How to Learn a Language without Studying

[leosmith]

I came across this video in my youtube feed, and as you can imagine, have some issues with it. Before watching it, I suspected that he was just going to redefine “studying” in a way that excludes whatever he is recommending. And that’s basically what he did, but let’s go over the details, then I’ll ask for your opinions.

no textbooks no courses no word lists

To be fair, he stuck to these principles throughout the video. But, he did not outline a clear language learning path either – he just recommended some things to do, and made some general statements about language learning. Not having a path mapped out can lead to disaster for some, as we have seen here.

when I tried to speak with people in the real world I felt lost always translating in my head

This has nothing to do with the evil “learning” – this is just not being told, or not figuring out, that you shouldn’t be trying to incrementally translate from L2 to L1 when you converse.

it's the polar opposite of how virtually every academic subject operates

How do you feel about this? I have mixed feelings. I guess it’s more like learning a sport or musical instrument than an academic subject, or maybe a cross between the two.

speak like a child

I hate this phrase, but he elaborates it to mean:

that kind of speech is based out of personal necessity not any kind of academic Theory

Then he goes on to say it’s like when adults are forced to live in another country, and so the answer is immersion. What a strange jump. Immersion is good of course, but why the whole “speak like a child without basing it on academic theory” spiel? He’s trying so hard to rage against the evil learning.
Anyway then he talks about having conversation – how is this not study? Then he does a short commercial for Preply, which I’m pretty sure he miss pronounces – its PRE PLY, right? Maybe I’m wrong though.

Do your best to speak English as little as possible during conversation practice

Duh.

you should only have one goal at the outset: stop being a beginner

I hate this comment. Benny did this too – he warned against long term goals to the point that he said you shouldn’t even have any. How ridiculous. My main goal is always to converse comfortably with natives. If I wanted to set a short term goal, it would be something like to finish whatever program I was doing. But it would never ever be “stop being a beginner”. I can’t think of a more meaningless goal than that.

ultimately rely on yourself because most people who learn languages casually never make that jump. They lean on apps like duolingo for far too long and think they're mastering a language when what they're really mastering is how to use an app

Hard agree. He got something right.

comprehensible input n+1

Do you know how I can tell that you’re a Krashenite? Besides, it’s i+1 (I think).

Dr Steven Krashen, who's probably the leading Authority in the field of language acquisition

Cainntear is going to love this. He then goes into a long spiel about CI.

Love your failures.

Arg! I haven’t heard this for a while; I was hoping it was dead. What he really means is understand that failure is part of language learning, and if you’re not making mistakes, you probably aren’t pushing the envelope. So there is no reason feel bad about errors. But let’s not make it sound like our goal is to fail, because that’s exactly how he puts it.

Self talk

Although I rarely do this, I understand the benefits of it, and he explains them pretty well – you can do it any time, it’s free, less stressful, etc., when compared to conversing with a human. However, I don’t feel that this is necessary if you have a human, and he seems to indicate that this is a required step to get to the point where you can talk to people, or should be used to supplement real conversations, or something like that. That’s where we disagree.

Labeling out loud

This is an alternate way to practice vocabulary. I’m sticking with anki.

The big problem with AI

He points out the shortcomings of conversing, voice to voice, with AI vs a human. And he’s right. But why is talking to yourself ok, but talking to AI not?

In summary, everything he suggested I would call "studying". It might not be what Krashen calls "learning", but how one Earth are conversing with a teacher, reading, listening and talking to yourself like that not studying? Thoughts?

[rdearman]

Bloody hell... I hope my videos don't show up in your feed.

[iguanamon]

Thank you for saving me over 12 minutes of having to watch this drivel.

[Le Baron]

...but how one Earth are conversing with a teacher, reading, listening and talking to yourself like that not studying? Thoughts?

Well he thinks 'studying' only means sitting in front of books and memorising things. He redefined 'studying' , or so he thinks, then concluded that he's got rid of it.

Oddly a lot of YT people seem to have started their early videos saying these kinds of things. Then the other 95% of their content is presenting word lists and going over grammar problems. Often as a response to comments saying they need that.

There really should be a special room with a heavy, locked door for YT language gurus.

[kleene*star]

I'm always shocked by the number of people on YT who feel so confident in giving suggestions on how to study erm.. I mean learn languages, despite lacking any sort of actual qualification. Basically bro science but for language pedagogy.

