The Immersion Delusion
kimojima

It's a strawman argument, no question about it.
No rational person is saying that listening is a one-stop shop.
Listening DOES provide incredible potential and the building blocks/raw materials to speak but doesn't guarantee the listener will become a phenomenal speaker. You still have to put in the time having conversations to develop that skill.
I've seen similar arguments in the gym. People who don't do deadlifts or squats use the excuse that just doing squats or deadlifts won't lead to the gains they want, so they don't do either of them.
Who said to just do squats or deadlifts? Do them plus other high-yield exercises!
Here's another: Language apps and word/sentence SRS apps by themselves won't make you fluent. So, they are a complete waste of time to use at any stage of the language learning process and for any length of time. Umm, okay.
Nobody said listening was a standalone cure-all.
But it's an insanely important skill to develop; don't ignore it!
If I can't find one activity by itself that makes me completely fluent and completely literate I won't do any of them and you can't make me; nanny nanny boo boo!
Michilini

Which argument is a straw man argument? Are you referring to the content of my blogpost? I’m not sure what makes you think I devalue the importance of listening if you’ve read the post.
subsandwich

Who are you referring to when you say that there is an extreme school of thought that claims immersion is the only necessary component? Who advocates this?
PeterBormann

Maybe the early Khatz (from AJATT), but I've never heard anyone claim that we shouldn't speak at all. That doesn't make any sense.
As I wrote in another comment, the question is rather
"outputting earlier or later" (and how "late" is late?)
On the one hand, I don't think it matters if you want to master all four language skills.
On the other hand, "hyperfocusing on conversational fluency", as Toby would say, has definitely its merits. That is, achieving conversational fluency early on can be a huge motivational boost, esp. for inexperienced language learners. For experienced language learners, it's probably less interesting.
Michilini

This is too widespread blame on individuals. There are large numbers of people online I come across all the time who believe all they have to do is sit and immerse and the speaking part will come easily and quickly when they start outputting months or years down the line.
If you doubt this scroll down to the comments below by @ who writes "I totally agree at this point that immersion alone won't get a person to outputting." The use of the words "at this point" suggests at a previous point this learner had to some degree fallen for the immersion delusion - as many learners (including msyelf) have also done.
This is often due to misreadings of what influencers they follow actually think about language learning. For example, when asked by Olly Richards what the biggest misconception people had about him was, Matt Vs Japan answered that many people believed the transition from input to output happened overnight as if by magic when in fact it didn't. Matt also covered this when I interviewed him for my podcast.
PeterBormann

"Matt Vs Japan answered that many people believed the transition from input to output happened overnight".
Digesting lots of compelling and comprehensible content definitely reduces the "collocation problem" that many L2 learners face.
In other words. when they spend hundreds or thousands of hours inputting, they get a pretty good sense of what correct L2 sentences should sound and look like!
This also means that they'll find speaking much easier than learners who start speaking earlier.
However, if they don't practice speaking, they will sink much faster than the Titanic in a fast-paced conversation with native speakers.
And if the avoidance of speaking is based on psychological issues (e.g., shyness, perfectionism, etc.), then more and more and more ... input will never be enough to solve the underlying problem (that's just a typical case of "avoidance behavior"!).
Re "the immersion delusion - as many learners (including msyelf) have also done."
Sorry, mate, I can't resist:
If you had read more SLA research then you would have known that Krashen's ideas are highly contested :-)
Apart from that, the "speaking first / early" approach is neither revolutionary nor new. Benny, for example, has been preaching it online for almost 15 years :-)
And, finally, there are "no enemies" here (esp. not Krashen!)...
Nice Sunday to y'all
Peter out
PeterBormann

