Wouldn't you say that Comprehensible Input (CI) is a form of Immersion. And Immersion is best defined as a process of temporarily replacing one's Native Language L1 with a Second Language L2. What happens to people when they experience 24/7 Immersion is mind blowing in terms of SLA progress. Also completely abstaining from L1 is mind blowingly hard psychologically, at least in the beginning. It's a fascinating phenomenon and understanding it helps to better understand the Fundamentals of SLA. Of course everything you say in the video is valid and there is no contradiction. I just want to expand on Krashen and create a more comprehensive theory of SLA. PS Matt vs Japan has some good ideas and he was great at explaining his methodology. Perhaps there is nothing better than Matt's Refold UNLESS someone can also experience 24/7 Immersion.
Excellent, more like this, please. I would like to know your take on acquiring vocabulary using patterns, e.g. most English nouns that end in -ity are the same in Spanish but end in -idad. I found this helpful, but I am wondering if that is just my perception.
Dr. McQuillan. I am a fan of you and Dr. Krashen, and i believe i have a few missing pieces to the puzzle of SLA. This will be related to methodology of Middlebury Language school. A little background. I spent 7+ years learning a second language the conventional way, some in school and some as individual hobby. And even though i did well in school, realistically my final level was barely a beginner. Then as a 19 year old i was a part of this experiment. I was placed in a foreign military academy with very strict guidelines. I was only allowed to use the second language, absolute 100% immersion 24/7. And even though i was already an adult, i learned a second language to a near native level within a year. I could physically feel the development of a second language. And obviously i wasn't only studying a second language, I was learning science, engineering, humanities, doing sports. I was having a rich learning experience while acquiring a second language at a rate that seemed magical. There are very important conditions that allow adults to learn on par with immigrant kids. One condition really. Temporarily abstain from native language and dedicate the remaining time to a second language. Not everyone can go through such an experience, but understanding of QUALITATIVE differences that occur during 100% 24/7 immersion is important. Feel free to reply, i have some fascinating ideas that complement your own.
Interesting as always. I'm a big fan of professor's activity (as well as prof Krashen). If someone is interested in academic vocabulary list, the name of its publicator is Averil Coxhead
Can we learn a language by using the association method? For example, can we learn the Spanish word 'saltar' by visualising a giant salt-cellar jumping very high on the Moon, where there is little gravity so it jumps high, or remember the German word 'Kopf' by seeing somebody clasp their head in their hands and saying 'Kopf', or learn the German word 'Ohren' by associating it with somebody holding their ears? Could we learn the German word for '2' by seeing somebody draw the symbol '2' and then associating that image with somebody saying 'Zwei'? Or remember the Spanish word for 'bread' by associating it with an image of somebody cooking bread in a pan? Is the association method of learning words effective?
Thank you very much doctor McQuilan for all the hard work you've done over the years. Can you please make a video on talent/ability. I know Beniko has had some research but it would be nice to listen to your perspective on the matter
First of all, you've explained things amazingly clearly! Quick question: do you consider output as a form of input? After all, you can hear yourself speak and see yourself write.
Thanks for your kind comments. For input to be useful, it has to contain something "new" for you to acquire. We sometimes refer to this as "i+1" where "i" is your current level of acquisition and "+1" is something just slightly above it. If the input is 100% comprehensible and contains nothing new for you to acquire, you won't improve your acquisition. By definition, your own output consists of things you've already acquired, so no, it doesn't serve as a source of useful input for you.
@@jeffmcquillan I really hope I can share some of my experience and ideas pertaining to SLA. Everything you say, I agree 👍 with. But I have my own unique theory that complements your CI explanations. It really brings together CI and what we know about the brain 🧠 physiology. Also it explains WHY immigrant children can become native speakers of a second language. And why adults have a hard time achieving same results as immigrant kids can achieve, except it is kinda possible, as it happened to me. I will explain in the next post.
