I have always been the type of language learner to put off speaking until way way later into the journey. And I slightly regret it. So now that I kicked off a brand new language (Tagalog) and would like to reach fluency I would like to start speaking sooner rather than later. What do you guys here at LingQ think? How many know words should I reach before it’s a good time to start speaking?
I know an easy answer would be just to start speaking right away. But I would like to reach a good amount of known words first. Because though I want to speak early I see no reason to start speaking right now as it would take away from just reading and learning more words.
I studied 2 languages in high school and college and “speaking” was just part of the instruction from the beginning. I really don’t understand the idea of waiting to start speaking. If you know three words and they form the sentence you want to say, go for it.
Since school I spent a few years self-learning Spanish because I had a Mexican friend and was speaking to him as much as I could from the beginning. Now I’m learning Russian.
A teacher told me a couple of years ago that speaking “activates” the target language. I do find that to be very true.
A video from Steve Kaufmann helped me realize also that focusing on speaking without continuing to listen to a lot of audio input is not helpful. All that input that seems to be going in one ear and out the other actually builds repertoire that (again) is “activated” by speaking.
When I was in my early twenties, 45+ years ago, I took part in one of the most intensive large-scale language learning programs in the US. It was a two-month program where we were only permitted to speak in the target language from day one, while learning new vocabulary and sentence structures every day. If you didn’t know how to say something you just did the best that you could.
It was mentally grueling but fairly effective, in spite of spending two months speaking mostly with other rank beginners and a few teachers. It allowed us to hit the ground running when we arrived in the new country two months later, but we were far from fluent. Native speakers couldn’t understand our American-accented Pidgin French the way our fellow students could.
It took further months of in-country immersion to enjoy mutually comprehensible conversations of any length with native speakers, though newcomers were paired with more experienced language learners or, rarely, native speakers.
(I was raised Mormon and spent two years in Southern France, but resented being expected to go door to door annoying people. I still managed to make friends, learn a new language, and have some enjoyable moments. I’m so glad that the majority of French people are too smart to fall for that nonsense.)
The experience (1 lesson trial) I had with a conversation based tutor a while back was that they progressively build up from what you know, But some conversation based tutor expect you to be at a certain CEFR level, others can work with you from zero.
I was at 8592 known words on lingQ and was able to understand everything he said, of course he was dumbing down the conversation to my level.
2nd teacher I tried around the same time, had a more structured lesson covering all aspects but conducted it in only target language, I was able to understand him and have Q&As on the passages read in class. I was able to understand or guess meaning of all the words in the passages.
I think the 1st tutor I can get by with less words since we were just talking about daily conversation stuff. 2nd tutor The passages to read are on more complicated topics so probably will need to have a bigger base of known words.
I was raised Mormon and spent two years in Southern France
Over the past couple of years I was surprised to hear how poorly the Mormon missionaries speak their target language, at least initially, after their intensive language training - and their grammar is atrocious even after their mission.
“Janey” of “How Janey learned Russian” has students who are “return missionaries” and teaches them proper Russian.
I knew someone raised by Mormons in Germany, on an American airbase. He spoke fluent German, and English with an American accent. He was born in England, to an English mother, and was living in England, so it was a quite odd mix. I have no idea how well his parents spoke German. He was less than polite about his parents religion.
What do you mean by speaking? As others have indicated, research shows that input alone is not sufficient, output is required. Doing drills, such as creating sentences and then checking them with online tools is very useful, as is talking to oneself.
I went to Austria while having around 9k known words in German and was able to have light conversations in German. However, I think where I am now, 200 words away from 25k, I would get much more out of speaking than I did back when I only had 9k.
You can certainly start speaking with 500 words; but in my experience it will become easier at about 1000-2000 words, especially if you have read and listened to basic conversational material.
I have started speaking Ukrainian at 6000 known linqs. By speaking, trying real conversation. It was really painful. I was too limited. Now at 26000 known linqs it is much more enjoyable. I would advise starting at 15000 known linqs at least. So maybe 9000 for Tagalog.
Tagalog brethren. Galing. Mabuhay. You can speak Tagalog right away if you wanted to practice it. Because about 1/4 of the language is English and 1/4 is Spanish. Taglish (Tagalog + English) is mostly used in the Philippines. So if you haven’t learned a word yet, or if you can’t recall the word, you can substitute it with the English word for the most part. It depends on the material you’re reading. I wouldn’t look at the known word count, but the lingq learned count instead. My known word count is about 22k but my lingq learned count is about 11k. I think around 10,000 lingq learned count it good. Then it’s about reinforcing. I’m personally waiting until I get to Advanced 1, then to focus maybe 75% on speaking. Right now I’m texting with my girlfriend and I understand mostly everything. But speaking it going to take a while for sure. But that’s okay. Being around 10k lingqs learned, most of the imported content is 10% or less new words. You want to start with the basics until maybe 2k, then some songs, then go into podcasts.
Some missionaries definitely coasted their way through the two years – including those first two months of intensive language school, but for those of us who actually wanted to be there and made the efforts to study the language the learning opportunities were abundant. You can only learn so much of a new language in 60 days, even if the program runs 24/7 during those two months, but it was definitely head and shoulders above what was available in public schools.
