I’m fairly sure he said he found he could speak fluently (not perfectly) “right out of the gate,” or words to that effect. I’m not sure he’d would’ve said that had it been 3-6 months of practice, even it that would seem to him like a short space of time. It was definitely implied, IMO, that it was almost instant language coming out of him.
That’s interesting. I think neither matt or Krashen (or Steve?) believe that being corrected is of any use whatsoever. Though I’ve heard many testimonies like yours of people saying it worked well for them. I suspect the ‘input only’ crew would put that down to the input you received, and that you’ve mistakenly perceived that it was the corrections that got your speaking to a good level.
FWIW, I’m unsure either way. I certainly don’t think corrections would hurt, but I wonder if using that ‘conversation practice’ time would be better spent doing more input, at least until you’re at that stage where you’re ready to output. It seems to me like the idea of a long period of all input is to avoid forcing output, which will inevitabIy be littered with errors, even though some of those errors will be corrected in the moment.
I have also heard this said about corrections. Most of the “input crew” will allow for the effectiveness of vocab study and even (gasp) grammar study in some cases. Steve says he doesn’t do SRS or vocab lists, but what is LingQ if not a way to integrate vocab study with input to make it more comprehensible? Bill Van Patten says grammar instruction is effective “insofar as it makes input comprehensible”. I think this is a key difference. These things are valuable only if they are timely and relevant to your use of the language.
I found a presentation that Van Patten gave (here, in Spanish around 23 minutes or so: La adquisición del lenguaje: mitos y verdades - Bill VanPatten - YouTube) where he talks about the type of correction I’m talking about. He says that language production has nothing to do with language acquisition, with one exception, which is when the communication is part of a meaningful interaction. He gives this example:
Native: ¿Donde viven tus padres?
Student: Mis padres, uh, es, uh - vive en Sacramento.
Native: ¿Viven en Sacramento?
Student: Sí.
They define this as input, but this is the type of correction I’m talking about. The student incorrectly uses the verb (vive instead of viven) and received immediate feedback because the Native restated his statement with an embedded correction in the form of a question. If the learner notices this in interactions like this one, according to Van Patten, he gets a clue through “input appropriate for his level from another person.” I’ve found this valuable inside and outside the classroom.
My classroom experience at university was like this every day. You could say it was comprehensible input from day one, or what Krashen calls i+1 input from day 1. We also spoke from Day 1 in this way.
You can check a short video of me speaking French after 95% input and 5% output in 23 months. I started speaking after 9 months of silence. In the infobox you’ll find a translation into English.
I find it hard to believe one could start to speak fluently in Japanese after 2 years of constant input (without practicing ouput). Matt’s been at Japanese for over 10 years from what I’ve heard - getting fluent takes time.
I’m a fan of Matt’s videos. I haven’t seen them too recently so I don’t recall when he first output for “real.” But he took Japanese in high school, also did a study abroad program in Japan where he home stayed with a Japanese family and went to a Japanese high school. It was supposed to be for a year but he cut it short (I forget how short). He wasn’t “fluent” then but I think he could talk just not in a way that made it enjoyable and he avoided doing it (but he was still in Japan so it’s hard to imagine him not speaking any Japanese at all unless he locked himself in his room). He then went back to the states and continued inputting but not outputting… until finally he did output and it was like you said. So there was some output before he suddenly spoke Japanese but clearly there was a huge difference where he got so much better just inputting.
I had a similar experience with German I think. I got started and hooked on studying German when my dad paid for me to go study German in Berlin one summer when I was in college - I was living in Berlin for a few months. I actually ditched the course I signed up for a few weeks in and just bought books in German and tried to read them with a little paper Langenscheidt dictionary. I sort of tried to speak German when I went shopping, once in a while when I spoke to my landlord or randomly showed up at school. Most of my studying was on my own. At the end of the summer I visited some relatives near Frankfurt am Main (in Germany) and there I got to output for a week or so before coming back to the US. I was able to have a very simple conversation and this blew my mind. I continued studying (mostly just reading) German over the years after I went back to Boston. There was nobody to talk to and so it was weird to test myself on my speaking progress when I got the rare chance to actually speak. I basically leveled up between each conversation by reading/listening to German broadcasts on the Internet.
So I think you can make lots of progress by just reading or immersing without talking to anyone. Matt claims this prevented him from making bad habits. I think he’s just smart and fixed his bad habits as he went. Seriously, he’s way smarter than most people and you have to take that into consideration.
My method (for the first half to three quarters) is purely audio input. I find I can remember how words sound and I can say them more or less how I remember them sounding like.
