We DO learn languages through input 

The input hypothesis does not mean that you should never study, it means that the focus of your study should be making input more comprehensible. And when it does become comprehensible, you don't stop, you continue to receive input then you truly grow to aquire the language.

25 years ago I spent a little time travelling around China and getting to know a few Chinese people. I met a few very diligent students who had degrees in English and they really struggled to communicate. I understood of course that they found it hard to go from 'learned' English to spoken English as back then getting good materials was very hard. But quite randomly around China I met a few people with surprisingly excellent English. The common denominator among them was simple - they listened to the BBC World Service every night (you could even hear the BBC inflection in some voices). Later on, I've met Vietnamese, Thai, Koreans, etc., who learned excellent English simply from being addicted to US TV shows, playing online games in English or similar. Long before I heard of the input theory this convinced me that passive listening and reading 'natural' material was far more important for learning than formal classes or early speaking (which in my opinion only reinforces bad habits).

I’ve been a ESL teacher for over 15 years and Krashen was largely the butt end of a lot of jokes by big names in TESOL. His ideas supported my experience of learning German and French when I was younger so I never really understood the hate; input is not the only thing, but it is important. As a teacher now, I never stop telling my students how important it is to build strong reading and listening habits. From my observation, Krashen really only gained “legend” status when the polyglot community become more visible on social media.

As a child of immigrant, I concur with what you explained. I'm french and my parents only speak in russian with me (while I spoke back in french for my whole life), and even if I can watch any movie and understand 80-90% with no subtitles, I'm only realizing now that I'm really trying to learn the language, that my input is very basic : because the main input I was exposed to what stuff like "dinner is ready/did you tidy your room? etc" stuff that people would hear in a household. It's only by exposing myself to more tvshows, books (reading is still very hard for me, since I lack input), comic books etc, I get to increase my vocabulary and my comprehension and hopefully my communication skills. For example, until I started to read a few chapters of Berserk, I didn't know how to say "knight" in russian, because it's not part of the topics encountered in daily family life.

As a German learner, i've done almost zero speaking. However I randomly have thoughts in German as I would in English. My biggest pet peeve with the 'start speaking right away theory' is that you have nothing to say! If anything goes off the script you're screwed basically. Just immerse yourself and read a lot. I don't really understand Christians argument, the 'receptive' children of immigrants could easily just spend probably a month and suddenly bring their speech up to speed. I think writing is a far better method than speaking.

My first language is Italian, and living in Italy means no chances to practice speaking in english. But when the chance comes sure enough my english is on point. Last time i took a test i scored C2. All of this by this made possibile by just hangin around on the internet :') Im not even remotely an excepion. Input just works. Trying the same methodology with Japanese this time around, so far im very satisfied with the results.

I have another anecdote for you. My wife was a "receptive bilingual" of Italian, her mother spoke only Italian to her while she was growing up. After spending a summer in Italy with relatives at age 19, she was very frustrated with her level of speaking. She could communicate but with lots of mistakes, and her Italian cousins openly mocked her speaking. Upon returning to the US, she studied Italian at university and went from a low level to C1 in less than a year, and she started out completely illiterate in Italian. I believe that kind of progress is only possible with the years of input she had growing up. She went on to take graduate level courses in Italian literature.

I was shite at English in school, and now 7 years later I am at a C2 level. Input turns out to be the most important.. for me at least. I was subconciously learning English after graduating highschool by going to the Irish pub, hanging out with British friends, watching shows in English and reading course material for university. All without actively learning the language. And then suddenly I was good at it. Although, when I think too deeply about it, I still get uncomfortable and see the teenager that couldn't even pronounce 'while' or 'vocabulary' and almost wanted to cry when asked to speak in class. I think input is very underestimated and it is always about 'actively using grammar and vocabulary' in schools and language courses, in my experience.

I found out a while ago my grandpa was trying to learn German with those CDs from the library that prompt you to speak a lot. He moved to the us from Germany when he was 12 and stopped speaking it. I suggested he try Mass Input instead and he researched it and said he would like to do that. He later said it gave him confidence to start speaking to people. Input still seems like a very niche way to learn a language. In my high school, most people expected the classes to get them fluent or at least very close.

I am one of those receptive bilinguals (English is my third language, btw). While it is true that your level of comprehension is usually much higher than your level of output, frequently using said language (while on vacation in the old country for example), will dramatically improve your output even within a single week. So yes, the hypothesis still stands. You _do_ actually _learn_ the language mostly from input. Speaking it is just another skillset that relies on your understanding of it.

Just going to share a little anecdote of mine: I spent a solid 2 years learning French with an SRS-based system, but it was really only after I decided to read a bunch of books and got hooked on French RU-vid that I really made progress in both my comprehension and output.

I've never got people "hating" on input... You always learn from input. Outputting will force you recognize what words and structures you don't know and do need (which I why about 10 - 20% of my studying is output), but input is where you do the actual learning/ acquiring... You can't just say "I want to learn Swedish" and start outputting Swedish, everything you say has GOT to come from input first!

In my experience most normies (by which I mean people who don't obsessively consume YT language learning content) would not identify input as an important factor in language learning. More commonly mentioned factors are consistent study, consistent speaking practice, and talent/memory. Sometimes they'll get a bit closer and say immersion, but usually they have going to live in another country in mind.

Another aspect of receptive bilinguals is that they may be getting only a very narrow range of input from their parents. In the same way, you might learn to understand Let's plays on RU-vid really well in your target language but still struggle to output.

