Reading or listening? Which is more efficient?

[Serpent]

This might be another America vs Europe thing. In Europe high schoolers are often treated like kids and there are modern textbooks with "fun" stuff, shiny pictures, less grammar etc. This doesn't necessarily lead to good results either. Motivation and a lack of input are the main problems. Motivated learners succeed even with old-fashioned methods.

And let's try to focus on input here

[Bakunin]

I’m a bit late to the party, but this discussion needs a contrarian who points out to all of you that most languages on this planet don’t have an established writing system and are still being learned just fine. Take the prime example of Swiss-German, a language without an established writing system and only very few and rather experimental books. There are no regular publications in Swiss-German (like newspapers, magazines, books… not even Harry Potter ). This country is full of immigrants who have mastered the language to various - and sometimes impressive - degrees, and I’ve met many who didn’t go through Standard German and don’t even speak it. Another example: I’m currently learning Khmer and I haven’t touched a book so far let alone opened one. And I’m still making good progress with the language.

So whatever you have to say about listening and reading, one thing is clear: Reading is not necessary to learn languages. I don’t believe statements like “I need to see words written down to learn” the tinies fragment of a second. Unless you’re mentally disabled (I mean this in a neutral, non-judgmental and medical sense) you can pick up language through your ears - 99.9% of humanity can and does.

I don’t dispute that reading is an efficient way to engage with language, and I’m prepared to entertain the idea that reading might well be (much) more efficient than listening in terms of vocabulary acquisition per time unit, for instance. On the other hand, as other people have recently pointed out, nobody here has ever defined efficiency in any useful way, and the same applies to ‘vocabulary acquisition’.

My personal take is that reading and listening are pretty separate skills. They positively interact: a lot of reading helps to some extent with listening, and a lot of listening helps to some extent with reading. But in order to get good at listening, you need to listen a lot, and in order to get good at reading, you need to read a lot.

However, spoken language is the real deal. Writing is a relatively new technology, and all those languages out there without established writing systems are as fully developed, rich and rewarding as the few which are customarily written. They can be learned just fine.

[sctroyenne]

I’m a bit late to the party, but this discussion needs a contrarian who points out to all of you that most languages on this planet don’t have an established writing system and are still being learned just fine. Take the prime example of Swiss-German, a language without an established writing system and only very few and rather experimental books. There are no regular publications in Swiss-German (like newspapers, magazines, books… not even Harry Potter ). This country is full of immigrants who have mastered the language to various - and sometimes impressive - degrees, and I’ve met many who didn’t go through Standard German and don’t even speak it. Another example: I’m currently learning Khmer and I haven’t touched a book so far let alone opened one. And I’m still making good progress with the language.

This was what I was just thinking I think the danger in believing too much in learning styles is that people may take for granted that learning a language through listening only is supposedly easy for people who are "auditory learners" and the fact that they have difficulty is because it's just not their learning style. Audio-only courses are supposed to be quite a workout if done right and there's no shame in getting stuff wrong or having to struggle to get stuff right (kind of like doing heavy lifting). I've even heard people say that you really shouldn't try to do Pimsleur or Michel Thomas while driving because they require too much concentration to safely do both at once (reviewing courses already done would be fine). Of course seeing the word written down helps remember things better but the fact that you don't have a lesson mastered after going through it once isn't a sign that you're not getting it. For the Michel Thomas courses, for example, if you fall somewhere between the "good student" and the struggling student you're doing fine. If you have to repeat Pimsleur lessons because they were a disaster that's fine too (though, if you find doing taxes a more appealing option than doing these courses than of course don't do them).

From my anecdotal observations (maybe someone will have science to back this up), I found that in French class working with primarily text, a non-native speaker, and a bunch of other learners with a little bit of audio that we followed with text, quite a few students would have persistent pronunciation errors based on interference with the written text (pronouncing the final -ent in the 3rd person plural conjugations, pronouncing terminal s at the end of 1st person plural conjugations and even at the end of nous itself). I have no way of proving that they wouldn't have these issues if they didn't constantly have the text at the beginning but I definitely think a balance with much more audio would have helped. I will say, though, (again, anecdotal) that matching up sounds with writing from the beginning made me a better speller than even some natives. There are some homophones that I would never mix up that French kids need little tricks in order to keep straight when learning to write.

