Professor Reveals Language Learning Tactics (According To Science)

in today's interview I talked with Dr brigita dosi and we talk about how to learn languages according to the current scientific evidence and so Dr brigita dosi is a university instructor researcher and reviewer of academic journals in this field and we talked about about a bunch of things namely balancing input and uh output the role of age in language learning how to use subtitles to optimize your language learning how to develop good pronunciation of a foreign language uh we also talked about narrow reading and narrow watching which is a concept that was new to me

uh we also talked multiple times about pushed input uh specifically to overcome uh language learning plateaus and we talked about a bunch of other things I hope that you enjoyed this interview so could you introduce yourself as it pertains to this world of language learning my name is brigita DOI I come from a very small country Hungary which is in the middle of Europe and this country is a monolingual country and so I think today I'm here as a language learner and also as a language teacher as a language researcher and now teach at University

I have subjects related to actually teaching aspects of vocabulary aspect ECT of grammar pronunciation so I believe that I can I can train language teachers if I'm also aware of the problems that Learners face when learning the language right so um you you mentioned that you uh do also some research um what is your sort of domain of expertise when it comes to uh the research I specialize in um uh vocabulary learning and um I'm especially I have especially been interested in um uh aspects of vocabulary development um and um I did my PhD study

on um how uh a group of uh relatively Young Learners well around 14 changed in terms of vocabulary development and vocabulary learning uh over the course of uh uh uh 16 months so I looked at the same tabary items without the teacher knowing about these items and I tracked uh how well uh their depth of vocabulary that is what they knew about each word uh this was interesting because uh uh when we talk about vocabulary we talk about receptive and productive knowledge and I think that a lot of the research was questioning whether there was

actually a cut off line between receptive and and and productive and according to my research there wasn't because it was quite continuous and it could be placed in a continer oh okay right uh actually I'm very interested in in uh this domain of vocabulary learning um you know as a language learner I I realized you know learning English uh now learning Japanese and a little bit of Italian it's always been the case for me that you know the most difficult aspect of language learning is it's definitely vocab I mean I don't know about you but

uh the grammar and uh the pronunciation and you know all of this it's manageable you know there there's only so much that you need to learn but the vocabulary is just you know tens of thousands of words that you need to know multiple aspects of different lemas and it's just a mountain of of uh work to do now um with that being said and I asked this question two days ago I was interviewing Jonathan Newton from uh uh New Zealand and um we talked about you know there's sort of this divide in the in Academia

it seems from my perspective where you have on the one side you have people who say well you know uh input it's all about input that's all you need it's sufficient it's necessary and then you have the other side you know like uh I'm assuming you as well Paul where you know there are vocabulary learning activities that you can do deliberate learning activities that work and so it's not just about input input is not sufficient there are other things and so I'm really confused because the two groups have people that have obviously they're very intelligent

they've done the research so what do you think about this what is what's happening here thank you for this question because I think this is a very very important one first of all I would discuss the topic of uh age and level because I think according to research we can say that at the beginning of language learning input is is extremely important it's probably the most important thing of course the right type of input for the right type of learner so comprehensible and sufficient and for children for example I think shintani did research on this

that actually input was more important than output however as the level increases I think output becomes something that you cannot live without and I think that that's going to be for example the dividing line between someone who can achieve let's say an intermediate level of knowledge as opposed to someone who can have like C1 or when it comes to language attainment we did research a few years ago here in H which I've already told you is a monolingual country and unfortunately we don't score very high when it comes to actually speaking or being able to

use the English language and what we found was that we did the uh observation research in high schools and uh what we found was that teachers were using amazing kinds of input so they were using very modern course books and uh and digital materials and everything however in some cases not always but in some cases the output was not enough so I think that it is possible for example in a school setting to just kind of do the T that you're given to do and if there is no effective um participation and I think here