Really well put. I agree that the way Christian went about the input method is a bit reductive. I'm Brazilian and teach English as a foreign language, and what I see the language schools around here advertise (and students to expect) is to speak as much as possible, from the very first class. As a teacher, I've been to my fair share of training programs and they talk an awful lot about maximizing student talking time and minimizing teacher talking time in class. And on top of that, most people who advocate for input don't say you should only ever get input and never speak or write the language. And here's my anecdote: I started studying English as a teenager with a word list and sentence translation method paired with random reading sections. Most of the classes were input, and more than half of the speaking I did was just repeating and translating sentences. It was an extremely tedious routine and the only reason I stuck to it was that I was a very dedicated student (my parents were paying for it so I gave it my all), but most of my classmates dropped out within the first year. Now, I wouldn't recommend that method because most people would die of boredom before they learned anything, but surprisingly after a few months I realized I was understanding a lot of what I tried to read. Then I started watching anime in Japanese with English subtitles, reading manga and books in English, and finally watching American series without subtitles. Soon enough I was making online friends from all over the world by speaking English and that's how I became highly conversational in about a year. In two years I could say I was "fluent" by most standards. For me it was basically in this order: lots of input in class > lots of input by consuming media > speaking. It's like speaking came to me really fast once I started trying after I'd had a fair amount of input. Anyway, sorry for the long comment!

17:59 "My personal take-on would be that input alone is not enough, but it massively magnifies the results of speaking when speaking is eventually attempted." - That's what I am going to recall from this video! Thank you, this has been a super interesting video!!

I respect the fact that you admit to "doing a 180" and have changed your views. For some people, their ego is too big for them to admit that their views have changed. My philosophy towards the input and output approaches is that I sit on the fence a bit. Incorporating a balance of both is great. I think using the 80/20 rule - spend 80 percent of the time towards input, 20 percent of your time towards output is a good aim. For me, this is about 7 hours of comprehensive reading and or listening in the week (an hour a day), with about an hour or two of speaking practice in the week - as my bare minimum. And in my opinion, a silent period is still a great approach, spending somewhere between 3-12 months (depending on the foreign-ness of the new language) before speaking practice. 14 months ago, my beliefs were very different with these two philosophies. Perhaps I might think differently in 10 years time, who knows. Love listening to your thought-provoking language learning discussions regardless, keep it up!

How can you call it BS when there's thousands of people online who say that's how they learned their English?

Was watching RU-vid, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon in English since age of 5. Never practiced speaking. When moved to the UK at the age of 21 only problem I had was that I spoke with an American accent, lol

Saying that "comprehensible input is bs" is extremely arrogant and disingenuous, because it ignores the fact that this method is based on scientific research (which has been independently verified by people other than Krashen) and asserts that "my own personal intuition is just better because reasons".

I don't know of anyone who says input only - even Steve Kaufman is input heavy until something like 20,000-50000 lingQ words are known, but then says that if you want to speak a language well you have to speak a lot. Great discussion video!

IMHO, the importance of emphasizing input early on is supported by the number of language learners I've met who can express themselves fairly well in the target language but have an extremely difficult time understanding the language. If the goal of language acquisition is communication and you can speak but not understand what's being said to you, you have not acquired the skills necessary to truly communicate.

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). 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.

Reminds me a lot of the guy who got his JLPT N1 and degree in Japanese, but couldn’t property hear or speak until he did a lot of input. All the learning put a lot of information on the surface so it wasn’t a waste of time, but the input was needed to push that information to the subconscious

This is true. I received about 15 years of semi-regular Japanese input. And beyond recalling a few vocabulary words I was still only an English speaker at the end of the day. Then in August of 2019 I started finally studying the language, reading, writing, and speaking, and within a few months I was already in the Intermediate level, this was bolstered even further by meeting my current girlfriend (Native speaker of Japanese) which created this perfect storm that felt like unlocking a chest. A chest that I had been building up inside of myself because of all of this input... and then suddenly I'm able to access it. So the points in this video I completely agree with. Input is crucial to forming the lock and key needed to open the door, but at the end of the day outputting the language is what helps you to turn the key.

The reality is that the best way to acquire a language is to be like Matt vs. Japan. Be totally obsessed, do nothing else, lock yourself in your room for 3 years only listening and reading (do nothing else, very important) and stay obsessed. Rinse and repeat for years on end until you achieve near native fluency. The funny thing is that he has been "learning" Mandarin for years and has admitted he is not anywhere close with it compared to his Japanese. Obsession is unhealthy but it is a hell of a motivator/driver and it applies to everything in life.

I watched Matt, Stephen Krashen and several more channels about input. I've tried to learn english without any teachers based on the hypothesis and anki, 18 months later it turned out I got 7.5 ielts. Now with the confidence from the prior success I use the same method to learn french and japanese.

Having been learning languages for decades thorough different systems, output heavy is definitely the norm. I never even heard about "input hypothesis" until this year via RU-vid. And no-one who has ever actually learned a language to a functional level has ever claimed that any one technique is all you need. You have to do ALL the techniques at some point, the only questions are how much, how often.

He recently appeared in "Luke's English podcast" saying that he didn't clarify quite correctly what he wanted to convey. He's a great RU-vidr, as well as you are.

Excited for parts 2 and 3! I have a heritage language that I barely speak but understand at a basic level. If I really think about it, my exposure to English as a child would have far exceeded that of my heritage language. Likely 90%+.

heritage speaker here. because I use it at home, I actually have spent a lot of cumulative time speaking. as far as my input goes though, it's only very narrow and contextually restricted. if it were the case that speaking makes u better, I wouldn't have stagnated at like the age of 5.

