I love languages, I had tried many times with various methods (books, apps, courses etc). Finding out about the Comprehensible Input method has gotten me so much further in acquiring another language than any other method. CI method is about acquiring another language rather than learning it. CI teachers use a lot of stories to teach the language. I have been using Dreaming Spanish to acquire Spanish.
How long have you been using Dreaming Spanish? How is your Spanish now? My son and I tried it years ago, but he preferred Mandarin so we stopped. I would totally try Dreaming Spanish on my own again if it truly works.
I've been using DS for about a year now. Though life has meant I haven't always been consistent. I also haven't been able to do conversations with a native speaker like DS recommends. I am able to read kids chapter books, fully understand children's tv shows/movies. Adults tv shows - I am learning the slang/increasing vocabulary. I do believe DS / Comprehensible input works. There is a subreddit on Dreaming Spanish with lots of people posting about their progress & experiences.
It seems criminal that I haven't responded before but life kept intervening. Anyway, here goes.
I've been a second language teacher for about 15 years. My mental model is that some people are going to learn languages MUCH more easily than others. If you are in this lower-friction group, congratulations.
For those who tend to succeed, whether easily or with more effort, there are several common factors:
1) There needs to be something they want within the language. I have a bunch of students who became extremely fluent watching YouTube videos and even brainrot short form content. It motivated them.
It could be books or stories or video games. Immersion is a great reason to want to learn a language. That could be a trip. Ideally this isn't something they can simply translate or find in their own language.
For some kids the simple feeling of improvement is enough to motivate them to keep going- don't bank on this, it often is this way for easy language learners.
2) deliberate practice - often this means doing something outside of school. Tutorial lessons can work if the student wants to improve. Self study can work if there is place where students can 'test' their learning.
This is weightlifting, not a race for output. I think some of the apps are so frictionless that the information gained only stays in the app. The information should be pulled out into more realistic applications if you want it to generalize
3) there needs to be a safe environment students can test what they've learned and receive authentic feedback. This could be conversation. Reading or listening can be a test, too. Students who understand pass the test. The key point is that the language feedback that they receive is accurate and that they are willing to engage. This is environmental.
I cannot stress enough that learning a language is a vulnerable experience and learners need to feel that the benefits outweigh the fear and vulnerability. It is easier with younger children because they feel less social fear. The ability to experiment with language is crucial.
In addition to being a teacher I live and raise two primarily English-speaking kids in a primarily Cantonese-speaking environment.
Unfortunately my children did not pick up Cantonese well enough that we were willing to put them through Chinese medium of instruction local schools. A regret, to be sure. But even though they may not reach native-level language ability, there are a wide range of fluencies between nothing and perfection and benefits to be enjoyed at each increasing level of mastery.
Even my own, extremely limited Cantonese helps a lot. People will go out of their way to help a foreigner willing to try and speak their mother tongue.
Thanks for this, Andy! After I write the second part, be sure to give a full critique of what you think is missing. (Some of it can be added to the elementary part; the other stuff, I can give focus to in the middle school part.)
Father of a preschooler who speaks English with me, Cantonese with his ma, and Mandarin at school and with his friends. He is very fluent in all three, but Mandarin seems to be the language he prefers (his English sometimes comes out as “Chinglish”).
My question is: what about reading and writing? I feel like you wouldn’t get the full benefits of a second-language without literacy. And while writing with a pen and paper may be a little outdated (as everyone types now) and tedious to teach, it still seems important for some reason. I can read and type Mandarin (poorly), but I can’t really write it at all and it’s like I’m missing out on part of the second-language experience.
I am also curious/skeptical about the International Phonetic Alphabet. It seems like IPA is more useful for linguists and people learning rare dialects than it is for a kid who just wants to speak a second language. When I started to learn Mandarin I used the pinyin system for making the speech sounds (I believe pinyin is also used in the schools in China). This was more practical because most learning materials and a lot of children’s books use pinyin, whereas I’ve never seen any Mandarin material using IPA. I like the idea of children making all different kinds of speech sounds, but I think it would be more efficient just to focus on the sounds for the specific language they want to learn.
Thanks, JR! I'm going to try to write a separate short post about the IPA — for the moment, I'll just note that my crazy notions isn't that kids should try to learn *all* the sounds/letters in the IPA... just the ones (1) for their language, and (2) for their adopted language.
What's interesting to me is that the tones of Mandarin terrify me (my wife and I used to teach at a Mandarin school, so I was around it a lot), and having something like the IPA (or some other way to write down the tones) would have made me much more comfortable learning it.
