The myth of input | How NOT to learn a language 

I am nearly fluent in a second language because I watched tons of TV in that language as a kid. Much more than in my native language due to more and better content in the language. I have never practiced speaking it. I never spoke it to a native (I was shy about it). And yet, to this day I can produce it on a nearly native level. Despite never actually practicing or speaking it actively. Input works.

I am a bilingual offspring of immigrant parents. I'm also a language teacher. I've worked to acquire other languages. And I respect the work of Krashen. I believe that input comes first. It is the clay you need to do something with. After you have that clay, you then go on to do something with it. I see the language-learning process that way.

Consistent input + conversation is infinitely superior to traditional grammar rule based, classroom learning. That's not only my own experience, but also the experience of every other polyglot I know. Lots of reading, lots of listening.

Comprehensible input is exactly how I learned to speak Spanish, Italian, and French fluently, and also how I am currently learning Russian at a fast pace.

As someone who magically became fluent in English just by consuming RU-vid, I can confirm that input does indeed work.

I achieved a C1 level in English a few years ago by reading and listening to English for three years so I am a true believer in input theory.I am learning French now and I use the same method. I think it annoys you teachers that there is a way to learn languages where you are not indispensable.

Then why am I able to speak in English quite comfortably? I haven’t outputted in English so much (I guess less than 24 hours in life), but I’ve gotten more than 10,000 hours of input.

English is my second language and I'm fluent in it despite the fact that I've never been to a country that can speak it. I've learned English almost exclusively from watching gameplay videos on youtube, playing games and watching cartoons on TV with audio set to EN. I remember when I first started feeling confident enough to speak, words just wouldn't want to come out on their own. I definitely believe forcing myself to speak over the years has helped improve my speaking, however I also know that if I hadn't kept getting more and more input between the rare times that I felt confident enough to speak about something in English, I would've never improved in the slightest. I know, from my experience, for a fact that input is 100% the most important part of being able to not only understand but also speak a language. Nowadays if I'm lucky even native speakers occasionally mistake me for a native speaker and I never had to study for it. I never had to prepare vocab cards, practice speaking phrases or study pronunciation and writing. But go ahead, call the way I learned my second language complete bullshit.

The man was saying "comperhensible input" not only "input". I was studying for an English exam. I tried to memorize a lot of vocabulary and grammer rules and failed it. Then I decided to read a lot instead studying hard (memorizing vocabulary). After time, I realized that I had much more vocabulary than it is needed then passed the exam. The secret of language acquisition is understanding what you are reading or listening. It needs to be understood. It needs to be so understandable that it allows your brain can acquire that language.

Dude, I have done nothing with my time during the entire pandemic but watch series in Catalan and sentence mine there. After 15 months of nothing but input I activated the language, speaking it for the first time. Fluently. It's a new chapter for me living in Barcelona. You know nothing.

i disagree, you have to be in contact with your target language as much as possible to learn it so of course input is very important, that's the way you learn, you need immersion :) eventually you will be able to use the language in your daily life, doing your normal activities, watching things you enjoy on youtube/netflix, etc. that's how i'm learning English.

I've a simple question for you: how can you speak well something you don't understand well? The answer is: you can't! So the input comprehensible, and acquire the language, will always come first. And nobody is saying you don't have to practice. Make no mistake, you will have to speak a lot, to improve. But if you keep repeating verbs like a parrot don't take you anywhere. I'm a Brazilian who has learn four languages, and I know the input comprehensible works.

To increase your vocabulary you definitely need lots of input. I also believe we learn languages in context, whole sentences. And being continuously exposed to certain structures will help us internalize the language. This is my own experience of learning English. I consider myself a relatively fluent speaker and I got here, I believe, by lots of reading and listening. But also speaking! They do go hand in hand but I still think there is a place for the comprehensible input hypothesis. It is simply one of the most effective and organic ways to improve your language ability.

classic trick: find an example where the argument is not valid (surgery), then use "analogy" to invalidate the original argument. because the world is so simple and elegant and there's no such thing as case-to-case basis.

The fact that this man literally compared input based methods to a “parasite” shows that he understands nothing about the topic. And outputting broken sentences into the world as a beginner who knows nothing is somehow “generous”? These arguments make no sense.

You can't really compare brain surgery to language learning; they are very different things. I agree people have different learning methods. And yeah, method might not be perfect but, it's how some of us learnt languages.

I'm not a native English speaker, I learned English from watching TV, youtube videos and gaming. I never really practiced speaking it, but when I suddenly needed to for an English assignment, when I opened my mouth: there it was. I'm bilingual, my native language is Dutch even though my parents are both Turkish. I can speak Turkish fluently and understanding does seem to come easier than producing the language, but it's hard to say by how much. I'm still a believer of comprehensible input. Good to hear a sceptic voice though. Thanks

I think you misunderstood the input method. The main concept of the method is to get enough input in your target language so that you can produce it. Just think about how we learn our native tongues. We listen every single day, right? And after like several years, we start to speak even though we make tons of mistakes. It is the same principle. How can you speak a language if you can not understand a conversation? How can you write a language if you can not even understand what you read? And of course once you reach that certain level, you should speak and write as much as possible. But without listening and reading, the output is not going to be good because reading and listening are the foundation of the other two skills.

