Comment by emptysongglass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emptysongglass | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> - Avoid speaking. This has shown to actually hinder the process of acquiring a language. Speaking is the natural result of having learned a language. You'll notice when you're ready to start speaking a little because you'll occasionally have thoughts in your target language. Until then, speaking practice is virtually useless.

This has to be the most counterproductive advice I've ever heard. You need to start speaking as soon as possible. There's no other trick to learning a language than forcing yourself to speak.

For some it's easier because they're less socially anxious. For others it will be more difficult. I was in the latter camp learning Danish. You have to make friends with your fear or you will forever be stuck in what many language learners refer to as a "quiet period". I was for a decade (!!!) If you don't start speaking you will forever have only an intellectual understanding of the language.

So speak. Please speak. Early and often. Babies sound things out early because they're trying to get a hold of it, the vocal contortions required.

Now a result I can believe in this vein would be: "that attempting to lean heavily on sentence construction and grammar exercises to induce speaking could have a negative effect on language acquisition" and that's what I believe Stephen Krashen is actually advocating against.

But that's a very specific claim as opposed to "avoid speaking".

You haven't really shown how speaking improves your understanding or comprehension of a language.

Of course you need to speak to get good at speaking, I don't think that's what the original poster meant. But rather that you should focus on comprehension initially,because there's not really much point to speaking to someone if you don't know what you want to say and cannot understand the response.

Language comprehension is a two way street. If someone thinks comprehension is a passive activity, then they're likely not fully comprehending. Comprehension requires active engagement.

When you're learning another language, there'll be countless times where you're like "ohhhh, I understand this." Then the moment you open your mouth, you'll get pretty directly told, "No, you completely misunderstood." You'll also encounter people who immediately correct your mistakes when speaking, whether they're grammatical or misusages of words.

As an example that people here might better grasp, learning a language without speaking is like learning a programming language without writing your own code. You might generally recognize the syntax and usage of various functions, but you won't truly grasp it and understand its nuances until you sit down, write, and accept that you'll make mistakes and identify them.

>Comprehension requires active engagement.

I agree, but active engagement does not require speaking or writing. Listening and reading are not necessarily passive. You don't need to know how to write fluently to be able to read fluently and comprehend something, and I don't need to say something to be able to understand it. Can mute people not understand spoken word as well as people who can speak?

>As an example that people here might better grasp, learning a language without speaking is like learning a programming language without writing your own code.

>You might generally recognize the syntax and usage of various functions, but you won't truly grasp it and understand its nuances until you sit down, write, and accept that you'll make mistakes and identify them.

You'd need someone to correct your mistakes for this to work. And that can help, sure, but you can definitely internalize the correct usage of phrases, etc, from reading and listening to it being done correctly as well. Doing something incorrectly (which you will most likely do without a highly developed model of how the language works in practice) will not help on it's own.

People who are mute still communicate. They're not merely listeners.

If you're not practicing output, you're not truly comprehending. Output, whether it be speech, writing, or signing, is how you get and demonstrate confirmation that you comprehend.

If you were speaking your native language to someone who understands it, but spoke back to you in their native language that you are learning, you can get the same confirmation. I've done this before and it can work quite well. So I'm not really convinced it's necessary for comprehension. It's necessary for being able to speak of course, I don't disagree with that.

This also implies you cannot understand a language without people who can speak it to you. You can learn to read books without reading them out to someone who tells you what they mean.

Honestly, this doesn't even really make sense considering my own experience of going from not comprehending stuff like shows and podcasts to being able to almost completely understand everything being said a lot of times, without any real practice speaking to people. Unless you want to claim that I'm not actually understanding anything at all :).

Hey, if it works for you, that's great! It's not necessarily what the research I've done says, but I'm glad you found a strategy that works for you.

EDIT: You may appreciate this - http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/down_with_forced_s...

The title even disagrees with your statement. And this research is entirely focused on student anxiety. "Forced output" is what the claim is against.

Even more specifically these studies are focused on beginning students (i.e. 1st term students), so it is even less applicable once you have some level of experience with the language.

There is even a section on "How to promote speaking fluency". He is 100% not advocating to avoid speaking, but it talking about how speaking is a lagging indicator of proficiency.

Speaking requires the integration of language skills, so it will always lag behind other language skills. That does not mean it should be avoided.

The Defense Language Institute (DLI) even formally recognizes in its graduation requirements. The standard is 2 Listening/2 Reading/1+ Speaking indicating that speaking skills will generally lag behind reading and listening skills by 1/2 a level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com