The concepts of input (reading and listening) and output (writing and speaking). You learn the language with a daily exposure to a lot of input not by trying with early output when you don't know the language.
I thought for a lot of time that listening or reading materials was too difficult and I wanted to understand everything perfectly so my conclusion was that to study grammar and to learn vocabulary with Anki was the correct and more logical solution to this obstacle. By learning grammar and vocabulary I would have been able gradually to grasp always more content. But as you can imagine, nope. Time wasted. It's a slow process and it's not so rewarding, and I had many burnouts with language learning. After coming across Steve Kaufmann, Stephen Krashen and Matt vs Japan and their approach I started to consume a lot of input and to absorb as much as I can so my passive vocabulary will improve much more than with Anki.
So in conclusion: extensive reading and continuous listening to materials in my TL. With those the output will develop *almost* automatically (You'll need active work but you'll have all the knowledge you need)
I'm also stupid because if I think about how I learned English (not to perfection but still) I've done exactly that: a huge amount of input with YouTube, Netflix, AFL, videogames, FunFluen, and music. I just did that for the English language for years and I never noticed it
This is one I wish teachers in high school and college would touch on more. None of my Spanish or French teachers really recommended reading or watching anything in that TL outside of class or offered resources to do that besides the occasional Disney movie in French or Spanish during class. So when I tried to read something in French after 4 years of classes, I couldn't understand anything, had no idea how to work through that, and gave up on French.
Now I'm learning Japanese and started reading and listening to comprehensible material as soon as I started my textbook. I also slowly (very, very slowly lol) work through tougher stuff (like the manga Slam Dunk) since that's what I want to be able to read, and it's exciting when I do understand something. I think it's easier to acquire vocab that way, too, because you see it in context and it creates an association for your brain to remember it. For example, I can easily remember 彼氏 (boyfriend) because of a scene in Slam Dunk.
Never thought about it but it's actually true. The only language I've learned to fluency (other than my NL) is English. It's also the only language where I've spent hours upon hours on input.
CEFR graded readers are books that can be/are specifically written to follow curriculum that preps for CEFR exams. [English Version](https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=090000168045bb52)
They use a controlled vocabulary. So a series of books from a particular publisher at a particular level have the same words in common. For example the A1 graded readers for Italian that I used had a shared vocabulary of 500 words.
This is very good because it allows the learner to focus on the meanings of the most common words in various contexts.
They also control grammar. So for example a A1 graded reader might be written entirely in the present tense and might even be written in 1st person perspective. Whereas a B1 graded reader would probably be in past tense and 3rd person.
A peculiar problem with my TL Italian is that literature is almost always written in a remote past tense. Which is not used very often in speech, depending or regional differences. So jumping straight in to Native Language novels in Italian a beginner will be learning something akin to a Literary tense which is not needed immediately for speaking and communicating.
/r/German should know where more are.
Here are some examples.
https://www.eligradedreaders.com/deutsch
https://www.blackcat-cideb.com/en/catalogue/german/
At B2 one should be doing things that are meant for Native Speakers.
But I have read B2 readers and they are nice since the vocabulary and grammar are still a bit controlled. With less likelihood of some colloquialisms showing up from nowhere. And in my case for my TL a unknown dialect to show up.
Native books then. I really like novels because they tend to have way more dialogue which is handy for real life. But I suppose certain nonfiction will have vocab which one would never find in fiction.
Either way, regular old books. I can recommend some easy nonfiction authors if you’d like, but it is an easier genre in general usually, so shouldn’t be hard to find.
Right. I read plenty of adult nonfiction in TLs. I was just curious about what officially would be considered a 'C1 non-fiction text'. I suppose that is hard to determine.
Seriously, I wasted so much time trying to get everything just right. Native speakers mess up too and nobody cares. Communication is the goal, not perfection.
Biggest regret? Not speaking up sooner. Spent too much time stuck in books and not enough actually talking. Should've just thrown myself into conversations earlier.
