I had exactly the same thing from a film director the other day. He replied to my review of his one and only movie which he shot in his loungeroom, and it's one of my favourite movies. So I interviewed him a few days later... I was a bit starstruck haha.
"Keep getting input. Relax. Keep getting input. Relax. Read. Listen. Read. Listen. Make friends." This man makes me want to live! Thank you so much, Matt, for making this interview! It is not just entertaining for me (though it WAS extremely compelling). But every live interview with Stephan Krashen brings out those golden grains of knowledge that help moving on in investigating language acquisition strategies. Especially coming from you makes it so precious. Sincere virtual grateful hugs!
I'm input person. But I don't want to make friends to improve my English. If he/she has same interests with me, I'd like to try it. If the purpose is leaning language, I'd rather pay for it.
@@OneTruthReacts Comprehensible input means that those parts of the input that you don't know are easy to guess the meaning. With the help of various hints like the context, illustrations, realia, gestures, occasional translation or any other hints. If you can not guess then it just means that the input is not comprehensible at all or not comprehensible enough for your level. Also very rarely some people are just closed to the ides that they need to guess. It makes them uncomfortable. They don't have experience of such mental work, they are not confident enough and they don't tolerate the ambiguity. This mindset can be an extra filter for comprehensibility.
I respect how quick Krashen is to say, "I don't know." Even when he guesses, he bookends it making it clear that he doesn't know, his statement is conjecture, he isn't familiar with studies, etc. I appreciate that he comes from such a scientific background and holds true to the values of scientific studies. Thanks for doing this interview, Matt. I'm sure you were giddy as a schoolboy when he agreed. Who else would you be as excited to interview (or be interviewed by)?
I was about to post the same. My respect for him shot upwards. He never interpreted, he separated his own opinion from peer-reviewed science and he wasn't afraid of saying "I don't know".
“Nobody cares” Man I can’t even express how much this one truth has helped with my output. Dropping the anxiety of making mistakes feels like when Lee dropped the weights fighting Gaara lmao
+An Takabi Yeah dude, look at Sofía Vergara, the Colombian actress, people love her English accent. Americans love Arnold Schwarzenegger's English, so cool. I think accents are cool.
From what I've seen, ALG is perfectly in life with the input hypothesis, so I imagine he would be a fan.... I've been meaning to look more into ALG myself!
I love the fact that you say _Stepping ladders_ rather than _Stepping stones_ , it just shows how HIGH up in value this interview is, it's not on a hill, it's on a MOUNTAIN.
Absolutely. Output is NOT something which is forced, it's a natural result of enough comprehensible input. People REALLY need to know natural output is the result of enough comprehensible input.
This is wrong lol. Infinite esl students around me input 5 yrs and still cant talk property even though they seem to understand. Output to output. You don't get better at speaking by never speaking just like doingeverything else in this world.
@@bobjohnson1717 True. Although I think comprehensible input is underrated, I also agree that each skill needs to be practiced separately and in a balanced way. Yes, input might carry my level of comprehension to an advanced level, but it won't be of much help to my production (maybe in writing it will, but in fluent and accurate speech, no). Especially when you are no longer an infant, it is kind of wishful thinking to expect this. We cannot acquire a new language like babies. We are already capable of thinking/speaking/writing in a complex way in at least one other language.
@@bobjohnson1717 It's not wrong you do aquire through input. Even if you can't reproduce it yet it's in your brain. You've aquired it now obviously you just have to get it out through speaking. He means you can't reproduce a language. Without first squiring it. The only way to do so is massive input. Then eventually you begin to speak it. If they can't speak well after five years. There's many other reasons why. Not consistent, not inputting everyday, not speaking often enough, the quality of input, your concentration, exc. This guy can speak great japanese after five years. The proof is in the pudding so to speak.
This conversation of two language acquirers just reminded me that what I was doing is actually right and good. There are several bullet points that I can recall from it: 1)Motivation , self-esteem and anxiety are three major factors in one's language learning success. 2) Not practice but do for pleasure either listening or reading. 3) There are still some hidden stones hidden underwater of language acquisition and even those two guys cannot explain everything. 4) Comprehensible input is a good methodology to learn a language but lack of materials for beginners is a stumbling rock.
