I truly enjoy your interviews, Olly! You don’t interrupt, are kind, and listen. Mr. Krashen shows so much passion and humility when he is interviewed too.
Wow, i thoroughly enjoyed listening to you gentlemen converse about the theoretical and practical aspects of multiple language acquisition. With so much rubbish on the internet, it's refreshing to find interviews/conversations that encourage intellectual growth. Thank you very much!
what an amazing interview! I'm a Spanish teacher and you guys just changed the way I see language learning! Thank you for making me a better teacher. Ana
I'm really glad they mentioned the monolingual language teacher issue. That confuses me to no end. How can someone who has never learned a language themselves, teach and guide students to learn a language? Its like taking dance lessons from someone who has never danced. I've looked into job postings for ESL teachers and they want a masters degree and jump thru a dozen other hoops...but being monolingual (the most important thing! ) is perfectly ok
It's largely a byproduct of not being able to find enough people that speak multiple languages. On top of that, the methods being used in schools are typically not grounded in sound theory anyways, so it's a bit of a moot point. To make matters even worse, often times the students won't continue coming to class if a teacher does demand things of them that would lead to success because it's boring and difficult. Personally, what I've found works best for me is more or less comprehensible output. I get my comprehensible input by learning it for output and then listening for it around me. Each time I learn a bit of language, that becomes something that I can then pay attention for when reading or listening.
I'm no polyglot; I'm not interested in learning a bunch of languages for the sake of it. But Krashen's ideas (compelling comprehensible input, distinction between learning and acquisition, etc.) have helped me acquire the languages I have wanted or needed to acquire (Japanese, Korean, and some French). Thanks for doing this interview, you touched on some topics I haven't heard Krashen speak on before.
I agree with the interviewer when it comes to music. As a singer/ pianist I am used to changing my mouth shapes and patterns to get the desired result. I picked up my Spanish accent quickly, and the rolled r's were seriously a piece of cake. I am also use to performing with tones of confidence. So when I speak Spanish it feels like I'm putting on a show, I don't care or mind and my spanish comes out great. As a self taught professional musician I know what it takes to become better, so I just spent 9 hours a day learning. Being a musician helps. But it's not the be all and end all.
I agree with the interviewer too. I also happen to have a musical background (albeit not professional) and that guy's argument made a lot of sense. I really think there may be a causal connection between music training and and talent for language learning. I have a friend who's a guitarist and he's understands and speaks english fairly well for somebody who never, never studied the language seriously, like me. Since he was 10 years old he's just been learning the lyrics of the songs he likes to listen to and play, doing some regular listening here and there and this alone got him really far. I'll certainly research the literature on this topic.
I agree with a lot of this. I'm also a fan of Steve Kaufman. The trouble I have is with this 5-10% unknown words. First of all, it's really, really tough to keep finding new material that is exactly in this pretty narrow "sweet spot," and secondly, if you work only with material that has 5% new words it'd take you a ridiculous amount of time to expose yourself to enough new words. I can't really understand why you'd limit yourself like that. What I tend to do is find anything that's between 50-90% comprehensible, which immediately opens up a much wider range of material. I then work through it, looking up each unknown word, not to memorise it, but rather to aid my overall understanding of the text. Then I repeatedly listen to it and reread it until I feel like I've got out of it as much as I'm going to, then I move on. I find looking up the unknown words helps push the comprehension up towards that 90%+ level, if only for that short period I'm working with the material. So long as you make sure the text isn't too long, and you keep it short, no longer than 5 minutes or so of audio, I feel like it works well and you'll be exposed to more new words than if you kept with your 90-95% known words. That is unless, of course, you put in longer sessions.
Yes, and that’s Steve’s perspective too. You’re absolutely right that practicalities (ie available material) often render much of this moot. The response to your point would be that if you’re working at 5-10% unknown then you’d have to spend less time with the dictionary, due to the amount you can infer from context. This really is picking at straws though, and important thing is to be reading and listening a lot! Cheers!
Hey man, I learned about your channel through Matt vs Japan. I already thought so while watching your interview with Matt, but you're an excellent interviewer! I'm so grateful that you got to interview Steven Krashen so we can hear some things no one else has asked him about before.