Glad for the clarification that we're not trying to tackle the whole thing. That might actually help with motivation (more achievable) up the mystery factor (what interesting dragons lurk over here?).
I did a little research on the IPA and appreciated this article:
Handed them "ɪts ˈlaɪrəz hæf ˈbɜrθˌdeɪ təˈdeɪ" last night. They ran off to a mirror at first and when that didn't yield anything say down together and chatted with each other for a bit. "I've seen those connected letters in a book before!" "Does the line through the O mean zero? Why would there be a zero?" Silence for a beat and then my 7yo triumphantly declared "birthday!" From there it was just a few seconds until they had the rest. They requested a second one and decoded it immediately (ɪn ə ˈbætəl bɪˈtwin ˈɛləfənts ði ænts ɡɛt skwɑʃt). This morning I have Frost's Dust of Snow for them, we'll see if that slows them down compared to the short phrases with some of their favorite words from yesterday.
They are having so much fun with this! They've gotten all but two words in the poem I gave them this morning; down looks to them like it should be dawn and they haven't been able to figure out what else it could be, and change is a hard word to puzzle out from their limited experience with two other sentences. But they are starting to identify the sounds associated with the symbols, so now I think I get to make them a blank chart to fill in. (If anyone has seen such a blank chart premade I'd love a link; everything I can find has example words.)
I think I remember Scott Alexander saying somewhere that as a child, he wondered why the Japanese didn't use the True Names for things.
Some perspective on learning English as a foreign language. I grew up in a bilingual household in Switzerland, where it's accepted that every child in our area learns the local dialect of Swiss German, then at school High German (which is our approximation of "German" German even though the actual Germans often find our pronunciation hilarious), some French (it's one of our national languages), some English (often more popular than French with the kids), and if you want you can do Italian too.
But so much media is in English, and I guess that effect is even more extreme in countries with smaller numbers of native speakers (German has about 90 million speakers, Finnish for example only about 5 million). You hear English songs on the radio. Cinema films are English with subtitles (or they alternate between dubbed and subtitled on different days, but not all films have a dubbed version in the first place). Youtube is apparently 93% English and 0.5% German videos if Quora is right. Popular TV shows might or might not be dubbed, or they might not officially be released in your country at all; a lot of world-famous singers, bands and other performers speak English - for an obvious example, you can still be a Taylor Swift fan in Germany. As a child or teenager, English isn't exactly everywhere but it is everywhere you look for it, and you pick up a lot of it in those early years where your brain sort of learns languages naturally.
I can recommend watching the occasional French arthouse film or a Miyazaki animated film in original language with subtitles, but you can imagine in a non-English-speaking country a lot of your media experience will be like this.
If you were to put that much German around some child growing up in an English-speaking country, let's say they grow up in the US but with a father whose native language is German and they speak it a lot at home, and sometimes read German picture books or watch German kids' TV in their early years, they should grow up bilingual no problem, and as a bonus they get to enjoy the famous "with the mouse" series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Sendung_mit_der_Maus, https://www.wdrmaus.de/).
PhD Biomedical engineer who attended a terrible grade school that bragged about starting Spanish in kindergarten but didn't teach us any verbs until 4th grade, and barely scraped by with a 3 on the AP Spanish exam but didn't actually feel like I forgot all that much of what I ever had in the 15+ years I barely used it before I started working on it again. I would agree that it's dispiriting to sink untold hours into learning a language with the goal of fluency only to never achieve anything near that and then forget what you ever had, but I also think there's an unhelpful assumption that anything short of fluency is pointless. If you can communicate in a second (or more) language by reading and writing, even imperfectly, that's not nothing! And whether you want to try to become fluent in one additional language or gain some lesser skills in multiple languages seems to me like it might reasonably be a personal choice with no clear answer. Currently my 9 and 7 year olds have 1100+ and 500+ day streaks in Duolingo respectively (Spanish). It's far from perfect, but it's super easy for them to do a few minutes of it every single day. We're also using anki for toki pona, kanji, and ASL (initially to communicate better with a friend, but super incredibly helpful to my kids for everything from dealing with the annoyance of a dentist asking questions while their fingers are in their mouths to communicating across distances at the park to giving silent hints to puzzles without spoiling them for someone who doesn't want a hint). I don't have a grand vision of where we're going with any of this, except that it's joyful and fun the way it is at the moment. I love the idea of introducing the IPA via cyphers, though, going to give that a try!