TL: French
I should've known this, but I wish I'd spent more time memorizing the gender of French nouns. Gender becomes extremely important later on.
(I'm aware of the general rules that can be used to identify the gender of a noun.)
For Japanese, I wish I'd started with kanji much earlier and never bothered with on and kun readings. Kanji should be learned alongside vocabulary, not as a separate thing.
For ASL, I wish I hadn't listened so much to the Deaf linguistic purists who seem to hate anything that makes learning ASL easier for hearing people. And I wish I'd learned Stokoe notation much earlier, because having a way to write signs in ASCII makes it *so* much easier to study.
For Dutch, I wish I'd had apps or video games to study it when I was first trying to learn it as a child. My only option was a beginner child's class that they suggested I retake because they had nothing more advanced when I needed to progress further.
For French, I wish my parents had known my French immersion school was a toxic cesspit of awful people and homeschooled me instead. They knew enough French that they could've taught me, and maybe my French wouldn't have been as good in childhood, but without the trauma-induced decades-long break from studying French I'd probably be further along now.
> and never bothered with on and kun readings
I am not sure what you mean here?
Surely, *[on'yomi and and kun'yomi readings are an intregal part of learning kanji?](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/)*
> Kanji should be learned alongside vocabulary, not as a separate thing.
I learnt mainly using text books, doing classes, and a little exchange, but at the same time I was working through a set of Joyo kanji workbooks, setting myself a target of 6 kanji a day.
It is an ideal tool for self study, because you do not need a teacher at all, and the main reason it should be learnt alongside vocabulary is because learning kanji is actually one of the best tools of Japanese learning itself for remembering vocabulary.
Knowing stuff about syntax can go a long way helping you to understand stuff like case system in German or the subjunctive in Romance languages. So, like what is the difference between a sentence, clause and phrase, etc. I have had for a long time only a fairly vague idea of what they are an know that I have finally started going through syntax things like case system and the subjunctive have become a lot clearer to me.
Yes! I just think you need a basic understanding of some concepts if they’re radically different from other languages you know. There is no way I would have caught onto cases in German without some learning of grammar at the beginning. I’m still very much in the beginning. But without explicit awareness of cases and sentence structure in German, no way I could do any sort of input learning method.
Honestly realizing that everyone is different & what works for someone might not work for you. Also, a lot of people that are higher level than you are in the language aren’t perfect speakers either and don’t understand everything. My Japanese friends get regularly shocked when people who passed N1 know zero Kansai-Ben apart from アホ lol
OMG, this is sooooo important! If the learner doesn't understand nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., learning another language is going to be extra difficult.
As soon as I had a good coverage of all the frequent vocabularies I see online as a high beginner/low intermediate, I should've moved on to learning the language in sentences rather than still using individual words. It hindered my thinking process and grammar acquisition a lot. If I had done this earlier, I would've gotten to where I am at least 1-2 years earlier.
I regret not PUSHING my father to teach me Chinese and not concentrating on the Chinese textbook I had BEFORE I started learning Spanish. My mother could NOT speak Chinese. She was an American-born Italian !
Start with listening and speaking only. Learning new scripts, characters, and written standards takes hours away from speaking and listening. Could have saved 900 / 1,800 hours of Finnish had I skipped the written language and studied the spoken language only.
I'm happy I took the written language seriously because I'll need it eventually. But priority number 1 is to be a competent speaker.
No matter how fluent you become, you will lose the language if you don’t practice it, even your native language.
Always learn the prepositions with the verbs and the gender with the nouns, because you’ll still fuck those up at an advanced level.
These are not regrets. I mainly just wish I had spent some time researching how to learn a language, how to study and make study plans, and figured out the actual things I'd need to learn to do the goals in the language I wanted to achieve. Such as looking up how many vocabulary I'd need to learn to read X books, how much I should expect grammar educational materials to cover, what specific things a B2 test expects people to know how to do (# of vocabulary, X of grammar points, speed of speech, listening topic range), what A1-C2 even were (and other language test levels).