Legendary I cannot count how many times I’ve watched/listened to the pod of this conversation. Anyone learning a language just needs to start here. It’s that simple!
So true for me. Learning French right now. I came across a piece of writing on a French learning website, it was a Translation exercise from French to English. the article was to do with April Fools Day and how it is celebrated in France. I was compelled by the story which made me more dedicated to understanding what was being said. I found an historical error in the article that just could not have been factually correct. But this made me more determined to keep reading and translating. what krashen says is true. Compelling input really helps you learn a language.
I have acquired a lot of Dutch just from watching tiktok videos. It's a low stress environment, I can usually figure out what's happening based on content, and they're funny and clever so I'm actually motivated to watch them.
I am starting to think that most language classes are really backwards, they should not ty to teach you English (or French or whichever language they try to teach). They should teach you how to learn another language. There is so much that other learners have disovered, so we should learn from that.
This is one of the reasons why it's a useful use of time to start with a few weeks of a constructed language like Esperanto before moving onto your main language. The experience of hearing yourself speaking a foreign language cuts down on resistance to the possibility.
I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Krashan. I love his saying, "silly people never study but try to solve the problem". And TPRF is another new term i learned.
Just a short defense of having an accent in a foreign language: It betrays you as a foreigner immediately, which immediately makes you interesting to a lot of people. People are often interested in foreigners, where they came from, why they're here, why do they speak my language, they want to tell you fun things to do there, etc.
Thanks, Olly for the interview with Steve. I've always been influenced by his theory of comprehensible input when I evaluate language courses, teachers and materials, but it has taken me over 50 years to finally discover your website and the vast resources available on the Internet. This has taken my language learning to a new level. I'm no longer stuck with meaningless grammar exercises, and instead can find lots of RU-vid videos in the languages I'm learning with content that is inherently interesting and made accessible through captions, dual texts, and facilities to both slow down and repeat spoken language. As a native English speaker, I have also discovered that translations of popular American novels and dubbings of American movies are a treasure trove of comprehensible input. After starting from zero one year ago, and using leads from your website, I am now having weekly conversations, totally in Italian, on topics that are unpredictable but always engaging. I've just started Mandarin so Steve's tips on TPRS and his experience with good teachers is really timely. Thanks for all your efforts and valuable insights on how to learn languages. It's working.
Great interview! Probably the best Krashen interview out there, so well done, Olly! I wonder how Krashen feels about the Gold List method, which has been making a lot of positive noise in the polyglot community...
Olly Richards There are some great polyglots I think you haven’t interviewed yet. I like Moses Mccormick, Robin Macpherson, Alberto Arrighini, Felix Wang and Tim Doner.
This is a really excellent interview. It's always a pleasure to listen to thoughtful people discuss their passions, in this case the conversation was free & relaxed enough to expose valuable context but also skillfully directed and shaped by insightful questioning. Much appreciation for the effort and the sharing!
that accent conjecture actually makes sense, or that's exactly how I feel with my german. The accent is acquired but I can't perform it without feeling akward.
Comprehensible input language acquisition method definitely works. I'm à polyglotte too native Romanian-German bilingual speaker, professional English and French, Italian working skills, basic Dutch, some Hungarian, some Finish and some Thai. I teach German, French and learn Italian exclusively by Comprehensible Input.
This has been a very inspiring interview. Thank you so much for sharing it. Please keep up the good work!!! I probably will come back for listening this interview over and over.
You can and can't. You have to get over the first 500 word struggle, flashcards, reading very short sentences, translating, writing them out, all that every day helps very quickly. Starting with personal vocabulary. Learn the top 20 most common verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc. Write out sentences (Very short: subject, verb, object etc). Eventually you'll pick it up. Sources? RU-vid offers a lot for beginners.
"Other times I'm told I speak French without a trace of a French accent", hahah. I think the accent conjecture makes sense too. Great talk! Thank you!!
This was such an interesting and insightful interview. This came exactly at a time when I needed to hear it in my language learning journey in Japanese. Thank you so much for doing this. These theories are incredibly encouraging.
Olly: Your Russian reader fit my level well; I understand probably 85-90% of it and so it's perfect. It is so hard to find the right level of reading. It was great to find it.