🇺🇸🇧🇷 It's totally understandble that it's hard for any English teacher, who were created in a formal system, listening and teaching complicated stuff, to accept S. Krashen ideas. They may never accept that learn a new language can be much more easy! I can say it! I'm learning using input method in a country were traditional methods are almost 100% failure!

Mr. Canguro, with respect I think you are very, very far afield. My experience as a teacher has taught me the opposite of pretty much every argument you've made here, so I really hope for the sake of your followers that you put some serious time into upgrading your understanding of language acquisition.

I love this debate. I think this video is doomed by a misunderstanding of the input hypothesis. As far as I understand the hypothesis, in order TO SPEAK a language you need to have the needed words and the rules to combine them INSIDE your head. And to have words and rules in your head, the only thing you need is comprehensible input. Not grammar classes, not lists of words to study. The input hypothesis is just about this. Then, OF COURSE, you need to actively USE the language (PRACTICE).

Sorry but it seems you didn't understand exactly how comprehensible input works.

Hi Christian, I very much like your charismatic vlog. Nevertheless, today I wouldn’t agree with your theory that much, no matter how attractive it is. In my view if someone starts learning a language, he/she has to acquire A BIG ESSENTIAL INPUT FIRST (vocabulary, basic grammar, pronunciation, for example) to be able to speak, write and understand - as well as to be understood by others in the same basic way at least. Unfortunately, there is no way round it. Until after a student has gone through this, he/she can actively focus upon an area of the given language he needs to improve or likes and really enjoys.

Heritage speakers often don't get nearly enough input to qualify as a true native speaker. If you added up all of the minutes you converse with your parent in the heritage language, what would the average number of daily minutes be? Maybe 30 minutes? An hour if you are really chatty? And the topics will often be the same common things which come up again and again in daily life, so it won't cover the breadth of language use necessary to be fluent. Some children are raised bilingual and do end up as true native speakers in more than one language, and I would assume it's just because they are getting way more input than the failing cases (like they watch old country cartoons or something). Heritage speakers are also interesting to look at because they very often go through a silent period after moving to the new country (sometimes lasting several years) before they actually start speaking. This is yet more evidence of the input hypothesis at work. I don't believe that comprehensible input is the be all and end all of acquiring a language, but it's like 95%. The only thing it doesn't solve is that when your comprehension hits 90%+, you stop acquiring new grammar as your brain is more than capable of piecing together enough meaning to get by, so it isn't incentivised to notice the finer details. So some additional study which aids you in actually noticing those subtleties rather than glazing over them is helpful.

👏👏 In many years working in education, I've never come across a single teacher or specialists who takes that approach seriously. It's funny to see lots of people here sharing anecdotal evidence and swearing they've learned merely with input. Reality and statistics: immigrants who merely rely on input and don't attend real language lessons need on average 30 YEARS to reach an advanced level (article: What drives the language proficiency of immigrants? IZA). And then some language nerd hobbyists believe they are going to do much better watching youtube videos lying on the couch at home. 😂 It's consensus that PASSIVE LEARNING is the slowest and most inefficient form of getting knowledge. Faster and solid results are better achieved with ACTIVE LEARNING METHODS. This is not even a discussion in modern teaching. You'll only find the defence of total passive methods coming from enthusiasts, lazy learners, language gurus and people selling it. It's also funny to see lots of people here saying language teachers and teaching specialists are wrong, and their work is not needed. They must be the same people who distrust doctors and scientists and go for healing shamans instead. 😂

In my early to mid twenties i watched a lot of Korean drama tv series with subtitles. After several months i was able to understand certain phrases. I then started to learn about grammar and it was fun because it already felt familiar, like i had this intuitive feeling of how the words should be formed into sentences. It was such a fun joyful experience while my traditional way of learning English was really traumatizing. I learned it against my teachers methods, not because of them.

We all aquire language in one way and only one way when we understand messages .

Of course comprehensible input alone is not enough, but it has been the single most useful thing in improving my understanding of English. Here teachers in school are all about grammar, translations, making word lists and other such exercises but I never learned a thing. I really began understanding and improving my spoken and written English after consuming tons of American TV series and I made another big jump after I discovered audiobooks. I started with a very slowed down Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone (a book that I read in my own language many times) and by the third book I was listening at 1.25x to not get bored. Of course my spoken English is not as good as my general understanding of the language, but knowing how a phrase should sound is a massive help in speaking and writing it. I also don't know how else I could have acquired as much vocabulary as I did. Maybe I am wrong or maybe when you speak of learning through input you mean a different thing from me, but for me it has been a fundamental part in my learning journey.