I think that you can see the whole 'input vs. output vs. classroom' debate in a new light if you read Barbara Oakley's 'Learn like a Pro' or 'Uncommon Sense Teaching'. She explains that we have two main learning system in our brains: declarative (logical, step-by-step, classical classroom style) and procedural (intuitive, based on patterns, practice, and repetition). Both systems complement and reinforce each other. Usually the declarative system is faster but less reliable, while the procedural system is slower at first but then becomes automatic and effortless. That's why in traditional language classrooms with grammar exercises and drills you can 'learn' many words at a rapid pace, but then struggle to keep a conversation. On the other hand, intuition developed by mass input (procedural) can make you fluent almost in a magical way, although it can be veeery slow (hundreds or thousands of hours of input). The same is true with speaking, you need both learning systems in place to reach some proficiency, that includes exercises, scripts, drills, and conscious study, as well as many hours of 'mindless' practice. In general, I believe that input is still more important than output, though, basically because input and comprehension comprise more than 90% of the time I use a language, and I rarely need to output. Great video! Looking forward to parts 2 & 3. (Background: Spanish native speaker, English & Swedish as second languages)

When I first heard of the input hypothesis (about 6 months into dabbling in Spanish) I felt, despite not knowing anything about language learning at the time, like I intuitively "knew" that it was the way to go. Not long after trying it for a month or so, I went to say 'traffic lights' in English and I almost said the Spanish word instead, it literally came out of my brain BEFORE the English. That's when I KNEW that the input hypothesis was the sh*t, and that no "other" method would come close.

I feel the offside explanation so hard. Once in a blue moon someone in my "real life" will engage with me about how I've been acquiring language(s), and I'm not sure if they don't accept it or they don't understand. I definitely agree this is something people need to learn for themselves. I certainly did. My explanation I've diluted is now to: You already acquired a language, and humans did it tens of thousands of years before school and grammar books. It takes hundreds or thousands of hours, but it doesn't have to be "hard" or unenjoyable. At times it will be frustrating, and that's okay. You also get runner's high moments so it's not all bad. The pattern (I believe) is input > staying curious and asking questions > getting answers > noticing the answer in the input. Output and explicit memory/recall takes dedicated practice, but a requirement is implicit memory/recognition and understanding. A language is not "just" a language. It's a culture and shared set of references. To really be "fluent" you need to become a member and want that as an outcome. Skill Level Goals are fine to have but not controllable, what you can control is what you do and if you enjoy the process. I have maybe convinced one friend, but he's still taken aback by the sticker price of 2.000+ hours to learn Japanese.

I have learnt 4 languages with professor Krashen's method, 2 of them are at C1 level, 1 is B2 and the last is B1. So I am pretty sure it works.

As someone who is mostly a receptive bilingual, I can tell you that input is the MOST important thing and that most of your results in language learning will come from that. For some context, I am South African, but I have spent most of my life speaking English. For the 1st few years of my life (about 1-4 years), I spoke SeSotho. But things changed when I had to go to a school where the language of instruction was English, and I had to learn English. I think after that, it just stuck. I was already using it in school, and almost all people in my life outside of school could speak English as well, regardless of what their native language was, so people would often speak to me using a mixture of both Sotho and English. On top of that, I was one of those kids who spent most of their time in the house, so I spent a lot of time on the internet and watching TV, and reading books, all in English. There were things on TV that I could watch on TV, but most of it was reality TV and soap operas, stuff I wasn't interested in. So, as a result of all that, my English is far better than my Sotho, BECAUSE I've seen it be used in so many different contexts. BECAUSE I have more comprehensible input. I realize now that the key to being able to speak Sotho better is using the input to learn what I'd say in Sotho if I wanted to greet someone the same age as me, vs someone who's older, or what I'd say in Sotho if I wanted to bring up a new topic in conversation, or what I'd say if I was struggling to find the word for something. I know how to do these things in English because I've seen English speakers do them countless times compared to Sotho. In fact, one thing that got me to start speaking it more and improving was moving to an area where a similar language Setswana was used a lot more than English, therefore providing me with more context and input than I'd had living in a place where English is more dominant. So the point of this long-ass comment is that yes, although won't work alone, it is the foundation for any sort of language learning you hope to achieve.

Thanks for watching! Here is Part 2: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yBHmuOi5ww8.html Do you believe that INPUT really is the widely recognised method of language learning? Do you agree with my three schools of thought theory?

I remember attempting to make sense of the words "deuxième" and "douzième", and I saw another frustrated learner post about it on the french subreddit, and someone responded that they couldn't tell them apart simply because they didn't know how to say them. This of course is more of a pronunciation issue, but I feel like it could be applicable to other elements of language, speaking is powerful and I feel like it can help construct mental maps to better understand Input as well as construct output more effectively. Maybe you think this idea is stupid, however I really do appreciate that this channel isn't just another fake polyglot channel and there are people here who can make arguments for how we can learn language more efficiently, cheers!

I like your points about the limits of the speak early approach especially with languages that are very different from your native language. I think Benny Lewis, who is probably the best known advocate of early output, is a good example of this; he was very successful with French and Spanish and German, but if you look at the progress he made in languages like Chinese, Czech, and Japanese, he wasn't able to make progress at the rate that he expected to.