This was a very interesting interview. I think you did a very good job of asking questions, which elicited some very informative answers. Even though I accept his basic thesis, that CI is key, his methods and comments leave me with a lot of questions of my own, not that I have anything like his knowledge and experience of course. I have a good B2 level in French, and I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. As a result my comprehension of native level French (in a formal register) has rocketed, which confirms for me the benefits of CI. However, my spoken French is at a much lower level, grammatically it’s okay, but I struggle to find the right words, even when I should know them. I can only hope that CI will also improve my spoken French. French seems so easy, it has a similar sentence structure to English and shares so much vocabulary. The two languages are almost like dialects. I am also learning German, and I am now at an A2 level. It has a weird word order, a case system and words that I struggle to learn such as die Ausbildung, and anfangen. How on earth does one find CI at that level? I use Babbel (I tried Duolingo, it is dreadful), which I enjoy. I suspect native German books for German children would be useful. As I said, this was a fascinating interview. Thank you.
I've almost always, as a language teacher, had class groups who tackled comprehension by translation, most often a common mother tongue, not matter how comprehensible, didacticized etc. etc. the input is. Most of those learn almost nothing in language classes - except than somehow dealing with upcoming exams. It's maddening. In China, as in many developing countries, the inofficial standard approach to learning/teaching foreign languages is CONSTANT TRANSLATION. Literally, the number "eins" (German) has to be tranlated - in the mind but often for the entire class or a certain in-group - as Arabic "wahed. Foreign words are treated like mospuitos on the wall - CLAP: GONE.
Ace interview..... All language teachers should language learners....absolutely, to paraphrase Kipling (which may be a first!): “What do they know of English, who only English know?”
@@bozenaszulc4815 okay obviously yes that's true, I think what Stephen was getting at was what separates those who just mindlessly study from those who then APPLY that by solving problems using what they've learned. Learning in context of solving problems also often sticks much more and highlights gaps in your knowledge too. So a combination is best. Problem solving without study is needlessly difficult and study without problem solving is less efficient and doesn't make you a master at that skill :)
I just come across with this character and you could find a lot of deep knowledge in him 28:32 Great video Olly I hope that many more people that love languages get watch this video and also a couple of more info about this great linguistic Master
The "Noise" issue is interesting, I actually did 99% noise, over and over and over till I'm now maybe at 20% when listening to podcasts/tv series and I feel like it's amazing, 20% is awesome :D And than I hear people saying that 10% is max, 20% is max they can handle. Seems little weird.
Yes....I think you always get _something_ out of such exercises, even if it's only a little each time. But as Stephen says, it depends on your individual tolerance for noise. Mine seems to be quite high.
I think that maybe the neuroplasticity that music and martial arts give to us helps us with language learning, but because neuroplasticity affects learning in general
Poor Olly just wants to believe the music-language connection so badly. As someone with a background in both music and science, I'll freely admit the prospect is fascinating, but a lot of the studies that articles quote as support haven't been reproducible. What you have, instead, is comments like the ones for this video: anecdotes, and, more validly, a passion for both.
Independent language learners come to the conclusion sooner or later that studying grammar is a waste of time but when I understand what I hear and read, then I learn some of the language. The rest of the world doesn’t understand this because of the text book publishers. Sooner or later language teachers are gong to have to dump the text books and their publishers. The alternative is to be lazy and use the failed methods spoon fed to you by the text book publishers.
I reckon if you're not learning languages yourself as a teacher, you're not really teaching. You're just presenting information for students. You're NOT teaching. There is a HUGE difference. How can you TEACH something when you don't AT ALL understand the process that happens for the learner??
All good stuff but I think you're wrong about teachers needing to be great language learners themselves. It certainly helps but being personable and entertaining, being dedicated and passionate, going out of your head trying to do the best for your students, celebrating success etc. etc. etc., are far more important qualities. It's the students that decide who the best teachers are, not the gurus or the management. In my (now somewhat extensive!) experience, there's little correlation between popular teachers and those who are vastly experienced language learners. I'm a "(very) minor polyglot" and that certainly helps me teach, especially with empathy for the enormity of the task, but I'm a good teacher because I'm such a hilariously funny great bloke, not because of my language background :) I know fantastic (i.e. popular) teachers who have hardly a word of a second language, and (IMVHO) the opposite. Anyway, gentlemen, 9/10, and thanks for sharing. Cheers.