I can refer to laer and H's um uh uh theory of involvement load hypothesis which means that if uh the learner is involved in dealing with the vocabulary in actually trying to use it trying to understand it providing a that or or uh other forms of the same word then are they're more likely to acquire that vocabulary item so I think that this is essential and so I think there needs to be a balance between input and output so I always tell my students I have quite a few students who would like to achieve C1

or even uh a level of proficiency and I always say that you need to take care of the output that you produce especially now I think that we have a generation of language Learners and this is quite a new phenomenon when it comes to learning English I'm talking about learning English specifically that you have all this um uh uh um all this material where all the you can watch videos audio content podcasts everything so I think that we have such a variety of input that uh um that if we if we take care of turning

it into output I think we have a much greater chance of uh uh of you know reaching a higher level that language actually the literature refers to uh concept called pushed output this refers to for example you giving yourself I don't know let's say some vocabulary items and you make a conscious decision of using those vocabulary items for example I don't know during Written Task or even when you're let's say giving an interview and and I think that these things can actually help you and and and create a more balanced way between input and output

so it's not sufficient just to do the input you have to do the output especially if you want to reach uh higher levels of of proficiency then um what about um activities that are not necessarily output but I'm I'm thinking specifically of uh I don't know learning vocabulary through uh flash cards or word list do you think that these things are effective or are there other strategies that that you like absolutely I I I I believe in combining a lot of types of strategies and a lot of types of tasks again my decision might be

based on the level of the learner I think at the beginning of language learning we really need word lists and uh and and flashcards could be useful anytime I've watched the interview with po Nation as well absolutely I think word list really help you to kind of master um a set of words in a given topic and I think that could give you a sense of uh confidence that now you know I know some words in this topic so I don't know I can have a conversation about it I think this is also very useful

for children but as I said at earlier levels of language learning also because what you said earlier about uh vocabulary being kind of infinite so you have to have some kind of organization and I think word lists are really good for that when it comes to flash cards they're also really great because you tend to have a look at the words more often or you go back to on the flash part you can you know on one side you could have the word or the lexical item and on the other side you could have the

definition or the meaning of the word what is also interesting when it comes to vocabulary knowledge that at the beginning of uh the language learning process and this is something I have also dealt with quite a lot you might need the meaning sense in your mother tongue much more than later I don't know if you have found this probably when learning Japanese or Italian that uh uh that in the beginning you really need that connection and this is due to the models of uh lexical organization and the mental lexic that we need that link between

the L2 word and the L1 meaning however as we become more advance I think sometimes we don't need the specific meaning anymore because we can just connect the L2 word to the concept that we already um that we already understand so many times it happens that that I don't know how to translate an English word into Hungarian anymore when I'm speaking English because I'm not a translator of course for translators this is different because they keep this for a long time but this is why for example when it comes to flashcards I would recommend that

for beginner Learners the meaning sense would be more important but for more advanced Learners context and definition could be very helpful what about um you know there are some people saying that uh when you're learning through it can be flashcards or word lists if you use so let's say for example I'm learning Japanese so I have the Japanese word on the front of the flash card and then on the back I have the English equivalent uh there's some people that think that well you know if I use the L the the definition um or the

translation then I'm going to start thinking in this language just translating in my head coming up with sentences in English and just translating translating them to Japanese do you think that this is uh something that you have to worry about well I think again it depends on the level because when it's a beginner learner I think um we somehow need these uh uh sources of help and I I don't think we will will be able to think in the foreign language anyway but I think when it comes to higher levels I would actually go in

the direction of a definition for example a sentence or or and this is something I um I've been quite passionate about teaching language in a way where I don't teach individual words but I teach lexical items or heavily emphasize the importance of formulaic language so whenever actually I do this from lower levels but I try to teach with short texts for example at the beginning of uh uh someone's language learning career where I give them short sentences or lexical items that belong together so I would never teach for example the word let's say okay to

be sure to be sure about something and then you teach that item with the preposition and so the person will be able to create a sentence using the word and not just the meaning so I think that uh research has been very clear about the advantages of uh lexical items and uh and of course shorter ones again at the beginning of the language learning process but uh uh but longer ones when it comes to higher levels and I think about 50 % of the English language is for leg so this means that when we speak