When you asked the question about pitch accent, krashen said something like, just keep listening and relax and it will come. I have an experience, just one incident, that makes me doubt that it comes without paying attention to it. What happened was this. I was a grocery store where I live in the Netherlands. A woman was doing groceries as well and said something to me in the Dutch language, just about 5 words. She had no discernable accent, but she pronounced the character 't' in a way that only Germans do. So I asked her: "are you German". She was flabbergasted and honestly a bit pissed. She told me she had been living here for over 30 years, had lost all of her German accent, she says 5 words, and I recognize her as German. She was really pissed off. I didn't have the guts to tell her it was only one character. My suspicion is that, having lived here for 30 years, she never noticed the difference between the Dutch way of saying the character 't' and the German way. And according to Steve Kaufmann, noticing is one of the seven rules of acquiring a language. So, I do think you are right. You can get very far with input alone, but you need extra, conscious input, to understand that you are still missing something. Like a native telling you when something sounds off. Had I told the lady what was wrong, she might have been able to correct it. Unfortunately, I chickened out. Well, end of rant, hope it helps.
You didn't chicken out. She did. If she had merely asked, "how did you know?", you might have felt comfortable enough sharing this little detail with her.
Could you tell us aksjakjs Edit: 3 mins in and I found this on wikipedia: Unlike English and German, in Dutch the voiceless stops are unaspirated in all positions: thus while English tip and German Tipp are both [tʰɪp], Dutch tip is [tɪp] with an unaspirated [t]. Is this what you meant?
@@Matheus_Braz Probably this is it. It feels for me as if German people often "spit out" some of their "t"'s when speaking Dutch. Of course that exaggerated.
It's interesting that Krashen says that he doesn't know about acquiring from one's own output. In his writings he hints at it here and there. J. Marvin Brown who came up with the ALG method by basically taking Krashen's hypotheses even further than Krashen himself was adamant that an extended silent period is vital to achieving native-like results. I put it all together and I think what happens is that early on we kid ourselves that we've mastered things that we haven't and this gives us a double whammy of acquiring the mistakes in our own output while simultaneously closing our minds to those elements in the input that we get
@@feliche2292 No, he just didn't immediately recognise what Matt was talking about. When Matt posed his theory on how Anki can work within Krashen's framework, he said "Yeah quite possibly."
Stephen Krashen saying "I don't know" is a big lesson of humility and scientific attitude. Just found this channel, great video. Thanks for doing this. Greetings from Colombia.
Thanks for the 5 hours I'm sincerely happy that you could have the honor to talk with stephen krashen and that we could get all the knowledge that you carry with you
"all these things are a RESULT of comprehensible input" - and just like that it all made sense to me. How can you be corrected if you can't already comprehend some of the language? How can you output if you don't already comprehend what you want to output? How can you do anything if you don't comprehend what it is you want to do?? You can't.
I 100% second that. I'm German and learned English in school for 3 years (--> couple of hours a week + home work). After holidays/vacations in English speaking countries I kept to "English only" (Netflix/RU-vid anyone :) ) as far as possible for a couple of weeks, until in 2011 when I stuck to it forever since. This immersion made all the difference! At a certain point I noticed, that I did not "translate" what I've heard back to German anymore, but simply "understood" what I hear/read - this was the moment everything changed. I for sure still make mistakes with speaking/writing - but in terms of understanding there is no difference between English and my mother tongue anymore.Great feeling, but what is more - I look at languages very different now.
Love Dr. Krashen, I'm on my 10th graded reader in Italian. Verdict.... it works! I've been studying on and off for years. My story: Added over 4,200 most commonly used words in Italian on Anki (from a book referred to me by professor Arguelles), studied abroad in Milano for 8 months in college, practiced on and off speaking with native Italian speakers on apps, memorized all verb tenses, and watched (wasted) for 30 mins every day for 2 years of Italian (too advanced and thought it would just 'click' - never did because it was mainly incomprehensible). Been reading graded readers for 2.5 months or so and feel like I've learned and am more 'fluent speaking' from those 2.5 months than my 15 years of on and off learning. Professor Krashen gave me the confidence to not quit, even though I was pretty much done and thought I could not learn a foreign language. My only gripe, not able to find enough graded readers. If anyone has a source, please let me know. My end goal? Is to speak Italian at a C1 level - ce la faro'!