@Michilini
"the immersion delusion" is a bit more complicated, IMO:
1) "Early outputting", esp. in schools, often fails to this day (!) because students simply don't have enough exposure to their L2. Therefore, they tend to translate from their L1 into their L2 and form sentences that are semantically "off".
To be more precise, these students tend to create word combinations that often sound unnatural because they don't know the highly conventionalized ("formulaic") word groups (esp. "collocations" and, to a lesser extent, "idioms") that native speakers use when they communicate.
2) The solution to this problem were input-heavy approaches (based esp. on Krashen) such as Antimoon, AJATT, Mass Immersion Approach (MIA), or Refold.
Main advantage:
Adopting an input-heavy approach will definitely improve the learners' non-conscious knowledge of collocations. So when they have been exposed to the language for thousands of hours, they will have a good sense of how correct sentences should sound in their L2.
Some problems with such approaches:
- a high risk of burning out.
- the danger of low-quality listening, i.e. listening without much attention (which is rather a waste of time) [see our discussion about "passive" listening on LingQ from a few months ago].
- the conclusion that any early output is "bad", which is nonsense, because the specific problem was "early output without sufficient L2 exposure." However, if learners couple early outputting with enough input and / or with a feedback loop based on deliberate practice à la Will Hart (i.e. saying something -> getting corrections -> repeating the corrected sentence(s) and / or using an explicit SRS for learning these corrections -> rinse and repeat) etc. then "early output" doesn't do any harm. On the contrary, it improves the level of engagement with the L2 compared to relying exclusively on reading and listening activities!
- when heavy input adepts postulate that L2 learning requires a "silent period" similar to that of babies. However, human babies are born too early, so they must mature outside their mother's womb. This isn't the case for teenagers or adults. Therefore, for the latter, a silent period of many months or even years is unnecessary. Instead, they can speak (and sometimes even write) from day 1 of their L2 learning journey while avoiding the pitfall of "early output without sufficient L2 exposure" (see the point mentioned before).
3) The real questions in this context aren't related to "magical thinking" like
- becoming orally fluent by inputting alone and without any speaking practice
or
- (similarly): becoming a good writer by inputting alone and never practicing how to write (well).
Reading, listening, speaking and writing are all "practical skills". So if learners don't practice them, they can't become good at them (however, there are some spillover effects, for example from listening / reading a lot to speaking and writing!).
The real questions are rather:
- Should we output early or later? (and that's not a question of effectiveness - because both approaches work! -, but of efficiency!)
- Which is the right input - output mix depending on the personality of the learner (shyness, etc.) and the language level (beginner - IM - ADV)?
- Should we primarily rely on unconsciousness learning (see, for example, Steve's latest video on how he learns vocabulary based on Krashen's research)?
- Or should we also learn consciously by using artificial SRS, etc., e.g. for non-frequent collocations, important grammar patterns, etc.?
My personal take based on my learning and teaching experience is:
- output as early as possible, but combine it with a lot of input. esp. as "(ultra)reading while listening based on content flexible audio readers (à la LingQ, ReadLang, etc.)".
- combine unconsciousness learning (reading / listening as "natural SRS") with conscious learning (i.e. artificial SRSes à la Anki, Memrise, etc. for the most frequent 1000-5000 words / sentences at the beginning, explicit pronunciation activities à la Idahosa Ness, and, if necessary, "grammar light" approaches à la Michel Thomas, etc.).
So I'm definitely in the "(flexible) hybridization" camp when it comes to learning in general and language learning in particular :-)
Nice WE to you all
Peter
bamboozled

Imho, immersion learning is just a fad.
Reading about immersion learning in Internet forums and listening to gurus on Youtube, has left a rather negative impression on me. There seems to be a lot of fetishizing over big numbers, hero worship, and ostracizing of non-believers. I haven't seen much of value, tbh.
What the proponents of immersion learning fail to prove is, that it is the immersion that makes the difference, and not the 10.000+ hours.
It also remains completely unclear how immersing for x hours results in one's speaking. Where is the logical connection?
Let's get this straight, you painfully avoid doing an activity for years, then, on the day of a blue moon, you wake up and start speaking fluently? That just doesn't add up.
It's probably just me, but I don't get it.
Therefore, I'll treat immersion learning just like Dogecoin, Anki and other schemes. I'll just sit this one out and let everybody else get rich. Too much belief, too many gurus.
Don't mind me, while I wait for the next big thing...
asad100101

I am not sure if it is a fad but there is living proof of Japanese learners who could speak fluent Japanese by following the immersion route.
Michilini

For a while some believed the success of the All Japanese All the Time AJAAT movement would lead to a spin-off ACAAT (All Chinese…) version. But it never happened. Why? One answer is tones. Japanese had pitch accent but you can still reach an excellent level and be understood without it. Without Chinese tones, however, you can’t even get off the ground. There may also differences in terms of the extent to which the grammatical patterns of both languages can be acquired through immersion alone. Either way, I have yet to see AJAAT results replicated for Chinese or, for that matter, european languages.
PeterBormann

"to see AJAAT results replicated for Chinese or, for that matter, european languages."
Before AJATT, there was "Antimoon" (for English, etc.):
https://www.antimoon.com/how/input-howmuch.htm
However, Antimoon also mixes both artificial and natural SRSes..
S.I.

