TopDog_IK wrote:Let's put some boundaries on this comparison. On the one hand we have a native English speaker who spent 800 hours in a classroom learning French. This learner has not spent any time at all watching French TV. His only experience with French is in the classroom. On the other hand, we have an immersion learner who spent 800 hours watching progressively more difficult French TV, but spent zero time in a classroom and zero time using traditional learning techniques, studying grammar, etc.
Who will have better comprehension for a regular adult show on French TV?
Ok, let's play the game of dichotomy in a sandbox. Keep in mind, even in your example, the quality of a classroom might vary greatly based on any particular teacher - student pair, just a few things worth mentioning being the method and skills of the teacher, and the motivation and personality of the student. For the sake of the game, both learners are equally gifted, motivated and picked the method that best suits their personality.
Any teacher worth of the name will try to use multiple sources of input, so in the classroom the learner will likely encounter video, or in the worst case scenario, audio in target language. Native material, preferably. Will also practice output both speaking and writing. So, after 800h of balanced practice, would likely be able to understand the main ideas in some native material, and talk about it in French (as in the example).
The second one most likely would be more familiar with regular adult shows. But output skills will probably be lacking, especially if all he did was watching. Speech is not magically growing at the tip of the tongue, regardless of how much input you get, without a modicum of deliberate practice. So, a bit like a dog situation, intelligent eyes, but unable to express itself in coherent language.
I assume you mean some sort of a dry class, though, books only, with a bored teacher, with little accent put on conversation and such. We already established the student is motivated enough. Then yes, but is a problem of method. No audio output from native material, it means will have a worse understanding than someone that had only that as study method.
However, that was a an example for the sake of examples: watching TV, vs a class with a bad teacher. And we used French. Try watching 800h of Chinese shows. Apart from the fact one will be unable to read hanzi, the gap between languages is quite large.
No one is negating the importance of audio (and video) input in learning process. Just the magic aura that is painted around it. People learned languages pretty well from books only for many centuries. People learned languages pretty well from interacting with other people. Emphasis on interacting. People learned from passively listening a language too. As I said, I believe, given enough time, most methods work. If time is of the essence, just watching TV loses the race with most other ways of studying.