Italian here, you should try comics. Italy has amazing comic artists/writers, a couple of favorites are Gipi and Hugo Pratt. Check out Pratt`s "La ballata del mare salato" and Gipi`s "La mia vita disegnata male", "Appunti per una soria di guerra" or S." (anything by Gipi is great). These are graphic novels meant for adults (in the sense that they are really just literature with drawings), so they might feel a bit complex at first but the drawings may help when things become confusing and the beautiful narrative should be motivating enough to keep reading. My two cents anyway.
38:30 - my second ever video on language learning was 2 years ago now, and it was a terrible video... but it's me just doing a French accent for 17 minutes, basically saying how it's actually helpful to pretend to be a French person, that is to actually completely imitate them down to the smallest things like the sort of mistakes they would make in English (if you are still speaking English). I have also found this beneficial when pretending to be a Swede... it's like a warm up. My hypothesis is that if you pretend to be a Swedish person speaking English for like 30 minutes, you get into that frame of mind before needing to worry about the actual difficulty of outputting... And then when you go to output you are more "ready" than you would have been because you feel Swedish, rather than just regular Aussie Lamont speaking Swedish.
This has to be hands down the best interviewing of anyone I’ve ever seen. You did a great job at questioning him, following up, and asking him to clarify. I’ve never seen an interviewer be so curious and so persistent and so polite. You’d researched his ideas on CI, considered them, and then asked him to fill in the gaps. I watched a whole lot of interviews with Krashen before yours and you asked questions that really helped me see his ideas and the current limits of some of them more clearly. You even presented theories that expanded on his ideas. I’ve never seen someone do an interview this well. Amazing job.
I can’t believe if watched this for free. Acquiring this information at home in my bathrobe free of charge would have been unheard of a decade ago. BTW, Dr. Krashen, you should totally change the battery in your smoke detector. Thank you so much!!!
Graded Readers is so great. I've been reading these simple Japanese stories that I can comprehend and understand without many issues, learning new words and getting used to Kanji. The stories may be dull, but being able to read a language that was once so mystical to me, even if it's such basic language, is a great pleasure and source of motivation to keep going. So even tho I read about mundane stuff like John-San visiting another family over summer vacation and going to a festival with them becomes crazy exciting to me. There should be graded readers for every language, it makes things so much easier.
Hi!!! I'm desperately looking for graded reading material in beginner Japanese, I would be so very thankful if you could tell me where you find the stories you are reading. At the moment I'm reading these books tadoku.org/japanese/en/ Please help, pretty please ^_^
Overall I liked the conversation, although it wasn't what I expected. What I didn't like was that a lot of times when Matt tried to place his theories under Krashen's knowledge and experience so that Krashen would somehow judge them based on that, Kashen would act too pragmatically, too strictly scientific. He a lot of times rather repeats his tenets, that he has already tried than ventures to use his knowledge and truly elucidate Matt's scenarios. Moral of the story: I think Matt has really stumbled upon some really novel problems that are outside the scope of Krashen's largely empirical knowledge. But the thing Krashen says about 'club membership' really gives me a lot to think about. I think that's the nugget of this video XD
Think about how many years Krashen has spent chasing alternative theories and comparing their results against his methods. It's like trying to teach someone a new way of mentally multiplying numbers: if they already have a working method for them, they're right in knowing alternative methods may exist, but may also be not as effective, so they're naturally skeptical or resistant to novelty. It's not simply that they're "stuck" on their concepts frameworks, but that they legitimately "know better" from their experience.
The subconscious self-restraint when interacting with someone from a different "club" than you also works the opposite way when you're a native speaker of a language a foreigner is speaking to you in. I'm an Englishman who doesn't come from the central southern area, so I have a very strong regional dialect, and the difference between speaking to other British people and the non-British is huge. Not even just non-native English speakers; if I'm speaking to an American or what have you, I'll revert to the Queen's English and I'll actually mess up pronunciation because suddenly I'll get a somewhat American twang or overcompensate on pronunciation because my accent leaks in. AND YET, none of these changes occur if there is at least ONE other British person with me. And then the foreigner always comments on my accent. Reasonable self-consciousness I'd say.
Wow, Matt. This is one of your best videos ever, and that's not a low bar. You did a great job as an interviewer with a legendary subject. Congratulations. I hope this video gets a million views.
I want to say "Thank You" to you Matt, 'cause you're the one who introduced me to him and his "Comprehensible Input" theory, Japanese pitch accent, native-like pronunciation, these are all the things that I've known from you; so THANK YOU for all of these things.
