How to learn a new language like a baby
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
> Listeners correctly distinguished the languages more often than not
Just to be clear what was actually tested. The conclusions seem pretty heroic to me given the extremely limited nature of 'language learning' that happened here.
Anecdotally, I'll say I've been learning a second language for 20 years by myself in a place where that language isn't spoken by anyone, and I've made more progress in the past 2 years than the preceding 18. What I changed:
- 15 minutes on anki vocab flashcards every night
- reading books in that language daily instead of english (my native language) and making flashcards for every word or phrase I didn't know
- listening to videos and podcasts in that language aimed at native speakers, NOT learners, and watching them REPEATEDLY until I could understand as close as I could get to 100% of it without subtitles. I try to spend 20-40 minutes a day listening. I especially put on podcasts in the car, but I have to be at home on my pc to rewatch with subtitles or a transcript to get the parts I couldn't understand initially.
It takes a lot of patience. There's no way around that.
I feel like I’m starting to get an actual grip on the language instead of just being able to get the broad strokes of what someone is saying by latching onto vocab I’ve memorized, and while I wouldn’t say I’m comfortable with trying to hold a conversation yet it’s already dramatically improved my ability to compose understandable sentences.
Sadly, there are not a lot of comprehensible input based learning courses out there as most focus on speaking early.
In general, I find that the most important thing to learn first with a new language is the pronunciation. Compared to learning thousands of words, it's not that difficult to learn to correctly produce the sounds of a foreign language. If you are able to pronounce things properly, native speakers will think much more highly of your abilities in the language (which can backfire when they assume you're fluent).
My only disappointment is that Pimsleur only created 2 levels for my target language, so after I had repeated them a number of times I had to look elsewhere for other (less effective) materials. Recently, I've been using the ChatGPT Voice Assistant to try and approximate the Pimsleur experience - it works to some degree, and it's novel that I can ask it questions during learning, but it can't really offer a curriculum in the same way.
We've created an app with listening-first approach and added some very useful features on top of that, like showing a sentence when requested and saving unknown words for later practicing.
There are three exercise types, one is prerecorded conversation where you pick one side and record your pronounciation so you can compare it with a native speaker.
I'd be curious to hear what you think about it.
What's your target language, if you don't mind me asking?
I do question whether it's helpful to focus on audio without text. They're focusing on melody and rhythm, and it seems that listening without subtitles is better for that, but that doesn't get you understanding, while listening to comprehensible input with subtitles lets you get melody, rhythm, and actual vocabulary and grammar at the same time. It also lets you stretch "comprehensible" a bit further, since you have an extra source of contextual input.
Babies also have a lot of context for what the words they're hearing actually mean. I suppose there's the "watch translated peppa pig" approach for that.
My project (https://nuenki.app) translates appropriate-difficulty sentences into your target language as you browse, so you casually pick it up over time through comprehensible input.
As an adult, if you were sent to an immersion program in a foreign country with two full-time foreign tutors/caretakers who loved you, like legitimately loved you with all their hearts, you would pick up that new language pretty darn quick.
The advantage is that it's easier, and often more pleasant, to integrate.
That said, babies do have some neuroplasticity advantages.
We should play to our strengths - babies are hopeless at grammar drills, and adults aren't as good as babies at neuroplasticity - by applying our brain to the problem.
I say that, while having built a comprehensible input tool (https://nuenki.app). But it's useful as a complement to that study, as you can more readily run a browser extension or listen to podcasts than devote your entire life to focused study.
There are different levels of fluency that language training professionals recognize, mostly standardized on the ILR scale [0].
There are 5 levels on this scale. What people commonly consider "fluent" is level 3. There are also midpoints recognized by a "+", e.g. most people who study language seriously but don't have any special aptitude for language training get to a 2+. It's an open question of serious debate and active research of whether it's possible to train anyone past 2+ to 3. Some rare individuals seem to have an innate aptitude for language acquisition and they seem to breeze through their training to 3 and then continue on from there. Everyone else seems to plateau at 2+.
3 is just the level of "can easily be understood as a foreigner by a native speaker". It's not native level of mastery. "So fluent you can fool a native speaker" is 5.
All of that is to say that children are most definitely not fluent by the time they reach school age. Most children starting school will be at a 0+ level. Particularly intelligent children might be at a 1. But they are definitely nowhere near 3.
And indeed, by the time most people graduate highschool, I would struggle to admit that they are much beyond 3. Hell, I'd even say a large portion of people graduating college don't have mastery of their native language.