Before AJATT, there was "Antimoon" (for English, etc.):
There the author writes about the "language module" in our brain, just as we have the "face recognition module".
But then he jumps to an implicit (if not explicit) conclusion, that it all boils down to an amount of input.
But it's not that simple. We don't have just one general "language module" across the board. We have different and highly specified neural populations, that responsive, for example, to singing, but not instrumental music or speech etc.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00131-2
(LingQ interrupts with URL of this link. Pls, just copy and past, don't click it)
("the link you absolutely have to see before you're ready to understand my point" :D)
Input would be like a messy database, but not a substitution for the actual skill, when it comes to speaking.
It's like in chess. You'll reach a higher level of skill just playing chess and rarely watching tournaments or reading theory comparing to those who's mostly watching tournaments and reading theory, but almost never played it themselves.
The reason, why we seek for some kind of substitution, is what @asad said. "It is extremely expensive to hire a tutor every day", and sometimes it just isn't realitic for some of us to do what Will have done.
For example, I rather can learn Chinese that way, than English. Because language Exchange "Russian-English" just doesn't work, not so many English natives are interested in learning Russian beyond "Privet kak dela", 95 (actually 100%) are males, interested in dating, not the language exchange.
Chinese people learn Russian for business reasons, at least.
Hiring English tutors for daily intensive practice is expensive, because of the difference of value between Dollar and Ruble. It would be what, like $4.500+ a year? Sure it should be effective for language learning :D It better be!
Some people might have other reasons. It just that there no one size fits all approach.
Our life is a complex thing. All those claims of some young enthusiasts, that they have finally found THE METHOD are at best just marketing for their content on social media, at worst it's just short-sightedness and obsession.
Input is good. Output is good. Vodka, Beer, Bourbon all are good. Girls, boys, cars, airplanes and birds all are good. Searching for what is good FOR EVERYONE usually isn't good. History knows many figures, who knew what is best for everyone. It all starts like this. Today you don't wanna learn languages with input/output, tomorrow you're in the GULAnG somewhere in Siberia.
PeterBormann

"Input is good. Output is good. Vodka, Beer, Bourbon all are good. etc."
Just mix everything together (input, output, vodka, beer, bourbon, girls, cars, etc.) like I do then you never have to worry about "THE METHOD" :-)
BTW, the link doesn't work [is that some secret Russian research for creating the ultimate Soviet brain - sorry, comrade: I couldn't resist :-) - that we in the West aren't allowed to see?]
"An error has occurred
The page or action you requested has resulted in an error. Please go back to the previous page by using your browser's Back button, or visit the .
This page does not exist"
S.I.

Fixed.
Here the link:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00131-2
OMG, I can't even delete this comment, nor can I really fix the link. Zoraaaan!
S.I.

LingQ does something to the link. Try to literally copy/paste that link, don't click
PeterBormann

"Hiring {English] tutors for daily intensive practice is expensive,"
It doesn't have to be. See: https://www.tandem.net/
Nice WE
Peter out
S.I.

It's a dating app
PeterBormann

PS -
Since when is "tandem.net" a dating app?
"With millions of members, Tandem is one of the largest language learning communities out there! With our Tandem app, you can connect with native speakers all over the world and practice languages via text, audio message, and video call. Download Tandem today - it’s free!!"
S.I.

Man, I answered this in the original comment. Free Language Exchange for Russian-English doesn't work. I tried tandem and other exchange apps for half a year and yeild nothing. Just bored dudes waiting for Natashas and Lenas. Well, it works for them, but if I disguise myself as a Russian girl it won't last long enough for fluency to be acquired, as long as I'll start to speak. Also I'll have to shave my beard. And it is something I can't go for :D
noxialisrex

I tried HelloTalk and it felt like a dating app. I think the ideal would be find a good conversation partner/friend and then leave the app. Maybe even one where you have the same TL.
PeterBormann

@S.I.
"Free Language Exchange for Russian-English doesn't work."
I see.
Maybe I should put on a wig, adopt a Russian accent (call me: Petra Petrova), dress up as Rosalia and interview Spaniards about Rosalía on Tandem.
I mean if Rosalía can do it, I can do it :-)
asad100101

@
I think you speak Spanish as a bilingual kid if my memory serves me right. You can evaluate his level in Spanish.
Fluent in Spanish in 10 Months | Matt vs Japan Interviews #9 - Khalifa
PeterBormann

Matt said that Khalifa was a "solid B2".
However, we don't have enough background info to verify that.
1) Matt doesn't speak Spanish (as far as I know) so he can't judge.
2) It's not that hard to practice "an introduction of yourself" and be pretty good at it. That's what Benny has been preaching for years. Therefore, the significance with regard to the actual language level is pretty low.
3) Talking to your tutors isn't a realistic "test" because tutors usually speak quite slow with a very clear pronunciation.
As I wrote before a few times, the "bar / restaurant, etc. test" is a much more realistic test scenario. That is:
- If learners pass the "bar / restaurant, etc. test" (with background noise, contractions, slang, fast-paced conversations, jokes, unclear pronunciation, unpredictable topics coming up, etc. for at least 30-60 minutes) then they're conversationally fluent.
- But if they struggle here, they aren't fluent.
4) B2 depends on the skill dimension:
- Khalifa has been hyperfocusing on "fluency first" choosing the subtitles of YT videos and Netflix shows. Similar to Will, that's an excellent strategy, esp. for inexperienced language learners.
- But he's probably not B2 in reading / writing comprehension. For example, a word count of only 23k words (on LingQ) is way too low to digest Stephen King's "It" without problems. And even with >= 40k words (on LingQ) he would still have problems with "It" (that's my case in Br. Portuguese).
- But a "solid B2" should have no problems with reading / listening to "It".
Anyway, I like the idea of "hyperfocusing on fluency first" more and more (since our in-depth discussion with xxdb). It's definitely a strategy that all language learners should have in their toolboxes!
Thanks for sharing the video, Asad!
Michilini