There is a lot of pressure from the Mormon community to go on a mission – especially for young men, and you don’t have a say in where you are sent. Some of the missionaries are basically forced by their parents to go, using a variety of carrots and sticks. Those guys often just coast along, putting in their time so they can go home and collect the new car, the free university education paid for by their parents, a job with the family firm, or whatever it is they are being bribed with.
I was indoctrinated enough at that age that I really wanted to be there, though my parents didn’t offer me a penny and I worked for years before my mission to save up the money to pay my own way – which was fairly unusual. Most missionaries got financial help from their families. (In spite of its wealth, the Mormon church makes missionaries pay their own way.) I made the efforts to continue my grammar studies and reading the whole time I was in France, as well as making efforts to tame my American accent and make myself understood.
It’s ridiculous to paint the program itself with a broad brush – you get out of it what you put into it. No language learning program is magical, but good programs will reward those who make the efforts. The experience gave me a solid foundation to continue my studies in the language when I returned to the US. No one achieves native fluency in those two years, and – at least when I was there, the church made no efforts to provide further formal language training in-country, besides pairing you with someone who had more experience with the language.
Like education in general, people are rewarded for their efforts. I just wish that I’d had access to some of the instructional technology we have available today back then. We didn’t even have language tapes or videos available to us in the program at that time.
Any advice for learning German? I am planning to move to Austria soon, I do have a sense of the language, but I struggle a lot with it. My gf is Austrian, sometimes she talks to me and I get some phrases and so on, but I could get so much from her if I was able to speak/understand more. It´s just really different from Spanish and Portuguese (two languages I speak)
I have little embarassment in speaking but find being corrected interupts any sense of conversation.
If I have the language in my head - if it comes to me - I see value in “activating it”.
I’m learning Greek which I find glacially slow. Pretending to being able to speak what doesn’t come to my brain feels disheartening. For French or Spanish, it seems easier/ quicker.
So broadly, I focus on input and output when my brain seems ready with the words.
It could be possible that it might be a subconscious thing. If your native language is spanish, there’s a chance portuguese will match in the amount since they have a lexicon similarity of 89% automatically in a passive vocabulary sense. Active vocabulary will vary. For passive vocabulary, more would be useful anytime
I agree, but I think some ppl have a different idea of what a known word is; I am not saying they are wrong, I just perceive them in a different way. I could easily mark as a known word some portuguese words, for example, because they are really similar to Spanish, however if I am not able to produce them, or if I am not sure how it is written, then I do not mark it as a known word.
Also, I think it is a bit too risky to mark a word as known just bc you recognised it. When I hear Steve speaking in Portuguese, he often mixes Portugues with Spanish, and I think with such a similar language, the worst thing u can do is to take words for granted just because they are similar. It is -ofc- my experience and opinion. That´s how I stopped speaking “portunhol”.
I’m a native English speaker, and I find French relatively easy. Yes I make mistakes with prepositions, and mix some things up, but it’s pretty close to English in so many respects especially vocabulary and turns of phrase. English is almost a dialect of French in my opinion. German, on the other hand, is a nightmare. My approach, and this might not suit you, is as follows.
Find some YouTube videos at the appropriate level, or a bit harder. I am currently using tagesschau and DW Nachrichten from Deutsche Welle. Choice of videos is crucial, they should be at the right level, and repeat words across videos. Some major German media outlets sell course material such as videos and texts, these might be of use.
a) Study a new video line by line to understand it. I like to cover up the German phrase, and translate the English one, and to play around with it e.g. change the person, or the tense.
b) Listen to the video, stopping when words are not remembered.
c) Go to a previously studied video, listen to it, stopping to refresh words that are not recalled.
Go to step a).
In addition I add phrases from the videos to Anki, which helps me revise grammar and recall vocabulary.
I am of the opinion that just using the comprehensible input method with German videos does not work, in one ear and out the other. That said, it is worth listening to input without studying.
I also like to analyse German words, thus vorlegen means to present or show, and can be thought of as “to lay in front” i.e. vor+legen. Maybe this is obvious anyway.
I moved to Austria in 2023. I was there for almost a year, but I went there with zero German, thinking, ‘I’ll just learn it once I’m there’… well, terrible idea. First of all, I made the mistake of speaking English whenever I felt overwhelmed or when people didn’t understand me. Secondly, I didn’t study for a single minute; as I mentioned, I thought it was just going to pop into my mind. So, I already felt frustrated. However, learning German is really important to me, since my girlfriend is Austrian and I want to return to her country.
I would say I have a sense of the language, since I’ve picked some things up with her and I have been using LingQ for German for the last two months. I know basic stuff and basic vocabulary (1,200 words on LingQ). I do, however, know some rules which help me. As for speaking, I barely do it with my girlfriend due to my lack of vocabulary. I believe I should start with that later on, though now she helps me by mentioning things in German, like speaking randomly. I understand more than I speak, obviously. But now I really need to hustle and break the barrier.
As for the mini-stories, I find them useless in German. They are written mostly with vocab that germans/austrians do not use at all in the “spoken world”.