@ kimojima

Pinyin was introduced to standardize the pronunciation of Mandarin in China. It's an excellent tool for learning Chinese characters. The problem with pinyin is that sometimes we can not clarify the sentence's ambiguity without the presence of the Chinese character.

mù dì has the meaning of 目的（intention）， 牧地（pastureland)， and 墓地 (graveyard).

Another example will be yù zhī, which can be 欲知 (to find out) or 预知 (to foresee as in premonition).

Unquestionably, contextual clues come in handy sometimes. It's the very same reason that I recommend learning Chinese characters. I believe some fundamental language learning skills should be acquired as basic building blocks. Be able to sound out words, deduce the meaning of new words, and use context clues to expand and grow one's language repertoire organically and holistically. Indeed, knowing Chinese characters enables one to acquire vocabulary more efficiently. I am a listener in language learning myself, but without developing these crucial abilities in the language, tons of listening might be like rote memorization.

It is common for people to say, "oh, we belonged to the same family five hundred years ago." as a way to bridge the distance between two Mandarin speakers. We can never be sure of it without finding out the actual Chinese characters for their last names 关(guān) and 官(guān).

@Llearner

I don't think there's anything magical about Chinese characters in and of themselves that cures the pronunciation problems you've outlined.

Using Japanese as an example, I read in full Kanji because it's faster. I would hate to read anything at this point in just romaji or hiragana/katakana. But my knowledge of the Kanji, and even being able to identify the radicals they contain, doesn't ensure anything about my speech being proper.

I know exactly what "chopsticks" and "bridge" look like on paper, but the only reason I know how to pronounce them correctly is because I've listened to tons of folk stories that talk about bridges, and I've been out to eat with friends.

I rely a ton on my listening experience. I'm already clicking quite a bit when I'm stretching myself in harder lessons with a lot of unknown vocab. I don't click on or double check Kanji that I'm already confident reading or even confident minus. I just assume what sounds natural based on my experience and keep reading.

When I'm having a conversation and a word isn't coming to me, I circumlocute, and in the few seconds I'm doing that, just the process of talking about similar vocabularly normally scares out the proper word.

I don't have a mental visual scorecard in Kanji, romaji, or Kana. Nor do I make any discriminatory analysis about homonyms. I just say what comes out naturally. My Kanji knowledge has nothing to do with it, except for the huge secondary efffects of being able to read a lot more and hence have a higher input volume level.

For Chinese, the pinyin are dangerous for people allergic to characters because the pinyin are great. You can even denote the tones just using pinyin.

I don't see any problem with someone speaking Chinese and only knowing pinyin to do it. The only disadvantage is your reading input volume will be terrible because you could cover a lot more ground if you could easily read the characters.

But again, knowing the characters doesn't ensure anything about being able to speak properly.

For LingQ subscribers, I think Refold is telling us to Speak from Day1.

The advice is to start speaking once you pretty much understand everything.

Judging from a lot of our dogmatic answers here in this thread and elsewhere, we DO feel we pretty much know everything about language learning.

So, hey, whatever language you're studying, start speaking it.

@ PeterBormann

"Reliable source for that claim?

BTW, anecdotal evidence is just that ... anecdotal :-)"

I was referring to this adoption of a particular language as a matter of personal choice rather than the complexity associated with the language.

Some new immigrants in an English-speaking country speak different languages with some degree of mutual intelligibility. The language they initially choose to converse in and how it continues to dominate their daily interaction is the most intriguing. I had seen many people gradually become fluent in Cantonese even before acquiring similar competency in English.

@Michilini

"Speaking with good tones requires simultaneously training yourself to hear tones correctly and while reinforcing this with accurate mimicry."

@ PeterBormann

"The "secret" (if there is one here) is probably:

1) it's deliberate practice

with a

2) a reliable feedback mechanism

If that's not the case ,"outputting" (by practicing self-talk, for example) won't help much

to improve one's tones. It's the same for pitch accent in Japanese."

Unless you are in a classroom or language exchange session to deliberately learn the language, you will seldom get direct feedback from the speaker in real life. It should be considered reliable if you can detect the difference between you and the native speaker or a mispronounced tone. If self-practicing does not help to some extent in acquiring the proper pronunciation, then speaking atonal Mandarin must be unavoidable without intervention from a native speaker. Even if this holds to be accurate, I still wonder if it will be possible for following native speakers to learn or improve their pronunciation by self-practicing.

