Pablo from Dreaming Spanish: Language can’t be explained

[Iversen]

I think both Peppa pig and classrooms sound abhorrent, but luckily there are alternatives.

[TopDog_IK]

I don't think most adults would be willing to watch Peppa Pig and similar shows for five hours a day.

I don't think most adults would be willing to sit in a classroom for 5 hours a day, either. Do they want to learn a new language or not?

If there is a certain amount of allocated time, I don't think is even a topic, which method is more effective. If John Cablefan spends 800h watching TV in the target language, while Billy Booknerd use TV as a supplement (within the available time) and study more or less structured the language in 800h, my money would be on Billy in any sort of skill test.

If there is no time limit, sure, almost any method would work, eventually. You can happily dig a trench with a spoon if you choose to. So maybe the method is suited for people that would want to learn a language, but don't want to put in much effort, and time is no issue (which, of course, is an illusion, time is an issue for all of us, but I digress).

What if the skill test is comprehension of TV shows?

[LupCenușiu]

If there is a certain amount of allocated time, I don't think is even a topic, which method is more effective. If John Cablefan spends 800h watching TV in the target language, while Billy Booknerd use TV as a supplement (within the available time) and study more or less structured the language in 800h, my money would be on Billy in any sort of skill test.

If there is no time limit, sure, almost any method would work, eventually. You can happily dig a trench with a spoon if you choose to. So maybe the method is suited for people that would want to learn a language, but don't want to put in much effort, and time is no issue (which, of course, is an illusion, time is an issue for all of us, but I digress).

What if the skill test is comprehension of TV shows?

Billy wins, if he has to summarize his comprehension in target language

[Cainntear]

If there is a certain amount of allocated time, I don't think is even a topic, which method is more effective. If John Cablefan spends 800h watching TV in the target language, while Billy Booknerd use TV as a supplement (within the available time) and study more or less structured the language in 800h, my money would be on Billy in any sort of skill test.

If there is no time limit, sure, almost any method would work, eventually. You can happily dig a trench with a spoon if you choose to. So maybe the method is suited for people that would want to learn a language, but don't want to put in much effort, and time is no issue (which, of course, is an illusion, time is an issue for all of us, but I digress).

What if the skill test is comprehension of TV shows?

Billy wins, if he has to summarize his comprehension in target language

He almost certainly wins however it's assessed.

[TopDog_IK]

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?

[tractor]

Why on earth should anyone spend 800 hours in a classroom in order to learn French? The world is not black and white. You don't have to do only one thing for 800 hours.

[Spaceman]

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?

I don't think this is a particularly useful question. A much better question is "What is the optimal mixture for X goal?" I'm fairly confident there is no goal in which the mixture is 100% consumption, or 100% anything else for that matter.

[Iversen]

If you have spent 800 hours in a classroom then you will probably have heard your native language far more than the target language, and out of the remaining hours you will have listened to your classmates maybe half the time - and they can't speak the language yet, that's why they are there.

As for listening to progressively more difficult TV ... well good luck to find it. I agree that some program types are more difficult than others (and we can discuss till the cows go home whether programs for children really are easier than weather reports), but I doubt that the typical couch potato can control the gradual march through the levels. And there is little hope that you can find something at the rock bottom which is worth listening to.

As far as I can see there are two alternatives. If you are in an immersion situation then you may be so overwhelmed by too much input that it becomes less important that it's a sick mixture of input at many levels of difficulty, most of which are too difficult for you. And you will be wasting a lot of time that way. The other alternative is to do do some hardcore studying so that you can squeeze as much information out of your limited input as possible when you meet it, but it's hard to become active without experiencing an avalanche of input at some point where your stash of knowledge can be put to work. Personally I solve that problem by using bilingual texts alongside my grammars and dictionaries until I can think and write in a language - and then I use the avalanche to make the process automatic (and oral).

The solution must be to work with both intensive studies and extensive activities from the start.

For me the focus is on the intensive activities in the beginning because I don't like to be rambling around in a murky chaos of things I don't understand, and then the percentage of extensive activities grows with time, but if you have enough input from day one then it may function as a fertile soil wherein you can put those random tidbits of information you can glean from grammars and dictionaries (or your friends and parents). But during my work in my mother's garden I have learnt to be sceptical about plants just popping up and blossoming by themselves - sometimes you have to water them.

PS: several years ago I had cable TV in Polish and Montenegrin/Serbian and Albanian (!), but I never got to the point where I could understand any of those languages. If things are easier now that's because I have been studying them - and now where I'm at a level where I might have profited from having those programs the cable provider has removed them.

[Le Baron]

I don't think most adults would be willing to sit in a classroom for 5 hours a day, either. Do they want to learn a new language or not?

They do though! We can quibble about whether or not they are doing the right thing, but they really are willing to sit in a class for 5 hours (with breaks). Loads of them.

Especially those who emigrate or go to work in a foreign country. Very often you find people turning up there out of despair who have been totally surrounded by the language for up to five years or more and haven't learned how to use it. Despite being in situations where they have to use it. Sometimes they've been plugging away at home watching the telly and not getting far. Successful learning needs, motivation, structure/guidance and content. In that order. Or that you need to want to learn, you need to know what and how to learn and then you need the materials.

And again you are doing that thing of making it black or white. As though any structured teaching/learning means being condemned to sit bored in a classroom reciting verb tables, trying to memorise grammar rules and learning little to nothing.

Why are you persistently doing this when it's a completely made up view?

[Cainntear]

Let's put some boundaries on this comparison.

That's not putting boundaries on the comparison, it's changing the boundaries. Let's look at what was originally said:

If there is a certain amount of allocated time, I don't think is even a topic, which method is more effective. If John Cablefan spends 800h watching TV in the target language, while Billy Booknerd use TV as a supplement (within the available time) and study more or less structured the language in 800h, my money would be on Billy in any sort of skill test.

Notice that Billy Booknerd has been watching TV as well as doing his bookwork.

You can't argue for the superiority of a particular language learning method by saying it's better than something that nobody is proposing -- that's an absolute strawman argument.