Olly, I loved the conversation, but your style of moderating the talk could be smoother. I felt at times that the flow of the conversation was cut off, disconnected which was a bit annoying, since I didn't get the impression that you're relating to Stephen's stories, no confirmation of his experiences. As soon as you question was answered, you moved on to the next. Also, too much looking at the laptop while he was talking facing you ;)
Professor Krashen claims at one point that it's often very difficult for native English speakers to practice a second language because everybody else wants to talk with them in English. While it holds true in not a few cases, this still sounds to me more like a convenient excuse generally speaking...so many people around the world cannot speak English or even have no interest in the language and hence learning and speaking the local language will be the only way to communicate with them, plus where there's a will there's always a way...
Olly, you've invited such a grand figure as Steven Krashen, a famous scientist who spent decades researching language learning/acquisition, and when he's telling you, as clearly as as it could be, more than once, that there's NO significant relation between learning music and being good at learning languages, you keep pushing your ideas about the nature of this relation... Dislike.
12: 25- Neuroscience doesn't agree with Mr Stephen Krashen here. Music may make a lot of difference as comprehensible input. As we already know young human brain does learn to recognize phonetic patterns of a native language. After a while it makes more mature brain "blind" to some phonetic patterns present in other languages, dfferent from one's native language. This is why, as some already existing data proves, early musical education might for example help some non-natives acquire tonal languages easier in adulthood. For other people listening to music in a new foreign language might help to reverse to some degree the "brain blindness" to phonetic patterns of a foreign language which are not present in their native language(s). So using music in such learning should not be as much about learning lyrics first, as it should be about noticing what sounds and elements of phonetics are present in a foreign language and present in a particular song.
You are having a laptop in front of you...u have prepared ample questions to be asked...then why do you stammer..?.. why do u stop mr. krashan's flow of reply... this is for the sake of extracting reply and experienced knowledge from mr.krashan...!!then why does the interviewer stagger ...? Any how the reply given by mr.krhn is amazing..!!!
please refer to the 19 min mark of this video - the one question I have always asked of this guy is how to start from scratch and he says take a class despite everything else he says is to not take a class. Please observe the body language at the question asked at 19 min mark. I think this guy is at least part fraud. Why the head scratch...is he saying - why did I say that??? He also has said in a separate interview that he speaks little to no chinese and how would the entire reading strategy work with chinese?
Is it possible that his head was itchy? You are such a body language decoder. Why don't you look at his research so first you understand what is talking about first.
I don't really believe this . Languages are tough and take time and effort. And a classroom is a hard place to impart knowledge. There are those like Stephen ..absolute wizards at all of it..and these systems are fine for buying a beer and such but for getting to write a comment, like this one... in German say , you are going to have to do some learning.
You don't have to believe it. There is plenty of research to prove his method. It works and it is fun. I, myself, picking up French easily right now using his method. Languages are not tough but it does take time and effort. Learning language by using old methods is tough. Word by word, grammar rule by grammar rule. How boring and most importantly, ineffective. Again, his methods have been proven, and I am doing it right now and it is very effective.
Not everyone is like you Olesya. And there is the big problem of class language teaching. And though he is correct in certain parts, his saying "it's all easy peasy--look at me!" or even your own experience ( which is actually exactly the same as mine ..) doesn't prove much really.
@Vũ Tùng Yes it IS work. And not to forget these are two jazz pianists; top chaps; He's a multi-linguist, high-flyer, ultra-high IQ Jewish chap, dropping by Brahms and the Peace Corps and is telling us its all easy for him..his way. I'm sure it was.
@Vũ Tùng Essentially he is not being fair in comparing "traditional language teaching" and his own "modern method". 'Traditional teaching' is that of a school class of 30 recalcitrant tearaways who have some simple targets..who need a few rules. He however is a grown- up hugely self-motivated super-learner. No-one in their right mind nowadays would sit down, alone, and do three books of grammar tests in order to learn a language...They would mix it all up. Comics, TV, talking to folks, a book and yes some formal lessons to keep the speed going... I note that he digresses much here on the video. I suspect he knows that there is a fair bit of blather in his self-salesmanship..and wants to keep it jokey and superficial.