He's certainly fluent in this video after 10 months: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAQmQfdP9Pg
I have no means of saying whether he's B2 or not. He speaks very well, makes some grammar mistakes as expected, but an extremely impressive level after 10 months.
Pronunciation is good, very clear - more towards Mexican Spanish which I find harder to evaluate than accents from Spain.
Makacenko

I have never practised speaking English. After cca 2 years I am better speaker then friend of mine who practised a lot. Just out of curiosity I started practise speaking Russian which I learn for shorter time. The result is that my Russian is way more horrible than English even if it is very similar to my native language (Czech).
xxdb

LOL that made me laugh.
My spoken French is probably horrible too: I got told I speak French with a Mexican accent.
TofuMeow

Good points!
I totally agree at this point that immersion alone won't get a person to outputting.
I've read & listened to so much content at this point, but can't speak since I've never practiced.
Sometimes I wonder if it's because of how the chinese characters work, there is somewhat a phonetic pattern, but honestly you can read without subvocalizing if you forget the pronunciation (or like when Chinese learners start Japanese, the brain auto subvocalizes familiar kanji in Mandarin). I'm kinda curious if massive reading is more effective for speaking for languages like Spanish, German etc.
Luckily, little to no output doesn't hamper reading comprehension (a thing I was worried about since I only care about reading). SRS, vocab / hanzi drilling are almost required to get up to speed quickly though...I've recently figured out how to easily import books into Anki with Chinese Text Analyzer and the Morphman add on to mine sentences easier.
hellion

How much is "so much content"? I have a feeling that immersion only produces output if you take it deadly seriously. I suspect most people who are doing "immersion" are actually spending more time/day in their native language than their target language. I doubt that would produce output, at least not a high level of output.
The more I understand about how we learn our native language, the more I realise just how much sustained volume of input we were getting. Trouble is, unless you have next to zero responsibilities, it's bascially impossible to replicate that.
Therefore, the "end" result isn't even close to what it is for a native speaker. If we're spending more time using another langauge than the language we're learning, it's no wonder we don't get the results we want.
I genuinely believe that the brain needs to be tricked into thinking this new language is the only option. The brain is lazy, it won't get to work on a new language with the kind of intensity required if you're feeding it another language for the majority of the day. It needs to believe this is a survival issue to fully commit, IMO.
In short, I don't think it helps that people do 2-3 hours/day of "immersion" and then deduce that it doesn't work.
TofuMeow

Don't get me wrong, I'm currently doing the "mass input only" approach and seeing where it gets me. But it shouldn't used as a blanket recommendation to everyone. Immersion is probably the most important activity for language learning, but so is practicing whatever it is that you want to get better at.
I've read >10,000 pages, watched near 1500 episodes of Cdramas, done about 200k anki reps and listened to probably at least a thousand hour of passive listening within 500 days of starting...but I can't magically speak, because I've never practiced speaking. I do however suspect that if I did a 1/2 hr to an hr of shadowing practice daily that would vault me to a conversational level quickly.
Although maybe it is just the insane difficulty of Chinese...maybe I do need to read 50k pages (my plan) and listen to 10,000 hours of audio over many years to be able to speak effortlessly?
hellion

That's 2 hours/day of passive listening, which is like 1/5 (or less) of that of a native speaker has had after 500 days. Not many natives can "magically speak" after 100 days either.
10k pages sounds like a lot, and it IS a lot, but there's a lot, then there's a LOT. I feel like we're still grossly underestimating just how much input a native speaker gets. It's absolutely MASSIVE.
Native children are usually pretty much conversatioallly fluent by the time they're 5 or 6 years old, but that's a HUGE amount of input that dwarfs what you, I, and pretty much every second language learner has done over a similar time period.
Again, I'd estimate that even if we go hardcore and do like 4-5 hours/day, every single day, we've still only had about 1/3 of the input they have, and that's in a less than ideal environment, spending a large proportion of that time immersed in a different language to the one we're actually trying to learn.
TofuMeow

I will admit I haven't been doing as much listening practice as I should yet, as I'm not quite convinced passive / incomprehensible audio is anywhere near as effective as reading / SRS for acquiring vocabulary. (Chinese has a LOT of similar sounding words)
My theory has been that I'd read an insane amount until I'm near fluent, then start doing more and more listening until I can listen to native podcasts and audio books without needing a script, then try speaking to see how well the mass input only method works.
I'm having an absolute blast doing the input only method, because I love Chinese media and don't care about speaking, I just warn people that have a priority / urge to speak to go ahead and practice, especially shadowing as mouth & tongue positions are different and need to be exercised (not to mention matching the correct tones). I can hear Mandarin in my head, I just can't spit it out without it sounding absolutely terrible. (And I have been going crazy hardcore, I'm probably at at least 4000 hours at this point, I am constantly immersing in some form of Chinese all day, except when I dabble in other languages or my part time job / socializing.)
hellion