I’ve became fluent in English by listening to podcasts religiously and started doing the same in Spanish and I can understand random radio conversations in Spanish just fine after 2 Month It works extremely well for me - learn basic vocabulary - listen to tons of content which is just slightly above your level - focus while listening

Wow ! I will never forget that quote, '' We acquire language in only one way, when we understand it.'' Wow! That's so real for me

I'm just another one of the many cases listed in this comment section of people who learned a second language based solely on input. I started consuming content in English when I was 11, simply because I loved listening to Linkin Park. Afterwards, I started watching TV series, movies and a lot of youtube videos about topics I liked. I didn't have a conversation partner, nor English classes. However, after 4 years or so, I could understand pretty much everything I heard/read and could communicate without any problems. My comprehension became so good I could even tell when other people made mistakes in English, no matter how small they were, and later became an English teacher at a language school. I achieved that with input exclusively, living in a non English speaking country, having no one to teach me but native content videos. By my experience, I have to totally disagree with everything you said in this video. Input works.

no, this time you missed the boat, I think. Input is extremely important. It's not the only thing we should focus on, I agree, but it is likely the most important

This paints a very dishonest picture of comprehensible input.

Reading the comments I'm seeing this dude get a lot of hate. He's exaggerating and makes some brash statements that I wouldn't agree with, but he is also making some valid points. Comprehensible input is clearly a big part of learning a language, but so is output. He's critiquing the methods that involve only utilizing comprehensible input but completely neglecting output. In my opinion after learning several languages, you learn the fastest by producing it, not by consuming it. Ideally you want a good balance between the two.

I'm glad that you brought up Deliberate Practice, because I can ask some questions. What do you think the role of practice is? How do you differentiate between bad practice and great practice? And why is "Deliberate Practice" consistently the best form of practice no matter the subject? What do you think the "cause" of improvement is? From my experience as someone who's coached hundreds of people in things and have gotten better at being a coach because of it. Practice's role is often misunderstood. People seem to believe that you can just do practice and automatically improve just because you are practicing. This is why the vast majority of people never get "good" at things (see skill distribution curves in any skill). All they do is just mindlessly do an action over and over again as "practice". But practice is so much more than just doing an action repeatedly as a drill. The purpose of practice isn't to do an action and automatically get better at it. The role of practice is to expose you to input. Every time you do an action, there is a cause and effect relationship with the environment, and that the exact repercussions are something you observe, meaning this is input. This input is the cause of your improvement, not the fact that you're doing the action. This then moves onto "bad practice"/"great practice" and deliberate practice. Bad practice happens when a person does the same thing over and over again for the sake of repetition, and they usually get lazy and straight into autopilot. This will yield poor improvement and this is what most people do. But great practice, such as Deliberate Practice, involves actually paying attention to the cause and effect relationship between what you do and what happened. This means your brain can create a link between the result and the cause just from the details. And the more you do it, your variation in consistency will give different actions and thus different results to build up a repertoire of cause and effect relationships. And deliberate practice is not only about just paying attention to the details, but also coming up with ideas on how to change a detail to find different effects. It's also about spotting a problem, analyzing the details, and coming up with ideas as a solution to fix the problem by changing a detail. Often you would logically conclude _which_ detail is the cause of the problem and change it. This is exactly why Anders Ericsson found that every expert used deliberate practice in some form to get to where they are, and why that on average the best in their field on average had 10,000 hours of deliberate practice done. It's because when you are exposed to dozens of details each time you do something, and experimenting with them, your brain has thousands of patterns built up right inside your head. And you don't even have to consciously understand _how_ it works or _why_, just that the result is better. I also want to bring your attention to your lack of understanding of acquisition. You presume that just because you "acquire" something, that it's the ability to recognize it, process, and comprehend it, but this isn't what acquisition _is_ at all. This is what the process of acquisition, not the result. Let's change the subject from Krashen to general skill acquisition. When someone says they acquired a new skill, do you honestly believe it is referring to the the ability to process and comprehend the ability? No. It directly means that you have the ability to not _just_ understand the skill, but also be able to use it on command and pretty consistently too. So now back onto Krashen and acquisition. It literally means the exact same thing. That when you acquire a word or a grammar point, that not only do you understand it, you can consistently use the word on command in the correct situations with an innate feeling. Just like skill acquisition, knowing the theory behind a skill does not mean you can use it in the correct situations on command. I also want to point out to your surgeon example as it's actually directly in support of the input hypothesis. No amount of watching videos will ever lead you to being able to do surgery. Just because you understand what the videos show doesn't mean you understand what it feels like to actually perform one. The feeling of accurate and precisely moving along your arm consistently while holding a knife in the right spot to cut correctly. The feeling of actually seeing the organs, blood, bones etc etc while you are performing the surgery. The ability to compare what you see with the theory you know _and_ the past experience of a previous surgery. Your innate understanding of which actions to perform, and when, and when it is best to stop pursuing. See, videos don't provide any of this information except theory. It's not input. It's conscious knowledge. The only thing that would _ever_ be able to give you this input without you actually doing it yourself is unfeasible, which would be for someone to "send" their brain's comprehension of performing surgery. Think the old movie "Brainstorm" (1983). So the only real way of getting this input is to do it yourself and see the cause and effect yourself. This is exactly why before becoming a surgeon you have to be an assistant to a surgeon first. So that you get this experience of input to some extent before performing one yourself. And after you start, you would start on the easier surgeries first. This lets me conclude with this. Skill and language development are severely misunderstood. That people, for too long, assumed the output of practice is the result of improvement instead of the input you get from it. And that years of this idea circulating around conflated this to language ability, meaning that you can improve in language with "practice". In reality, language's output doesn't result in input. It indirectly can when speaking with natives, but the difference between language and most skills is that you don't ever need to output to get input. You can just get the input right away. But for most skills, input is _only_ attainable by output. The feel of the angle you move your arm as you throw a baseball, feeling the amount of strength, the wrist movement, the exact way the ball leaves your hand and at what time. None of this is in a book, and all of this is input when you practice (if you pay attention to the details that is).