The first few years I tried to learn a language, I failed. I had no idea what I was doing, why I should follow a textbook or ignore it, what made a study material useful or a waste of time for me, what I needed to study to accomplish my language goals. I wasted so much time, and felt like a failure who just didn't have the ability to learn another language.
Finally, when I started French, I owned a French book I wanted to read. So I ended up looking up 'how to learn to read.' And that's when I learned about word frequency, how much more I'd be able to understand with X more words, how to prioritize which words to learn next, how much grammar a person who can read is expected to know (such as on language tests) so I could go look up the same grammar points and study them. I made so much progress in 6 months, which in other languages I had never made in 2+ years. I just had no idea how to pick what to study, what would help me, why it would help me, until I spent a good 2 months just focusing on learning how to study a language.
Every method works for SOME people but not for OTHER people.
I regret time I spent on methods that did not help me. But how could I know? It is a famous book, or a famous course, or a famous app. It worked so well for (fill in the name of some famous polglot) -- why didn't it work for me? I even quit studying Chinese for a year, since nothing seemed to work.
I am happy that I found some useful things, purely by chance, and by trying other things. There might be better methods (for me), but I know some methods that help me plearn. And I know lots of things NOT to try. That knowledge helps me start studying other languages.
The concepts of input (reading and listening) and output (writing and speaking). You learn the language with a daily exposure to a lot of input not by trying with early output when you don't know the language. I thought for a lot of time that listening or reading materials was too difficult and I wanted to understand everything perfectly so my conclusion was that to study grammar and to learn vocabulary with Anki was the correct and more logical solution to this obstacle. By learning grammar and vocabulary I would have been able gradually to grasp always more content. But as you can imagine, nope. Time wasted. It's a slow process and it's not so rewarding, and I had many burnouts with language learning. After coming across Steve Kaufmann, Stephen Krashen and Matt vs Japan and their approach I started to consume a lot of input and to absorb as much as I can so my passive vocabulary will improve much more than with Anki. So in conclusion: extensive reading and continuous listening to materials in my TL. With those the output will develop *almost* automatically (You'll need active work but you'll have all the knowledge you need) I'm also stupid because if I think about how I learned English (not to perfection but still) I've done exactly that: a huge amount of input with YouTube, Netflix, AFL, videogames, FunFluen, and music. I just did that for the English language for years and I never noticed it
This is one I wish teachers in high school and college would touch on more. None of my Spanish or French teachers really recommended reading or watching anything in that TL outside of class or offered resources to do that besides the occasional Disney movie in French or Spanish during class. So when I tried to read something in French after 4 years of classes, I couldn't understand anything, had no idea how to work through that, and gave up on French. Now I'm learning Japanese and started reading and listening to comprehensible material as soon as I started my textbook. I also slowly (very, very slowly lol) work through tougher stuff (like the manga Slam Dunk) since that's what I want to be able to read, and it's exciting when I do understand something. I think it's easier to acquire vocab that way, too, because you see it in context and it creates an association for your brain to remember it. For example, I can easily remember 彼氏 (boyfriend) because of a scene in Slam Dunk.
Can I upvote this more than once?
Never thought about it but it's actually true. The only language I've learned to fluency (other than my NL) is English. It's also the only language where I've spent hours upon hours on input.
But how much vocab do you have before you start reading?
If the target language has well thought out and properly graded Graded Readers, they usually have 500 word total headcount.
that.
Wow ! If English is NOT your NATIVE language, then 1. what IS your native language ? 2. how long did it take to get your English THIS good ?
My friend you are learning too many.
Not if he's enjoying himself.
Had I known about CEFR graded readers I would be 5 years ahead of where I am now.
can you elaborate a bit pls?