this language we don't actually fill out empty sentences but we have uh um somehow set patterns uh uh in our mind uh the lature now refers to this as pattern grammar or lexical grammar and then that actually brings me back to your previous question that uh vocabulary and grammar are much more intertwined than we used to believe as at least when it comes to the English language but I would argue the same about Hungarian which is a very very different language right I see so yeah this is very interesting so learning lexical items which are

suppose I suppose you know groups of words that often are combined together as opposed to learning words I mean I suppose it's not one or the other it's the two of them uh together combination yeah absolutely so if you think about it learning vocab items together uh also helps you understand the pragmatic relevance so if uh you're learning how to write a formal letter and you uh you learn the phrase I look forward to hearing from you that's going to be really helpful for you because uh you don't actually have to worry about it anymore

you've learned the whole phrase together so there are a lot of phrases and actually we also have these uh soal called lexical bundles if you think about the word as it you know we use this together a lot is it grammar is it vocabulary it's an interesting question also when you want to express uh regret in English there are several ways of doing this I should have done that it was a mistake not to do it so you have vocab items and you also have more grammatical lexical items to express the same idea I think

that it's really worth that's why if you have good course books good textbooks they might help you with these items I think a lot of uh these course books are using this strategy now right yeah I was thinking actually of uh where should I get these uh lexical items these little Expressions because uh I'm recently I I've been working on a project where I actually make uh decks of flashcards so using Anki I'm not sure yeah yeah and so um it's quite interesting because I'm a software developer so I'm able to take text and run

you know code on it and say okay this word appears this many times and so I have the frequency of every word in the language uh but then it's single word items um and so you know lexical items like you know uh Expressions I'm not really able to extract them from uh the text yet which is one of the limitations of of uh my my decks but um I suppose if people want to learn these lexical items maybe the best resource would be a good textbook I suppose yes or well that requires some prior knowledge

but you have uh a language corpora different types of uh uh uh uh for example the British national Corpus or CA the Contemporary Corpus of American English where you can actually search by lexical items as well so you can uh you can see the frequency of an item so it is possible not to only search for individual words but I think that at this point it's either that you start paying attent to text and you try to observe um uh the frequency and then whenever I I start teaching this method which is I think is

actually Louis's lexical approach I try to teach my students to pay attention to what words are together and to see like the verb together with its preposition or the adjective together with its preposition or uh Nows that appear appear together so where like computer science or uh let's say environment protection or things that appear together um um they they are really helpful right yeah uh actually I was thinking cuz um it seems to me that maybe the words that work together these lexical items they're very very important obviously but maybe is it the case do

you think that there may be less of them compared to you know single words that you have to learn well of course because they're grouped together but I think there is the advantage that if you learn um a lexical item together you will eventually at least know the elements as well in themselves and of course when we talk about these set phrases formulate or formulas as we refer to them some of them are more transparent than others in meaning so there are there they might actually be very easy to remember like knowing computer science for

example you know that's that's quite a transparent word but if you look at the expression kick the bucket which is a oldfashioned phrase it has nothing to do with kicking it has nothing to do with a kid and it has a separate meaning so I think that the difficulty of learning these items also depends on the transparency of meaning uh for the language learner just that you learn them the phrase together and then you access it together so this means that when you uh when you know you want to express something like I look forward

to hearing from you then you don't have to think about anymore that uh that it's a strange expression because two here is a preposition and uh we have Jaren after it you're not going to stop and say like shouldn't it be I look forward to hear from you because you've learned it together so you can concentrate on any other aspect of writing or speaking when you use that phrase right right um actually yeah I'm wondering too kicking the bucket I don't know where this comes from probably has some interesting story behind it someone kicked a

bucket and then I don't know kicked someone in the head I don't know but this is interes or led the cat out bag which I think comes from medieval times when they used to uh uh uh buy pigs or instead of pigs they just bought a cat and then only when the cat was let out of the bag did the I don't know the buyer realized that not a pck so I think that's where fre that comes from but you don't have to know that I think that's kind of a semi-transparent phrase because you don't

let the cat out of the bag you understand that it's a you know it's revealing a surprise yes um actually talking about uh transparency this is uh semi- related I was thinking about this when you were talking because there are languages where um this this is on the topic of pronunciation and maybe your experience as a teacher of English will help you here because there's there are languages that are very transparent in the way that they're written in the sense that you see them written and it's pretty obvious how you need to pronounce them so

