So I’m using LingQ to get a LOT (and I mean quite a lot) of input. I’m only going to start speaking in earnest when I reach 25,000 known words (about April or so). When did you all start speaking? If you had a really long silent period like mine, was it awkward at first? When did it get less awkward?
Thank you all!
Silent Period works when you have a good foundation in how many hours of listening and how many words you can recognize when reading. If your current strategy is focusing on known words, your potential is higher to do listening and speaking but you won’t make actual progress until you do the listening to further benefit the known words. Based on your description here is that you want to have conversations asap. Get the listening in and shoot for a good number of listening hours too to get maximum pleasure when you start to speak along side with the known words.
Source: I started speaking at 49,000 words.
My Lingq journey through silent period: Tried Speaking/Italki For the first time after 1.5 years of Massive Input / Chinese Milestone / Appreciation Post
Well, I was going to go to the Balkans this summer as well (I have some friends there) and I am probably going to get speaking practice, but I still want to be somewhat fluent when I get there. ~50,000 words is a lot my man! Wow! How did it end up for you?
Was able to speak from that moment on pretty smoothly. Best of luck!
That’s amazing! Thank you so much. Just finished scrolling through your post. Am quite fascinated on how that all went down.
I guess I’m weird because I started talking to and texting my very patient Chinese speaking friends immediately. Like, even before I really knew what I was doing at all.
After a month or so of balanced reading and listening, I went kind of overboard on reading and graded readers, while continuing to text/speak with friends. This included a few visits to China during which I needed to listen and speak to accomplish simple things. I was fortunate to be able to observe how I was progressing (or not) on these trips.
Recently, I’ve put more emphasis on listening and watching videos with a transcript/subs and clear, slowish speech instead of graded readers. Progress has absolutely skyrocketed since making this change. One reason, I think, is that reading while listening has dramatically improved my reading speed, so I’m exposed to a much larger volume of words and symbols in the same amount of time.
I’m far from fluent and far from talented when it comes to languages, so take this with a grain of salt.