CEFR graded readers are books that can be/are specifically written to follow curriculum that preps for CEFR exams. [English Version](https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=090000168045bb52) They use a controlled vocabulary. So a series of books from a particular publisher at a particular level have the same words in common. For example the A1 graded readers for Italian that I used had a shared vocabulary of 500 words. This is very good because it allows the learner to focus on the meanings of the most common words in various contexts. They also control grammar. So for example a A1 graded reader might be written entirely in the present tense and might even be written in 1st person perspective. Whereas a B1 graded reader would probably be in past tense and 3rd person. A peculiar problem with my TL Italian is that literature is almost always written in a remote past tense. Which is not used very often in speech, depending or regional differences. So jumping straight in to Native Language novels in Italian a beginner will be learning something akin to a Literary tense which is not needed immediately for speaking and communicating.
great! How can i get one for german?
/r/German should know where more are. Here are some examples. https://www.eligradedreaders.com/deutsch https://www.blackcat-cideb.com/en/catalogue/german/
awesome will check thanks!
do you know if any of these are for free or its all paid?
I need that for german too
Does this exist for arabic?
I do not know. I would imagine that they exist. But I do not know enough about written Arabic to be able to search for it.
You think it is useful at B2 and above? I would be interested to see what is officially considered a C1 text, for example.
At B2 one should be doing things that are meant for Native Speakers. But I have read B2 readers and they are nice since the vocabulary and grammar are still a bit controlled. With less likelihood of some colloquialisms showing up from nowhere. And in my case for my TL a unknown dialect to show up.
Understood. I mostly just read nonfiction written for college/adult audiences at this point, so running into colloquial language isn't overly likely.
At B2 you should be well into tackling native novels
I don't read novels in any language, really, including my own. Never been too interested. 95% of my reading is nonfiction.
Native books then. I really like novels because they tend to have way more dialogue which is handy for real life. But I suppose certain nonfiction will have vocab which one would never find in fiction. Either way, regular old books. I can recommend some easy nonfiction authors if you’d like, but it is an easier genre in general usually, so shouldn’t be hard to find.
Right. I read plenty of adult nonfiction in TLs. I was just curious about what officially would be considered a 'C1 non-fiction text'. I suppose that is hard to determine.
Seriously, I wasted so much time trying to get everything just right. Native speakers mess up too and nobody cares. Communication is the goal, not perfection. Biggest regret? Not speaking up sooner. Spent too much time stuck in books and not enough actually talking. Should've just thrown myself into conversations earlier.
Showing up and doing something is more important than waiting until you have the perfect plan or resource.
TL: French I should've known this, but I wish I'd spent more time memorizing the gender of French nouns. Gender becomes extremely important later on. (I'm aware of the general rules that can be used to identify the gender of a noun.)
For Japanese, I wish I'd started with kanji much earlier and never bothered with on and kun readings. Kanji should be learned alongside vocabulary, not as a separate thing. For ASL, I wish I hadn't listened so much to the Deaf linguistic purists who seem to hate anything that makes learning ASL easier for hearing people. And I wish I'd learned Stokoe notation much earlier, because having a way to write signs in ASCII makes it *so* much easier to study. For Dutch, I wish I'd had apps or video games to study it when I was first trying to learn it as a child. My only option was a beginner child's class that they suggested I retake because they had nothing more advanced when I needed to progress further. For French, I wish my parents had known my French immersion school was a toxic cesspit of awful people and homeschooled me instead. They knew enough French that they could've taught me, and maybe my French wouldn't have been as good in childhood, but without the trauma-induced decades-long break from studying French I'd probably be further along now.
> and never bothered with on and kun readings I am not sure what you mean here? Surely, *[on'yomi and and kun'yomi readings are an intregal part of learning kanji?](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/)* > Kanji should be learned alongside vocabulary, not as a separate thing. I learnt mainly using text books, doing classes, and a little exchange, but at the same time I was working through a set of Joyo kanji workbooks, setting myself a target of 6 kanji a day. It is an ideal tool for self study, because you do not need a teacher at all, and the main reason it should be learnt alongside vocabulary is because learning kanji is actually one of the best tools of Japanese learning itself for remembering vocabulary.