I'm a receptive bilingual and I take issue with what Mr. Canguro English is saying about us. I learned Polish at home as a heritage speaker, I heard my parents speak it, I even read comic books and a couple of teenage novels as a child. However, when I traveled to Poland, I was unable to speak about deeper subjects I really enjoyed, like philosophy or economics or theology. The reason? My time spent with those subjects was 100% in English. I never read a book on economics in Polish or anything about philosophy in Polish - so the vocabulary and the grammar surrounding that vocabulary (you know, the declensions and such) were all missing. But, ironically enough, my "kitchen Polish" was sometimes better than my "kitchen English," because I grew up my whole life hearing the names for different pots and pans and foods and so on in Polish. Since that time, I've fixed this issue by... watching documentaries in Polish, reading non-fiction books in Polish, listening to the news in Polish, etc. And I've used mostly input to "learn" or acquire Russian as well.

I met a girl who spent 4 years learning English but had very little outside the realm of studying it and gaining input from music mostly. After a month or two of talking with me when she was on the UK, she was basically fluent, it was wild how quickly she went from struggling to very competent.

I was born and raised in Canada by Korean immigrants and I was one of those kids who ended up exclusively speaking English to their parents. Like you mentioned, I guess that there was just a certain point where it just became more comfortable to do so after having used it more in most aspects of daily life such as at school, with friends and through media. I also think there are two main reasons why such children of immigrants end up stagnating or even declining in their mother tongue: First of all, as we get older, the need for our mother tongue continuously diminishes as we become more independent and require less interaction with our parents. Add to the fact that our parents are mostly able to understand us when we use English anyway, the need to speak our mother tongue is pretty much eliminated. Additionally, much of the vocabulary that our parents use when speaking to us is very limited in scope (e.g. "Did you eat anything yet? Where are you going? How was your day?") so even just expanding our passive vocabulary eventually hits a wall once we have acquired the most essential 2k-4k words.

My.personnel experience completely validate the input theory. I learned basic english in school but was bot able to speak properly, even in a very basic conversation. But a friend gave me hours and hours of us sitcoms and bbc comedy without subtitles. I was lonely, there was no internet, and i watched them over and over many times. It lasted a year, and almost instantly become the first in english, so i started to read books, and listen to more content, and in the space of two years i became truly fluent, i wad able to understand nativr speakers completely and speak with them naturally. So yes, 100%, comprehensible massive input is a game changer.

Nice video Lamont! I’m glad someone made a response and I’m glad it was you. The thing I found strange about Christian’s video was that for an obviously intelligent and eloquent guy the video ended up coming across like the kind of conversation you end up in with an uncle at the end of a night on the beer.

The final thing you said in this video is the most important: you believe in the Input method because you have personal experience of it. The biggest problem with the Input method is it sounds too good to be true! I struggled for 2 years using an early Input method (FRENCH IN ACTION) which nevertheless had a TON of traditional exercises (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) which I finally realized just slowed down the rate of input. A year ago, I paused FIA and switched to consuming as many graded audio books, books, podcasts, and RU-vid videos as possible ('graded' meaning aimed at a certain level, like A2 or B1). In one year my French improved vastly... I would say by 3 or 4 times. Anyone who says Input doesn't work, just hasn't tried it. BTW, Krashen now says the writing does help, and I agree with that. I have been writing essays, etc., for about 2 months and feel like it is helping to cement things that I 'know', but have not nailed down in my head. Surprisingly, my spelling in French is amazingly good. If I can pronounce the word, I can usually spell it correctly, even though I've never spent one minute studying French spelling. My verb conjugations are about what you would expect at a B1 level -- pretty good, but not great. But this is without studying them at all! I am sure they will get better as time goes on. Input works!

I definitely agree that input is very important. I was raised in the U.S. in a Spanish speaking home where everything my kid brother and I watched had to be Spanish. Both my brother and I got the same amount of input in spanish as kids. I however, am fluent in speaking spanish but he barely can talk. The difference is I made an effort to always speak in spanish. He reverted to the dominant language of English and has trouble speaking. It goes to show how the first half of learning a language is getting the input, but putting it to use is also incredibly important.

Great video. The fact that you can say quite a lot of things jn a short space of time but never really push forward is that you don't need to. It's like going to the same place on holiday every year - you can comfortably say enough to survive for a fortnight, but the next time you go you use roughly the same vocab all over again. Input is the best way forward and surely you want your level of comprehension to increase even if you never speak to anyone.

I became fluent in English primarily from watching RU-vid content in English starting from when I was in 5th grade. I knew some basics at that point as I was learning English in school since 3rd grade but I didn't really learn that much except basic grammar rules and some vocab. But getting mass input through RU-vid videos greatly increased my comprehension of the language. It helped so much in one year I was basically outputting at a native level without me even realizing. And at the time I didn't even realize what I was doing was making me fluent in English. And from my experience I think I can be cocky enough to say that mass input with a side of grammar and vocab is what will turn you fluent. And as someone said in this comment section, reaching fluency means acquiring the language, not leaning it. So yeah, what I'm tying to say is that Christian's opinion is bs.

Now I am learning Spanish with a textbook (and accompanying workbook) I bought nearly 15 years ago. This textbook is said to be based on Krashen's natural approach. But from my point of view (I did language teacher training, and Master of Applied Linguistics, and then taught Japanese at universities for total 8 years), it is a very classic textbook - Explanation of grammar, exercises and vocabulary. By the way, every time I hear the argument against input, I think to myself "Without input, what will come out of an empty head?"

Your example with your friend who's mom spoke Japanese really does work in input's favor. She wouldn't've been able to succeed in an advanced Japanese class if she hadn't already been exposed to so much of it at home

I'm always impressed by how measured and nuanced your responses are.