I did not expect to find out that Stephen Krashen is actually really cute XD I mean, that famous video of him explaining comprehensible input is a lot of fun and he's really nice about the "beef" he throws around about teaching methods, but here he seems like a loveable grandpa ready to tell you stories about his life and share his knowledge. I'll be revisiting this interview! Amazing job, thank you so much!
51:22 Your theory about visualising specific grammar aspects as a visual aid for acquisition is amazing. I had huge success doing this myself but I've never heard it explained like this before. Wow. Thanks for the excellent talk... all language learners need to see this!
This is the method I am using and it has been incredibly successful, it completely counteracts the normal study method and I am honestly quite shocked that it has been working so well. I use no english, I use pictures and stories/songs, and after only two months of active listening and learning I am able to listen and understand basic conversations and some stories, it is incredible.
In the past year, I read a million words of Japanese novels, from popular thrillers to art literature. And shadowed a dozen audiobooks at 0.6 or 0.7 speed. I will only look up words after they reappear, and only in a 漢和辞典. My reading speed has quadrupled, to 24 to 30 pages per hour. For listening, I recommend shadowing (repeating aloud a split second behind) novels read clearly by top voice talents, as slow as necessary to keep up and imitate every nuance. You won’t learn to “mumble naturally” like hard-to-follow movie dialogue, but super-naturally, so that your every word in understood by everyone.
@@osamahabbas3443 9 paperbacks, 15mm thick, about 5000 pages. I learned Japanese 1975-1980. And in the 1990s I managed translation services. But moved to the countryside and changed jobs. I learned the (comparatively easy) Scandinavian languages well enough to enjoy great thrillers, simply by reading and shadowing dozens of books above my head. Recently I’ve taken up Japanese again. But I have never studied grammar or kanji for JLPT. I mostly resisted looking up words if I could guess from context and enjoy the stories. I only looked up kanji after I read them repeatedly, and they began to bother me so, that I already knew what they must mean, and I knew I would recall the pronunciation forever after looking once. But after all that reading, I recognize most kanji on my novels. So now I do what I used to avoid, and look up every kanji I don’t recognize.
@@DougalBayer Thank you. I also don't study grammar, I just read but I look up words . I'm a bit impatient because I want to learn other languages as well, but I know its a long word. Thank you for replying, just one more question any tips to improve my listening?
@@osamahabbas3443 I should tell you that I am a Speech-Language Pathologist and have studied acoustic phonetics in depth. I believe strongly in audio shadowing, by listening to audiobooks of full length novels or nonfiction works, read by professional voice talents, slowed down considerably, through headphones, and repeating aloud a split second later. If I have the mp3 sound files, I use a hi-res sound editor (SoX) to 1) hi-bias filter (reduce the low frequency vocal “carrier wave” boom below 500Hz to -6 or -12 dB, and amplify the “speech information” range 1500-4000 Hz +6dB 2) compand (compress loudest sounds 0dB>-12dB and expand/amplify midrange -36dB>-24dB, to enhance quick consonants relative to overly loud vowels), and 3) resample the playback rate to between 0.6 and 0.8 (as slow as I need be able to perceive and imitate every subtly of tongue position, rhythm and pitch). If I’m streaming (AudioBooks.jp), at minimum I adjust the graphic equalizer or choose the “vocal” filter setting, and slow the rate. Some language teachers will tell you not to listen and speak slowly, but every musician or martial arts practitioner knows the value of slow, accurate practice. Later, you can repeat at a higher speed and less filtering, until you are ready for street speech. But as beginners, we cannot learn from rapid natural conversation or noisy audio. I enjoy classic Japanese cinema, but it never helped my Japanese. I think that shadowing should run ahead of any other study, even at the beginning. Otherwise, how can you even learn one word, before your ear and tongue have acquired the new sound system? My approach is still meaning based (because I am daydreaming a story while I listen). But the foundation of the speech pyramid is the true sounds of a language, and the patterns they form, from syllables to words to phrases to sentences to stories.
I took several classes from Dr Krashen in grad school in the 80's... he only gets better with age. Matt, I think you are unique in your metacognition skills and reflection on your own learning, as contrasted with some hyper-monitor users who master difficult languages as adults. For example, in a way your study of tonality is like an advanced form of Input. You find it compelling to discover so it works.
It really isn't possible to find compelling Japanese reading material without first having rote memorized kanji. I understand Krashen's point that reading is great for acquiring languages, but I think this only applies to languages with an easy reading system. For Japanese it is not possible to pick up a book and learn from it without having brute forced some degree of kanji.