@@olesyawarner3920 I agree that grammar is dull and ineffective. However, these debates are often black and white with two distinct sides. I found this all throughout my studies in applied linguistics. Grammar study is good or it’s bad. Comprehensible Input and not necessarily output, etc. I find the truth to always lie somewhere in the middle. It also depends on the kind of learner you are. I like at least a little grammar study, if only to compare and contrast how languages function.
I love music and dance but I couldn’t tell you the lyrics of a song nor the artist half the time no matter how often I danced to the music. I was too busy counting the beats and getting a feeling of flow and groove.
This is one of the most fascinating/enjoyable interviews I've heard lately. As you know, Olly, I've struggled with motivation in learning Mandarin (IWTYAL episode 151). Maybe the next time I attempt to learn it (probably this winter, since I'm busy with projects in other languages right now, such as reading a lot of Japanese and trying out Benny Lewis' German textbook), I'll seek out a course or resource for beginners that's based on storytelling or a series of dialogs that together tell a story.
The language just sounds strange to my ears--more so than any other language I've studied. Usually, the more I listen to a language, the more I like it, and sometimes I even fall in love with it (for example, the poetic sound of Russian or Swahili). But the reverse happens here: The more I listen to Mandarin Chinese, the more bored I am with it. Also, when I try to learn vocabulary, I quickly forget it. It's very demotivating. I want to learn Mandarin, which is why I never quit completely. I put the language away and try again a year or two later. Many rich Chinese people are buying houses in my city, so I hear the language spoken on the street and at tourist spots a lot. I want to be a multilingual tour guide or use a foreign language in my line of work (IT). If I learn Mandarin, I can use it a lot.
Geza, thanks for your tips. Reading is what I enjoy most in another language, and I can't read what interests me in the beginning because of the many Chinese characters. But I have an idea that I'm going to try next month (starting tomorrow, after gathering materials this evening). I'd forgotten about Alexander's video. I've watched it a couple of times before but it would be useful for me to watch it again, so I'm watching it now. Thanks again!
@@lucasrba bro... Mandarin language is just spoken by Chinese people....and other languages like French, spanish etc is is important for university studies and job criteria in European countries and US.
Totally agree that teachers should be learners. Teachers are normally fluent in L1, almost fluent in L2 and probably beginner to intermediate in L3 because they've often got to be able to teach a second language to basic level. After a certain level they reach a ceiling to say that's enough and then they forget what it's like to be a learner.
Olly Richards But they are not polyglots because teachers hate learning new languages for the same reason that most people do - it's very difficult. And even teachers are not the meta language learners they want their students to be.
Stephen Krashen is a treasure. I have started putting his methods to work, and I feel I have learned more in this maybe one or two months of casual self learning with reading graded readers and trying to turn the subtitles off on the anime I watch than I ever did in an entire two years of Japanese in high school.
Thanks for sharing this interview Olly. Very, very interesting, I especially related when Stephen said that the best accent is inside of us, it has happened so many times to me that one moment I pass for an English native speaker but then on a different conversation I feel an 'unnatural accent', that but now I know that its more of a psychological thing.
Really an interesting interview. Certainly reaffirms the idea of how necessary finding compelling information in your second language is to keep you motivated, learning, and having fun. Listening and Reading! Listening and Reading!....... Thanks Olly for putting this out.
I moved to Japan about 6 months ago and only started studying the language a couple of months before that. Like almost every other English speaking foreigner I moved here by getting an English teaching job. I'm monolingual and after studying Japanese myself and researching a lot the different ways to study, my limited opinion basically aligns with Krashen. It really makes it hard to care about teaching English since 1 I only plan to do it for a limited time and especially 2 I completely don't agree with the schools teaching methods and I do think it's absolutely insane how easy someone that only speaks one language can get a language teaching job. Anytime I go into a class I just want to tell them go home and read A LOT then listen to tv or podcasts or audiobooks A LOT and save your money then after a while if you want to practice speaking just go online and find some native speakers for cheap or free to practice. I feel like I've learned so much more Japanese in 6 months than a lot of these students that just focus on classes learn in a couple years.
Stephen Krashen is one of those, who when I see, I always wish he would have been one of my teachers. Some people just have that gift where they can make anything interesting. Another like that is Irving Finkel