When learning Irish I felt like the phonetic system was so alien that I was getting overwhelming interference from trying to keep up with matching sounds to writing (sometimes in more than one dialect...). To make it worse, some of the initial courses I used were not good about having audio for every word - there would be a long list of vocabulary with no audio and then words would be used in different forms in the accompanying dialogue with audio. So I just relied on an audio-only course for a while to make it more manageable. Some lessons were much easier than others and there was one I got stuck on so long that I had to give up and "cheat" and look at a transcript but I felt like I was finally able to get through a course without losing my mind.

[Cavesa]

...
So whatever you have to say about listening and reading, one thing is clear: Reading is not necessary to learn languages. I don’t believe statements like “I need to see words written down to learn” the tinies fragment of a second. Unless you’re mentally disabled (I mean this in a neutral, non-judgmental and medical sense) you can pick up language through your ears - 99.9% of humanity can and does.
...
However, spoken language is the real deal. Writing is a relatively new technology, and all those languages out there without established writing systems are as fully developed, rich and rewarding as the few which are customarily written. They can be learned just fine.

(sorry, shortened the quote a bit)

Of course immigrants can learn without any reading but I am learning at home, not in the country. Therefore I can never achieve full immersion. And why focus on speaking mostly, without the opportunity to use the skill often? I admire your learning style, Bakunin, but I am afraid you are one of the rare learners with unique skills and goals.

Of course I could learn without any reading but my retention rate (and therefore the pace at which I learn) would be many times slower. Why waste time? I am not mentally disabled, far from it, I am just one of the people with huge personal connection and afinity to reading, probably caused by decades of practice and simply being used to it. It has been my main way of acquiring knowledge for 20 years (books and I are celebrating a nice anniversary this year). I am much better at learning anything from the writen form, not just languages. Lectures at university are mostly useless for me, there is no difference in learning what I had heard and what I hadn't bothered to arrive to the lecture room for.

I am not the only one by far, example: my flatmate needs to learn from the books as well, her retention of lectures or orally transmited knowledge on the go is much lower despite her not being mentally handicaped either (she's a much better student than I am and has no problem logically applying the knowledge, it is not about memorisation vs logical learning).

I'd say it is not just the need to see the word writen. Writen text and knowledge naturaly takes place in the complex network of knowledge in my brain. It is simply easier to relate new writen pieces of knowledge to others than just the audio exposure.

Speaking is not the only "real deal", not necessarily. Yes, it is always one of my main goals (and will become the absolute main one when I finally get to moving abroad. Well, very few learners do not want to speak the language they're learning) but an average book is simply much more interesting than an average real person. Writing is a younger part of language use than speaking, true. But our civilisation wouldn't have gotten so far without it. The books and other writen resources are the strongest pillar of it. All the huge jumps forward happened after a new breakthrough in the writing mechanisms. Dismissing reading/writing as inferior to listening/speaking is, in my honest opinion, just as illogical as claiming modern cookers to be inferior to open fire. Sure, you can cook just fine over open fire, many native tribes in Amazonia still do. But it is simply much more practical, interesting and efficient timewise to use the modern tool.

I am not learning any language just for reading. But a language without the reading resources are simply not that interesting and, unless I'd be moving abroad, I wouldn't ever want to learn a language without writen tradition. From what I've noticed on htlal and elsewhere, I am not an exception, most people just find it practical and enjoyable to use both their ears and eyes.

I think this topic would actually make for a separate discussion. Langauges without enough writen material. I would actually hesitate before trying to learn one for lots of practical reasons.

I am a too slow writer today. I fully agree underestimating listening is one of the major faults of far too many language classes. And there are millions (or more) people who are, for example, proficient at reading and writing English but bad at speaking it. Many non-anglophone scientists get to that point. But exclusion of writing and reading is not an ideal solution for most learners.