I love languages, I had tried many times with various methods (books, apps, courses etc). Finding out about the Comprehensible Input method has gotten me so much further in acquiring another language than any other method. CI method is about acquiring another language rather than learning it. CI teachers use a lot of stories to teach the language. I have been using Dreaming Spanish to acquire Spanish.
How long have you been using Dreaming Spanish? How is your Spanish now? My son and I tried it years ago, but he preferred Mandarin so we stopped. I would totally try Dreaming Spanish on my own again if it truly works.
I've been using DS for about a year now. Though life has meant I haven't always been consistent. I also haven't been able to do conversations with a native speaker like DS recommends. I am able to read kids chapter books, fully understand children's tv shows/movies. Adults tv shows - I am learning the slang/increasing vocabulary. I do believe DS / Comprehensible input works. There is a subreddit on Dreaming Spanish with lots of people posting about their progress & experiences.
Thank you! I’m going to try to do one video a day with my son and just enjoy the ride.
It seems criminal that I haven't responded before but life kept intervening. Anyway, here goes.
I've been a second language teacher for about 15 years. My mental model is that some people are going to learn languages MUCH more easily than others. If you are in this lower-friction group, congratulations.
For those who tend to succeed, whether easily or with more effort, there are several common factors:
1) There needs to be something they want within the language. I have a bunch of students who became extremely fluent watching YouTube videos and even brainrot short form content. It motivated them.
It could be books or stories or video games. Immersion is a great reason to want to learn a language. That could be a trip. Ideally this isn't something they can simply translate or find in their own language.
For some kids the simple feeling of improvement is enough to motivate them to keep going- don't bank on this, it often is this way for easy language learners.
2) deliberate practice - often this means doing something outside of school. Tutorial lessons can work if the student wants to improve. Self study can work if there is place where students can 'test' their learning.
This is weightlifting, not a race for output. I think some of the apps are so frictionless that the information gained only stays in the app. The information should be pulled out into more realistic applications if you want it to generalize
3) there needs to be a safe environment students can test what they've learned and receive authentic feedback. This could be conversation. Reading or listening can be a test, too. Students who understand pass the test. The key point is that the language feedback that they receive is accurate and that they are willing to engage. This is environmental.
I cannot stress enough that learning a language is a vulnerable experience and learners need to feel that the benefits outweigh the fear and vulnerability. It is easier with younger children because they feel less social fear. The ability to experiment with language is crucial.
In addition to being a teacher I live and raise two primarily English-speaking kids in a primarily Cantonese-speaking environment.
Unfortunately my children did not pick up Cantonese well enough that we were willing to put them through Chinese medium of instruction local schools. A regret, to be sure. But even though they may not reach native-level language ability, there are a wide range of fluencies between nothing and perfection and benefits to be enjoyed at each increasing level of mastery.
Even my own, extremely limited Cantonese helps a lot. People will go out of their way to help a foreigner willing to try and speak their mother tongue.
Thanks for this, Andy! After I write the second part, be sure to give a full critique of what you think is missing. (Some of it can be added to the elementary part; the other stuff, I can give focus to in the middle school part.)
Father of a preschooler who speaks English with me, Cantonese with his ma, and Mandarin at school and with his friends. He is very fluent in all three, but Mandarin seems to be the language he prefers (his English sometimes comes out as “Chinglish”).
My question is: what about reading and writing? I feel like you wouldn’t get the full benefits of a second-language without literacy. And while writing with a pen and paper may be a little outdated (as everyone types now) and tedious to teach, it still seems important for some reason. I can read and type Mandarin (poorly), but I can’t really write it at all and it’s like I’m missing out on part of the second-language experience.
I am also curious/skeptical about the International Phonetic Alphabet. It seems like IPA is more useful for linguists and people learning rare dialects than it is for a kid who just wants to speak a second language. When I started to learn Mandarin I used the pinyin system for making the speech sounds (I believe pinyin is also used in the schools in China). This was more practical because most learning materials and a lot of children’s books use pinyin, whereas I’ve never seen any Mandarin material using IPA. I like the idea of children making all different kinds of speech sounds, but I think it would be more efficient just to focus on the sounds for the specific language they want to learn.
Thanks, JR! I'm going to try to write a separate short post about the IPA — for the moment, I'll just note that my crazy notions isn't that kids should try to learn *all* the sounds/letters in the IPA... just the ones (1) for their language, and (2) for their adopted language.
What's interesting to me is that the tones of Mandarin terrify me (my wife and I used to teach at a Mandarin school, so I was around it a lot), and having something like the IPA (or some other way to write down the tones) would have made me much more comfortable learning it.