@@benjaminkelly7871 That's right. Japanese is a gold mine of comics and they do include furigana. I totally agreed that finding something compelling or addictive in another language is the key to rapid acquisition. But also want to acknowledge that some languages reading systems make this much more difficult.
I'm currently experiencing this steep first hurdle in japanese. Reading is so much harder to get into than just watching something with subtitles. This problem only really presents itself to L2 learners of japanese too, since the native will learn spoken language before written, and can therefore correlate meanings and readings of kanji to the visual representation (an idea which matt has previously said would be the ideal way to learn language, if it wasn't so slow).
+Vexxed Or go the entrepreneur Tim Ferriss route, he read all the One Piece manga (at the time) with buying the collection in English and Japanese. Easy translation in reading. I'm thinking of buying the entire Naruto manga, from English and Japanese, because they just keep talking a lot in their memories instead of fighting...it's useful.
Every time I start to burn out on my Spanish input routine a video on this channel inspires me to re-evaluate, improve my methodology, and continue doing the work. Terrific interview, thank you.
Awesome questions! You can tell how much Matt respects Steven Krashen and that he really thought about what to ask. On the edge of my seat the whole hour 🙂
I think like anything that is a novelty/new, we feel awkward the very first time doing it. I do think the more we practice or do it it becomes muscle memory. I find knowing vocab(like you all suggest) first is the foundation in which we can build fluency. Once the vocab is solid in our mind, the words will come out pretty easily when constructing sentences. I found trying to learn grammar before knowing many vocab is a struggle. I didn't make much progress that way. It wasn't until I decided to let go of speaking fluent asap, did I start to make progress. I decided to just build vocab. I would insert Hawaiian words in whenever I spoke. Since doing that, I've notice I don't have to think so hard when constructing sentences now, as opposed to before, I would be searching for words. I actually think the grammar part is easy once the vocab is in place. For me, learning my native language(Hawaiian) is a passion and something meaningful to me. This makes the learning process so much more fun and motivating. My favorite quote, which I apply to everything in life, esp the big stuff, 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step.'
千里之行始于足下。I've just discovered Chinese is such a compact ,concise language quoting your favorite quote. No more regrets over having to spent so long on Chinese literature.
This is really interesting. My first language was Spanish, but I was born and raised in the US with older siblings, so English had always been my strongest language. I never studied Spanish and rarely spoke it, but my whole life I was surrounded by Spanish because of my parents, family gatherings, church, etc. Now that I’m 26 and my job requires me to speak Spanish, I became fluent within a few months. Mind you I rarely used Spanish, I spoke here and there when I traveled to Spanish speaking countries and somehow I managed to speak okay. This past year I really focused on touching up my grammar but all in all this theory makes a lot of sense!
While I agree with a lot, I find part of his core thesis hard to accept, or possibly I just misunderstand it. But having studied many languages myself, I find that learning grammar, at least to the point that it provides a structural scaffold for your subsequent input to "nest" in, is a massive booster to the speed at which you can get better at understanding and speaking a language. Of course random "if this do that" kinda grammar points are pretty useless. Further, I think speaking yourself, making mistakes, and observing the feedback you get from your partner (f.e. a question because something was not clear, a friendly laugh because you accidentally said something hilarious) is absolute KEY to advancing your skills and one of the fundamental processes through which you gain ability. So yeah, of course, without input you got nothing, so that is where it all starts. But to me, input is exactly that, it's just the input part - but the machinery of learning a language involves many more cogs and wheels, and some of them are theoretically optional for sure, but might just help you speed up the process. Just my 2 cents. Anyway, love your channel and great video as always. :)
I think right now the consensus is that grammar instruction works, but not in isolation. Meaning that it works when it's done in response to a question that the learner has. Which intuitively would make sense. If you teach the grammar like that, the learner gets an "a-ha" moment. But if you teach grammar out of context, just with lists upfront on things the learner hasn't encountered yet, then he just won't see the relevance of that information, and will have a hard time incorporating it. The core of his thesis, the "learning vs acquisition" thing, hasn't stood up all that well to the test of time. And that's no diss on him. He came up with these ideas in the 60s/70s. But a lot has happened since then, and in particular in the last 2 or 3 decades where cognitive sciences have advanced in large strides. His idea was that grammar instruction helps, but only in the "monitoring" function, and it didn't help at all for the spontaneous production of speech. Namely it helps only for when you are consciously trying to be careful about how you phrase things. Brain imaging tells a different story, at least in the sense that neural systems related to speech production and neural systems related to executive functions are connected in a wide variety of ways. It's not all wrong, but it's just rather simplistic in light of current research. For instance, he says that the brain is good at acquiring language, but not so good at learning about language. That's true only in the sense that the brain is naturally geared to acquire language, but it is not naturally geared to learn explicit grammar rules. The problem is that he infers from that that anything we do that our brains aren't naturally geared to do, well, that will have less potency, less value in the learning/acquisition process. But here's the thing: our brains also aren't naturally geared to learn how to read either. There's nothing natural about that. It's a cultural invention, one that children can't learn without explicit instruction. In other words, literacy is "learned", not "acquired". This learned thing, literacy, completely rewires how the brain processes language. So, it's a bit disingenuous to then say that our brains aren't all that good at "learning" but to leave out just how powerful learning can be. Literacy is a prime example of something that you "learn", but that is so potent it completely changes how you "acquire". And tbh, I'm not entirely sure how Krashen promotes reading so much without having ever addressed that irony.