But you're warning them of this based on limited input. What you've described is still a volume issue, IMO. I mean, can you understand Mandarin as well as a native 6 year-old? Have you acquired the grammar like they have? My guess is a resounding no. IMO, the overall contributing factor to the difference is the sheer volume of comprehenisble input they've had Vs what you have so far had.
In a way, you're right, because it's near impossible to match a native for volume of input and quality of immersion. So unless one can do like 8+ hours/day for 5-6 years (for a language like Mandarin), then a high level of natural output is unlikely to emerge. But that doesn't mean, therefore, that 'immersion' doesn't produce output, it simply means that 'low volume/poor quality' immersion doesn't produce output.
Michilini

My opinion, based on interviewing a number of high level learners of east asian languages is that immersion-only learning simply doesn't exist.
At least I've seen no evidence for it. No adult I've ever come across actually learned like a baby. All the most extreme AjAATers supplemented hours of immersion with daily drilling of whole sentence flashcards. The results of this hybrid approach were they became fluent but didn't acquire pitch-accent - a key component of Japanese pronunciation.
Extreme AjAAT approaches are almost certainly quite inefficient. They are effective precisely because the people using them spend all of their waking hours (and in some cases sleeping hours) engaging with the language and supplement them with SRS.
Also, in dogmatically refusing to ever use alternative techniques - such as study grammar or rely on feedback and corrections from native speakers - they are closing the door on techniques which could make their learning much more efficient. Most people don't have the luxury of being able to ignore questions of efficiency in favour of spending all their time learning the language because most people have responsibilities. The message from extreme Ajaaters as consistently been: if you have other resonsibilities you can't learn the language.
But in recent times new cases have come to light of incredibly high achieving learners who didn't dogmatically follow immersion-only approaches. One example is the YouTube Aussieman who promotes immersion combined with early output. Another example is Will Hart, a Mandarin learner I interviewed on my podcast who learned Mandarin while studying on a medicine degree and reached fluency within a year: http://imlearningmandarin.com/2022/06/04/interviewing-this-master-of-oral-chinese-made-me-rethink-everything-i-believed-about-language-learning/
The immersion delusion has therefore reached a dead end.
PeterBormann

I agree.
But imitating young children 1:1 as adult learners makes little sense because mass immersion of native speakers, while effective, is also extremely slow and (time-)inefficient.
My favorite example, at least at the moment, is the following in this context (because I'm trying to reach an advanced level in Br. Portuguese):
"Let's say a baby is born in a Portuguese speaking environment. As an educated and adult native speaker of German who wants to learn Portuguese from scratch, I could learn Portuguese
- in ca. 1.5 years (investing about 2000-2500 hours = ca. 4-4.5 h per day ) to reach a C1 level in all four language skills
- start studying computer science (or another subject I'm interested in) full time at a university in Portugal or Brasil
- and get a degree
before the child as a native speaker is 6 years old and has a very limited vocabulary of about 7000 words!
I really love children, but when it comes to learning effectively and efficiently they're out of the competition: not only in language learning, but in learning in general!" (PB quote).
Maybe we can rephrase Michilini's "immersion delusion" here:
The problem is the thesis of Krashen, Steve & Co
- that SLA is primarily unconscious learning, not conscious learning and
- that conscious learning should be avoided because it's ineffective.
However, this thesis is highly controversial in SLA research and not convincing with regard to artificial SRS (if it's used with audio. cloze tests for everyday collocations, active recall, etc.).
Moreover, conscious learning based on SRS is much more time-efficient than natural SRSing by reading and / or listening.
The main benefits of reading and/or listening, on the other hand, are:
- They're much more interesting than using SRS.
- There's more context info available.
- The combo "reading + listening" results in a higher degree of focused attention.
Ergo, hybridization of both approaches (i.e. natural SRS + artificial SRS) makes the most sense to me because that way I can get the best of both worlds.
Michilini

Although maybe it is just the insane difficulty of Chinese...maybe I do need to read 50k pages (my plan) and listen to 10,000 hours of audio over many years to be able to speak effortlessly?
No, it's not that. All the evidence suggests your instinct is correct. You can't speak because you haven't practiced. This is a particularly an issue for Chinese where failure to become comfortable with the tones leads to distortions in the way we percieve and produce them.
This can be overcome, of course; In language learning no damage is irreperable. You can retrain your brain to percieve and produce tones correctly. But it's a bad idea to believe that more input alone will solve the problem as this doesn't seem to be the case.
For more on how I overcame similar issues check out my blog here: http://imlearningmandarin.com/2022/02/12/its-never-too-late-to-learn-chinese-tones-heres-how/
PeterBormann