I can pronounce more or less correctly and I can string words together in “sentences”.
My spoken grammar sucks though. I can’t reproduce grammar at all.
But according to the only native Russian I’ve spoken to live I am intelligible. (If somewhat childlike in my utterances).
Obviously I can’t confirm if you’re reading off of cards but your pronunciation is pretty decent. I did exactly the same thing as you did with French for six months. I can understand spoken French at an intermediate level. Your French is better than mine.
The pure audio input method works.
The real issue is we have no clear definition of “fluency”.
I find most people who are saying “you can’t” are actually saying “you can’t get to university level as in C1 or C2”.
You can definitely get to “it flows out of my mouth, broken but intelligible” at the same time as “I can understand most youtubers speaking at normal speed” if the language is close to english in six months.
I didn’t quite make that in six months for Russian but I’d say “it struggles to flow out of my mouth, I fumble for a word 1 in 10 and I can speak broken but intelligible” and understand a limited number of youtubers. I suspect I’ll be at the same place with Russian as I am with French by the summertime.
But if it was “can you get to C1/C2 quickly” hell no.
My 2c is that writing is the hardest skill of them all for me. I can speak very good Spanish (as in it feels like English to me). I can write but it is seriously broken. That said I did it mostly via audio and TV. So maybe if I had spent a bunch of time reading it might be different.
You are not kidding. As you said at some point, some of the famous youtubers like Kate Clapp don’t speak proper Russian. That said, I can kind of understand her now. I know way more about miniature handbags and makeup than I ever wanted to LOL.
Right. There is a dichotomy between “fluent” but “not perfect”. There are tons of very functional (and fluent) immigrants here in Canada whose first language is not English. But many of them make consistent wierd (to me) grammatical errors. I am in the same boat. My Spanish is fluent but not 100% correct. I am self taught so my grammar is likely wierd. In Russian I’m not fluent (although I can produce kind of) but my grammar is totally and completely borked.
In French it’s similar although I’d say I can speak “fluently” in French it is no way perfect. Probably most of my grammar is essentially subconscious Spanish I have twisted into French.
So yeah to me one of the largest issues is “what do we mean when we say ‘fluent’?”
Right. By my reckoning about 500 hours of listening was enough to get French up to a decent level where I can understand almost all youtubers and speak coherently.
500 hours of listening is not enough for Russian but I can understand some youtubers and speak broken.
Do you really need 2000 hours to get to understanding combined with conversational fluency if all you are focusing on is listening and speaking? I don’t believe so. But we’ll see.
Pretty cool. That’s motivating. I find words pop up in my head in Russian but not complete sentences. I’m only at 7 months though. Love to hear what you’ll be like by the summer time (2 years?).
For very high fluency my guess is you’re right on the nail.
That said, for acceptable fluency, you need less than half of that. A six month period of brutal slogging, 3-4 hours a day, then another six months of just an hour a day.
Also: one other thing.
It’s possible to “cheat” not “studying” grammar but still learning about it directly through input.
Some of the youtubers that I find easiest to understand are in fact Russian language teachers who are doing youtube podcasts of wait-for-it… grammar lessons.
“about russian in russian” is essentially this as is “maria petrova”. Basically they just kind of use simpler words to talk about the grammar. Maria Petrova is great because she usually tells a story with flash cards first. Irina (lastname?) from about russian… is also good.
They are both teaching old school… writing stuff down on whiteboards and talking about grammar.
In Russian for example “cases” are supposed to be super-difficult. In fact I think conceptually if I understood both Maria Petrova and Irina correctly, they aren’t that hard to understand. Just wierd and IMO crazy. Thanks Russians!
That said, since we don’t have them in English, they are super hard to remember. When I’m trying to speak, my brain is overwhelmed by the processing power required to recall and just output the words in a string so cases go out the window.
I suspect Mandarin is going to be easier because my understanding is it has very limited grammar compared to Russian.
I think you’re right. I originally started because I was intrigued (but somewhat skeptical) by what Benny Lewis said. He made the bald claim that you can do any language in 3 months if you just start speaking (combined with memorization). I hypothesized that 6 months should be good enough to understand any language if you put in enough input.
I doubted him because of the somewhat disheartening number of hours the FSI says it takes.
We were both wrong. The FSI is right in broad sweep. Some languages take more effort than others. That said, if all you are looking for is conversational fluency and listening comprehension and no reading or writing, then the FSI’s numbers I believe are off by a factor of at least 2 (for the distant from English languages).
