Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Nov 27, 2018 6:56 pm

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.
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby SGP » Tue Nov 27, 2018 7:05 pm

Cavesa wrote: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.
Tried it a very long time ago with a certain language, and my experience was what you described.

Cavesa wrote:But from the intermediate level on, it is massive listening, the way I improve my speaking fluidity, along with grammar practice.
As for me, not doing the usual textbook exercises. But some thinking in the language instead (thus applying grammar).

Cavesa wrote: The conjugations are the most common fluidity obstacle for the romance language learners, from what I've been observing for 20 years.
I am not at all disagreeing. That's why I took a closer look at the Spanish verb haber. Because of its Work-Around Function.
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby leosmith » Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:50 pm

Valddu wrote:Has anyone attempted something like this before?

I have not, but since you said output instead of conversation, you may be interested in Clugston's volume method.
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby munyag » Sat Mar 06, 2021 2:44 pm

@Stringerbell-How did your output experiment work when your in-laws were around?
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby jmar257 » Sat Mar 06, 2021 5:07 pm

SGP wrote:
Valddu wrote:I haven’t been able to find anything from Krashen that really explains this switch from lots of input to being able to speak so any advice would be great.
As they say about so many things, "It's ready when it's ready".

I definitely feel like I hit a point with Spanish not too long ago like this, where reading is easy enough that it bores me sometimes if I'm looking for a challenge (even if the book itself is interesting). I've done a lot more talking to myself/thinking in Spanish lately, especially before bed than in the past. Obviously I wouldn't wait doing any kind of output until such a moment, but I definitely feel like a ton of input + a drill-based method (FSI, for me) has me at a point where I should be using the language actively more (although I'm failing at actually executing here). Probably not a coincidence this is in the middle of a Super Challenge.
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby Lisa » Sat Mar 06, 2021 8:19 pm

As an example of what not to do, I waited til I was b1/b2 level in vocabulary, grammar and reading, and A2 in listening, before I attempted speech production (or more than trivial writing). While my pronunciation was okay (from repeating anki words), my ability to string words into sentences to answer a question... well, it felt like a train wreck. I had been aloud speaking to myself, but it was completely different in front of an audience (italki tutor) where I had to respond to what they were saying... And all the more frustrating and depressing since I "ought" to have been able to speak, I knew the words and grammar.
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby Kraut » Sat Mar 06, 2021 9:24 pm

Let's call bidirectional translation a method by which you create deep-learned input and a strong connection between the mental image/meaning and the written Spanish word/chunk/expression.
After doing this back or reverse translation for a while I create an audio file of my translation into L1.
I listen to the Audio (one sentence, two or three .. it depends) - concentrating on the mental image/the situation- and translate loudly into Spanish, you can call this "consecutive translation". If I want I check back in the Spanish text.
Doing this I get a prompt, much like in a real conversation, I have to maintain a high level of concentration, a strong connection to the mental image - and this is what "calibrates" the brain to apply the newly-learnt for similar situations - for what they call transfer in language learning.
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby lingzz_langzz » Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:44 pm

Valddu wrote:This year I got very serious about learning my L2, and after reading through these forums and learning about “comprehensible input” I’ve been trying to focus heavily on exposing myself to the language through podcasts, books, and videos. I still maintained about 2-3 iTalki lessons a week to keep my speaking up, but the bulk of my learning has been though input, shadowing, and using an SRS system. My vocabulary has definitely improved and I can understand more and more of what I hear without subtitles (I’m trying to avoid them at this point). I’m hoping that within a year from now my comprehension will be at the point that I can easily understand native materials.

At that point I was thinking of switching from lots of input to lots out of output. I can’t do an immersion trip unfortunately, but I think I could do something where I schedule 1-2 hours of iTalki per day. Possibly more during the weekend. Has anyone attempted something like this before? A study diet heavy on input and then a transition towards lots of output to try to develop fluency and activate your knowledge of the language? How did that go for you?

I haven’t been able to find anything from Krashen that really explains this switch from lots of input to being able to speak so any advice would be great.



Hi Valddu!