So no, I don't think children have a particularly large advantage in learning language. Despite significant, continue training in language for the first 18 years of their lives, most aren't able to get very far beyond what any studious adult can learn in 2 years.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILR_scale#ILR_scale
Edits: damn glass keyboards making my own fluency look suspect
"Fluency" is when you can easily speak without having to construct the sentence in your mind, not even for a moment. It just comes out. It _flows_, which is what the term originally meant. Being fluent does not imply that you can talk about anything and everything from philosophy to Bach, or whatever.
To hear "It is extremely rare for any child to be fluent in any language by the time they start school".. that makes no sense. Of course every single child is fluent in _at least_ their native language when they reach school! And long before.
Some are fluent in more than one language, but it's much rarer. Though I do know a family where all three children were fluent in three languages before they started school. Special circumstances though, and thoroughly anecdotal.
You might be thinking to apply measurements meant to verify a grown-ups fluency (with all that that implies: vocabulary, idioms, ability to detect nuance, etc.) for children, which is in my opinion a flawed methodology.
"A Comparative Study on the Effectiveness of Using Traditional and Contextualized Methods for Enhancing Learners’ Vocabulary Knowledge in an EFL Classroom" where those who were given traditional vocabulary lists performed worse.
That is an okay experiment to compare the two teaching methods, but doesn't address the question of what happens when you combine them by reading a text with an accompanying vocabulary list. I would be rather surprised if additional access to definitions actually hurt learning. Like, what are dictionaries for, then?
Language learning is not easy nor effortless nor "just a few minutes per day" endeavor. Babies had 24/7 immersion and a completely different context.
You can do experiments and try certain things but the framing needs to be honest and not "we tried this thing in a very small environment and extrapolated like mad".
This matches very well with my own personal observations. Most language instruction focuses very heavily on written instruction, which can be damaging early on. When you're just starting out a new language, you should learn the sounds by mimicking native speakers, not by reading letters off a page. When reading, your preconceptions of how those strings of letters would be pronounced in your own native language can interfere with correct pronunciation.
Once you've got the pronunciation of the basic sounds of the new language down correctly, you can start using written materials.
I’ve been working on a spaced repetition system that focuses exclusively on listening and speaking skills. It is not quite spicy enough to remove ALL writing (shown at the end of the review), but quizzes are done blind without showing written transcriptions.
Feel free to reach out if you have feedback or ideas: https://koala.cards
Socrates vindicated
I learned my second language by reading out loud, and only going on if I was sure I was pronouncing the thing right. We have the internet now; if you think you're pronouncing something wrong in a common language, you can go on the internet and make sure you're pronouncing it right. [edit: I remember when people were using their phones to transcribe what they were saying in L2 in order to check their pronunciation; do people still do that?]
When reading out loud sometimes I would sing the words, because you can't come up with a convincing way to sing a sentence unless you understand what it means.
Orthography is of course going to be distracting in English or French (or Chinese) because they have terrible orthography when it comes to representing sounds. But you're going to want to be literate anyway, so eventually you're going to have to learn how to recognize but ignore the details of the words.
Subtitles are a problem because people shut their ears off while reading them (as the article claims to confirm.) But if you can understand the subtitles, you've improved your literacy and gained an understanding of that piece of media. Now turn them off, and listen while knowing what's being said. Shadow and repeat after the speakers. Check your pronunciation against them. Roll the words in your mouth while the meaning is rolling around in your head. Make sure you know and can repeat every word that's being said, and make sure you understand the grammar.
Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are all very different things. But I'm not just learning a language to speak to people, so every one if them is important. I will not understand the cultural references that people use in daily conversation to communicate meaning unless I read. I can't replace their entire upbringing in a language by chatting, even in a focused way, for a few years.
Learning a language as an adult is different than learning a language as a baby. As an adult, you have another language to compare everything to, and you already know how languages work. A baby will become extremely fluent in their first language before they ever learn to read. You already know how to read. Take advantage. If you want to work on your pronunciation, there are lots of ways, like chorusing, shadowing, reading out loud, Pimsleur and FSI give you lots of chances to compare your pronunciation to a model, etc.
Babies take 7-8 years to get good at a language. They're no faster than you.
I was in Costa Rica and while all of the customer facing people spoke English, one guy who brought us water asked a simple question “desayuno o cena?” After thinking about it for a couple of seconds, I realized he was asking whether we wanted the breakfast or dinner menu. Even the Spanish I do know, it takes me way too long to understand it and speak it.
Incidentally the above is exactly how I learned English. I didn't try to learn English, I just wanted to read the computer magazine or the fiction or whatever I was able to digest at the time.
The side effect is that you'll be horrible at translation.. there's no connection to the same association.