I'm thinking of um let me see definitely not French uh like probably Spanish and Italian it's it seems very transparent to me whereas French English I'm not really sure uh you know some languages are pretty hard to pronounce and so how do you suggest that people go about uh you know learning good pronunciation in a language yeah actually it's quite a funny thing that Hungarian which is said to be one of the hardest languages I know that there are other difficult languages but one let's say Vantage of Hungarian is that it really is transparent when

it comes to pronunciation so what you have written down once you know which letter stands for which sound you're not going to make mistakes even if you're a beginner learner and of course English is the opposite uh so I um my suggestion would be repetition which I know you've also talked about it uh in another video and for example the the idea of this pushed output which I mentioned uh a few minutes ago where you give yourself certain vocabulary items to use in a sentence those will also force you to actually pronounce the words several

times so I think we need quite a few encounters to be certain about how to pronounce words and even that way I think we will make mistakes it happens because uh for example Hungarian is always stressed on the first syllable so for Hungarian Learners learning the the patterns of pronunciation in English sometimes prove quite hard my Learners will say even instead of event I always say that as long as you're comprehensible it's not you know mistakes are okay I think one of the difficulties of language learning in my experience is that a lot of people

don't have the self-confidence to actually use that language that also comes from our school cool experience that you've got a lot of input you're tested but no output comes out of it and so a lot of people feel when they when they let's say take a trip uh to a foreign country and they should order something in another language or I don't know go to hospital that they cannot use that language hi yeah sorry we got uh disconnected it seems like the internet is not so good today uh so sorry about that um are you

in Tahiti right now that's right yeah I'm in Tahiti yeah so uh yeah I'm sorry the internet here I got the highest plan but uh you know Tahiti is pretty far from everything we were talking about pronunciation and uh what is it that you were saying yeah Hungarian is pretty transparent and uh students tend to stress the first syllable of words yeah sometimes or they find it hard to uh to understand why sound is pronounced this way when it's written in a completely different way but I think what I would emphasize is uh the aspect

of self-confidence here that a lot of students uh don't dare to speak the foreign language or the second language because they they learned it in a school setting and uh um and when it comes to actually using the language they struggle a lot so what I try to tell my students or what I try to instill in my students is this aspect of self-confidence that even if they make an a mistaken pronunciation as long as they're comprehensible think it it's good but of course they should strive and practice as much as possible and here all

this input that we have available with subtitled movies for example they could be extremely useful because uh you actually have the subtitle in uh the second language so uh this is the bodal type of subtitling where you actually hear the word and then you see it written down so for example this could be extremely useful when verifying or reinforcing the the spoken form with the written form right so the I think here I have my own opinions on on this I've definitely uh used subtitles a lot in the language I'm trying to learn and also

in English to just get you know all the meaning but um I think a lot of people get stuck on you know I want to watch something in the language I'm trying to learn but then you know the subtitles do I you know is it cheating to put the subtitles should I put the subtitles in the language I'm trying to learn or in my native language what do you think about this yeah this is a very very good question I think for language learning after a certain level B modal subtitles so that is L2 sound

with L2 subtitles prove a lot more useful but I would emphasize the right type of input or the right type of material for the level of the Learners don't choose a very difficult movie with legal vocabulary and expect your yourself to understand uh uh all the words immediately so I think that's not going to be useful what I sometimes have recommended to my students is to watch let's say sitcom which is very useful for language learning there's a lot of research on friends for example that if you watch the the episode in English with your