The thing is, the actual speaking in your examples is technically not what you're learning from, but rather they became a vehicle to getting input in the form of the other person's reaction. I think he means that just speaking the words to yourself in isolation is not a means of acquisition
I don't like it when people keep saying the input "hypothesis", i mean, when it has been proven with millions of people already...it can't be hypothesis anymore, it's the truth. I learned English with Cartoon Network from 4 years old, i agree with both of you, compelling stories is the key. I have been waiting for this video a lot, and it's finally here...so amazing. Krashen you are my hero, Matt what you say is true, i speak from experience. Just Netflix and chill like a boss, learn languages the lazy way.
Fantastic interview! I dont think I have encountered a more clear and concise explanation of Stephen Kraschens theories before. And hearing him theorize and repsond to some of the points you made from your own language acquisition journey was fascinating! Thank so you so much Matt. Hope you have a great evening.
This is the best video on the internet, i’m watching for the 2nd time right now. Thank you for making this happen! I would say make a part 2, but i feel like the key points have been addressed.
Oh, did you hear any news recently? I don't know him very well, but I got really interested in the Spanish book collection he mentions at 17:36. The entire interview is amazingly interesting.
I was immediately engrossed in this mans ideas and voice. Truly interesting and he has truly contributed amazing ideas to language community!!! Thank you Matt!!!
It is great listening to this professor, and it has been an honour having been in his mailing list...reading is the key to language acquisition and Doctor Stephen Krashen has been an important inspiration for me during my process of improving my understanding of language acquisition. He is a can-do person who has left his print for future generations of teachers and students as well.
A comment on accent and “joining the club” so to speak: The overwhelming majority of the Spanish language content I consume is Mexican. I am inundated with Mexica media from RU-vid to television programs to music. In the beginning of my studies, I was exposed to a ton of European Spanish on account of my using Assimil. However, when I go to speak it is with a distinctly Puerto Rican accent. Why is this? Well, if what Krashen has said in this interview is true, it seems that it has to do with the fact that Puerto Rico is the “team” I joined. My wife and consequently her family is Puerto Rico and despite mostly speaking with them in English, the PR accent has come to dominate (though I still use Mexican slang). Completely anecdotal of course, but it is an interesting correlation and seems to agree with his assertion.
50:50 Contrarily, I spent some time living in the US at a very early age. Although I would live the next 20 years in my native non-English speaking country, all throughout school I associated with an identity of being partially American. Every time I went back to the continent this feeling of being part American deep down was there in the back of my mind. Thus I was never uncomfortable about actively speaking. But in actuality my learning situation wasn't very different from my peers. I didn't know much English grammatically starting school at the age of 7, nor did I study writing particularly hard. But being consciously aware of my past fuelled my interest. I may have acquired language elsewhere, or more strongly, because of this. Even if today my relationship with American culture is at an all-time low, convincing myself that we're not somehow associated would be very difficult to do. The "club membership" appears somehow hardwired because of important memories of my past.
There used to be a (danish I think) publisher, Nature Method Institutes, of graded language courses. It was essentially just a novel, written completely in your target language, which you could pick up as a beginner and immediately start reading, progressing towards an independent reading level at the end. Each chapter would have to be reread a few times but otherwise it was effortless. It is by far the best language course I have ever seen. This was around the middle of the past century and they seem to have been forgotten now. I wish someone could republish them.