Any native speaker learns to speak with a Beijing, British, Andalusian, ... accent.

Any native speaker learns to speak the most standard form of the language because they may pronounce or mispronounce some words somewhat differently due to regional variances.

@ Kimojima

"The assertion that kids observe a silent period (as an example of keeping quiet until understanding is mastered) is not true."

Indeed, language learning can be as dynamic as you have described because language is much alive and undoubtedly an integral part of our life. It just happened that even if there was such a silent period, it did not prevent me and many others from speaking mandarin fluently as a native speaker. We did not communicate much in Mandarin until we graduated from elementary school. It was not a conscious decision that we made not to speak Mandarin although we were fluent at the time. Let's say that speaking Mandarin in our daily life was not expected.

My unique experience may not resonate or be helpful to others. But I want to point out that a typical native Mandarin speaker possess all skills to speak fluently.

1. Impeccable listening comprehension
2. Spontaneity in response
3. Able to concoct any sentence by stringing words together naturally.
4. Flawless pronunciation with mastery of Pinyin

In the case of listening and speaking skills, they may not be developed in parallel with the same rate of progress. Per the topic of practicing tone in Mandarin, it requires deliberate practice over time to achieve decent fluency in Chinese. I just can't imagine anyone would listen to audio for hundreds of hours without learning and practicing Pinyin. Skills in language learning are interconnected, and I tend to focus on the smaller goal to work on so that I can check my progress to determine if things are going in the direction I expected.

I think the main reason Matt and others advocate this is that speaking early screws up your pronunciation. Unless you have listened hundreds of hours to your target language, you will not even recognise if your pronunciation is off.

This guy from Dreaming Spanish explains it quite well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHXVYe-zu6M&ab_channel=DreamingSpanish

I think everybody is different. That being said as a child I didn't speak until I could speak in complete sentences. And I devoured books way before kindergarten. I've also known people that did it like this and were the problem comes I believe is the input source. Because once you start speaking you alienate people by your word choice like you're speaking above them. The hardest thing is to learn yourself and understand yourself it doesn't matter what the success is of 100 people if you do better doing it differently.

@Michilini

"Speaking with good tones requires simultaneously training yourself to hear tones correctly and while reinforcing this with accurate mimicry."

The "secret" (if there is one here) is probably:

1) it's deliberate practice

with a

2) a reliable feedback mechanism

If that's not the case ,"outputting" (by practicing self-talk, for example) won't help much

to improve one's tones. It's the same for pitch accent in Japanese.

Apart from that, there are several key problems with the "input-only" approach:

1) The engagement level with the L2 (as pure "pattern recognition") is simply too superficial.

I've tested this with Portuguese - and I'm not happy with the result.

2) It matters "what" you digest.

Digesting random compelling content is simply not good enough if you want to become "fluent" in everyday language. In short, if learners want to become good at everyday conversations, they should use content with a lot of contemporary dialogues.

3) The claim that all language processing is "unconscious" is controversial. There's definitely a place in SLA for deliberate practice /intentional learning (that includes: explicit pronunciation training, explicit grammar study, and artificial SRSes for collocations, etc.).

4) And my personal pet peeve: the input approach is great because it leads to "effortless" learning. However, people who cling to effortless learning tend to be one thing above all else: subpar learners in any kind of practical skill acquisition process (SLA, math, programming, sports, whatever.). As soon as things get "tough", such learners tend to give up almost immediately...

In sum,

it's best to avoid input or output "extremes" and resort to an IO mix depending on the time budget, the specific goals, and the language level.

PS:

where you can "understand close to everything"

That's absurd.

There are thousands of job domains nowadays with their own lingo, specialized knowledge, methods / theories, etc. No native speaker can master all these domains. So, it's never possible to understand close to everything in your L1.

And if all native speakers fail miserably in this regard, so do all L2 learners...

Plenty of children with autism or anxiety do not output in their native language until they are near fluent. Pushing them to speak can lead to L1 mutism. As a classroom language teacher as well I don't really like to push output. However when you are a child or when you are in a Comprehensible Input classroom, you have lots of opportunities for one-word or non-verbal interactions

Plenty of "practice" approaches put output way too early and expect you to be able to output almost as much as you can comprehend from day 1, which definitely leads to language trauma, and I bet that is what they are trying to counteract--but they have definitely gone overboard.