own subtitles so L1 subtitles you will understand the topic the context everything and then if you manage to you know if you have the time to watch it again with L2 subtitles it's going to be very useful because then you will see what heard and then that can reinforce your knowledge about those lexical items or vocabulary items that you are planning to learn or you're not actually planning to learn because it's incidental language learning so you speak up the language it's so funny because uh I I've been doing this something similar to this for for

years essentially not knowing that it's an actual thing but so watching something like in Japanese for example with subtitles in English or French and then uh just to really understand the story and then I would very often what I do is that I actually have it playing in the background like I watched it once and then maybe a second third time is just playing in the background and I sort of know what is happening because I watched it and I read the subtitles and now I can start to sort of assoc associate the sounds with

uh what is happening and I get a lot of input uh from from this so yeah definitely a good thing to do um my yeah yeah sorry go ahead sorry if I can add something here I would add the concept of narrow reading or I think I would refer it also as narrow watching which is when you are interested in a topic and you watch several similar videos in connection with that topic and then the same vocabulary items will automatically appear so you are exposed to this vocabulary a lot more frequently so you have the

chance of learning it uh uh and I I think that's great so that could be useful as he did watch yeah I um I do it pretty much every night and it's more like repeated uh listening I suppose I mean it's really embarrassing how many times I've listened to a squid game in the background in Japanese or in Italian it's uh it's crazy but yeah you get exposed to the same words you know what's happening and it's uh it's really good but uh I guess some people maybe they don't like to watch the same thing

over and over so you'd have to you know yeah that's why that's why I said that with narrow reading you are reading actually different texts but they're all related to the same topic so let's say you're interested in cooking and you you start checking out different recipes and so it's not always the same recipe but essentially it's going to have the language of how to put a meal together so uh that could be really useful as well and I think with podcasts for example or sitcoms you have the chance of uh uh meeting the same

vocabulary items but not exactly the same content so it doesn't become boring you you mentioned I think that there's been uh some a lot of research done on Friends is this correct yes yes yes yes yes yes uh um uh actually uh I mean is this like uh friends used for language learning you mean yes it's quite interesting that uh that when it comes to frequency word frequency I think it has been discovered that friends uses the most frequent let's say uh I don't know five 6,000 words uh um uh in general so I think

um it's perfect for the lexical coverage of not only native speakers so this means lexical coverage refers to how many unknown words there are in any text that we read or listen to and so if you watch friends I think the chances of uh knowing what's going on or knowing the words are way higher than with some other series or sitcoms that are out there I think it happened by chance so I I don't think this was designed by the writers but then actually I think ranked the episodes of uh um ease of understanding and

uh and and word frequency so uh and I think it could be useful for for let's say Intermediate Language Learners first watching some of the episodes in English with L1 subtitles and then maybe uh watching it in English with L2 subtitles so English subtitles I I must admit that I have never watched uh friends and I know some people are going to be shocked I've also never watched Star Wars and Lord of the Rings so yeah it's it's a scandal but uh here I suppose maybe there's been a lot of research on friends but I

suppose people can use also other sitcom sitcoms that have simple language absolutely I think uh uh this is a generational difference because uh uh I think uh when I was young we we grew up on friends but but now there are other sitcoms I think the the advantage of sitcoms is that they're always using everyday language everyday situations situations that can come up um um you know in in any family setting and so I think the vocabulary is going to be easier to follow than for example let's say a medical series or a legal series

and so that makes it easier to understand right um I I just want to maybe some people at this point I know that there are some people who are super interested in everything that we we've been seeing but maybe for the people who are new to this Channel or new to language learning uh videos in general I just want to ask a very basic question that I ask pretty much all of the guests which is if um if there's a language that yourself you would like to learn uh is there a language that you would

like to learn actually third language is French and I've been neglecting uh uh this absolutely favorite language of mine so I would say I would love to relearn or become better at it uh than I currently am so definitely but I would love to learn Spanish as well okay let's say uh so what is your level in French is it beginner low intermediate lower I would say intermediate right now but I've uh I've been trying to for example make sure that I I expose myself to some audio visual content with subtitles so I try to