[chobbs]

Bakunin, you seem to be describing people who learn through interacting, not purely through listening. To me this is quite a bit different. Those immigrants you mention didn't learn the language independent of living it. Asking for something to be repeated back slower, asking for clarification of a misunderstood component, ability to gesture, etc. are all things that allow much higher comprehension and are not just listening. Barring that interactivity I don't see listening by itself doing much good for me, although I suppose if I had access to massive amount of perfectly graded listening content it could work okay.

I am a big fan of Idahossa Ness of the MimicMethod who also prefers to do things purely by ear. But, he goes to the country to immerse himself in the language. Once there it is interacting with the people in order to mimic his way to fluency.

I read your log and the spiral technique you describe sounds very interesting, but once again it seems based in interaction. Do you have any suggestions for ways to make podcasts or other non interactive material into something actually productive for those of us who struggle in that regard? I am very interested as when I am finally ready to tackle Mandarin I had considered experimenting with this type of approach. In this case I would have access to a variety of speakers and could interact, but if you had ideas for making that other content productive that would be great.

[chobbs]

This was what I was just thinking I think the danger in believing too much in learning styles is that people may take for granted that learning a language through listening only is supposedly easy for people who are "auditory learners" and the fact that they have difficulty is because it's just not their learning style. Audio-only courses are supposed to be quite a workout if done right and there's no shame in getting stuff wrong or having to struggle to get stuff right (kind of like doing heavy lifting). I've even heard people say that you really shouldn't try to do Pimsleur or Michel Thomas while driving because they require too much concentration to safely do both at once (reviewing courses already done would be fine). Of course seeing the word written down helps remember things better but the fact that you don't have a lesson mastered after going through it once isn't a sign that you're not getting it. For the Michel Thomas courses, for example, if you fall somewhere between the "good student" and the struggling student you're doing fine. If you have to repeat Pimsleur lessons because they were a disaster that's fine too (though, if you find doing taxes a more appealing option than doing these courses than of course don't do them).

For me, there were multiple runs through the Pimsleur and MT courses. I tried studying at my computer, as well as in the car. It wasn't about expecting perfection but about having close to zero that actually stuck in a meaningful way. I didn't find the courses difficult at all, I was just severely disappointed with the end result. My overall comprehension, as measured by videos and audio books, was no better than prior to the courses best I could tell. I wasn't willing to waste any further time on trying to make them work and so I just moved on.

From my anecdotal observations (maybe someone will have science to back this up), I found that in French class working with primarily text, a non-native speaker, and a bunch of other learners with a little bit of audio that we followed with text, quite a few students would have persistent pronunciation errors based on interference with the written text (pronouncing the final -ent in the 3rd person plural conjugations, pronouncing terminal s at the end of 1st person plural conjugations and even at the end of nous itself). I have no way of proving that they wouldn't have these issues if they didn't constantly have the text at the beginning but I definitely think a balance with much more audio would have helped. I will say, though, (again, anecdotal) that matching up sounds with writing from the beginning made me a better speller than even some natives. There are some homophones that I would never mix up that French kids need little tricks in order to keep straight when learning to write.

I think French is a special beast because, as native English speakers, we have many of those words in our heads already but pronounced entirely differently. Further, it uses the same basic alphabet and completely normal appearing consonant/vowel combinations. Liasons and elisions, at least such consistent rule based ones simply don't exist for us. We drop sounds when talking at speed, but nothing like what is done in French. From what I have seen the only way around this is to have plenty of audio while reading. I don't see how you could separate the two and have any decent success.

[AlexTG]

If you're learning a language with a widely used written standard then I think you'll reap practical benefits faster if you focus on reading over listening (by practical benefits I mean enjoyment of native media). Where in standardized written English you just need to understand "I'm going to" and "I am going to", in spoken English you also need to understand I'm gonna, 'm gonna, imma, 'm 'na, 'na, 'ma, I'm goh-win ta and 'm goh-win ta. And that's not taking into account regional variations of the phonemes: "I'm gawna" vs "I'm guhna" etc.