Glad for the clarification that we're not trying to tackle the whole thing. That might actually help with motivation (more achievable) up the mystery factor (what interesting dragons lurk over here?).
I did a little research on the IPA and appreciated this article:
https://www.fluentin3months.com/ipa-alphabet/
Handed them "ɪts ˈlaɪrəz hæf ˈbɜrθˌdeɪ təˈdeɪ" last night. They ran off to a mirror at first and when that didn't yield anything say down together and chatted with each other for a bit. "I've seen those connected letters in a book before!" "Does the line through the O mean zero? Why would there be a zero?" Silence for a beat and then my 7yo triumphantly declared "birthday!" From there it was just a few seconds until they had the rest. They requested a second one and decoded it immediately (ɪn ə ˈbætəl bɪˈtwin ˈɛləfənts ði ænts ɡɛt skwɑʃt). This morning I have Frost's Dust of Snow for them, we'll see if that slows them down compared to the short phrases with some of their favorite words from yesterday.
Oh, I like this SO MUCH! (And brilliant move, using proverbs for this!)
They are having so much fun with this! They've gotten all but two words in the poem I gave them this morning; down looks to them like it should be dawn and they haven't been able to figure out what else it could be, and change is a hard word to puzzle out from their limited experience with two other sentences. But they are starting to identify the sounds associated with the symbols, so now I think I get to make them a blank chart to fill in. (If anyone has seen such a blank chart premade I'd love a link; everything I can find has example words.)
I think I remember Scott Alexander saying somewhere that as a child, he wondered why the Japanese didn't use the True Names for things.
Some perspective on learning English as a foreign language. I grew up in a bilingual household in Switzerland, where it's accepted that every child in our area learns the local dialect of Swiss German, then at school High German (which is our approximation of "German" German even though the actual Germans often find our pronunciation hilarious), some French (it's one of our national languages), some English (often more popular than French with the kids), and if you want you can do Italian too.
But so much media is in English, and I guess that effect is even more extreme in countries with smaller numbers of native speakers (German has about 90 million speakers, Finnish for example only about 5 million). You hear English songs on the radio. Cinema films are English with subtitles (or they alternate between dubbed and subtitled on different days, but not all films have a dubbed version in the first place). Youtube is apparently 93% English and 0.5% German videos if Quora is right. Popular TV shows might or might not be dubbed, or they might not officially be released in your country at all; a lot of world-famous singers, bands and other performers speak English - for an obvious example, you can still be a Taylor Swift fan in Germany. As a child or teenager, English isn't exactly everywhere but it is everywhere you look for it, and you pick up a lot of it in those early years where your brain sort of learns languages naturally.
I can recommend watching the occasional French arthouse film or a Miyazaki animated film in original language with subtitles, but you can imagine in a non-English-speaking country a lot of your media experience will be like this.
If you were to put that much German around some child growing up in an English-speaking country, let's say they grow up in the US but with a father whose native language is German and they speak it a lot at home, and sometimes read German picture books or watch German kids' TV in their early years, they should grow up bilingual no problem, and as a bonus they get to enjoy the famous "with the mouse" series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Sendung_mit_der_Maus, https://www.wdrmaus.de/).
PhD Biomedical engineer who attended a terrible grade school that bragged about starting Spanish in kindergarten but didn't teach us any verbs until 4th grade, and barely scraped by with a 3 on the AP Spanish exam but didn't actually feel like I forgot all that much of what I ever had in the 15+ years I barely used it before I started working on it again. I would agree that it's dispiriting to sink untold hours into learning a language with the goal of fluency only to never achieve anything near that and then forget what you ever had, but I also think there's an unhelpful assumption that anything short of fluency is pointless. If you can communicate in a second (or more) language by reading and writing, even imperfectly, that's not nothing! And whether you want to try to become fluent in one additional language or gain some lesser skills in multiple languages seems to me like it might reasonably be a personal choice with no clear answer. Currently my 9 and 7 year olds have 1100+ and 500+ day streaks in Duolingo respectively (Spanish). It's far from perfect, but it's super easy for them to do a few minutes of it every single day. We're also using anki for toki pona, kanji, and ASL (initially to communicate better with a friend, but super incredibly helpful to my kids for everything from dealing with the annoyance of a dentist asking questions while their fingers are in their mouths to communicating across distances at the park to giving silent hints to puzzles without spoiling them for someone who doesn't want a hint). I don't have a grand vision of where we're going with any of this, except that it's joyful and fun the way it is at the moment. I love the idea of introducing the IPA via cyphers, though, going to give that a try!