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Input is necessary but not sufficient. | ||
Tags: Comprehensive input | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4561 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 36 26 December 2014 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree completely that most formal instruction is
inefficient for self motivated learners. I think that this thread, and others here support the idea that most people will not ever develop fluent speech with *only* input. Most people need a chance to speak. I wonder if *all* people need it. I think it is impossible to answer this with only anecdotal evidence. We hear a story of someone who only read and listened and then went to a country and took off speaking to native speakers. But what does this mean? How fluent and accurate were they? Did they stumble and fumble and eventually get their meaning across, and only start sounding good after a couple of weeks of trying? What about the person who says they have years of input and complete comprehension,but who claim they can't talk? Do they spend all their time going around saying, "I'll sound like a fool if I make a mistake." and never speak? Either case can be misleading if you just read about the person's experience in a forum post. Edited by sfuqua on 26 December 2014 at 11:18pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 26 of 36 27 December 2014 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||
Input helps a lot when you're not sure whether you're guessing or actually saying things correctly. Also, confidence can often account for the difference, whether it comes from being able to cite the grammar rules or from remembering your previous conversations... or from seeing/hearing the words and expressions in your input. The one thing anecdata can do is confirm/deny statements like "it's possible" and "it always happens". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 27 of 36 28 December 2014 at 5:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm having a problem understanding what the debate is all about. Nobody is against input and nobody
is against output. I have already said that I don't think that it's a debate of input-oriented vs output- oriented learner. Perhaps part of the problem is that when the word input is used there is the assumption that this is totally passive. The image is one of somebody laying on a sofa and watching a thousand hours of tv in the target language with subtitles and then suddenly jumping up speaking perfectly in the language. No, it doesn't work that way. The kind of input most of us do is what I would call active input, that is we are interacting with the language while we consume it. I'm sure everybody here looks at videos with a notebook at hand and jots down things of interest. Flashcards and Anki stacks are a variation of this. We repeat passages many times to be certain of what we hear. We look things up in dictionaries and do some research on the Internet. And we do a lot of shadowing as we repeat out aloud certain passages. Many people put passages into Audacity so that they can transcribe sections and practice more systematically. Some people may learn entire passages by heart that they recite or act out. For reading and writing it's more difficult but I'm sure people underline passages, copy sentences into notebooks and do some scriptorium whereby they copy entire passages in longhand. With this kind of active engagement, it's not surprising that input-based learning produces good results. Input does not have to mean sitting waiting for divine intervention. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 28 of 36 28 December 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
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This is called intensive listening or reading. But extensive isn't about waiting for a divine intervention either.
Out of what you mentioned, I only use dictionaries, Anki and google (and also GLOSS). And even these are only a small fraction of my time.
I'm against speaking from day 1. (apart from those who are abroad or desperately need this for motivation) Edited by Serpent on 28 December 2014 at 5:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4561 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 36 28 December 2014 at 6:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Back when I was in graduate school in the '80s there
were some pretty extreme versions of this I put hypothesis around, some supported by Krashen himself. Nobody completely bought the extreme versions (other than Krashen and extreme fans), and the input hypothesis is frustratingly hard to disprove (too vague to be a real hypothesis). Especially with the Internet, it is hard to understand why somebody would want to test the extreme versions of the input hypothesis. You gotta talk to get good at talking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 30 of 36 28 December 2014 at 7:19am | IP Logged | ||
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...Because I don't like talking and I'll use as much help from input as possible? Also because I'm more aural and like listening more than most people here seem to?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4561 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 36 28 December 2014 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sure :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mairov Diglot Senior Member Brazil mairovergara.com Joined 3420 days ago 1 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 32 of 36 28 December 2014 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe input is the foundation for language learning. Without it you just can't learn a language. This does not mean, however, that input only is enough. In order to speak you need to practice speaking, however the amount of input you have received will directly influence how far you can take your speaking, the same way the amount to reading you have done will directly influence how far you can take your writing.
My English level is a very good example... I learned English mainly through input. I rarely have the opportunity to talk to other people in English. As a result, I make many mistakes. The same goes for writing: I don't need to write in English, I don't need to improve my skills on it. As a result, I also make mistakes when writing. However, I believe all the input I have done so far is kind of "sleeping" in my brain and will emerge in case I really need to speak and write in English (if I move to US, for example). To sum up, I believe input only is not enough, but input still is the foundation upon which we all build fluency in the language. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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