make sure that every week I watch something in French if I had to choose a language that I don't know at all and what strategies I would use if that is the question then I would probably find I don't think it has to be a course book or a textbook but some kind of systematic uh um um I coverage of the basic aspects of that language but I think it can be best done uh with the help of a course book or textbook and uh um and and expose myself to some kind of content and

force myself to use the language always on the level that I am at so obviously not higher because it's not possible but uh um and I would try to seek opportunities for example to have a chat with a person uh from that country and so I would make sure that I practice reading and writing and listening and speaking so all these aspects and I would definitely do it with the help of longer chunks um uh and and not just single vocab items so I think that would be maybe my starting point actually um you're you

mentioned that you're at about an intermediate level in French and this is very interesting because I was talking about this with a Japanese friend of mine where uh you learn a language and it can go pretty fast in the beginning but then you get to the intermediate level and you hit a plateau it's uh it's really hard to go from intermediate to a point where you can call yourself you know fluent like hey I'm I can speak fluent French this is really rare this is really hard so do you have suggestions on how people can

go from intermediate to just fluent yeah that this is always such a difficult question because uh English looks like this it's very easy at the beginning and then you have the sense uh or you have this feeling that oh I can chat can you know talk about basic things and this is often a problem with Learners because sometimes they feel like why do you expect me to express myself with eloquent Expressions when I can just say simple things in that language but I think when it comes to the content that they start consuming and they

realize how colorfully you can express yourself maybe they uh they develop the need to to actually Force themselves to use Expressions that they wouldn't otherwise so I think this is the point actually where this uh concept that I mention now for the third time pushed output comes into the picture where you force yourself to use certain elements whether it be in speaking or writing that could change yeah pushed output so I um I've actually noticed and this is just anecdotal evidence obviously but when I yeah so in Japanese I try to think about you know

words that I have learned and one of the issues that I have noticed is that yeah learn a lot of words you know with flashcards for the most part but then um you know I may be able to recognize them and maybe produce them but if I don't make a conscious effort to use them in a conversation they're just going to fade and you know it's just kind of a waste so your concept of pushed output would be make a conscious effort to insert the word or the lexical item in a conversation and this is

going to make it stick um better is that what it is yeah for you can do several things you could yeah you could make a conscious effort of using certain vocabulary items let's say you're going to tell a story and you make sure that these five items appear it could be longer chunks again or single words the second thing I sometimes do is that I use the same text in different ways so one day we just look at the meaning of the text and then the next day I might ask myself students to summarize this

text using certain items again uh um from the text self or let's say I use an interview someone introduces themselves and talks about their childhood and so we underline interesting Expressions that that person has used let's say I had a fairly idilic child Ood or uh um my cousins were around my age and then I tell my students to take these expressions and create a text on their own using those expressions that refers to them this also has the added benefit of being interesting for the student because one thing that I haven't mentioned is effective

that we are starting to do research on why is it that certain items stick because they're relevant Salient for us we remember them this is why for example computer games roleplay games are so popular because they use the vocabulary that is needed for the players and so it becomes vital for them to use these vocabulary items whereas in in a school setting sometimes it happens that the teachers thinks that they bring something which is so interesting for the students but it's not actually actually so they just uh kind of do the task because it's required

but if you bring them a text where you know you ask a student to talk about themselves using new vocabulary items it's going to be very interesting and also another advantage of this is that you can do this on different levels so for a beginner learner you just take very simple expressions and with those expressions they can actually introduce themselves and they're going to realize oh my god I've managed to put five sentences together because you know I'm I'm using the example of another speaker and um and then become more fluent and this is also

in connection with lexical fluency which is another aspect of vocabulary knowledge how you are able to actually express yourself in another language so this concept of fluency just to develop a little bit here is it uh I talked with Paul Nation about fluency development which is um you know words or you know expressions and developing fluency means how well are you able to use the things that you already know is that what we're talking about here okay and I I think this is uh something that definitely I did not know about until you know a