THAT SAID as a self-motivated language learner who is following CI I don't think there is one right time to start speaking. The problem is their one-size-fits-all approach.

You have to practice speaking to become skilled at speaking.

Communication is the cornerstone of languages and language learning.

The input methodology is just our entrance ticket into getting into a communication mode faster.

Everyone starts by developing a little snowball of understanding or a Katamari of understanding that they use to roll up similar content that is ready to become understandable for them and thus increase their arsenal in that language and improve their ability to communicate.

The assertion that kids observe a silent period (as an example of keeping quiet until understanding is mastered) is not true.

Kids vocalize as soon as they're born. They are such little beings and incapable of forming words. It's a romantic idea of language lore to assume they're these little sages just soaking up everything uniformly until they're ready to speak.

No, they have a Katamari ball, just like we L2 learners, where they're rolling up words and phrases ready to be assimilated and they practice very early with what little they know, as soon as they can, to let parents know what they want.

Per the topic, it's very important to start speaking in Chinese as soon as you have a willing partner to be your language parent.

The best way to quickly learn a language is to have a relationship (romance, friendship, or close tutor) where the two of you constantly ask each other questions and provide the answers in the L2.

You won't get there as fast with input-only. Nor will you get there as fast just scheduling tutoring sessions where you go on a 30 minute or hour monologue by yourself, thinking that you're getting your money's worth by dominating the conversation 95%.

The input methodology beats the drum of engaging in interesting, compelling content. What could be more engaging than for people to ask you specific questions about your experience, your political views, passions, and so on. Having a native who is sensitive to your current (and increasing knowledge base) is perfect to listen to and interact with.

I enjoy my tutoring sessions on LingQ and iTalki, but I enjoy the free conversations in chat rooms possibly even more. I love being brought on stage and asked pointed questions about a specific topic, or how my week is going, or what fun or educational things my children are up to. Talk about active listening and the pressure to respond! It's sink or swim and it's great. I've been lucky enough to speak with Noriko sensei as well in these chat rooms several times for free. Last weekend, I spoke with a French lady for two hours and only ended it because I was hungry, had to go to the bathroom, and wanted to spend time with my family. That was two hours of speaking, intense active listening and also engaging her with interesting questions. You can't get communication like that by watching a movie or passively reading a book.

I say speaking is not only important but communication becomes the driving enchilada for excelling in our L2's.

I've heard a few Mandarin learners say, Thank God I kept going with my studies, I was about to quit because I was hitting a low intermediate wall and not progressing, but I pushed through.

I actually think that's false patting yourself on the back. It's not that you kept persevering with the input approach and that's what did it, it's that you found someone (or a group of people) who wanted to communicate with you often and THAT was the reason your Mandarin took off.

I don't think the speak from Day1 approach is wrong; the idea is just a little too extreme for me. I don't want to be in a chat room just introducing myself and not knowing how to say anything else.

I need at least an A2+ or B1- level to start engaging confidently.

I don't think it matters when you start speaking (A1+, A2, B1, B2) but the sooner the better as soon as you feel comfortable, because no matter when you start you will eventually blow the doors off of the input-only crowd if you keep with it.

Again, conversations that are balanced and engaging for both sides, spoken 100% in the L2. No monologues where it's just you speaking crappily, and no long breaks to "relax" back into the native language or ask questions in the native language about the L2. If your partner is good and knows your level, they'll be able to explain themselves in the the L2. And you stay in the L2 as well and don't forget about them. You have to keep it interesting for them as well even if you're paying or the session or else your time won't be as effective as it could be.

Can anybody point me to success stories/ cases that contradict my point of view?

Every skill set in any language requires deliberate practice to achieve decent fluency, and speaking is no exception. In my opinion, those language learners at stage 5 may not have the skills to quickly develop a high fluency in speaking a tonal language such as Mandarin. For the sake of argument, they must acquire the following skills so they can speak Mandarin fluently in a relatively short time.

1. A nearly impeccable listening comprehension of watching any TV series or shows in the target language.

2. Being fluent in exchanging text messages with others spontaneously with minimal or no grammatical or syntactical errors.

3. Record reading practice from time to time to bridge or eliminate the gap between you and a native speaker.

I am somewhat baffled by the idea that the tone could be internalized incorrectly for those language learners who have achieved exceptional listening comprehension skills. I don't see a problem with the main focus on listening and reading comprehension in the beginning stage of learning a language.