"But it's a bad idea to believe that more input alone will solve the problem as this doesn't seem to be the case."
I agree.
For example, if it's a psychological issue (shyness, a perfectionist attitude, etc.), then it's never the right time to start speaking. More and more and more input won't solve this problem.
However, speaking early, making lots of mistakes and experiencing that it's perfectly ok to make mistakes is definitely a more successful strategy in this context.
xxdb

Right. Babies essentially spend 16 hours scratching their ass and listening to their mother tongue. Rest of us, we got bills to pay.
Why we need to find a more efficient way to force the neural pathways to burn in.
Numerically speaking, to get to the same understanding as a six year old would have looks like at least 10,000 hours.
Most adults can probably find an hour a day.
So we need *at least* a 20X efficiency gain.
Just focusing on vocabulary acquisition alone that children acquire around 5-10 words a day. So at the low end that's 10,000 words.
To do this in a year you'd need to accumulate 27 words per day.
How much watching TV would you have to do to accumulate those 27 words?
I can't find the research article quickly, but the gist of it is that you'd need at least 4 hours per day of watching gradually laddered up levels of difficulty to do it.
IMO, therefore, SRS is a must, at least until you have accumulated enough words to be able to learn from accurate guessing (the research says something like 5,000-7,000 words gives you that ability).
Michilini

@ Thanks for commenting. Very interesting to hear your views on this as somebody who has taken an immersion heavy approach. Keep us updated on your progress. And the door is open if you ever want to discuss this on my podcast in future.
bamboozled

Great idea! I've been been following TofuMeow's progress for more than a year, and there is no doubt in my mind that she's a language learner extraordinaire, certainly the most successful Chinese learner in recent years here on LingQ and an inspiration to many.
TofuMeow

I've been thinking about this, and I really think it comes down to personality and goals.
The mass immersion approach has been embraced by certain parts of the Japanese learning community, because it gives them permission to do what they are learning the language for - watch a lot of anime and read a lot of Japanese books. It was a revolution because a lot of the traditional approaches involved a lot of talking to people, moving to another country or learning from resources that don't have relevant vocabulary. Speaking is like a cool party trick / side benefit, not the end goal.
I don't see a lot of examples of people doing this for Chinese (except the Heavenly Path site) since a lot of people seem to be learning Chinese for career purposes or the intellectual stimulation itself, not because they want to read danmei webnovels or are mad at the quality of Mango TV subs.
This conversation has been super helpful, because now I realize my crappy listening skills are a problem... I shall now turn on pinyin and do that listen for an hour to a podcast with transcript at 1.3 speed that the Peter (?) member swears by.
Michilini

I really think it comes down to personality and goals.
- You’ve hit the nail on the head. Extreme immersion started out as a reaction to traditional dogmatic views on language learning being imposed on everyone regardless of their personality type. Using traditional methods, people who don’t like speaking or studying grammar don’t get to learn languages. Extreme immersion offered these people another way. But the movement morphed into something equally dogmatic whose purpose became to convince the world extreme immersion and extreme immersion is the only way to learn a language. This idea has mass appeal because of how much people hate traditional methods. People didn’t just want alternative methods that could help them learn, they wanted a campaign to wage war on traditional methods. Anyone who questioned these ideas or supported methods became the enemy.
I don't see a lot of examples of people doing this for Chinese
There is another reason you don’t see people doing this for chinese. With Japanese it’s possible to have bad pitch accent - which most people who follow extreme immersion methods do - and still sound phenomenal. But the equivalent person learning Chinese would speak with poor tones and not only sound atrocious, but not even be comprehensible. For this reason there are no role models in the Chinese learning community to follow. People always look to follow the methods that the best speakers use.
PeterBormann

"they wanted a campaign to wage war on traditional methods. Anyone who questioned these ideas or supported methods became the enemy."
I'm sorry, Michilini, you lost me here.
The common credo among probably all polyglots is:
"There are many ways to make an omelette!" (OrientalPearl).
PeterBormann

Hi TofuMeow,
"I shall now turn on pinyin and do that listen for an hour to a podcast with transcript at 1.3 speed that the Peter (?) member swears by."
We've enough evidence so far that (what we call) the "ultrareading while listening" (URL) approach (with an audio speed > 1.0x) works pretty well for not so distant Indo-European languages. But we need more experiences / stats with distant L2s (Mandarin / Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Arabic, etc.).
So it would be great if you could share your URL experiences (and maybe some stats) on the LingQ forum in a few weeks/months!
bamboozled

