Re: The limits of comprehensible input?
Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 6:26 am
Without knowing more it's hard to judge how really bad this person's Spanish is, and how much Comprehensible Input they've got. I've done a lot of CI for German, and generally found conversations the least useful (esp. in lower-intermediate stages) as people don't talk about a wide range of subjects, and naturally try to tailor their speech to what you can understand.
I'm now at a point where I can very comfortably watch TV shows on whatever topic I want, but I still find reading books a bit of a slog. As soon as I pick up a serious book I can see the gaps in my vocabulary (in part because reading makes these gaps obvious; in part because reading just uses a larger vocabulary). That doesn't mean I can't read any book I want, but it does mean that I have tolerate a certain level of ambiguity.
My spoken L2 is OK, but it's definitely nowhere near native level. There are three main problems I can see: (1) I still lack lots of useful vocabulary - when talking about the school system in Berlin with other parents in my Kita or about maternity hospitals my 1000s of hours of Netflix don't help much - it's surprising how often these gaps trip me up; (2) My pronunciation is still not great for some words - I am often thought of as Norwegian or Danish for some reason - there seem to be two sorts of people: those who understand me close to 100% and those close 10% comprehension; (3) My sentence structure is not standard German - while I can understand a German sentence fine, that doesn't mean I repeat the same sentence later. I have a slight tendency to use English rather than German word order, I also have a certain tendency to use the words/phrases that sound most English when speaking, rather than the most appropriate German ones.
None of this seems particularly problematic to me. I think to a large extent I just need to do a ton more Comprehensible Input to get my vocabulary much better, and really strengthen the use of idiosyncratic expressions. For instance, if I just really immersed myself in German for a couple of years my German would improve drastically.
One thing people forget about CI is how long it takes native monolingual speakers to learn a language. It's been estimated at 16 years old you only know about 2/3 of the words you'll know as an adult. And any 16 old year has done a ton more CI then most L2 learners.
I'm now at a point where I can very comfortably watch TV shows on whatever topic I want, but I still find reading books a bit of a slog. As soon as I pick up a serious book I can see the gaps in my vocabulary (in part because reading makes these gaps obvious; in part because reading just uses a larger vocabulary). That doesn't mean I can't read any book I want, but it does mean that I have tolerate a certain level of ambiguity.
My spoken L2 is OK, but it's definitely nowhere near native level. There are three main problems I can see: (1) I still lack lots of useful vocabulary - when talking about the school system in Berlin with other parents in my Kita or about maternity hospitals my 1000s of hours of Netflix don't help much - it's surprising how often these gaps trip me up; (2) My pronunciation is still not great for some words - I am often thought of as Norwegian or Danish for some reason - there seem to be two sorts of people: those who understand me close to 100% and those close 10% comprehension; (3) My sentence structure is not standard German - while I can understand a German sentence fine, that doesn't mean I repeat the same sentence later. I have a slight tendency to use English rather than German word order, I also have a certain tendency to use the words/phrases that sound most English when speaking, rather than the most appropriate German ones.
None of this seems particularly problematic to me. I think to a large extent I just need to do a ton more Comprehensible Input to get my vocabulary much better, and really strengthen the use of idiosyncratic expressions. For instance, if I just really immersed myself in German for a couple of years my German would improve drastically.
One thing people forget about CI is how long it takes native monolingual speakers to learn a language. It's been estimated at 16 years old you only know about 2/3 of the words you'll know as an adult. And any 16 old year has done a ton more CI then most L2 learners.