The only reason I am writing this comment is to alert viewers who have not yet come across Dr. Stephen Krashen's comprehensible input theories that not only is the content of this video total BS, it is dangerous. DANGEROUS. Many viewers can be set up for failure if they simply follow the ideas laid out here, instead focusing on lots of input. I took traditional English lessons (2 classes per week, emphasis on grammar drills, speaking from day one, etc.) for 4 years and after that time I still had immense difficulty putting two sentences together. When I decided that "all I wanted was to read books and magazines, so I'll try to read them instead of using my time doing grammar drills", I suddenly realized that I was making massive improvements, not only in my reading ability, but I also felt more and more comfortable speaking the language. Comprehensible input is the key!

But wait, are we certain that the Input hypothesis dismisses the rest of the things most language learners do? Maybe I got it wrong but I always thought S.Krashen is just emphasising the _importance_ of input, not suggesting you should do only that to - eventually - learn _and_ use a language.🤔

These are good comments regarding comprehensible input. I was born in a Latin American country to Asian parents. So all day long I was exposed to Spanish until I went home to Korean-speaking parents. I was a receptive bilingual until at age 13, I decided to learn Korean. For a whole year, I read my bilingual Korean-Spanish Bible. I tried using the words I had learned when answering my parents’ questions. My ability to speak and read Korean skyrocketed. But I couldn’t and still can’t write it very well (no practice time). Then I emigrated to the US and I started the whole process of learning a new language again. I was a young adult. I memorized a ton of words. This didn’t help. I learned to memorize the words I needed for daily US living: vocabulary related to banking, buying groceries, enrolling in college, etc. I watched a lot of TV with captions. I got an English-Spanish bilingual Bible (NIV was the easiest version). And of course, practiced speaking with peers. I read a lot of books in English I had already read in Spanish (Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, etc). The last batch of English I have learned related to kids and phonics, which I learned by having kids in the US. I’m so grateful at the opportunity to have homeschooled my kids (read, write, and to math in a second language). It takes time and work, and repetition. You are absolutely right. Now regarding Dr Krashen, I don’t think he’s that wrong. My adopted son from China did learn English by just listening at first. I think it was 9 months before he said the word “cow,” his first English word. He was obsessed with Chica Chica Boom Boom. Now, age 9, he begs me to read. So thankful I’m now reading “Little House in the Big Woods.” It’s work to read. Learning a language is like building a mountain one grain of dirt at a time. Good thought, Kanguro! Going to try to apply those thoughts as I teach Spanish to homeschoolers at my co-op!

I've learned 4 languages using it 😁😁

-_- Sometimes, the language community seems absolutely weird. This is a pretty hard stance on a topic where you will have, especially in the field of Japanese, a giant group of learners that just learned to read, watch shows or play video games - and got to a level they can even speak very, very well. So overall, I do very, very much disagree with such a hard stance on this topic. Especially since I do consider myself a person that hardly ever had any opportunity to speak and never went into shadowing or listing to the own voice. Still, I very much succeeded with language acquisition. If you start out? Let yourself aid by classic starter materials, will make the start easy because you needn't have your own system. You go beyond the beginner stages? Now you need to make sure you aim towards what you want to do with the language - reading, speaking, playing video games? Whatever it is, try to move there as fast as possible and build a system that allows for tackling what you want to do - like to have a great grammar and a great vocab source Once people do what they love, they will advance in the highest speed possible for them. Everyone that falls into any trap of believing one individual that they know something is right or something is wrong. Now for speaking & acquiring language: the more anyone is exposed to a language, the easier speaking will get as well. Oh and in regard to the English language: I only got basic education in school. That was it. Without any extra studying or conversation practice, I still hold my own in whatever situation. And I absolutely will include even legal talk in there because I am confident in my knowledge. Now on the topic of Japanese, fluent conversation is something I do not yet have achieved. However, I am getting there. Occasional shows & video games are going to support all the former input I did read for soon being able to pretty much always understand everything and, too, produce language around a large variety of topics.

It almost feels like you're desperately trying to convince us that traditional language learning methods, like yours, are still needed

Can you all relax? He's just saying you should put in practice everything that you're learning, he's not rejecting learning altogether. He literally said to not take it to extremes with comprehensible input and practice speaking as well, because that's your ultimate goal in the language.

