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Comprehensible input? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6079 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 1 of 16 24 August 2008 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I found this:
This seems true, but, what do Children understand? Nothing at first! Somehow, Incomprehensible input must eventually become Comprehensible input, which means that this is all wrong. Can someone explain please. Thanks TEL EDIT: The above quote is from the HTLAL wiki Edited by TheElvenLord on 24 August 2008 at 8:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rekunoto Senior Member United States Joined 6174 days ago 104 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 16 24 August 2008 at 8:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree with you. Everyone starts from nowhere. Of course, children (and adults...) can visually see things, such as a ball, and associate it with the word "ball" if someone points to it and says ball.
Yet people who are blind from birth speak well too (I think...never talked to a blind person), meaning humans have the ability to infer language without sight, meaning the the statement you quoted is probably untrue. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5980 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 3 of 16 24 August 2008 at 8:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yeah, both the baby and the guy on the island get incomprehensible input, but only the baby get also comprehensible input. That's way one learn the language and the other not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 16 24 August 2008 at 11:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Children's brains are different from adults' in very important physiological ways.
You may as well look at a fish and ask why sparrows can't swim. Edited by Cainntear on 24 August 2008 at 11:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5951 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 16 24 August 2008 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Okay, as a medical student with some neurological and psychological background I might be qualified to answer this one. It's actually not that difficult to understand.
What are the first words? "Mama" or "Dada" in most cases. Why's that? Because these are concepts (people in this case) that are being referenced often in the early 24 months. A baby has no "brain for mama" as Cainntear seemed to suggest, but instead can only build language in concordance with other input. It's quite feasible that if you had a TV instead of a radio and access to very, very basic programs, you might be able to learn Mandarin on your island. This is because the TV presents visual stimuli in relative coocurrence with words. For example, you might soon be able to pick out the word for "night", "rain," "car" etc. because these concepts tend to cooccur with the respective words. Example: "As you can see, the tropical storm X is making landfall..." You understand: "*** *** *** ***, ******** storm * ** ****** *******..." And you see: a storm. HOWEVER, you might plausibly never pick up the meaning of the Mandarin word for "racism", or "eternal love", because these words have no direct visual equivalent. They are abstract concepts. Example: "I will love you *******" (unknown word) could easily mean "never", "forever", "as long as I can" or even "so God will". Also abstract concepts are the words "soon", "late" or "earlier" - the difference here is that these words are often used in closely related manner. Example: "Today, a terrorist shot the president. Earlier today, the president held a speech. Yesterday, he denied being afraid of terrorist attacks." What that means is: Watch enough TV, watch it smartly and attentively, and you might pick something up. You will never understand a language completely. My English is, in my not so humble opinion, on a near-native level, and yet I've looked up five English words today. Also, it's difficult to learn proper grammar this way. Of course, you will never learn to read or write, which is a loss in and of itself, because without reading and writing, you will be forced to a relatively basic (if fluent) level of your target language. Edited by Autarkis on 24 August 2008 at 11:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| autodidactic Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States tinyurl.com/cunningl Joined 6622 days ago 100 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Japanese, Kazakh | Message 6 of 16 24 August 2008 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah but a baby doesnt get stranded like that, he mimics his parents(and TV, and other fmaily and adults, older siblings, etc.), learning to speak in every situation that they speak and topics relevant to the family's life. They are there to repeat and emphasize what's important and correct errors. If you were stranded on an island and had a phone that only connected you to mandarin speakers, then you're more likely to learn chinese, but definitely not from a radio I think.
I bet that if you put a mandarin radio on for the baby at all times that he was awake, even while his parents are there raising him and speaking their language, the baby will not pick up any mandarin. Edited by autodidactic on 24 August 2008 at 12:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 16 24 August 2008 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm sorry if it came across that way, but I had no intention on making any statement about how baby's brains work. As far as I can see it's a side issue that is of no consequence to the adult learner. However, since we've gone down that road, you may have your "mama" thing back-to-front. I'm told that in the majority of the world's languages the familiar word for a mother is monosyllabic or disyllabic, and consists only of M sounds and plain vowels. The most likely reason for this, they say, is that "m" is the first consonant a child can clearly pronounce, seeing as it's just an opening and closing of the mouth. There's a school of thought that says that when a child first says "mama", it isn't really saying anything -- it's just making noise. Instead, they suggest it is the mother who imposes meaning onto this utterance and builds this association in. Much of the initial vocabulary can be explained in the same way. This theory can be extended to suggest that the next step is to mimic more complex words without having any initial association, and for the association to be developed after the fact by observing the effects. At some unknown point, this will give way to understanding before producing. However, an important thing here is that we don't know how a child learns, and until we do, it's impossible to replicate it. More important though is that a child's brain has massively higher potential for direct association than an adult's, so we're unlikely to be able to copy it, even when we finally know it all.
Yes, but there are plenty of words that recurr in these contexts. In news stories about cars, we often have the phrase "at the wheel" and the announcer may talk about the wheels hitting the kerb. The longer we operate under the assumption that a car is a "wheel", the harder it is to realise that a wheel is a wheel.
I would be very surprised if anyone could learn anything without some sort of feedback. Everyone I know who claims to have learned through absorption has a well-thumbed dictionary and grammar on the shelf. I've never met anyone who has ever learned entirely passively. Edited by Cainntear on 24 August 2008 at 5:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6446 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 16 24 August 2008 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Uh, how do you do? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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