@ZayaFTW True. But to be clear, I didn’t say that ALG is wrong, I just said there is no prove it is right. That is a different matter. I never said that I can prove what I am saying, too, I just bring up arguments. You are free to bring up counterarguments, or actual scientific research backing up ALG.
The proof is the autobiography he left and the legacy he left as told in the video. You’re more than welcome to be just as skeptical as everyone else. But I choose to believe.
If you give me an advice and then you try to sell me a product which “surprisingly” is related to that… let me doubt about it.
What does it sound better to your ears: You will have to practice reading, listening, writing, speaking and grammar; investing time to every aspect of the language… or “input is the key, here there is a discount for Lingq”?
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I wish I had a passion for German because you and I could just do an experiment right here right now. I’m also at roughly 2500 German words. We could just go and say, I do comprehensible input, you do grammar studies, and we meet up in a year and see whose more comfortable in the language. I really wish. It’s tempting.
There’s the problem, children don’t learn language through massive comprehensible input. They learn through a combination of input and output. Output is crucial. They use output in part to test the theories they’ve developed. If a child finds the output doesn’t get the desired response, they adjust their strategy.
The whole CI theory is naive and ignores the results of cognitive research.
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I recommend you read some text books on SLA. Comprehensible Input is just one of many SLA methodologies. And yes it has been discredited. But it is a very powerful marketing tool for online SLA apps that provide only input. Such as LingQ, until recently with the AI of course.
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It depends on how you count words. I do not even have 8000 Portuguese words, and I speak the language fluently. Same way around goes with English. I haven’t been -active- on Lingq for long, though.
My girlfriend is Austrian. I met her while I was living in her country. Back then, I had only immersed myself and I did not study anything. It was a complet failure. I have restarted my German language path around three months ago while living in Argentina; and now I am able to understand her and to even have some basic conversations with her and her mother.
I have also had an interview with an Austrian Hotel to go to work there. The interview was mostly in English, but we did exchange some German too. They would never take me with a poor level. But it is still a process.
I do not count words only when I recognise them. I need to be able to write them correctly and to use them without thinking in different contexts. I also do not count certain kind of words. I disagree with “if you recognise it then move it to known”. Otherwise, I would have a bigger number of known words in every language, included Italian, a language which I am not studying but I can easily watch a series (as I did) in that language and following the story without complication. I would never say I speak Italian just because I can understand (70%?) of a movie/series.
Mr Kaufmann and Mr Krashen create this mythical traditional language learning method, which is based on rote learning grammar tables and vocabulary lists. I’ve never encountered this linguistic unicorn.
In truth it’s not a case of rote learning versus input. Rather input plays an important role alongside looking up words, thinking about patterns, memorising words and structures, practising output, practising aspects of grammar (which is really just grammar) and so on. Input allows you to experience real language, but with input alone you don’t notice details, you miss important aspects, you don’t build up the ability to create language. I think language learning is not so complex, it’s just massive amounts of hard work.
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