I agree with the speaker!! Input is not enough to learn language. Pronunciation will not become perfect only by listening and watching videos!! It would be very easy to becone fluent!!

Yea, You get good at what you practice. And, comprehensible input is part of the practice. I want to get good at speaking. To conduct a high-quality speaking practice, I have to have words and expressions I learn from comprehensible input, and then I use them in my conversation and further learn from my mistakes in my conversation.

There is not one person that can speak a language without understanding it... Understanding has to come first.... Input is the best way to understanding... To be able to speak a language, undeniably you must practice speaking.. I think you are misunderstanding the process as I've yet to see any program that pushes not speaking ever.

Bro i used both methods, by using input method you can not only learn the language better but you get also a better sence of words and you could the emotions of the new words😂

I recommended this teacher to read Krashen's original works. I think this teacher didn't understand the concept of "acquisition", which is totally the opposite from what he have said, "error correction" or learning. Krashen has evidence of the uneffectiveness of error correction. This teacher also missed another part of the theory, that is the silent period. Languge learners, like children who acquire their mother tongue, have a period they not yet prepared to generate output. But that doesn't mean they don't know anything of the languge, they know something, but just not enough. See, output, esspecially the output of a adult languge learner, requires a high level of comprehension, so that they can convey their messages to other adults. So that they need sufficient input to let him prepared from output. So, I think this teacher just ignored some components of Krashen's theory.

I am deperately trying to learn Brazilian Portuguese as a native English speaker. I am married to a Cariaoca, a Bralizian woman from Rio. I understand a fair amount of what she and her brother from Bazil say on the phone. But I can shit in the language. I don't have enough understanding of the grammer and the rules of the language to put it together in my own brain and make it come out of my mouth. I think that both sides to this agrument have a valid point, but I think it takes more than just "input" to make one conversational in a rapid period of time. I am wrestling with how to do this. I listen to Brazilian music, I read short stories in Portuguese, I watch tv news programs from Brazil, but it doesn't seem to help my output.

That’s quite a combo of straw man destruction and category switching for a result that is both trivial and wrong. Of course you need to practice speaking to speak well. But what is it that you are going to say? What you acquired through comprehensible input.

As a professor with over 20 years of experience in English, I firmly advocate for input-based language learning. It's the most effective and, in my view, the primary method for true language acquisition. Language acquisition, as proposed by Crashen & Allis (1994), relies on comprehensible input, just slightly beyond the learner's current proficiency level. I can illustrate this with the case of my 15-year-old Brazilian student who learned English solely by watching "Friends" repeatedly. Through extensive exposure to comprehensible and enjoyable language input, her brain naturally processed and internalized the language patterns, resulting in her speaking General American English fluently with a flawless accent, all without formal courses or going abroad. Several reasons support the effectiveness of input-based learning: It mirrors the natural process of acquiring one's first language. It enables the practice of all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Its enjoyable and motivating nature encourages long-term commitment. It's accessible to learners at all levels, from beginners to advanced. If you're committed to language learning, I highly recommend embracing input-based learning. It's the surest path to achieving your language fluency goals.

Stephen Krashen's hypothesis on comprehensible input in the language learning seemingly makes language teachers useless. By the way, that hypothesis is confirmed every year by about 100 millions newborn children that start their language learning journey without teachers, without dictionaries, without explicit rules of grammar, without ability to speak, just using comprehensible input. The same method can be used also for second language learning, where due diligence plays equally important role as comprehensible input. The primary role of the second language teacher is to select or generate best possible comprehensible input and provoke and encourage due diligence and thus make second language learning more effective. Trying to undermine obvious. role of comprehensible input in the second language learning is useless and unfair and also misleading for many young people that begin to learn their second language.

'You get good at what you practice'. What a great sentence today, I will remember it all of my language learning journey. Thank you.

Input works . My language learning was painfully slow until I discovered comphrensible input method . Don’t listen to anybody criticizing the input method . It’s not exaggeration to say it’s the end all be all

Hear Hear! When I was in grad school in the 90s I had to read several pieces by Krashen but fortunately my profs were not huge fans. Now I'll write something off topic but you reminded me of it. I team taught Japanese to English grammar translation, lecture style, at a juku in Japan for many years. My team teachers were all Japanese and they would sometimes write a sentence on the board and talk about it in Japanese for 20 minutes. Outside of that sentence not a word of English was spoken. Students went the entire year without speaking a single word of English. It was really good money but rather surreal.

I don't think this is a fair representation of krashen's work. And in the end the point he made about language used for what it is for, it's actually from Krashen's introduction of his paper "Principles and Practices on language acquisition" something like that. So is hard to take this seriously when it appears that you don't understand the full idea. Btw Krashen never said there's only one way to acquire language he said what is necessary for each method to work and this is comprehensible input.

I am bilingual Spanish/English. Fluently. Combination of input, speaking, reading and writing. I am now acquiring French the same way. Comprehensible input makes sense and has worked for me. Acquiring and producing goes hand in had.

