Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Language Researcher: "This Is How Adults Learn Languages" | Dr. Batia Laufer" video.

@a.r.4707 That's my thought. I doubt any Arabic teacher would want to work with a student that is clearly wanting to learn Arabic to take advantage of Arabic speakers. If that's not the motivation, then I'm puzzled as to why they'd be looking for an Arabic speaker that's not Muslim as Islam is by far the most common religious view of speakers of that language. It's like insisting on learning Hebrew, but refusing to learn from anybody Jewish.
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20% is roughly what Krashen recommends. Anybody saying 100% input is completely full of it. It's possible to learn a language like that, but it's offloading a lot of the work to teachers and it's going to take a great deal of time to do. One of the big benefits to an input intensive strategy is that if you like the material and can find material of an appropriate level, it's easier to remain motivated to continue.
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Up to a point, but you hit the point where you don't technically need any more language pretty quickly. Even the newspaper is typically only at a 6th grade level.
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It's not necessarily that hard if you don't mind cracking a book and have a bunch of videos or books that you're interested in. The trick is ignoring all the people that don't know what they're talking about. You shouldn't be studying too much grammar at any time, and ideally, the vocab that you're learning is stuff that's going to be relevant to the use you have for it.
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She's not wrong. You can communicate a lot with just simple 3 word sentences. Grammar is certainly helpful and you don't want to neglect it too much, but it's usually wrong words that trigger misunderstandings, wrong grammar can, but it's far less likely.
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It is, but that's the case with most languages. The thing though is that grammar is useless without vocab and you can pretty much always express a lot with a smaller grammar set than people realize. In any language there are redundancies and different ways of expressing the same idea. And, a bunch of the grammar will be learned from exposure or from the example sentences that people ought to be using when learning vocab.
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@etienneturgeon Um, what? Speaking is one of the most common issues for people to have. Reading and listening are mostly a matter of having the correct vacab for the media you're trying to understand.
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$200 is far too much for flashcards. Especially when ChatGPT can make you a set of flashcards based on whatever text you care to use. Texts that are probably more inline with what you're specifically interested in.
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I see a lot of people saying that on YT lately. But, a more realistic stance is for it to be 20% study and 80% input. Perhaps a bit less, I think Krashen recommends somewhere around 10-20% deliberate study activities.
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@father_saturn That's probably the 2nd least reliable way of learning a language the only thing worse is 100% CI.
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Yep, the good thing there though is that in modern times, it's possible to buy decks of just minimal pairs to train your ears to hear the differences in words that differ by only 1 sound. It's not something that used to be practical, but for most common languages, they do exist and it wouldn't surprise me if they become available eventually for pretty much any language. The main reason why that wasn't the case previously, is that the resources were bad, most of the teachers don't know how to teach it and it's a lot of practice.
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You'd shadow proper pronunciation. If that's not enough, you can get minimal pair decks where the words are just different in one sound. I'm curious how you would address that which isn't input heavy.
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Grammar, definitely not, basic pronunciation is. I definitely didn't have much of a grammar foundation when I was learning Mandarin and that worked out fine. You really don't need more grammar than you can internalize, more than that is just a distraction from learning more vocab and actually going out and interacting with people in the language you're trying to learn, or at least reading books and watching videos.
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@1mikon I'd say definitely not, it's important, but it's hardly so important as to be on par with pronunciation. Far too many people can communicate with zero grammar for it to e that foundational. It's less than ideal to not know any grammar, but it's hardly mandatory if you don't need to communicate efficiently.
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There's certainly some, but barring an actual intellectual disability, most people that are willing to put in enough effort can learn to fluency 3-7 languages. Probably not native-like fluency, but enough that they can handle most circumstances without any real issue. The real limitation tends to be in the maintenance. Learning a language is one thing, but maintaining it is a lot of work if you don't have time to regularly use it.
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It certainly happens, that's basically the only way to live in a country for decades and be incapable of speaking the local language well enough to go about your business. Part of why that happens in the US, is that we provide interpreters for far too many things. It's one thing to talk about interpreters for medical appointments and immigration services, but most of the rest of the time it's not helpful. I moved to China for a couple years and I was able to work through most of it fairly quickly. Sure, there was a bunch of stuff where I still needed help, but for the basic daily living stuff, I could manage on my own pretty quickly.
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@Alec72HD I don't think the racist policies they have in France where there are areas with unemployment rates well into the double digits are a model to copy.
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@Alec72HD Most developed countries don't have massive slums the way that France does, nor do they set a national standard for how the language is spoken.
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That's not a real problem. The only time that might be an issue is if you never actually expose yourself to the language or use it with other people. I'm not aware of anybody that learns languages through textbooks and doesn't ever read or otherwise use the language outside of that context.
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@Reflektor-o2c It's a made up problem that people don't have. The only way that happens is if you're avoiding coming into contact with the language outside of language books. And if that's the case, then it doesn't really matter. Personally, I do just fine in the languages that I know. There's always more to learn if you want to, but I can already use the languages to travel.
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@PsychoLingo CI wouldn't, if you want accent free, you need to specifically study the sounds so you hear them. Minimal pair decks with words that are just off by a single sound are how you develop the ability to hear the difference. And, then you have to spend a bunch of time actually working on accent reduction. I don't personally recommend people go too hard on that unless they are young enough to still have time to learn the cultural norms because without an accent, you're expected to behave like a native speaker.
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