I am a language teacher in a regular 'bilingual (but not really)' school in latin america. I teach following Krashen's priniciples, the rest of my colleagues with grammar grammar grammar and my boss (as lovely and motivating a person as she is and who loves the way I teach) still insists on grammar syllabuses and course books. The thing I notice is that some students learn (acquire) english well (obviously from the delivery of the grammar in english) while others do not (because learning grammar as if it were a language learning method is boring as sh!t) and those students simply think they can't do languages because they fail at grammar. The irony is despite their negative opinions of themselves because of their difficulties with grammar they actually do learn and don't realize it. They just fail the grammar tests.
I loved the final, those last words were inspiring, for me, Krashen is a fundator and a very important figure in these places... thank you for making this amazing interview
Amazing interview! Thank you very much for making this possible. It’s always interesting to listen to such an intelligent person. Mr Krashen is a fricking legend!
Great video! My biggest problem is how would I learn this without a teacher or class? I am on my own and I am a complete beginner to mandarin. how would I go about TPRS alone? I feel since I know no words, I would need vocab, animations, or whatever and not mainly listening and speaking (since I don't know what I am listening to and no one to guide me on what the words are lol)... Any help would be appreciated.
@マークフゥ Stephen Krashen's theories are not entirely wrong, but the big problem is that he ended up becoming an authority on the subject to the point that people believed more in his theories than in the way the true polyglots learn any language. there are some techniques that have always worked to learn languages but Stephen Krashen condemns these methods to the point of saying that they do not work. most polyglots do not agree with him but prefer to teach Stephen Krashen's theories on the internet so as not to lose credibility and also to avoid controversy. if you really want to learn languages just use whatever method you think is best and just have the discipline to go to the end of the course and avoid going after theories and more theories that have no end and do not help anyone to learn. in fact, we don't need evidence for the obvious.
@@bofbob1 I really enjoyed your analysis and I’d love to hear your technique in learning languages. I’ve lived in the US for 28 years and I speak English fluently but I still make the occasional mistake every once and a while. I moved out of the US and now I only speak Arabic and sometimes English to non native speakers with low levels of the English language. So , my English is getting worse. I have high level of French comprehension but it’s difficult for me to speak the language. I’ve also just started learning European Portuguese. I mainly use RU-vid to learn both languages . Please share with us your methods of learning languages
@@bofbob1 I totally get you, for example in a written an listening exam I can get a score similar to a native but in absolutely no way I can pass for a native in writing, speaking or even sometimes comprehension (even if that's my strong side) I may pass a C2 exam but my skills are probably C1 or B2 Tops in English. (Not that I really made an effort to speak the language, I mean I had decent exposure when I was a kid but after that it was mainly consuming english media).
This is a great interview. It's super cool how Stephen is so scientific he won't even state his opinions on something before making it really clear it's a hunch or something. Great guy.
I learned Japanese primarily by reading lots of novels. It took many years, but worked great, so I completely agree. Now I'm learning Cantonese and the spoken language is different from the written. It's quite a challenge when you know how you want to learn, but have to find alternatives.
@@rimenahi I learned grammar, pronunciation, and the basics of Kanji through college classes in the US and Japan. I also spent a lot of time talking to people in Japanese during college, which was the first 5 years I was learning the language. For reading, I started trying to read manga at the beginning until I could finally understand the story and get through a volume in a few days. I started reading books as soon as I got to where I only needed to look up a word every other sentence or so. I just looked everything up with an electronic dictionary. After college, I started trying to take the JLPT 1, and it took a few tries, but all I did in between with the language is read novels. For the next 10 years I only used the language for reading novels, then about 5 years ago I became able to get access to audio books. After listening to about 5 or 6 audiobooks, I could finally understand most RU-vidrs. Comedy and informal conversations between other people, especially in a dialect, are still hard to understand. So reading novels isn’t the only thing I did to learn the language by any means, but I did it more than anything else. I feel like when I got to the point I could read the speed that people talk and then mapped it to native speaking with audiobooks, is when I finally became able to process the language with my brain without thinking about it. So I think reading was the essential key for actually acquiring the language for me. I didn’t have RTK back when I started, but if I were starting again with today’s resources I would certainly try it, because I think it could help me start reading earlier.