This is a great message. Nice work Christian!

The problem is that he says ONE way. Input is very important but I dont think it is the ONLY way.

...and finally: the "little problem" with the input hypothesis (as you see it), is that acquisition is not learning. How in the world could you not have distinguished between those two completely different concepts?

Well...I can tell you that as an argentinian spanish speaker, I went to the US when I was 12 years old and the state of SC put me in seventh grade with the rest of the kids in a public school. I never had a special teacher of any sort...my learning was fully done through listening for the first 4 months, after the summer break I started 8th grade as a regular student and passed all my subjects, never had a problem...I've never studied grammar or vocab. So, it seems like you've never experienced this process... Im an english teacher now, specializing in sound recognition...I could teach you a thing or two

Children spend over a year just listening and learning as much as possible. They only start speaking/writing much later. Maximize input and then start writing

You missed the point. You cannot make mistakes if you don't speak/write. Trying to "output" a language when u barely understand it is illogical. Input comes first, output later

Paradoxically, when I clicked the video, I got an advertisement trying to sell me an English micracle course.

This is my experience. Indonesian is my first language. 1. I studied english the traditional way in school since i was 12 years old, i'm 37 so i've learned it for 25 years! The result: Reading, Listening: I perfectly understand even the most advanced english conversations or articles, my vocabulary is great. Speaking, writing: Bad, really hard for me to compose a natural sentence. Grammar: When taking test, i usually score around 90-95 out of 100. But when speaking, my grammar is bad. I realize my mistake after i have already said it, really slow. My great vocabulary and grammar knowledge are useles, I can not apply it when speaking. I felt like i was really bad at languange learning.

Oh, Chris, oh, Chris. I enjoy your videos, but in this particular one, you are making a strawman argument...

I disagree. My mother who learned English without ever picking up a textbook or studying it is an example of how input is so important. Studying a language like studying chemistry is not the way to go

You can't compare making a surgery to learning a language. Most of doctors can't operate. But acquiring a language is natural process that everyone can do. And Stephen Krashen doesn't say ''don't make practise or you don't need to speak''.

There are some limitations of what the input can teach you: perfect pronunciation requires you to work on your pronunciation. If you want to have perfect handwriting, you must write things by hand.. Pretty much everything else is achievable with consuming a lot of materials and sometimes paying attention to details.

Input...worked for me. Study boring grammar, write nonsense essays, speak like a robot, listen artificial audios....well it didn't. Cheers!

Dude am the perfect counter example. I learned english at school, they forced us to talk in english whilenwe had no idea what we where doing. At the end of high school noone , absolutely no one was able to speak. I watched alll tv with subtitles, sometimes i didnt even had them, for years cause i had no choice, and i never learned any grammar rules. Maybe it doesnt apply to russian , but for English, as a french native, comprehensive input is just incomparable.

As someone who was raised by Russian speaking parents in a Hebrew speaking country who acquired English through input I can agree that input alone won't get you very far. As from a personal experience I can perfectly understand Russian but unfortunately speak very poorly because of the lack of variety in conversational topics. I believe it really depends on how often your parents engage you in conversations. And the same thing goes for my English - I have thousands of hours of input but I don't believe I would've been able to speak the way I do now if I hadn't outputted at all. On the other hand I don't believe I would've been able to speak English at all if I hadn't had as much input. What I'm trying to say is input goes and in hand with output - specifically conversations where you both get input and to output. * mic drop*

Christian! I have watched your video several times. Read - read more; speak - speak more; write- write more... Violin starts to play and I start to cry... I am an elderly person. I am from Russia. I study English language for two years. I am studying State University... Yes, this is hard work. This work is desperate... Your meetings help a lot. Hug. Sincerely... LARISA Rozen. Russia.

What? Input is the most important thing to learn language!! Without a lot of exposure of that language , you won't be speak in that language for sure!! Wow I can't believe you say otherwise!😒

I certainly believe the CI is important but I don't think it is the only factor. Comprehensible Output and noticing errors is very important too. Motivation is the biggest factor.

Bullshit, I am brazilian and I learned english just by listening FNAF theory videos, my english is not perfect but it definetly good enough, just by input.

Having learned L3-L4 before the Internet existed in wide public use, I can say that CI was much more effective than the methods (audiolingual, etc.) that were being used. I'm not sure where your evidence comes from. We all learn L1 via input, comprehensible input. Output comes later.

Input works. This video is very wrong. I've taught French for 11 years, and only input works! Error correction does not work, because it makes the learner feel dumb and incompetent, and focus only on their errors.

I can actually testify to this. I've been "fluent" in English comprehension for 15 years yet I'm still learning to speak it. I'm particularly bad at speaking because I never do. I do write it regularly but I never practice my speech. So I'm always fumbling for words and let's not talk of my accent. I think a good phrase to summarize why this is is : "What you understand well, you enunciate clearly" I can indeed "understand" most English in the sense that I get the gist of what is said, but I recently had to look up "gist" for instance. As despite hearing it thousands of times, I wasn't sure how to write it or even its exact meaning. Only now writing it, do I practice using "gist" the next time I speak with someone. Bottom line is, if you want to input a language, you should practice input. If you want to output it, you should practice output.