[Severine]

A lot of people in the target market for such videos have had negative experiences with traditional methods of language learning in the past, most commonly ineffectual and unenjoyable language classes in middle school or high school, centred around textbooks, structured exercises, word lists, and so on. Videos that suggest these things are a terrible idea get a lot of clicks.

Re preply.com, I've only ever heard it pronouned "prep-lee." Presumably, the "prep" part is meant to evoke "preparation."

[emk]

speak like a child

I hate this phrase, but he elaborates it to mean:

that kind of speech is based out of personal necessity not any kind of academic Theory

Then he goes on to say it’s like when adults are forced to live in another country, and so the answer is immersion. What a strange jump. Immersion is good of course, but why the whole “speak like a child without basing it on academic theory” spiel?

Total immersion—the sort where nobody speaks any language you know, and where you can't just spend all day on a smart phone—certainly tends to be extremely effective.

But it's also a miserable experience, even for children. I've read several accounts where someone was sent to an immersion school at age 7, or where an immigrant kid got dropped in a school where they had zero knowledge of the language. And the stories sound really unpleasant: "I was surrounded by adults who loudly insisted that I needed to do something, but I had no idea what they wanted," or "I couldn't express even basic needs."

People will absolutely learn quickly under these conditions, whether child or adult. But by all accounts, it can be pretty miserable. The whole point of a beginner course is that it offers a road map to the point where you can say quiero ir al baño "I need to go to the bathroom", and then actually have a chance of understanding the directions on how to find it.

(This is actually one of the reasons I was delighted about starting Spanish with Avatar—it covers both of these things in Episode 1.)

I do think that heavy passive immersion can be very powerful, and that once you hit A2 or so, then full immersion where you need to speak will make a big difference.

But childhood language learning is also relatively slow in a lot of ways. Toddlers hear 3–13 million words of conversation per year, and academically successful middle schoolers read 1–4 million words per year. Children's true gift is for accents, and they seem to have a small long-run advantage in things like gender. But apparently, sufficiently motivated adults can get conversational at least as quickly as kids, under the right circumstances.

So "learn languages like a child" really means "spend a bunch of time completely helpless and unable to communicate, and consume at least 3–5 Super Challenges of input a year for 20 years, all while spending 6+ hours a day in an educational institution where people make you read books, give presentations to the class, and get your writing corrected, all while doing 100% of your socializing in the language you're learning."

Or, you know, you could do an Assimil course and maybe look at some conjugation tables at some point. Adults usually have better academic skills than kids, and there's nothing wrong with using them occasionally.

[leosmith]

Re preply.com, I've only ever heard it pronouned "prep-lee."

Thanks - I stand corrected.

[MorkTheFiddle]

How many folks, I wonder, went from zero to fluent in a language by following the advice of any random Youtubers?
My perhaps simple-minded response to this topic is to say that surely either only people who actually in fact went from zero to fluent in a target language can give us credible advice about effective methods, or, only instructor/s using some method or set of methods and who have taken a student from zero to fluent and who can prove it, only those two kinds of people can give good useful advice or instruction.
I leave the definition of 'fluent' up to you, and I concede there can be levels on the way to fluency that can be taught. Many members of this forum have proposed or developed methods that provide help along the way. (Though of them I know of only Rdearman and SpanishInput who have tested Youtube waters. My apologies if I miss anyone.)

[dubendorf]

So "learn languages like a child" really means "spend a bunch of time completely helpless and unable to communicate, and consume at least 3–5 Super Challenges of input a year for 20 years, all while spending 6+ hours a day in an educational institution where people make you read books, give presentations to the class, and get your writing corrected, all while doing 100% of your socializing in the language you're learning."

Or, you know, you could do an Assimil course and maybe look at some conjugation tables at some point. Adults usually have better academic skills than kids, and there's nothing wrong with using them occasionally.

Thank you so much for saying this. I can't comprehend why people argue for only native input and no grammar practice. I mean, we spend years studying grammar lessons and literature in our native language. Why on earth would we avoid it completely in a second or third language? I feel like "comprehensible input" gets conflated with childlike input when something like Assimil is "comprehensible" exactly because it has translations and grammar explanations. It took 15+ years of practice in a native language to be able to speak professionally and read literature. Why would I want to wait that long in my second langauge?