To add on to your response I saw this video from a person who went to a French immersion school for 5 years where speaking in your target language is basically required all day everyday (or at least 50% depending on the school) and she had no problem outputting. She came to the realization that her output was never improving and her ability to understand natives was nearly impossible when the class visited Quebec. Her hypothesis was that she wasn't communicating/inputting with native speakers, only non natives and 1 native speaking teacher who was simplifying the French. When she started learning Japanese she made it a point to input with natives. She feels inputting with native Japanese was the key to advancing in a much shorter amount of time past her ability to speak in French ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-l8NbQkUaalw.html

Awesome video bro, I've watched his video for some reason (didn't know his channel) and thank you so much for making this video, I really wish the input hypothesis were as popular as christian says haha

Steve Kaufman is one of the main RU-vid proponents of input, but he does stress that 'to get good at speaking, you have to speak a lot'. Input gives you the words and expressions needed for a meaningful conversation, but for conversation to become 'natural' and 'fluent', you need tonnes of speaking practice to develop the necessary language 'reflexes'. My personal experience definitely attests to this. With daily input, my knowledge of French grammar and vocabulary is significantly better today than it was 18 months ago. But I speak French less fluently, as a result of personal life changes that have meant that I have far fewer opportunities to speak the language. I have also met British PhD students specialising in French literature who have a highly advanced level of French reading (they have to read French texts in their original language), but who aren't able to produce the language to a highly advanced level, simply because they have no need to (they write and speak for an anglophone academic audience). Whatever the case, it's an interesting question. Great vid as usual!

Spot on, seriously your language learning channel is the only I can tolerate and enjoy.

Thanks for helping me to discover Christian's channel! Searching for something in french, found your opinion about input, I went there from curiosity and I saw that his content is amazing

Also (this is my 4th comment), hell yes! I feel like this topic is need of a real in-depth analysis and I'm super excited that this long video is only part 1 of 3.

I was born in Canada, when I was roughlu 1.5 years old my Swedish mother decided that Sweden was a better place to raise a child in than Canada. Since my dad couldn't really speak Swedish, my mom did and my dad spoke English. I think that helped quite a bit, had pretty good grades in English without even trying (could have gotten perfect grades if I could be motivated to). 13:55 Before the internet was widely available, cable TV certainly helped with getting English input. So many good cartoon series during the 90s, we where pretty spoiled for choice regarding how many good series that where aired at the time.

I felt this. I got stuck for years with a higher speaking level than listening level in Spanish, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong and even with speaking didn't know how to progress from knowing a literal translation to actually knowing how words and grammar structures were used. I spent over 3 years listening to/watching native-level media because I thought I "should" be able to comprehend it given my overall level. It was only after watching some beginner-level phonetics videos that I actually started to have a good comprehension of what I was listening (again, 3 years into an *incomprehensible* input approach after years of extremely poorly-taught classroom study) and I wish I'd started off with comprehensible input aimed at beginners even though I didn't "think" I was a beginner--my ears were (and I was fighting against a mental model of the phonetics of the language based on learning from books back in the day before there was a lot of online language learning content, which gave me a strong gringo accent that Latinos could generally understand but made it impossible for me to understand native speakers). I also think if instead of watching short tiktok/youtube videos I'd gotten addicted to a telenovela, even if I had to use subtitles, I would have progressed faster since I've been progressing quickly in the last couple months since I started watching them.

Input is how I (and so many of my peers) learnt English! I never realised it had a name before lurking in the online polyglot community. I've never seen anyone promote it offline.

Great video!!! I study Turkish language at University as my major. What is interesting is that I had no experience of speaking to Turks, except for our native teacher (1 hour per week) for about 5 month. So from the very beginning of my journey (September) all the way to February I didn't speak Turkish more than 1 hour per week. Yet I worked hard did all of the assignments and wrote little useless texts about seasons and my family (which we had to memorize, but I always expressed myself by just writing it once and improvising remembering some key points). And guess what, when we had a speaking club with Turkish students at my Uni that studied Ukrainian everyone was astonished by my speaking abilities, I was super concentrated and red and sweaty but I was creating sentences using almost all of the grammar we had learnt by then. Only after a half a year I had my second experience of speaking to a Turk and it was fine, because colloquial language was almost a completely unknown thing for me at that point. I hadn't watched any TV shows, I wasn't speaking to people, I only studied what was given at my uni and reading graded home reading book. Now, I have studied Turkish for almost 2 years and I feel pretty comfortable speaking with people on daily topics, about world issues or complex topics and I understand a lot. From what I understand I have B1 level now. What I think is important is to work, in any way possible, speaking practice is important, but it's better to have someone who can speak at a level you understand Comprehensible input kind of thing, but it's not only about input, it's about materials and practice. I have never hesitated to speak Turkish, even though I knew a tiny bit, I was even eager to speak, when there was a chance. However, the key point here is a lot of work, mixed with speaking or writing practice (So basically Lamont's situation). The video is great. I simply love this channel. Okuduğunuz için teşekkürler ;)

My experience confirms your response to Canguro 100%. Sometimes my first job with a new student is to have a long conversation about their expectations of how the process looks and what works and what doesn't. This can get interesting especially with older students who went to schools that followed traditional models (looking at you, former Soviet Union! - but to be fair, everywhere else too). Sometimes I do traditional textbook exercises as a kind of "learning theater", not so different from the "safety theater" my school did by putting up tiny little plastic "barriers" on desks to prevent the spread of COVID... Anyway, the difference I notice between my students who have started a daily input habit as their primary time investment and the ones who haven't is dramatic, and gets more and more noticeable the longer the students have been at it.

