rdearman wrote: What it will not do is help with the "fluidity" of speaking in a TL. I believe this is because when you speak you need to train your vocal apparatus to perform the required pronunciation, you need to train your mind to access all that vocabulary quickly and to have large "chunks" of full or partial phrases which you can access quickly. It is also good to have lots of conversation fillers to use, things like. "That is a very good question, but...", "At the end of the day...".
I cannot agree because that's exactly what massive input does for me after a certain point. It trains me to automatically think in the language, and therefore speak much more fluidly, with natural use of conversation fillers, grammar, and idioms.
I partially agree, because many people think on the input will do it, without any "boring" stuff. They skip the basics, they rush through the pronunciation learning, and then they are suprised not to get the results from input only. That is a problem.
But from the intermediate level on, it is massive listening, the way I improve my speaking fluidity, along with grammar practice. The conjugations are the most common fluidity obstacle for the romance language learners, from what I've been observing for 20 years. Not lack of speaking, laziness to learn their verbs as soon as it stops being easy (which comes at different point for everone)
I know lots of people not believing in this and getting stuck at broken use of the language for years, despite paying for teachers, and trying to speak as much as possible.
Yes, you can improve speaking mainly by speaking, but massive input is more efficient. Both when it comes to time and money. But people underestimate how much input they need to devour, and what kinds of it.
Massive output is awesome, don't get me wrong, just like buying a Ferrari is awesome. But not necessary for fluidity (which is one of the main differences between B2 and C2 as I see it). And it costs simply too much for many people. A hundred hours with a tutor simply costs much more than a hundred hours of tv series, even though the effect is likely to be similar.