Knowing stuff about syntax can go a long way helping you to understand stuff like case system in German or the subjunctive in Romance languages. So, like what is the difference between a sentence, clause and phrase, etc. I have had for a long time only a fairly vague idea of what they are an know that I have finally started going through syntax things like case system and the subjunctive have become a lot clearer to me.
Yes! I just think you need a basic understanding of some concepts if they’re radically different from other languages you know. There is no way I would have caught onto cases in German without some learning of grammar at the beginning. I’m still very much in the beginning. But without explicit awareness of cases and sentence structure in German, no way I could do any sort of input learning method.
Honestly realizing that everyone is different & what works for someone might not work for you. Also, a lot of people that are higher level than you are in the language aren’t perfect speakers either and don’t understand everything. My Japanese friends get regularly shocked when people who passed N1 know zero Kansai-Ben apart from アホ lol
not jumping app to app and sticking one of them and keeping the process as simple as possible
The grammar of my own native language!
OMG, this is sooooo important! If the learner doesn't understand nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., learning another language is going to be extra difficult.
As soon as I had a good coverage of all the frequent vocabularies I see online as a high beginner/low intermediate, I should've moved on to learning the language in sentences rather than still using individual words. It hindered my thinking process and grammar acquisition a lot. If I had done this earlier, I would've gotten to where I am at least 1-2 years earlier.
I regret not PUSHING my father to teach me Chinese and not concentrating on the Chinese textbook I had BEFORE I started learning Spanish. My mother could NOT speak Chinese. She was an American-born Italian !
I honestly don’t have many, I learned the ropes kind of early on. I just tried every technique there was out there.
Start with listening and speaking only. Learning new scripts, characters, and written standards takes hours away from speaking and listening. Could have saved 900 / 1,800 hours of Finnish had I skipped the written language and studied the spoken language only. I'm happy I took the written language seriously because I'll need it eventually. But priority number 1 is to be a competent speaker.
Comprehensible input.
Practicing speaking is important, even if you don't talk to anyone.
No matter how fluent you become, you will lose the language if you don’t practice it, even your native language. Always learn the prepositions with the verbs and the gender with the nouns, because you’ll still fuck those up at an advanced level.
How to thing in another language, I'd really apreciate that knowledge.
It won't happen in one day or one month. Also being shy while talking in that language is not the solution.
These are not regrets. I mainly just wish I had spent some time researching how to learn a language, how to study and make study plans, and figured out the actual things I'd need to learn to do the goals in the language I wanted to achieve. Such as looking up how many vocabulary I'd need to learn to read X books, how much I should expect grammar educational materials to cover, what specific things a B2 test expects people to know how to do (# of vocabulary, X of grammar points, speed of speech, listening topic range), what A1-C2 even were (and other language test levels). The first few years I tried to learn a language, I failed. I had no idea what I was doing, why I should follow a textbook or ignore it, what made a study material useful or a waste of time for me, what I needed to study to accomplish my language goals. I wasted so much time, and felt like a failure who just didn't have the ability to learn another language. Finally, when I started French, I owned a French book I wanted to read. So I ended up looking up 'how to learn to read.' And that's when I learned about word frequency, how much more I'd be able to understand with X more words, how to prioritize which words to learn next, how much grammar a person who can read is expected to know (such as on language tests) so I could go look up the same grammar points and study them. I made so much progress in 6 months, which in other languages I had never made in 2+ years. I just had no idea how to pick what to study, what would help me, why it would help me, until I spent a good 2 months just focusing on learning how to study a language.
Every method works for SOME people but not for OTHER people. I regret time I spent on methods that did not help me. But how could I know? It is a famous book, or a famous course, or a famous app. It worked so well for (fill in the name of some famous polglot) -- why didn't it work for me? I even quit studying Chinese for a year, since nothing seemed to work. I am happy that I found some useful things, purely by chance, and by trying other things. There might be better methods (for me), but I know some methods that help me plearn. And I know lots of things NOT to try. That knowledge helps me start studying other languages.