@@jeffmcquillan Background: I had spent 7 years learning a second language the conventional way, some in school and some as individual hobby. And even though i did well in school, realistically my final level was barely a beginner. ( A1-A2, as was confirmed by a comprehensive test) Then as a 19 year old i was a part of this experiment. I was placed in a foreign military academy with very strict guidelines. Foreign students were only allowed to use L2, it was absolute 100% immersion environment 24/7. (Kinda similar to Middlebury Language school or French Foreign Legion approach) And even though i was already an adult, i learned a second language to a near native level within a year. I could physically feel the development of a second language. After 3 months i was thinking in L2 full time, i had near native listening comprehension in 6 months. And obviously i wasn't studying a second language exclusively, I was learning science, engineering, humanities, doing sports. I was having a rich learning experience while acquiring a second language at a rate that seemed magical. There are very important conditions that allow adults to learn on par with immigrant kids. One condition really. Temporarily abstain from native language and dedicate all the remaining time to a second language. Regarding deliberate study of grammar. Nobody was teaching me any of that. Well, I had a tutor for a few sessions, but then a school decided to forgo tutoring because our progress was too fast to keep track of. Yes, our progress, because there were 5 of us. And we all exhibited remarkable rates of improvement. We were separated to different battalions (dorms) and we weren't allowed to communicate. As far as explicit knowledge of L2 grammar, I FORGOT everything I knew as a beginner. I ACQUIRED grammar the same way native speakers do and I was reasonably grammatically correct. A Grammatically correct sentence SOUNDS right, incorrect sounds funny. I don't know any of the textbook grammar explanations. That being said, studying L2 grammar ENTIRELY using L2 when you are more advanced could be a USEFUL tool, though not entirely necessary. Studying L2 grammar (or vocabulary) using native language is a colossal waste of time.
@@jeffmcquillan PS. I don't mean to be deceitful. The Military Academy was the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY The year was 1991. And my native language is very distant from English, it is русский. My main interest is promoting effective acquisition of English as the international language. Because old traditional methods (grammar & translation) are widely used and produce abysmal results. Paul Nation can travel to Russia or China and see how great of a failure that approach is.
I can say this without any doubt: I started to see a real improvement in my listening and speaking after starting to listen to your podcast every single day in the last 10 years. It was absolutely vital to truly understand what native speakers say and sound much more natural when I have to talk. You and Dr. Lucy Tse have no idea how much you changed my life! Mainly, the routine of presenting new vocabulary and right after explaining the meaning with examples, all in English, helped me improve my learning so much! Thank you so much Dr. Jeff McQuillan!
Thanks very much Jeff, very nice talk indeed. A couple of questions come to mind... 1 is if reading/mouthing words has a positive impact on effectiveness (and maybe even prosody) - it is something that young readers do. Does it hold any value for language learning. If anyone happens to know of some material on this, that would be great! 2, I am it seems a rare unicorn,,,, 25 years teaching and 15 years a web programmer... so what app should I build!?! (I have some apps already - specifically one where I collect errors [booooo!] for students while they talk.... but I wonder what tech / app could beat simply picking up a book for Comprehensible Input? (I mean there are already apps like Lingq etc). If anyone has an answer I could build it!
Good questions! 1. I don't think there's any evidence that mouthing or reading aloud improves fluency, although it may have a psychological impact in lowering the Affective Filter (see my other video, Fundamental of Second Language Acquisition, for more on this concept). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-d4RI0GWnWEs.html&lc=Ugzm0zs4-70c3TjMVNR4AaABAg 2. Apps that tells stories in a slow, comprehensible fashion (i.e. the visuals make the language comprehensible) would be a great idea. No need for focusing on individual words or phrases (a la Duolingo). Just lots of interesting, illustrated stories. I suspect with DALL-E and other tools this will all become much easier in the next few years. But most programmers will screw it up by trying to make it a memorization game rather than a source of interesting CI.
@@jeffmcquillan ha ha! But I like the concept of AI generating a cartoon (like the ones they show for talks eg Sir Ken Robinson) as the story is told - obviously there are already cartoons and videos, but this would mean any type of text and as I have seen already AI can take a book and summarize it to (let's say "B2") and then you can ask for the AI to generate an accompanying series of images... very interesting (if I got your drift right) and I am pretty sure you don't need a programmer! But I may well look into this - watch this space! And thank you kindly for the link! Much appreciated!
Exactly. I'm working on some things now, getting myself more acquainted with the "prompt engineering" side of things. Please do drop me a line if you develop anything - you can contact me via www.backseatlinguist.com or via eslpod.com @@adamFluency
When I was just starting to learn English seriously (I was about A2 level at the time), I was lucky enough to stumble upon ESL Podcast, which helped me reach the level needed to understand native content. Now, years and thousands of hours of input later, I'm about C1/C2. If I could change one thing in my learning journey, it would be to learn about acquisition vs learning much earlier, as I only learned about it when I was already about B2/C1. Thank you for your work and research!