All skills acquired in language learning follow an S growth curve, although the progress may vary among language learners due to many different factors. Once you build a solid foundation, the major framework will be accomplished much faster.

There are two skills that I consider to be crucial not only for listening and reading comprehension, but also for achieving excellent fluency when speaking the language.

1. Be able to sound out a word (Foundation building)

2. To subvocalize unconsciously as the language learner follows along with the audio, which can be accompanied by the text. (Framework construction)

On the other hand, the challenge question is similar to the following, given that every language learning skill requires deliberate practice.

Is there any fluent Mandarin speaker (heritage language learner) who will be able to read Chinese at the beginning?

On a side note, it is interesting that a Mandarin speaker would pick up and become fluent in Cantonese through immersion, and the same thing for a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish, but not the other way around.

Speaking from my experience, I never really practiced when I was learning english, I didn't even practice speaking before I taking my IELTS English test and my overall score came out to be high C1 thanks to my perfect listening and reading score. I went to an english speaking country for school and I had trouble articulating my thoughts but it took a few weeks with total immersion to get extremely comfortable. I haven't really spoken english for almost 3 years and now it's extremely rusty but my understanding of the language is still impeccable.

At some point in your language learning journey you just *feels* fluent, you don't need a test to classify you as B2 or C2 because it can't really get any harder, listening and reading become automatic and effortless, anyone who's truly fluent in a language will understand what this mean. But speaking is a skill of its own, extremely high maintenance but easily improve once you can understand virtually everything.

With all of that said I truly think there's little reason to deliberately practice speaking if you're not using it daily or planning on soon because it's going to deteriorate very rapidly. Even my native language became rusty when I was not using it living in an english speaking country. My native language is Vietnamese btw and for Vietnamese speakers English is as exotic as it is for English speakers learning Chinese or Japanese

Babies are the alternate test case.

Yes, parents and surroundings offer high input. However, from the moment a child is born they cry, and thereafter they try to get attention through such imperfect oral communication.

I agree with it. I reached a high level of Spanish without having to have many conversations. Each time I would have a conversation after listening for a ton of time, my ability to converse would be so much better. When it boils down to it, language really feels like just repeating phrases and grammar structures that you hear. To me, that all comes from extensive listening.

I think the recommendation to not output early is less 'avoid output at all costs until you understand everything' and more so because Refold mostly aim their advice to those living and working/going to school in one country while learning another language, without much access in their environment to native speakers.

During those stages where you understand relatively little of the language in the first place, I think their suggestion is that for most people in that position - given the conversations you are likely able to have - it's probably not worth the time/effort/money it may take to find native speakers to talk to when those resources might be better spent on getting good input, which is what will facilitate learning anyway.

I think they'd say that if you did happen to find yourself in a bar with a bunch of spaniards, say, during those early stages there definitely won't be any harm in attempting a conversation and having a good time with what you have. Different circumstances apply to different people.

I like the idea, but I always say to start talking whenever you feel like it and you shouldn't force someone that doesn't want to talk yet. If you want to talk early and have willing interlocutors, go for it. If you prefer to wait until your level is higher, that's good too. Imo, I'd say around the B1 to B2 threshold is about right.

Other than a 1 minute convo with a guy selling tamales (and unless you count babbling to myself, practicing pronunciation) my first conversation in Spanish was a complete conversation 30-45 minutes long. I wasn't necessarily at the level of understanding every single word all of the time but I was at the level of using anything as comprehensible input (no problem understanding telenovelas, news, etc, much of the time word for word, but still using context to fill in often). So I'd say a high B1. If B2 is "regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party." I'd say I wasn't far from that, definitely not fluent but certainly able to "get by".

I have zero interest in talking too early, it's like trying to run with my shoe laces tied, it's just too frustrating. I did the exact opposite in French, I tried speaking every chance I got before I had any business trying to talk (despite good grades after years of traditional skill-building classes), I was absolutely fearless, and it was just disaster after disaster after disaster (I was studying abroad at the time). I was a pain in the butt for every French person I interacted with. With Chinese, I'm just gonna chill, get my input, get at least a few Chinese TV series under my belt and someday I'll do some talking (or maybe not, not a lot of Chinese people around where I live).

I don't buy into any language being more or less special than any other one. So maybe this is a sort of middle ground between refold and talk on day one, although I think I definitely lean towards the refold view.