El input comprensible si funciona, es súper fácil ver los resultados, en menos de 6 meses entenderán cerca del 40% O más de todo lo que vean o escuchen, yo ya lo comprobé

If you have not acquired a car, you can't drive. You can however acquire a car and not know how to drive. You can also know how to drive and not have a car. It's a lot easier to learn if you already have acquired a car. Comprehensible input works only for reading and listening skills, but yes it does work to acquire a language. The ability to use it comes from practicing with it. I bet it's easier to learn to use speak if you already comprehend the language than if you don't and are constantly trying to figure out what others are saying and are confused.

I will always prefer the suggestions of other students that have reached their objective, rather than teachers who speak 1 or barely 2 languages. They haven't gone through the process of learning to a high level. Lots of polyglots on internet back up input hypothesis, and thanks to that I quit Japanese language school and began learning by myself. In a few months I learned more than in 2 years in class. Of course you will need speaking practice to develop speaking skills, but you can't practice something you don't even know in the first place. A lot of schools urge you to "use the new language from day one", how can you speak something you don't know? Yeah you could "practice" the 5 words they teach you in the class but you will spend half an hour or an hour practicing 5-10 words, instead of learning 50+ in an hour with input, its a matter of time efficiency. Depending on the language, after some months (or even years for hard languages), when you have a decent vocabulary amount is when you start practicing speaking. Its still good to hear other opinions like this video tho.

Hi! I've learnt a few languages in many different ways, and my take on this is as follows: - Comprehensible input is a prerequisite to language learning. You can't internalise a rule, structure, or vocabulary, if you haven't come across it enough times to form a good understanding. - Speaking is as much a language skill, as it is a social one. Not only will people speak much differently when conversing from the way they produce a monologue (vocab, structures, freer grammar), in most cases a language is inseparable from the culture of its speakers, so having the right cultural context is very important as well. - Writing systems that languages use are pretty much arbitrary. They don't constitute an integral property of language (there are many examples of languages being written in several writing systems), and thus its rules must be learnt separately. However, reading greatly improves your ability to write, and of course you can't learn to write without learning the language itself. - [FROM THE TWO POINTS ABOVE, it follows that] you won't start speaking better without speaking practice, you won't write better without writing practice; - The order in which you learn a language and practice its parts depends on your goals. If you just need to be able to read it, it's one thing. If you just wanna understand the spoken form to watch movies or consume other content, it's another. But the former is a prerequisite to writing, and the latter is a prerequisite to speaking. Based on these thoughts, my approach to learning a new language when I want to casually speak with a native speaker and be able to engage with the content in this language is 1. understanding its context a bit (culture, people, history) in a language I already know. 1a. trying to understand a bit of the linguistic properties and more or less the phonology (but that's very high-level and mostly because I'm interested in linguistics in general). 1b. Plan more or less when I'll be going to need to speak it (i.e. plan a trip to a place where I can use it, or find such a place locally / online) 2. comprehensible input, first with the focus of dissecting phonemes (sounds) and trying to repeat them if they are new to me 2a. comprehensible input, trying to catch the words. At this point I can start using a translator. Again, I repeat the words to practice pronunciation and internalise them. 2b. comprehensible input, trying to catch the general meaning. I use subtitles and sometimes translate chunks of text or specific words. I also utter what I caught. 2c. comprehensible input trying to dissect specific phrases and constructs. Once I can identify a structure very well, I'll sometimes look it up in a grammar book 2d. comprehensible input trying to understand full sentences. 3. Start practicing speaking 4. From this point onward, the more you surround yourself with the language, the better. You gotta produce it (speaking, writing) if you wanna get better at producing it, but listening and reading should be at least as important. I haven't yet tried learning a language which didn't use a writing system I didn't know, so I can't say how I'd approach it, but I think I'll try skipping the written form and focusing on listening and speaking first.I was learning Japanese in class, and we learnt hiragana after half a year of classes using transliteration to write stuff down, and it went quite well.

If you want to learn to understand the language (passive vocabulary), its all input. If you want to learn to produce the language (active vocabulary), its all output. Language acquisition involves more than one skill.

I remember back in the early 2000s, after high school. After all those years of formal English teaching, I was pretty bad at it. Started watching TV series with subs looking up words I didn't know. After a while I understood all the subs, then some speech, then all speech. In parallel I started reading only books in English. After a few years I moved to an anglophone part of my country and was surprised that I could (after a few days only) speak at a near native level. I would say comprehensible input was the way to go for me (even though I knew nothing about it when I started doing it). But I would say learning a huge amount of vocabulary using flash cards also helps tremendously to make the input comprehensible. In fact, learning vocabulary lists is the only useful part of my high school English education. Doing the same for Spanish now, and I can say that without a doubt it works. I can understand about 98% of the language by just reading stuff on the internet, and Anki flash cards. Speaking is all but inevitable.