Thank you Dr McQuillan. I have a question: I have often wondered why it's called "comprehensible input" and not "understandable input". I think it's because "comprehension" refers to grasping the overall meaning or intent behind an utterance, while "understanding" usually refers to awareness of the role of individual words. I've never seen it elucidated like that anywhere, but is that a useful way of thinking about the terms?
Thanks for your comments. The terms "comprehensible" and "understandable" are used by Krashen interchangeably. I'm not sure about the use of "understanding" to refer to conscious or explicit awareness of individual words. It may be used by some experimental psychologists in this manner (?), but it isn't a commonly used technical definition in applied linguistics. Sorry I can't be of more help!
@@jeffmcquillaninla Thank you for your response. It's clearly a rationalization on my part, so I will be careful not to ascribe it to anyone else. I suppose it was mainly motivated by a need to distinguish between TPRS-style comprehensible input, where students can translate every word, and comprehensible input defined as "successful communication" whether achieved through linguistic competence alone or not. Is there any other useful terminology for making this distinction?
@@jantelakoman Not that I know of, but it is an excellent observation. I suppose it is really more a continuum of comprehension, from every word and sentence to something more "global." But I don't know anyone who has treated this carefully. To be fair, most L2 researchers are too busy studying various forms of form-focussed instruction with which to torture their students :).
Thank you so much for the lecture, but I disagree with what you said. When you learn something consciously (learning), after practice, you do it automatically (acquiring). The same is true when you learn to drive a car. I can deliberately study "she or he runs," and after practicing it many times, I will use it automatically without thinking about it! As you said, just acquiring it from input can take you a whole life. Retrieval practice is the most powerful way to learn something, both explicitly and implicitly, according to science. Your approach implies using repetitions (a lot of input); that's not an effective way. Research shows that studying deliberately outperforms studying undeliberately. There's no research that shows that a lot of comprehensible input can beat deliberate learning through deliberate retrieval practice, but there's a ton of research that shows retrieval practice is the best for learning and implicit knowledge. So deliberate learning with a lot of practice and retrieval practice will make it perfect!
There is a considerable amount of evidence that conscious learning does not become acquisition. See Stephen Krashen's reviews in his various publications, including Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use (2003). Learning to drive a car is not the same as language acquisition. Retrieval practice is not the most "powerful" way to acquire languages. In fact, it won't help very much at all, for the reasons I explained in the lecture (see discussion of the Monitor Hypothesis). Also, I reviewed the evidence on rote memorization and retrieval "practice" for vocabulary at length in a series of interviews with James Stubbs @futuremultilingual6134 of Future Multilingual. See links here: backseatlinguist.com/blog/interviews-with-james-stubbs-on-future-multilingual/
I used to think like you. What really helped me was understanding that learning and acquisition are fundamentally different kinds of knowing. I found that there are other examples of tacit knowledge which can only be acquired through experience, such as chick sexing and the "sixth sense" that seasoned experts of many professions use daily but struggle to describe. This all helped to make the learning/acquisition distinction make more sense to me.
@@jeffmcquillan Is teaching somebody the word for something by pointing to it and saying the word for that thing, an example of 'conscious learning'? Or is it more 'explicit instruction'?
conscious learning vs. language aquisition are both results, so direct instruction produces a bit of both, i suppose, but is meant to mainly produce ”learning” in the krashen sense of the word
Hi, Dr. Jeff, I very love ESL POD, I checked your name on RU-vid and found this amazing video. As a second English learner, I totally support your opinion, reading is the best way of learning words. Once upon a time, I learned vocabulary by remembering its meaning using my native language, I can remember a lot of words, but when I want to speak or write it, I don't know how to use it. Last month, I begin reading English books, such as English textbooks. At first, my reading speed is very low, and I know every word, but I didn't understand the meaning of sentences. And when I listen to some English podcasts or watch English videos, I often can't understand, but when I checked the subtitle, I can understand them. To solve this problem, I read English books, and when I finish a chapter, I will read and listen to the audiobook of the chapter again. I didn't know if was it efficient or not, can you recommend some efficient way to improve the phenomenon. Thanks for your video, I very much appreciate it.
Thanks for sharing. I come across a tweet from Kelly Gallagher, and I would like to know how do you deal with an unknown vocabulary when reading? What are your strategies? Just look up the definition in a dictionary?
I think Jeffrey exaggerates the possibilities of reading. We learn English for communicating. I doubt that reading can help people speak a second language. You need to take vocabulary and use it in speaking.
My views are based on the available scientific evidence. I'm not sure what you think I'm exaggerating. Of course we learn English for communicating. Reading improves vocabulary, which improves communication. That's what the studies I review have found.