As a chinese guy, i think the easiest way to learn cantonese is to learn mandarin and then watch a lot of hong kong cantonese drama, you dont have to learn the writing, you will automatically understand from your mandarin vocabulary, most of it that is.
Hi Matt. This is wonderful! Subscribed! I started a RU-vid Spanish CI channel largely due to being inspired by Stephen Krashen's findings. What a cool experience to interview him!
As a black man, I totally understand the thing about accent and club membership. Because, I can speak perfect intellectual school taught English when I am in a formal setting, but when I get around the community that I am from and my family, I speak perfect Ebonics without thinking about it. I can switch between perfect standard English and Ebonics on demand without thinking about it depending on the setting.
I totally relate cause Im a southern white hillbilly. Often I cringe at myself when I notice myself talking "normal" cause it dont sound like me or my people and aint normal to us.
Wow this is the first time I actually heard Stephen Krashen speak but he is such an awesome guy in person. So inspiring. Had a blast listening to this interview- thank you!
Really enjoyed this one, Matt. I never tire of watching people who are much, much smarter than me, and Krashen is one of those people. Both of you have given me a lot to think about as I enter my third year of learning Japanese. Congrats on this interview.
Watching this made me remember that english isn't even my first language and I can't remember a single moment in my life that I thought "ok so now I'm gonna study english". I actually feel kinda stupid now cause for the past few weeks I've been trying to learn japanese (I'll be going to Japan in a couple years to get my Master's degree) through classes, books and flashcards and being bored asf doing these things. Like, 80% of entertainment content I consume are in english and I never really thought about it... I already knew how to "learn" it and I was completely blind to it. lol.
This video has given me such a push to keep pushing forwards with the Tonal Engine prototype I'm creating. When you both said one day you will be able to read a text and create comprehensible input from it, this is exactly the base of my prototype (for Asian languages). As I'm testing it now as part of my thesis I created a RU-vid channel called Tonal Engine, so if you're interested you can have a look at the few videos I created to recruit voluntaries to help me test it. I have been watching your videos for years (even when I wasn't interested in AJATT or Japanese per se) and this is one of your best ones. So impactful and insightful.
Very inspiringvideo! I wasn't much motivated lately but this awesome interview made me recovering my energies and keep learning. It's so great watching content like that that make people see that the whole process of language acquisition is wonderful. Thanks guys!
So, the big question that I was waiting to hear an answer to, but feel like I didn’t: How does input become comprehensible in the first place? Especially for an adult learner.... Dr. Krashen (rightly) emphasized comprehensible input as means of acquisition but he didn’t really address this question. If one is a complete beginner in their target language, then presumably *no* input will be comprehensible to them. How then are they supposed to get comprehensible input? It seems to me that they would have to do this *via learning* as opposed to acquisition; because, well, how else could they? I saw that you were driving at this question towards the end of the interview, Matt, but Dr. Krashen had less to say about it than I would have hoped...
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fnUc_W3xE1w.html skip to 3:36 he shows input is comprehensible through visuals and actions people do while speaking. This is what matt was talking about with mr. spock
Dr. Krashen had less to say... So far as i'm concerned he embarrassed Matt on his own channel by trying to come across as being a "real professional" with "real evidence". Krashen didn't even know what anki was? Why did he bother to do this interview when he probably didn't even know who Matt is or what he represents? So far as i'm concerned the theory of comprehensible input with graded readers lacks significant results for a reason. Seems to me Krashen has zero interest in helping to advance real language learning results and is only interested in protecting his legacy of which he readily admits he wasn't the innovator.
@@teatime2688 Right, that’s what I was talking about by saying Matt was trying to get at the question by asking something like, “But can’t learning/memorization serve to facilitate acquisition? Isn’t this actually necessary in some sense?” It seems that learning by someone pointing to an object and then saying the word for that object isn’t that different from learning/memorizing a word on a flash card. It seems more like learning/memorization than “acquisition”. So doesn’t learning always have to precede acquisition? I just don’t see how you could a “acquire” a sentence’s meaning without having first “learned” the words.
@@Aditya-te7oo Yeah, I definitely think you’re right. I’d go even stronger and say that it’s necessary, because I can’t see how else someone could get to the point where any input is comprehensible. You could lock a native English speaker who had never heard any Japanese in a room for a year and just play Japanese audio non-stop, but without any meaningful context at all, they couldn’t learn anything