(not all languages have a written standard though, for instance Middle English, where you have to deal with all sorts of variations depending on which writer you're reading.)

[Serpent]

That depends on what practical benefits you have in mind
At least I find that listening with a less than ideal comprehension is much more comfortable and enjoyable than reading at a similar or even slightly higher level.

[Elisac]

I'd like to comment on the "reading not necessary when learning a language" and "you can learn by listening only" point of view.
I myself "see" words when talking and I was stunned when, at a university level course for teachers, my colleagues confirmed that it is a normal thing for some of them too.
I found extremely interesting to read something about Antoine de la Garanderie https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_La_Garanderie, whose works were suggested at the time.
I started learning Japanese before entering university and my teacher there used the listening approach. Results: I didn't learn as much as I learned by myself...
I tried to listen to Japanesepod but nothing ever sticks when I do that. I HAVE to learn the word in text before listening to it...then listening reinforces my learning...but I can't absolutely learn by listening as a main way to study a language...
This is true for drama and movies too...
That is the reason because I prefer structured lessons also while learning with tutors.

The teacher who taught us about De la Garanderie told us that someone who is good at doing chemistry or design or something needing visual skills is usually someone who represents visually what he's trying to recall. Instead someone topically studying literature uses words and recalls memories through words.
This is indeed true in my experience as a teacher and in my life.
I think that the new course of language classes, with listening as a major focus, doesn't really understand the variety of learning styles and assumes all students are the same. This is not true...even when studying physics and chemistry, someone prefers telling the lesson to friends and talk and others prefer drawing schemes.

[reineke]

"I collect words--they are sweets in the mouth of sound."

Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner

The optic nerve is an information highway and the written word such an easy target that even the so-called auditory learners (if there's such a thing) can't resist to splurge on reading while leaving a pittance for listening.

Are we raising a breed of ‘dyslexic’ foreign language learners?
February 18, 2017

"...one may argue that many of our students do exhibit a form of deficit in their foreign language competences akin to a disorder called ‘Phonological dyslexia’, described by Ellis (1984) as the inability ‘to read unfamiliar words or non-words aloud, suggesting impairment of grapheme-phoneme conversion and/or phonemic assembly."

"Another interesting finding by Erler was that 75 % of the total sample Year 7s thought that it was indeed useful to know pronunciation and 63% stated that they were aware of subvocalizing to sounds when reading in French, confirming what we know about automatic phonological loop activation in working memory during reading (in simpler words: whether we are aware of it or not, the brain automatically converts letters into sounds as we read, even when we are not reading aloud).

These findings are dispiriting for several reasons. Firstly, because, as much L1 and L2 research clearly indicates (e.g. Stanovich, 1980; Bryant and Bradley, 1983; Sprenger and Casalis, 1995; Gathercole and Baddeley, 2001) decoding skills are crucial to comprehension of written texts and poor readers often exhibit serious deficits in their deployment. Heaps of research indicate that a child’s early knowledge of phonological awareness is a strong predictor of their fluency in later years...

Secondly, ...phonological awareness is crucial in listening comprehension in that it helps the brain make sense of the speech flow by identifying word-boundaries, intonation patterns, etc.

Thirdly, and more tragically, as Erler’s concluded, the students she investigated exhibited decoding deficits (in French) comparable to those symptomatic of dyslexic reading impairment... Could this be one of the reasons why many of our students don’t enjoy learning languages?"

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2 ... -learners/

See also: How to teach pronunciation

"...the typical French, Spanish, German or Italian textbooks currently in use in the UK or US hardly deal with the teaching of the L2 phonology system; when they do concern themselves with pronunciation or decoding instruction, they do so superficially..."

"Pronunciation errors are difficult to correct when they are fossilized (Ellis, 1996) – L1 transfer in pronunciation is a major threat to the acquisition of accurate L2 pronunciation..."

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2 ... ciation-2/