Like Canguro's video, also superb from a different perspective: From my experience, input, output, and feedback all have to be meaningful taking into consideration a learner's goals, prior knowledge and motivation.

Great video. i had problems with Christian's video as well. I learned russian and spanish through input. Not perfectly, but conversationally and of course continue practicing everday. My wife learned English the same way. From experience, speaking happens pretty easily after you have enough input to easily understand a normal conversation. I'm not sure I understand the argument against input. Languages are pre-existing things. You can't learn history without inputing history. In the same way, you have to input vocabulary and grammar in order to speak and write a language. The traditional classroom method focuses heavily on grammar and this seems to work, because speakers can manipulate a smaller set of vocabulary words using the algorithms inherent in grammar. They always sound strange because you can translate your own language into patterns that are correct grammatically but rarely used by native speakers. But this is still input - just more focused on grammar manipulation than pattern recognition. In practice, comprehensible input is all about memorizing patterns. I know that it isn't clearly stated this way, but that's what is actually happening - you hear in context words and phrases so often, you can manipulate them yourself. The third method you mention - speaking. Well, I'm puzzled by it. I'm not sure you could learn to speak a language without getting input first. So, by speaking early, I think you mean you first learn phrases through input, and then you practice these phrases. Well, this is still input. And so the question that is raised is not "does input work or not work", but how much and what type of input. And so I think this debate is not really a debate about the mechanics of language learning but a debate about pedagogy.

We are all anticipating the duolingo video

I spoke to some language learners yesterday and they thought that my learning Spanish by watching Peppa Pig and taking no classes was just crazy. Input is not mainstream at all, no matter what Christian says. I also find Christian's manner of speaking English extremely irritating although, of course, he is aiming it at non-native speakers and he knows what is best for them.

The way I see it is that input is the foundation of output, if you have massive input it potentiate your output phase, the reverse is not nearly as true

In my experience with both Icelandic and Japanese, I can say that speaking at the beginning is probably not the best idea. However, at some point you do need to start speaking (and not when you're already passively fluent) in order for your mouth and brain to get used to producing the new sounds and quickly compose sentences in your brain. I think there is a healthy halfway between the two schools of thoughts. Also, if your goal is communicating as soon as possible, than starting a bit early to speak makes sense. If your goal is ultimate fluency, then you can wait longer before outputting.

Wonderful video. Loved the breakdown, and perfectly executed and explained. I agree with almost all of your points on the benefits input has brought you and can bring you. Just needs to be utilized properly. I also feel like input method is best with the 80-20 approach. 80 percent of time spent should be input, other 20 is your output. That is how I’ve been structuring my learning and I’ve been loving it for far. Been doing that method for about 2 years now

My problem is: all my input is watching videos talking about input and language learning!

Soooo glad you made this. I'm not exaggerating when I say: in my entire life that is the singular RU-vid video that has pissed me of by a factor of 100 more than any other in existence. Worse, I barely felt I could argue because it had such a ridiculous number of comments, most of them coming from his lapdogs. My reply was just buried alive!!

I have spent nine years learning classical piano, and five years on French. During that time I have had various teachers, and the one thing that stands out is that only one of them seemed to understand the mindset of a student in the various phases of learning. This always seems regrettable because the student is forced to, for the most part, find their own path through the hardest part of any subject. So as much as I like Canguro, I have to be wary in taking any advice. Especially when even teachers seem to disagree on how to teach. I cannot agree with you more about speaking lots but not getting anywhere. I thought my speaking skills had improved, but I found my conversations were repetitions of the same old stuff. My plan has been to start a radical overhaul of how I am learning, and I have been picking up some good tips from this site. Thankyou.

i had a weird childhood and spent the majority of my time at home consuming US media, youtube, reddit, etc - i had 0 friends, had no one to speak to in english but through pure input i went from basically 0 english to english years ahead of my peers. when i went back to school it was basically all i was good at and could slack through every english lesson lol. subconscious learning is so powerful

I don't stick with only one school of thought, i integrated the three of them, at differents stages i prioritize one over another and it's working well with learning japanese and english ! Great video btw

I'm just over a year of only reading books in Spanish at age 50. I've shattered my previous high school level many fold...tried other stuff and it's harder to keep going and harder to make noticable progress

Thank you for the intelligent discussion and food for thought. I’m learning Spanish. I’ve noticed that I seem to have more confidence speaking when I have completed a high amount of input. (My listening comprehension is coming along albeit slowly). IMO it would take me considerably longer to speak confidently if I hadn’t read so much. After seeing the words and phrases numerous times, they started to stick. I am more likely to remember them and use them in the correct context. This from a woman who first took Spanish by correspondence and by that I mean with a textbook, cassette tapes, and an occasional phone call with my tutor. (80s). I had no other resources and no Spanish speaking people around me. I still managed to learn and did quite well in this class. But it was a high level of input. It was all I had. If a high level or even a similar level of output was necessary, I would not have passed my class. Instead it lit a fire in me and I continued to read and learn. That being said, my listening and speaking level are impaired and I need to put more focus on that to progress.

