Presumably Matt agrees that practicing speaking is needed since refold has an entire stage dedicated to output (stage 3) once your comprehension is good enough.
Isnāt this what krashen says? however I think Steve says you do need to speak. Personally I donāt want to practice speak so Iām just gonna do input. Iāll report back in a year or two what happens. Lol.
This March it will be 2 years and by March 2023 it will be 3 years in total and I think I will try to maintain the same intensity by then to assess how his method actually turns out.
His method is technically a full-time job and thatās how a kid learns his native language just through sheer language exposure. As per his given timeline 3 years for fluency and 5 years for perfection but yeah after a three year I will keep learning the language on a daily basis but I am not sure if I can maintain the same intensity due to other factors like getting a professional job lets see how it goes
Cool.
I think though, that like Matt, youāre shooting for a very very high degree of functionality in the language because you need it for day to day life as well as work.
So yeah, thereās no surprise that itās a full time job to get to that kind of level.
That said, after having already done a pretty functional level of Spanish in the past, I can say that the intensity definitely slows down after a while. I think the highest intensity for me was the first year to two years. By the time I hit the five year mark Spanish was like English for me. I could use it to do essentially everything.
Long tie no see^^
I have been hiding from you. Had had enough of your antics. But I was wrong and now I am back for more!
Iām pretty sure Matt had several years experience in speaking basic Japanese, before; he began using AJATT methodology to study the language. Which would explain his sudden jump from basic to fluent output. But that being said, Iāve definitely had the experience of studying through input for 1-2 years then opening my mouth and having natural sounding, fluid language come out. It isnāt necessarily 100% correct all the time, but it is what I would describe as ārobust fluencyā.
I only have a vague idea who Matt is and I think YMMV but Matt seems to clarify what he means starting around 26:30 in this video: Does immersion have to hurt? Language learning secrets from @mattvsjapan - YouTube
Iāve had that experience with French. From no speaking to pretty decent speaking overnight.
Repetition of AUDIO material is key. If you hear something hundreds of times itās easy to reproduce as long as your mouth can do the actual mechanics of the sounds.
The audio aspect of this comment is the important part. We learn to speak through our ears.
Iāve had a pretty similar experience with learning English. Long story below.
I started learning English when I was around 11 years old in school, and was pretty terrible at it. We didnāt have any opportunity for output, it was basically all self-study. Then a neighbor introduced some manga to me, though she only had English series. So that summer holiday I stayed at home reading some English language manga I only half understood for 4 to 8 hours a day, which gave me quite a lot of input. Since I only did reading, I only had a vague idea of how everything was supposed to be pronounced (my only source of audio input was some popular music). Later on, I think it was about a year later, I moved on to reading light novels and watching anime with English subtitles. not much later I got my first audio input (outside of music) by watching some English TV-series, and though particular accents such as British and Scottish took some getting used to, I got the hang of that pretty quickly as well, since all I had to do was match up what I was hearing with the words that I already understood when written.
Move on to a few years later, I think I was 15, my school did a student exchange with some British kids, and I was one of the students picked to stay in England for a few days. By this time I understood both spoken and written English fluently, and the only output I had ever produced was the kind of content I needed for my English classes which were far below the level I was used to. while staying there, I was able to carry a conversation without much of a problem, with the only difficulty being that I tried to use some words Iād only read, not heard before. When I was in my ācomfort zoneā, however, my speech was completely fluent. Since we were already having conversations on our way from the airport, it canāt have taken me much more than an hour to get used to speaking. later opportunities to speak English were pretty much the same, as long as I understood what was being said, I could reply without having to translate anything in my head or having to think about how a native speaker would word something.
In my experience, but keep in mind thatās only with English, it just takes a lot of input and some knowledge of pronunciation to feel fluent in conversation, though it depends on my familiarity with the topic how well Iām able to express myself. For me, it took some 3-4 years of input for the conversation to start flowing naturally, and it might even have happened sooner if Iād had the opportunity.
I think Steve said this in one of his videos. Which is why I think he pushes for us to listen to the mini stories many many times.
Yep, it definitely works. Like i said as long as your mouth can make the actual mechanics of the phrases you can just say it without thinking.
I found my problem wasnāt being able to say stuff, it was stringing together coherent thoughts in the language where i could just talk without having to think of what to say. In English i can just talk and talk without much thought but in French thereās much more thinking going on, and itās not thinking in terms of translating the English into French or anything, itās more a delay where it doesnāt roll off the tongue quite as quickly. Itās hard to explain.
Thanks for finding this. I agree 100% with Mattās points here. There is a role for study and speaking practice in language learning, even if comprehensible input is the best place to spend vast majority of your time to acquire a language.
Yeah. 100%. I think the audio mini-stories are the most valuable part of lingQ at least in the early stages.
Agreed. IMO Itās literally what āfluentā means. In English and Spanish, the words just flow out without thought. In French there is a delay for me which is not quite āfluidā. In Russian I have to line up what I want to say and then slot in the words. Then I have to think about the grammar which is unclear. So essentially I guess itās sentence construction which is anything but fluid.
In order to bring up your writing skills you will need to raise your reading ability. If your are able to read at a third grade level fluenlty then your writing will be below a third grade level. Reading ability is always higher than writing ability and listening is always higher than speaking.
I learned to speak German fluently mostly by reading and listening on my own over several years. I double checked my German with a German friend later and he confirmed: āI can understand you.ā (when I speak German.) Sorry, couldnāt help it. I got pretty fluent, and felt fluent, like I was speaking perfect German, but obviously it wasnāt perfect. Just understandable.