I have done both, but I am not really certain what conclusions to draw:

"Speaking Early"

I started speaking Swedish and Norwegian (and German, but that was in school a long time ago), before I even knew about the input hypothesis. I talked about this before, but my first Swedish conversation in August of 2020, I Googled how to say my name and how old I was, and the proceeded to say it wrong.

During those first two months I read a lot about the grammar in Swedish and Norwegian and could have talked about nearly any concept in their grammars. But I'd say 99% of my "conversations" were me talking in English. When I learned about input, bought books I was familiar with, and forced myself to read them, my progress was rapid, and there was very little divide between things I could understand and things I could say.

"Input Only"

In May of 2021, I became curious on how much Danish I could understand, and then read "Den lille havfrue" one random night. I tried to also start reading Dutch but that turned out to be too much. I continued with Danish for 30-60 minutes of input from May until having my first conversation December of 2021. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life, because I understood the entirety of what was said to me, and was almost incapable of saying things in Danish, my mouth had no idea what to do and everything was some weird "svorsk". I kept up with it, selecting tutors that do not understand Swedish or Norwegian (very well), and my progress week over week was unrecognizable.

I have never "studied" Danish grammar, but I have noticed over time the differences between Swedish and Norwegian. I also did not practice any Danish pronunciation before my first conversation.

In December of 2021 I picked Dutch up again, and read roughly 30 minutes a day, and had my first conversation 3-4 weeks ago. I did study some Dutch grammar (in Dutch) through that time and I did practice pronunciation of words I had a hard time hearing (e.g., graag gedaan). And my first conversation was possibly worse than Danish. Again, I found it very hard to not speak German or English. After week 1, I made a cheat sheet showing random words and phrases I like to use and their conjugations and have that up on a monitor to peak at in an attempt to not speak accidental German. Weeks 2 and 3 were much easier and I expect it to progress just as rapidly.

Summary

I did "speak early" with lots of corrections in tandem with mass input before learning a similar (mutually intelligible) language using input only. Even in that case, I did not wake up one day with a magical ability to speak that new language.

Agree on the point of hearing tones -- it's important. And I don't believe for a second the people linked on that page just started speaking for the first time.

But I have not done much output over three years and I don't regret it. A hard policy of -no- output is obviously not a good idea, but depending on one's personality waiting may be better.

My comprehension is C1 - C2 (I attend university level German language philosophy courses) but my output is B1 - B2. Sometimes I can still stumble in the simplest situations at a restaurant or something.

But here's the thing: I am only interested in real conversations with real people about real things. While learning I have not burdened my friends with “what's your favorite color” style conversations, nor have I engaged in much role playing where I pretend to call a hotel to make a reservation. Maybe this has stifled my growth, but I don't mind. It depends on your personality, and your friends, but if you want to talk about real things, it will take a while to learn the necessary vocabulary and expressions in the domains you aren interested in.

Another benefit of waiting is that I feel like I am not dealing with everything at once. I'm at the point where I understand almost everything I hear. So conversations for me are purely an output struggle, I'm not struggling at the same time to understand the other person and form sentences.

This all depends on personality. Some people would enjoy language class style roleplaying and that's ok. But for some waiting a long time to output works better.

My question to you is what exactly do you understand and what exactly do you speak with little language exposure?

I am currently attending a formal language course at a language school where early speaking is encouraged in terms of asking questions about the language itself and about some randomly chosen topics. My experience over the months of observing these students speaking German is that 9 out of 10 times they can not string together a coherent sentence and moreover they are internalizing mistakes/sounds heavily influenced by their native languages. The teacher is too lazy to point out their mistakes and is under time pressure to complete his syllabus.

Your early speaking approach is like a suicide bomb ready to detonate if there is no "feedback loop" at all on offer as was the case in the above-mentioned formal language course.

Not everyone can find a patient native speaker friend who can provide nonstop feedback about their mistakes and then they are constantly making sure to fix them in their spare time.

With massive language input exposure, it is not that hard to convert your passive knowledge into active knowledge and develop some sort of spoken fluency. And you develop a clear mental image of your foreign language.

well learning languages IS a simultaneously process, only for entirely talented can not we reach that by mentioned things. Now I have been struggling with Japanese study for which I can not output early times for some private reasons then here I came to the forum

A link to the guide in question: https://refold.la/roadmap/stage-3/a/starting-output