I just want to add some anecdotal proof that purely input does do wonders. I started learning swedish a little over a year ago because i was going to be starting my exchange year this august. I was in full time high school, so i didnt feel like actually ’schooling’ my way through swedish. That one year before i moved, i spoke almost nothing, except for to my dog. I combed through the internet to watch any swedish videos i could find, subtitles or not and watched those repeatedly. Same with other resource i could find, i watched the whole of pippi långstrump on svt (swe subs) and followed the julkalender that year. I never touched a grammar book or language app except for on specific things i couldnt figure out myself (like the difference between tycka, tänka, tror) occasionaly. Multiple people thought i was crazy, that id learn nothing by just getting input of stuff i barely understood. Flashforward to this august, arriving in sweden and blowing people’s minds just by understanding them when they spoke to me in their language. It took me about a month to start using swedish myself and ditch the english the mos

What a weird theory? all three of them: you need always both sides active and passive, theory and practice, all 4 pillars: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. you can start with any of the methods, but after a while you have to fill the gaps with one of the others. I prefer the mixed approach myself.

As a father of a bilingual child with two very incompatible languages (Czech-Chinese) - no matter what school of thought on the language learning and acquistion, once they start to argument with children, I just smile

my mom had a similar experience to your cousin! her parents both spoke spanish natively and used it around the house, but she only spoke english. not a word of spanish. in high school she had to take spanish classes, and by the end of her high school career she was completely fluent. i hope i have a similar experience 😅 i understand spanish pretty well but im horrible at speaking it. but with a little studying i’m sure i can get there

I am a Portuguese native speaker, I have been studying English for 1 year and a half using the theory of language acquisition and after do this for so long I finally became fluent in English. People this work, now I'm thinking in learning German doing input a lot.😁🧠

Very well put! I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said that it might be something they'd have to experience and realise for themselves. I feel like all the grammar and vocab (mostly grammar) that we learn in the early stages of our studies create this illusion of 'fluency' - we go from knowing nothing about a language to suddenly being equipped with all these tools that are supposed to be the fundamental makeup of the language and suddenly we feel like we can say anything we want. Not saying that studying grammar is unimportant (it isn't!), but we *cannot* in fact say anything we 'want', unless we're content with stitching together words into odd-sounding, awkward combinations. We can't create natural-sounding sentences that we haven't seen or heard before (except by happy accidents), and if we spend most of our time trying to output, then we won't be 'seeing' or 'hearing' much of anything at all, which means we'll be stuck saying things the same way we've been saying. There's input in the form of what the other person is saying to you, but you'll have to be super focused to really pay attention to all of it, maybe even write it all down for reinforcement later and it's just not very doable in an actual real-time conversation. The more you speak, the more it becomes apparent that you don't have much within you to draw from, so a shift in focus (to input) is probably inevitable. Unless, of course, they're happy with the level they're currently 'stuck' at, which is also possible. Maybe sounding natural isn't their goal - there are people who aim to just be able to get what they want to say across - in which case, yes, the amount of input they need would be significantly smaller than those who are aiming for a wider range of self-expression in their target languages.

Agree with the input / offside analogy. I have learned German for 2 years, using RU-vid and other common mehtods, and only recently discovered the idea of comprehensible input. Seems so obvious but it really didnt strike me before. Been very eye opening.

Absolutely agree with you. I rarely come across people suggesting “input”… although it is what I’ve always been naturally drawn to.

Great video. It makes sense that It seems that you're advancing quickly with early output but it does not last.

I haven't watched the second video yet as of this posting, but I struggle to think of people who insist on input only. Anki is a huge topic as well as dictionaries, both native to target language and monolingual. In fact, I see acknowledgment that input is a long term, compounding type of investment, that if your goal is to go on vacation or greet a foreigner at a business meeting you're better off rehearsing from phrase books. Most of the internet language community is focused on acquisition efficiency with the goal of fluency in mind.

I've seen 2 systems work very effectively. One is the Pimsleur dialogue style and the other is the military and Mormon missionaries, drop you in the deep end and force you to speak under pressure from day one. It's terrifying but you're conversant in like a few weeks. Mandarin Blueprint has a theory for teaching Chinese about getting as much input as possible and naturally allowing the language to fall out of your mouth when you are ready... when you're head is sufficiently full. To do so, listening and reading as early as possible is the critical move.

"three distinct schools of thought" 1. Classroom Study 2. Speak Early 2. Mass Input (?) 10:53

This is somewhat unrelated but one fundamental difference between L1 and L2 acquisition is phonology. An L1 speaker somewhat effortlessly acquires native phonology with few problems; an L2 speaker not only has an L1 interfering but also rarely if ever acquires native-like phonology. The best evidence for this are the millions and millions of English L2s who speak impeccable English, with great and varied vocabularies, flawless grammar...but just sound foreign when they speak, despite years and years of comprehensible input and immersion. They simply do not sound like natives and phonology usually seems to be the last thing anyone fully acquires if ever. There are theories that seek to account for this as there are examples of actors temporarily shedding their accent for roles, then regaining it as soon as the scene is over. Some people think that it is akin to being part of a club, which is intimately tied to your psychology and stripping yourself of your L1 phonology would involve losing part of your internal identity but this is more about the difference between L1 and L2 acquisition as I know there are some peddlers of Krashen's ideas that like to claim the process is necessarily identical, the lack of evidence supporting such a claim notwithstanding.

You need all of those approaches at some point in your language journey. Beyond a certain point of proficiency "studying" won't cut it anymore. E.g. just because you know 10 ways of saying "but" doesn't mean you know how to actually use them correctly. That's where mass input comes into play. Because while you don't feel like studying, your brain is. Eventually we know how something should sound and know how words fit together to make sentences. It becomes less of a knowing why something is correct and more of a feeling that something is correct. E.g: Most native English speakers will struggle to explain why adjectives go in a certain order (or what that order is exactly) in English, but they will absolutely know when the order is wrong. That's the end goal for me in any language. ;)

I’ve had an identical experience with Dutch. I had lots of early speaking but was really dismayed that I still couldn’t understand people. Then I started listening to a ton of Dutch language videos on RU-vid and felt loads more confident almost immediately.