I really appreciate you sharing this video! In the context of Krashen's hypothesis, does "vocabulary" mean productive as well as receptive vocabulary? Is reading the most efficient way to improve my speaking and writing vocabulary in a second language?
There are few tests of productive vocabulary looking at what words people produce "spontaneously" vs. on a translation or other "prompted" test. Those sorts of studies are difficult to carry out (time consuming!). But generally we assume that increased receptive vocabulary will lead (with a lag) to more productive vocabulary, so the short answer to your question is "yes." In terms of efficiency, we can generally read faster than we can listen, so yes, reading > listening on words per minute efficiency of acquisition. Thanks for the questions! How did you come across this video? Curious to see how people find this, since while it is on my blog, I don't promote it otherwise. -Jeff
@@jeffmcquillaninla Thank you so much for your reply! To your question: I searched RU-vid specifically for videos about research on vocabulary acquisition. Lots of eye-catching, clickbait schlock, frankly. I can't recall the search string that led to your video, somewhere down the list. But "vocabulary" and "research" were certainly part of it. It took me two or three searches to find what I had in mind, which was your clip! On reading versus listening efficiency, I don't know whether the fact that my L2 is Russian makes any difference. Stress, noun declensions, verb conjugations, and perfective/imperfective verb pairing aren't always evident from the page. Neither from a single spoken word form, but hearing stress spoken can be a big shortcut. There's also a meaningful difference in written-spoken style and vocab, so I'm trying to keep up a strong diet of reading and interview/news videos. I cannot tell you how much I wish "Russian 101" in college was in fact "Language Learning 101", with some hints to start. But perhaps when I went through the system, that knowledge simply wasn't ready for freshmen and sophomores. Coax you into e-mailing OUP about writing Language Learning: A Very Short Introduction? PS: I can make apps and websites on my own. Way back when, I worked with Tom Garza at U Texas on multimedia for Russian instruction. rr.coerll.utexas.edu/
This was life-changing! I am a new teacher (graduated June 2021 and currently teaching 10th grade ELA summer school!) and I have been trying to figure out how much time to spend on vocabulary and is SSL really worth doing in the classroom--- and this lecture cleared that up!! Thank you!! I will share with my cohort!!
Totally agree! Kids often times are watching the movie but not reading the words and making sense of how words are used. And if they’re not reading enough, then background knowledge is also put in jeopardy, and this is so important in helping kids make connections.
What does the research say about vocabulary retention for SSR vs explicit vocabulary instruction? When the students are tested, are they tested only for receptive skills or does it also include productive skills as well?
Most studies are of receptive skills (reading/listening) for both SSR and explicit vocabulary studies. Productive - "output" - lags receptive, of course, so doing immediate post-testing for productive skills would probably not be very informative. It's an interesting question, and one that would be useful to investigate! I'm not aware of anyone who has looked at this thus far, however (which is not to say there isn't a study out there). Thanks for your question! Jeff
I absolutely agree that reading is the best way for vocabulary acquisition, and it works amazingly for native speakers, kids, or teenagers. The mentioned researches is a nice confirmation of that. Also, books reading will definitely help ESL students to advance and pass IELTS or TOEFL test. But, will it help them to understand American movies, and, what is more important, speak fluently? I learned English using the classical method going throw units with a new gramma, a list of words and exercises to nail down material. My total vocabulary was 1800 words. Later, I moved to the US, read tens of English books, listened to all eslpod.com audios, watched hundreds of movies, attended ESL classes (most useful related to pronunciation). I estimate my passive vocabulary to at least 8K now. But, I still have issues in real life situations finding required words to express something, I don't feel myself fluent enough. My active vocabulary required for fluency and built during initial learning doesn't grow the same as passive one. It would be nice to hear others' points of view and advices about this problem. I didn't find any useful resource which would help to advance active vocabulary and fluency.
Always a joy to listen to someone who has done the research. When I heard about Krachens comprehensible input hypothesis back i 2014 I thought yes that is how I became fluent in English and German, but it will take to long, but then I started to look at my 10 year old son who got comprehensible input in abundance from RU-vid videos and I realized that the reason some danish students where way more advanced in English compared to their classmates was the amount of compelling comprehensible input they had access to. Many of these students have a implicit knowledge of grammar acquired through reading or watching English languages material of their own choice., wich correlates with some of the findings Dr. Krashen has shared on his Twitter account. Thank you very much for giving us the empirical data we need to defend our choice of teaching through comprehensible and compelling input.
