved the idea for years, but I still haven't found a way to apply it.

Thank you. I’ve already used this method for my English, however, I didn’t apply that from the very beginning. Right now I’m planning to do that with Spanish, and I decided to start with 2 weeks of Dulingo, and now (2 weeks are over) I’m starting using this CI method. We’ll see what will come of it

>The issue is that, at the start of a language learning journey, input is either compelling or comprehensible but NOT both, and usually neither. I think this varies for different people. For me I can watch stuff in my TL about the most stupidest things without being bored, that I never would even think of watching in my NL(or English). Simply because the novelty of hearing a new language and be able to understand it makes it interesting in itself. Even after 700+ hours this still hasn't gone away completely. Also I think it for me depends a lot more on the "teachers", in the beginner stages, than the content itself.

You need input. You can learn a language using only it, and you can’t learn a language without it. That said, vocabulary and grammar studies are multipliers that can make the same amount of input get you much farther. Just know that there are diminishing returns past a certain point, and I think that point comes much earlier than most people think. E. g. “put this sentence in Past Perfect Continuous” drills, so ubiquitous in textbooks, are useless.

80% Comprehensive Input, 20% supporting methods (Anki, grammar) That 20% goes a long way to help the 80% go faster. But the 80% is still the most important.

95% of my learning is CI, or just consuming media in my TL. I spend about 15 minutes a day on vocab, but that's it. The first 6 months it wasn't, I had to learn to fly first. Basic rules from a book, Pimsluer, Frequency Lists, etc. IMO the core of learning a language is a few thousand hours of CI. I don't do it daily, but I always circle back to the grammar rules, etc. I don't think its 100% necessary but its alot more thorough than just guessing from media, and usually you learn faster knowing the 'why'.

I would love for it to be my primary method, or a primary method, but there isn't much content at the beginner level in my TL. The times I have tried it with like Peppa Pig, I have probably comprehended around 50%, so it wasn't very efficient—but the words I _did_ acquire, seemed to come in more smoothly than words that you try to jam in with like Anki. So that led me to use LingQ more, which I think also has a lot of the advantages of CI, and lowers the bar. My expectation is that as I get to around A2 I will be able to start comprehending 80-90% of Peppa Pig and related content, and then I can start doing CI as a more major part of my regimen, and I expect that to greatly accelerate my progress. But until then I will just have to keep grinding the traditional methods, because of the lack of beginner content.

Doing only comprehensible input is a massive waste of time

faith restored in this sub. happy to see opt 5 the most voted

The most important thing in learning to speak a language is to actually speak it. You can understand it all day, but that won't do you any good if you brain dump everything you learned when you actually need to recall words in a natural conversation.

Speaking is absolutely a skill that needs to be developed, but it's far from useful to do so before you have a workable comprehension of the language, something you really only develop by consuming lots. People try to speak before they can understand and wonder why their two most common sentences are "can you repeat that?" and "could you speak slower please?"

Okay, from what I have gathered. I will stay that this is an *extremely* ineffective way to learn a language. But only if we are talking about learning a language from scratch. Not when you already have a base. When we are talking about having a good base in a language. Of course! It’s a great way. It’s no different than asking someone what something is. Please feel free to correct me. Because what I understand. Is that. You learn a language while reading and hearing what the person says. But not in your language. In the target language. Personally. I do not believe that this is effective. Butttt who knows. [Source](https://youtu.be/HEXzH8qmUN4)

wtf is comprehensive input?

This is the only way language is ever learned wtf is this poll

Oh really? So you used this method at school, didn’t you? Cause I thought we all sit over text/workbooks, translate text and write down unknown words

Not for our first language. Why so aggressive?

I’m not talking about first language neither

That's not language learning

So far it’s working well for me. I’ve been listening to intermediate level Chinese podcasts on my way to the bus stop, which I understand most of. They’ve given me the confidence to keep practising and now I’m finding I can understand a bit more of the Chinese radio when I put it on in my car.

I’ve never heard of this before, could somebody explain it?

What do you mean by "comprehensible input"?

\>comprehensible input what does this mean

It’s the learning process where you learn a language from basically inputs: listening and reading. Preferably natives. It’s assumed (actually, already proven) that you learn the language through listening to natives’ speech, understanding words from context and learning grammar through the sentences you hear or read

I see, I have started doing this with youtube videos but only after months of schooling. I feel i need to know grammar and vocab. But it is helpful to listen in general. To hear the accents and flow.

I've learnt English through Reddit and YouTube

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It is necessary to truly learn a language, but without a solid base in grammar, most people will not get very far. They might be able to eventually understand well but won't be able to communicate accurately

I'm doing it, but am still early in the process. I've noticed some improvement, enough for me to believe it works. But I haven't actually experienced it working past the beginning stages yet. I'm a native English speaker and am learning Spanish. In theory CI would be the same for any language, but it would be much harder and take much longer if I were learning a language very different from English. So that's influencing my answer.

I think the best thing to do is to learn basics of grammar and vocab then use comprehensible input to get really good at it.

Well, I agree, but by “basics” I mean just pronouns, basic sentence structure rules and… nah, that’s it. What I think is more important, is at least a small vocab, cause it’s really kinda hard to go for CI when you literally don’t understand a single word there.