Examples of Input Only

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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby reineke » Sat Mar 02, 2019 2:04 pm

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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby reineke » Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:36 pm

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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby smallwhite » Mon Mar 04, 2019 1:30 pm

reineke wrote:
In light of all this, why is Patrick being painted as a near failure?

Re: The limits of comprehensible input?
smallwhite wrote:Patrickwilken is probably the most immersed member here - lives in Gemany, [here she lists Patrick's private business] consistent multiple hours of media for multiple years. English native learning Cat II language. If Patrickwilken is still not doing that great then it seems to me relying on comprehensive input to learn anything but sister languages is unrealistic and infeasible.


... and Patrick's success is being whittled down to failure.


I haven't been following this thread but Reineke's saying I painted Patrick as failure and near failure is just horrible. My description of Patrick "not doing that great" - far from "failure" - was a quick summary immediately following Patrick's own post in which he described himself as -

- "I still find reading books a bit of a slog..."
- "My sentence structure is not standard German..."
- "I think to a large extent I just need to do a ton more Comprehensible Input to..."

so still "a ton" of input away from his goal. Patrick's post here.

Reineke has become the reason I will read LLorg regularly no matter how busy I am.
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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Mar 04, 2019 1:50 pm

smallwhite wrote:
reineke wrote:
In light of all this, why is Patrick being painted as a near failure?

Re: The limits of comprehensible input?
smallwhite wrote:Patrickwilken is probably the most immersed member here - lives in Gemany, [here she lists Patrick's private business] consistent multiple hours of media for multiple years. English native learning Cat II language. If Patrickwilken is still not doing that great then it seems to me relying on comprehensive input to learn anything but sister languages is unrealistic and infeasible.


... and Patrick's success is being whittled down to failure.


I haven't been following this thread but Reineke's saying I painted Patrick as failure and near failure is just horrible. My description of Patrick "not doing that great" - far from "failure" - was a quick summary immediately following Patrick's own post in which he described himself as -

- "I still find reading books a bit of a slog..."
- "My sentence structure is not standard German..."
- "I think to a large extent I just need to do a ton more Comprehensible Input to..."

so still "a ton" of input away from his goal. Patrick's post here.

Reineke has become the reason I will read LLorg regularly no matter how busy I am.


But was he really "not doing that great"?

Patrick notes:
patrickwilken wrote:I think people are misreading what I said a bit. I am (admittedly self assessed) at C1 for reading and listening in German. So CI worked really well for me. The last time I looked a couple of years ago I had a knowledge of at least 10000 words in German, but that just doesn't equate to knowing all the words on a page. There are still lots of gaps as soon as you start reading serious newspapers or books, though I can still read and understand these things without a dictionary.


So despite the issues he states he has, he also states a C1 proficiency, a huge vocabulary knowledge base and not issue in understanding of films or newspapers. All in 5 years.

If you take him for his word for achieving C1 in 5 years, that's doing pretty damn good.
(Still, personally I'm not going to "buy" a CI input only approach, than you very much.)

It's funny how subjective success is - with "not doing that great", I'd be really happy with. I think part of the issue is the words he uses from post to post to either complain about his weaknesses vs communicating his success - we only see part of the picture.

Also, and this is my concern with CI methods - if I focus much less on output then I'm going to build less output.
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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby reineke » Mon Mar 04, 2019 6:05 pm

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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby Tristano » Mon Mar 04, 2019 9:02 pm

golyplot wrote:You can add me to the list of people who study almost exclusively through input. Of course, that's partly a matter of expediency, because it is a lot easier to watch TV than to do anything which requires actual effort.


I'm an example, even though you are probably looking for someone more accomplished than me.
I don't use the TV method. I rather use translation and srs (memrise, clozemaster) to kickstart a language and move on reading extensively.

At that point my production sucks but gets very soon better, if explicitly trained. The languages I can't speak are also the ones I forgot the fastest, even if i can read in that language. For me an example is Romanian: I can still understand a good deal but can't recall anything that is not dragostea dintei or mamaliga. (Ok, yes, buna ziua)

I found that training production has a positive effect in enhancing recall and listening comprehension.
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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby garyb » Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:23 am

reineke wrote:
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
garyb wrote:Maybe being too invested in one learning philosophy is a language learning weakness? I remember a poster on the old forum (whose name I forget) who was determined to stick to the input method: avoiding speaking German whenever possible despite living in Berlin with a German wife, and steadfastly refusing to study grammar even though he admitted his grammar was a major weak point. He was very frank about his results, and eventually admitted what most of us know: input gets you quite far but most learners need other work on top of it in order to become a competent speaker in a reasonable amount of time. He's just one data point of course, but probably the best-documented example we've had of someone persisting with very input-focused learning over several years.


I think that was patrickwilken and his mega thread German: massive input in Berlin. More thoughts about it here: Krashen & some failures for massive input.


Monox D. I-Fly wrote:
garyb wrote:Maybe being too invested in one learning philosophy is a language learning weakness? I remember a poster on the old forum (whose name I forget) who was determined to stick to the input method: avoiding speaking German whenever possible despite living in Berlin with a German wife, and steadfastly refusing to study grammar even though he admitted....


OCD: Any learners' worst enemy


Fair play is sorely lacking here. The thread is entitled "Your language learning weaknesses".


I think it's unfair to quote that without mentioning Patrick's reply and my apology for my over-simplistic interpretation of his method which (as is worth mentioning especially for the purposes of this thread) was input-heavy but certainly not input-only; he never shied away from speaking when he did have the chance, he started with classes, and he admits that reaching C2 likely requires lots of output and feedback.


In general, I just struggle to find any real examples of adults learning from input-only. Plenty people claim to have learnt a language, particularly English, from "just watching TV and films" but when you ask for more details it almost always turns out that there has been some amount of classes, study, conversation, and/or travel involved. These will usually be downplayed with statements like "I didn't start to see real progress until I started watching TV" and even criticisms of their past teachers, and in fairness the number of hours of input are usually orders of magnitude higher than those of the other activities, but with those other variables it makes it impossible to judge the efficacy of just input.
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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Mar 05, 2019 12:09 pm

Tristano wrote:
golyplot wrote:You can add me to the list of people who study almost exclusively through input. Of course, that's partly a matter of expediency, because it is a lot easier to watch TV than to do anything which requires actual effort.


I'm an example, even though you are probably looking for someone more accomplished than me.

....

I found that training production has a positive effect in enhancing recall and listening comprehension.


if you are training production how is this Input Only. As for SRS, are you saying you never pronounce the words you study?
How is SRS input only? You somehow need to output the answer to show you got it right.
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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby Tristano » Tue Mar 05, 2019 12:31 pm

I'm a lazy person so I don't use srs courses where I have to type the answer.
I further study with a long phase of input only, after which I still need to train production if I want to get good at it. With input only I could reach a a2 level at production and b2/c1 at passive skills.

Since I won't need to speak many other languages, I am mostly going to use input only, but if I also desire to speak the language then I don't see the point of not training production at all.
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Re: Examples of Input Only

Postby reineke » Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:08 pm

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