Just to chime in here again,
I can heartily recommend using podcasts to improve listening comprehension. Starting in April I have implemented LR-ing of podcasts into my routine. And, subjectively, I'd say my listening comprehension has improved quite a bit.
The inspiration for this, of course, goes back to Chaseb's excellent post around that time.
I'll share some of my experiences in the following, maybe someone finds them useful.
As for transcription services, Steve Kaufmann is known to use happyscribe.com, I have not tried that, due to the low advertised accuracy (<85%) and the prohibitively high prices (18€ for 90 minutes). So who knows how good that service is, there are however many such transcripts available on LingQ Persian, maybe a Persian speaker could take a look?
Chase recommended https://www.iflyrec.com/ but I have been unable to create an account there. But this seems to be well established in Mainland China.
The only service I have experience with is in fact https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/ and the results are actually pretty good. It fails, unsurprisingly, whenever multiple people speak at the same time, but it seems to handle basically everything else. Prices are reasonable as well, but that might depend on region and currency, for me it's around 2,50€ for 90 minutes.
Next up on my list of services to test is https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/.
wit.ai, by Facebook is supposedly excellent as well, but I can't bring myself to create an account there...
Actually, I wish LingQ, which uses AWS extensively already, would offer a seamless transcription service on the site, this would be supreme, but unlikely of course.
There is also a YouTube channel that showcases quite a few Chinese podcasts, there are even some videos, with accurate, subtitles. Those are however burned-in, so not usable on LingQ but I found them to be helpful nonetheless.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjY7KRfXQU6faWZ5ca2un-g/videos
I have also shared some podcast episodes on the LingQ library in the past: https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/zh/web/library/course/952583
Which I really like, the transcripts are so-so, but honestly anyone who is not a complete beginner should be able to handle that.
(Btw. I don't think I will share long-form content on LingQ anymore, since the idiotic unfortunate 2000 words per lesson limit makes the whole process supremely annoying.)
Anyways, y'all have yourselves a nice weekend.
noxialisrex

This does not work well for multiple speakers, but for a podcast with a single speaker (at least at once) I used to simply open a Google doc and set it to voice-to-text with the audio out being the source. That worked better than HappyScribe for the "En Svensk Tiger" and "Mytologier" podcasts once upon a time.
xxdb

podcasts are super helpful.
I typically "ladder up" by starting with TPRS (the easiest kind of podcasters) on youtube.
Then when I understand pretty well (a couple months) I'll ladder up to the next level (slow spoken schoolteacher style podcasters).
Then in a month more I'll ladder up to news.
Then in another month I'll ladder up to native podcasters.
Then in another month I'll ladder up to easy TV shows (telenovela types).
Finally I'll start on netflix shows.
noxialisrex

The thing I am interested in is really how it works with less familiar writing systems. Icelandic has a few letters that don't exist in other Latin scripts, but I could follow along from day 1 even if I understood nothing. Not sure how Icelandic ranks for more distant L2's in my case... (At some point in my life, I will find out how it works with Sami and/or Finnish.)
Is that possible with less familiar scripts at 1x early on? That I have no idea. My belief is that once that *is* possible, that the benefits are enormous.
By R+L until the advanced stage where I can simply listen, if nothing else, it lets me get exposure to more words per hour (12-18.000 vs 3-6.000 with TV) and guarantees I am focused and not thinking about who knows what.
It is just I have no idea when that becomes possible to start. Maybe a romanization above the text could be an idea to enable this even sooner?
bamboozled

Is that possible with less familiar scripts at 1x early on?
No.
Relying romanization (Pinyin) is probably the only way at the beginning. I don't think there is a way around it, learning the characters takes a long time.
My belief is that once that *is* possible, that the benefits are enormous.
Well, it depends on your definition of "possible". If it means being able to focus your eyes on the currently spoken word; then I have been doing it for about a year, progress is noticeable but slow. The main stumbling block is the comprehension.
Personally, the idea of speeding up a Chinese language podcast sounds almost frightening. I can only speak for myself, but the mental load is already high enough. As an example: I'm listening to this podcast https://www.ximalaya.com/yule/14302859/ , it's listed under "comedy", so my current goal in life is figuring out what these people are laughing about, I'm a couple episodes in but I'm still in the dark...
Frankly, the only reason I have been able to keep my sanity is that this podcast has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
noxialisrex

That sounds about what I would imagine. I have read at least one billion words in English. That familiarity with the English alphabet means there is no resistance to seeing it, even when the word is in an unfamiliar language.
All learners I know want to ditch pinyin and romaji as quickly as possible (or never use them). But I now wonder if there might be a benefit in R+L a lot longer than is expected. I would obviously 100% recommend some intensive reading without and study of characters for languages that use logograms, but if romanization can make (much) more audio accessible faster that seems like it could be a good thing.
Unfortunately the only scenario I would test it myself is if someone paid me to make it my job.
PeterBormann

"I'm kinda curious if massive reading is more effective for speaking for languages like Spanish, German etc." (@TofuMeow)
Massive reading definitely helps for speaking Germanic and Romance languages, i.e.:
- your vocabulary and syntactic structures will become more sophisticated,
- you'll internalize more collocations so you can speak more naturally,
- And if you combine reading with listening (using LingQ, ReadLang, etc. plus Audible, YT, etc.), you can read much faster and with more focused attention (it's like a highly intense "word shower").
However, if you want to learn to speak well, reading/listening to (audio) books is less effective. It's better to read the scripts / subtitles of YT videos, TV series, audio drama, etc. while listening to them.
That said, practicing speaking (sooner or later) is still a must for anyone who wants to speak well.
Mutatis mutandis, it should be a similar experience for non-Indo-European languages...
MandarinFlashcards

