How To Master Any Language: Comprehensible Input

if you've been studying a language for years without making much progress there's a good chance you're not getting enough comprehensible input and if you don't know what that is yet prepare to have your entire language learning world completely transformed [Music] dr stephen krashen has been one of the most well respected researchers in language acquisition for decades he's the one who originally developed the comprehensible input hypothesis and his message is simple and now i'm going to share with you the most important thing i have learned about language probably the best kept secret in the profession we

acquire language in one way and only one way when we understand messages we call this comprehensible input notice that he says there's only one way to acquire a new language that's because he makes a big difference between learning and acquiring and he says that it is much more powerful to acquire a language when he uses the term learning he's referring to your typical school curriculum that emphasizes head knowledge so memorizing testing getting corrected on your mistakes trying to remember the corrections to those mistakes stuff like that this is a terrible method which is why so

many of us made it through school and forgot everything we learned as soon as the final exam was over but acquiring a language happens subconsciously without any deliberate memorization and it lets you internalize the vocabulary and the grammar of language naturally as you're exposed to it now i have to admit that i don't always use these terms in the technical sense so sometimes i use them interchangeably but for the purpose of this video i'm going to make a distinction between learning and acquiring and as hard as it is for us to learn a language our

brains are very very good at acquiring language and the key is comprehensible input so what is comprehensible input well input is just listening and reading as opposed to output which is speaking and writing now i'm not here to dismiss speaking practice because you need to do that too but i really wants to emphasize the importance of reading and listening but not all input is made equal because remember we only acquire a language by understanding messages i could read all quiet on the western front from cover to cover and not learn a single word of german

because to me it's all gibberish but if i watched a german kid's show i might pick up on some of the more common words and when i watch dr crashing's comprehensible input german lesson i understand basically everything thus is my hand this is my cop via good cop and here i'll draw a picture now this is mr spock yeah mr spock hot spy oren alden christensen that is comprehensible input now kids shows and lessons about hands and eyes aren't super interesting the sweet spot is when you find input that's comprehensible and compelling that means it's

easy enough to understand and interesting enough to hold your attention and that's going to be tough at first because you know so little that you're only going to be able to take in the most basic input but as soon as possible you need to get into contents that's genuinely interesting to you i'm learning thai right now and i would love to be at the level where i could read the harry potter books because if i could do that i know i would be motivated to read for hours and hours and hours but i'm not quite

that good yet but when i read graphic novels the pictures help me follow along even when i don't understand all of the sentences in other words graphic novels are more comprehensible than traditional novels now my comprehension is still not at one hundred percent but that's okay i very rarely stop to look up a word because that takes so much time and context usually fills in the gaps that i'm missing now there is a spectrum of approaches between the two extremes of extensive input and intensive input intensive input is when you read a book or watch

a show for complete understanding you look up every word you don't know and study every piece of grammar the problem with this method though is that it's very slow and every second you spend in a dictionary is one second less of comprehensible input remember we only acquire languages in one way and it's not with a dictionary the other extreme of the spectrum is extensive input where you just immerse yourself in the language as much as possible without ever stopping to look up a word a happy medium would be somewhere in between but leaning more towards

the extensive side in order to maximize your time in the target language of course if you see the same word over and over and over and you still can't figure out what it means go ahead and look it up but try to reserve that for only the most important words now no matter what you're interested in you're going to be able to find some kind of comprehensible input that's perfect for you video games music guided meditations makeup tutorials sports history books twitter tick tock podcasts anything that requires you to read or listen to your target

language is fair game find something you enjoy and do it a lot the beauty of this method is that it harnesses the power of something that you already wants to spend lots of time doing now there's a lot of strategy that goes into planning a routine for acquiring a language with comprehensible input so if that sounds like something that you want to do click on this video here for a detailed outline of the whole process then go into the world and learn that language