As he says here, Krashen is foundational. He is truly a legend.

Comprehensible input was the thing that finally helped Polish fall into place for me. I was so stuck until I just started listening and listening every day. I highly recommend this system.

OK. So, let me see if I've got it right. Your recipe for learning a language is like 'Mambo no 5'. I mean: 'A little bit of Listening in my life/ A little bit of Speaking by my side/ A little bit of Reading's all I need\ A little bit of Writing's what I see etc, etc.

I think putting in practice the language you learn goes without saying... who ONLY listens to a language and hopes to learn it? I think that's a misunderstanding of what Krashen means... I have to say that the languages I speak I do mostly because I immersed myself into them. I fully learned English by watching series movies and studying medicine (my profession) in English. I learned catalan by living in mallorca for 4 years, I learned French by spending a whole year listening to podcasts while cooking and cleaning, and by looking up occasionally the things I didn't get. I learned German by living in Munich for 2 months (of course a very basic German, but still). I don't deny that some grammar played a role in the acquisition of those languages, but without a doubt input has been the main reason I could learn these languages. Of course my English, catalan, French and German are not as good as my mother tongue (Spanish), but I can say with confidence that I can communicate in these languages, and I owe it to the Krashen method.

From my experience you need way more input to internalize a language & being able to reproduce it than to just understand. This is also my hypothesis about the assymetric bilinguals that you talked about: that they had enough input to understand but not enough to internerlize the language to a level that they can reproduce. That is also one point all to often forgotten when talking about the input hypothesis: language learning takes years and you need an extensive amount of input.

You know what's most annoying for a language learner? People speaking unnaturally slow. Then in a normal conversation they cannot pick up. Speed (x1.5) and now I can listen to you, RU-vid is a great tool indeed.

Sheer hubris. If nothing goes in, nothing comes out. Humans learn all languages the same way, from the first to the last regardless of what method you think you are learning with. Children don't start learning a language only the moment they start speaking. Infact they've been acquiring since before they were born. Glad you're not my teacher.

I started writing rap music at 13. Rap music is my favorite music. Thru comprehensive input I took rap lyrics of my favorite artist and translated them into Spanish from English. Hearing music, stories and material I already knew in my target language definitely helped to learn words faster. However I do suggest getting a friend to speak with at least twice a week.

I love your channel and I have seen all your interviews. I am very happy you brought up this topic. In my humble opinion, the Comprehensible Input Theory is correct but it has been sold as the solution to everything. Firstly, Krashen uses the word acquisition because he wanted to highlight the difference between acquiring and learning grammar back in '70/80. Learning means a conscious process of trying to acquire a second language. Acquisition means an unconscious process. He pointed out how children learn "ate" instead of "eated" via massive input and not vocab list or grammar explanation and this idea of acquiring means massive listening. He just discovered that grammar exercises and explanations are less effective than optimal input. Moreover, Krashen has always been in favour of reading and he always points out that storytelling is a great tool for input. In the same interview you showed, Matt (vs Japan) told Krashen that he improved a lot thanks to speaking and he asked an opinion about it to the professor. Krashen said that he could not explain how speaking can improve L2 knowledge because he never ran massive researches about it but he claimed that speaking could be a good way to recall information. The great misunderstanding of comprehensible input is due to companies that used this theory to sell their summer camps in UK or US claiming that a school trip in the UK or US will boost your knowledge without studying just having fun and interacting with natives. The real Optimal Input theory is the opposite: a lot of listening and reading stuff internalizing the L2 .

I don’t think people who advocate for CI say that you shouldn’t output.

Looking forward to seeing how good you are at Spanish. As you seem pretty confident about your method

My guy is getting absolutely roasted in the comments! I have spent years with traditional language learning methods until I realized the only languages I speak well are the ones I learned through exposure. Dropped the grammar books and classes and started listening to podcasts/reading instead. Fast forward a year and I’m fluent in Spanish. Input works.

[Disclaimer] I'm not an English native speaker. I understood your video thanks to comprehensible input. I think comprehensible input is a good way to get English but I agree with you. You need to develop active languages skills like speaking and writing at the same time passive languages skills like reading and listening. I took an English exam and I notice my passive skills are better than my active skills. There's a moment when you need to communicate and this is so important because you have the chance to make mistakes and learn about these. I think comprehensible input gives us more motivation to learn a language because you're understanding stuffs you like it, but at the same time you should find another places to apply it and to identify what you need to improve. Greetings from Colombia.

I completely agree with you. Learning a new language encompasses a set of things, comprehensible input and a lot of practice and repetition.

You really would have benefitted from actually investigating what the Comprehensible Input theory is about. It might have helped you not seem so condescending while attacking basically a strawman. You are entitled to your opinions, absolutely. I just think you went about making this video in all the wrong ways. "Days of French 'n' Swedish" 's response is on point. I recommend, if you just watched this video, to go and listen to the other side of the argument and then make up your own mind.

2 years (about 1000 hours) of input before output? I think that's a good deal. I am convinced that approaching a language analytically in the early stages does more harm than good.