I'm finnishing now my one-month challenge with French, that is: speak everyday for at least 30 minutes. I'm finishing next Monday but I have some conclusions already.

But first, a little bit of background:
my French is basic. I speak Spanish and Catalan so I don't have problems understanding the written forms. However, I've never really studied French (and I'm not going to) so I just wanted to use the language.

Now, I know a month it's nothing comparing to how much you could get in a country but I think it can already demonstrate you some things.

For me:

- it all depends on your level; I'm beginner in French so it helped really to distinguish words and my pronunciation improved, that's for sure. I am not sure I've learned so many words but that might be due to the fact that I'm just using them, not learning. So yeah, maybe I use more words right now however I wouldn't say it helped me speak MUCH better. I didn't expect that either but here's another thing:
- you cannot just speak for x minutes per day during one month and do nothing else. It might sound obvious but it's definitely important especially if you're a beginner. My teacher talks to me but he also walks me through some grammar so that we can practice pronunciation and so on but I haven't done much more than this. So it's definitely a complementary method for beginners, not the main one.

Then at more advanced level, I'm not even sure how much of this you need it as at the intermediate level you can already kinda communicate and you will just suck in any form of your TL language. So unless you choose really specific topics or register, it might not be that worth in my opinion.

However, for beginner levels, I think it's an awesome way of learning if you already speak a similar language or if you have bases of your TL and you want to make speaking X a daily thing. This is actually something that matters the most in this. Make this language normal to your reality. Integrate it in your life and this is already a huge step. The rest of the progress could be materials, methods and other things but the fact that you are not surprised by yourself speaking French is the key, imho.

Kuba
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Re: Has anyone gone from massive input to massive output?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:24 pm

I don't know about anyone else here, but I tend to lose the complete memory of the actual point of reaching some sort of fluency. I can't, for example, actually remember the point when I managed to get roughly conversational in German. I know it happened and I sort of vaguely remember the period. If I think really hard about it I see that it wasn't really that quick, but increased over a good 9 months or so when I was among native German speakers. But only after doing courses, studying at home, watching TV, listening to music etc. And only to a certain level.

I say this because recently, during the 2nd Covid lockdown, I was clearing out excess paper (so much of it!) and I happened upon a pile of exercise books from when I was preparing to sit the Dutch staatsexamen. The good old days of pen and paper. Flicking through them I was surprised at some of the word lists and set phrases I'd written down. From my current perspective they seem so obvious now I've used them hundreds (thousands) of times. There are points of grammar written there that are now second-nature. Yet clearly not long after I wrote them (just a matter of months) I was talking to people and doing things in that language. Mostly by force of circumstance because my wife was in hospital and I had to catch the bus, do all the shopping, phone the hospital and the cable TV company to get the signal back on and on and on. I can tell from notes and draft letters that it wasn't at all perfect, nowhere near, but I managed it. Another two years after and I was pretty much at ease, still with little mistakes. It happens over time and you don't really have time to asses it.

I don't remember doing really massive input programmes for either Dutch or for French and certainly not drills, lists and memorisation; mainly just time and persistence. The accumulation of doing one thing after another via those mediums, accumulating words and turns of phrase in encounters, from TV from books, from listening-in to conversations on the bus; getting ideas and snippets of history and culture. Can it really ever be something you acquire in a sort of algorithm-led intense programme? It's why I cast doubt upon the 6-8 hour a day for 3 months intense plans to 'fluency'. Even the ones like Mr Three Months going off to live in his target language country to 'master' the language. You don't master it in that time and there's a difference between the two because when you learn to 'get by' there seems to be a sort of unsteadiness to the language, like that plates on sticks trick where you have to keep them spinning otherwise it all collapses around you. Whereas when the foundations are laid deep, slowly and with care it can withstand some neglect and it's all more solid and sure.

I've rambled a bit, but to sum up: yes I think it is necessary to get a lot of listening practise in because you need to understand things first. However I think rdearman is completely correct that you only get good at speaking by speaking; which means also drawing on your store of knowledge from listening. There's a difference between collecting tools and understanding them and actually using them. Just like actually swimming is different from learning about swimming or knowing the technical details of swimming. You need it all.
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