few years ago and this is really overlooked it seems cuz you know in especially in school we focus a lot on well you know here's the grammar and here's the vocabulary that you have to learn and it's new stuff but there's not a lot of time um dedicated to saying okay you already know these things but you need to uh use them very well and my understanding of fluency development is that it also needs to be timed at least when I talked with Paul Nation it's you know here's you know you have five minutes to

use these words or write this text and you really need to get writing so there's this concept of of timing so do you suggest that uh people do these types of activities absolutely I refer to this as recycling I think the recycling of vocabulary is just as important and it often happens that teachers overlook this aspect like we cover that so let's move on to another topic but I think uh um there is a real benefit of let's say using the vocabulary that you learned for a different topic or the lexical items and you kind

of uh incorporate them or ask your students to incorporate those items when talking about another topic and I think that is very very useful right um I I have uh one last question because this is something that I'm always worried about and I'm not I'm not sure that this is uh something I should worry about but anyway so um I'm sure you've noticed that some people spend a long time learning English or whatever language and at some point they get to a very good level where they're able to understand pretty much everything they're able to

express pretty much any idea that they can think of but there's some noticeable mistakes not only in the grammar but I'm thinking also of pronunciation uh and this seems to me like a a lot of people just don't improve it's you know after decades they just keep on making the same mistakes and you know the same wrong pronunciation patterns do you think that and uh I think there's a word for this uh F fossilization or stabilization uh do you think that people actually fossilize or stabilize and there's no hope for any Improvement at some point

or is this something that we can actually you know work think you can definitely work on these aspects this is where I think the teacher comes into the picture so I think you can learn a language by yourself or you can attempt to learn a language by yourself and it's all great and I think that there are those people who have more autonomy to do so so they're more motivated they will just uh seek out opportunities to use flashcards quizl uh uh uh audio or or visual content there then there are those people who need

the teacher but I think the teacher might also be needed help the student overcome these mistakes it's a slow process once a mistake where I I should actually use the term error is fossilize because then I think it becomes much harder uh then there is the question how serious that error is so are you still absolutely comprehensible if you make that mistake so I think one of the typical examples in English is the third person s you know uh a lot of my Learners struggle with that even Advanced Learners that somehow we have a different

system in Hungaria they don't understand what this refers to even though this is one of the earliest aspects that any teacher will teach uh a language you have simple present you put this uh third person s but they still struggle with that are you you know especially now English being used as a linga Franco are you absolutely comprehensible without the third person as yes I still correct my students and try to give them opportunities to improve and let's say summarize a text where someone introduces their daily routine and then I will try to ask them

to pay tension and then uh they might overcome uh these uh errors so to say right so there is a need for feedback but it's not a very serious one yes yes absolutely interesting yeah well uh thank you so much brigita this this has been uh really great a lot of uh great insights I'm sure that uh a lot of people will uh like this interview uh is there anything that we did not talk about that you want to mention my God I think yes maybe this aspect of um going from receptive to productive knowledge

so I think this idea that with the most frequent words I think you will definitely uh need to make sure that you are able to understand and also produce these words and I think that would be the same case with mid frequency words when it comes to English that is I would say the uh uh you know uh the first 3,000 words are the most frequent words and up until 9,000 let's say we refer to them as mid frequency uh so I think that both of uh these um groups of words need to be understood

and produced so I think word lists and uh and uh flash cards are extremely useful however when it comes to frequency words words that might not always be used you might just need to understand understand them in a given text um I think it's nice to develop those strategies where you could rephrase that word or uh it's it's okay that you uh you cannot always produce it so I think that we need to understand how and where we are going to use a lexical item and how often we need that lexical item so that's one

more thing that I would add that uh um that it could be useful to have different strategies for the different levels of frequency nice Rita thank you so much very insightful and uh to uh all the listeners uh if you have uh questions or anything leave them in the comment section I I'll always answer all of the comments so thank you