Warning: semi-incoherent rambling below. I watched this video a couple days ago and it's been on the back of my mind ever since. I think the simplest answer is that everyone is different and the same methods might work differently for them, not only in terms of effectiveness, but even if there were a perfect method that worked perfectly for everybody, not everyone might find that enjoyable, or something that's worth their time. For example I recently read about a Dutch guy who spent 4 years in a Hungarian prison for selling drugs, now he speaks Hungarian at a pretty good level. It sounds like a good way to learn any language in 4 years, but not necessarily one I would like to try. I think it highly depends on the learner if they make input a useful method for themselves. For example I think that most people pick English up through input. I still remember that I was playing Quake 2 and came across a door that upon trying to open it prompted me with "this door is opened elsewhere". At the time I didn't know what that meant, but it was obvious that the door wouldn't open and I had to find a different way to activate it. Then as time went on, I played more games, had English classes at school that I didn't care about, but could pick up on things that sounded familiar from games, or made me understand something I wasn't sure about before, then eventually I ended up speaking English without really remembering how I got there. Then many years later I started doing Swedish on Duolingo (among others, but I didn't get very far with anything else at the time), then started doing Norwegian since it's almost the same as Swedish, then a Danish person agreed to help me with learning Danish, then we got closer, texted in Danish exclusively, started going out, her family is not as good at English as they think they are so I started speaking Danish to them, then we moved together and now I speak Danish every day without ever really having it formally taught to me. (I did try some classes later when I got the chance to see if they could help me improve even further, but apparently the only qualification one needs to become a Danish teacher is to be a native speaker and so all I did on classes was translate words the teacher didn't know in English for the rest of the class.)

I recently passed an exam on english C1 level. I only studied english during my high school years (nearly 30 years ago), I have barely never ever spoken english for the last 25 years, I didn´t practice oral skills for the exam and It was all fine. The only thing I do is watching videos, movies, series, podcats and reading news/articles all in english. That´s all. I have the feeling that your mind is 'talking' to you when you read or watch movies passively so you don´t really need hours and hours of speaking. At this time, I´m learning arabic, chinese, french and russian at the same time, and the only thing I do is the same, watch videos and read graded texts. Let´s see how far I can go within this year.

I really respect how you still heart comments on old videos.

Great video! The problem I have with the "input" theory is that it really isn't defined well and is in some ways an obvious thing. You have to have something put in to get it out. So the question is more of how much more input than output and when do you start output. There is no substantial scientific evidence that input only method is the fastest or best way to learn. Anecdotal evidence is still worth observing because of experience from polyglot. But even then, the outrageous amount of time to learn by input is ridiculous without any engagement of speaking. This whole thing reminds of psychologists who all claim their theory is the best. The answer is almost always in the middle. Get your input, practice your output. There is enough actual research on outcomes there that show substantial growth to fluency. There is a reason the Defense Language Institute or even college courses workwith many people. Steven Krashen has not really proven his theory, and how do you really test n+1. Plus the fact he said you don't acquire language at all when you speak!? That personally to me is a ridiculous overly strong statement. You absolutely do acquire by speaking and by using the vocabulary you have learned. Sigh, it's like the Skinner who overcorrected with his radical behaviorism. Care should be taken when using such strong statements, and as a fellow researcher, I'm disappointed with Krashen's statements. Damn, this is too long a rant. The point is the ultimate and quickest way to learn a language for a person will ways be the way that keeps you most engaged, keeps you motivated to study, and let's you enjoy the language most. For some, it's long hours of listening and reading. Some people prefer songsand movies. For others, like me, I enjoy speaking to people early as it keeps me engste with making new friends and exploring the world. Going to Language meet-ups in the city is awesome. But not everyone likes that kind of stress. Whatever gets you to keep moving forward

I'm a bit on marathon on your channel now :D but this channel is very good, anyway i wanted to say that i wouldn't believe in input based approach if i hadn't learned English to very high level only through input and doing it unconsciously. I was just reading and listening to stuff that i enjoyed because of course English side of the internet is the broadest. Overtime i became fluent without doing any grammar exercises, without speaking, without nothing. That's why i believe in it now in my journey of learning Italian to very advanced level.

I m learning finnish and using the comprehensible imput model. It is not easy. I am watching simple cartoons over and over again and work hard,to understand every sentence. Matt vs Japan calls is active listening. It takes a lot of work. But after a while you do understand....little by little.

Excited for these next two videos. And really, just excited for the comprehensible input hypothesis overall. It's a very interesting theory, and it could revolutionize language learning if it (1) actually works and (2) we can convince the world that it works.

I love your videos. They are so thoughtful and interesting!! Another great one! I'm looking forward to the next parts

I clicked from his channel and that very specific video you talk about to your video here. I'll share my views with you too unbiased. Input is important of course, without input there would be no desire to learn a language but understanding grammar in a new target language is even more important IMO. Because once the grammar clicks for you... then its all input from there onwards you have nothing to fear, just learn new words, feed your vocabulary and go wild speaking thinking writing :D With a proper understanding of grammar, there's nothing to shake your confidence or determination when learning a new language. However if you're going to expand further into speaking slang then yeah, input takes the cake and grammar might be less important but not irrelevant at all.