I totally agree with your opinion on the immersion delusion. We've all met non-native speakers of a language who have been living in the country of their target language for years and yet still make a lot of grammar mistakes. This is a perfect example of why immersion isn't everything. You need to take the mistakes that you're making and drill the corrections into your brain using SRS. Whether that's through word flashcards for mandarin tones or sentence flashcards for grammar.
Immersion is very good for quickly learning the high frequency structures that occur in your input. But the trouble is that the low frequency stuff doesn't occur often enough for it to be efficient beyond a certain level. You need SRS to modify the frequency of your input, and drill you more on the things you're getting wrong, and less on the stuff you know off by heart.
Michilini

You make an excellent point. Immersion is key but on its own will get you only so far. Repetition activities are crucial for drilling grammar structures, rare vocabulary and tones. Lots of output practice is also hugely important.
bbbblinq

I'm sick of being told I just have to go to Greece or Cyprus for a while to learn Greek.
A family member once said a person could learn Greek by picking up a word a day and after years they would be fluent. The metaphor is wrong. It isn't Lego.
Currently I am thinking of it as a tide (coming in) that ebs and flows but slowly covers (learning) the sand after many repetitions (20 + for me for reading ministories). This suits Complrehensive input.
I find large volume listenign in Greek awful. I might hear 1% of words and can't process them quickly. If a language is overwhelming, more of it may well be demotivating. Plus it's what people are telling you to do which cuts off some support.
People long-windedly giving you corrections or explanations in an overwhelming language is highly conterproductive; it sucks up time and is socially awkward while not being communication that you can process.
Babies get 10000 words a day and some of it is slow and clear from context.
I'm using LingQ, 3000 words of reading a day, 20 to 40 reading repetitions of ministories and then listening to them. I'm 2700 known words in (250,000 words read) having done other things prior to LingQ. It's helping. I'm hoping for 3000 words read a day and words known varies but seems to average 10 a day (not recently. It comes in fits and starts).
It all seems a process of managing familiarity and processing of an acknowledged fog.
Thanks for writing the blog post.
Immersion: I go to Cyprus and talk English to my family and shop keepers, say hi in Russian at cafes. Below a certain level and without reorganising your social situation (family agreements), going to the place can be worse than apps. Below a certain level of a language, going to the place doesn't create all that many useful conversations. Some good context and motivation but there is an element of delusion. Next time I go, I'm afairly sure I'll learn more from LingQ and that will be more awkward to use without a home PC and macro buttons (@Zoran please have a read+speak button).
RJDavies

Good luck with your journey. It's taken almost 3-years and I'm only starting to output! I could have halved the amount of time if I could just find content decent for learning.
Keep doing what you're doing.
Essie_B

Great read, thank you. I think all language learners could benefit from avoiding these pitfalls.
I'm certainly starting to rethink how I feel about immersion. I used to think that if you immerse long enough you will automatically be able to speak with some level of fluency. I'm finding that (at least for Chinese) this really doesn't apply. Early output (while paying careful attention to corrections and feedback on your pronunciation) seems essential.
Michilini

Thanks :) Pure inputism is an absolute disaster of an idea and one which has caused great misery and strife to language learners all over the globe. It is totally delusional to think that through input alone you will pick up correct tones, intonation, accurate sentence structure, grammar and correct word usage. Yet this is what is implied, if not outright stated, by some prominent influencers.
The majority of overall learning time should be input but if this isn't supplemented with other activities the results will be unsatisfactory (assuming your goals rise to the level of being minimally comprehensible when you speak the language.)
asad100101

It is extremely expensive to hire a tutor every day for having one hour conversation over italik also for a year who is patient enough to provide me feedback in regards to my mistakes. Does it sound realistic to you?
Michilini

Depends on your circumstances. I have three, hour-long Italki lessons a week. I speak to Chinese friends every day and they are happy to correct me when I make mistakes. I have been fortunate to meet many patient friends who have helped and continue to help me immensely.
PeterBormann

I agree.
But I've never met anyone online or offline who said that
1) there's only one way in language learning and
2) "pure inputism" is the only way to language paradise.
Yes, there is Krashen's approach, which emphasizes the importance of "unconscious" learning by focusing on input. But in SLA research, this claim is highly controversial.
By the way, Krashen has a great sense of humor.
And I can't see an enemy here. In contrast, I like him a lot!
xxdb

So there's kind of a straw man here though.
One of the very loud commentors is arguing that input only doesn't work.
It clearly does work, for *comprehension*...
But if you move the goalposts and ask if it works for output my guess is the answer is *mostly* "probably not".
I have a friend whose parents are slovenian. He can understand perfectly his parents but can't speak it.