darkjapanese Wrote:Thus input, while essential, is best used to flesh out deliberately learned aspects of the language (e.g. grammar, SRS). Just as monolingualism has caused an unscientific and impractical recommendation to avoid using the L1 (first language) and needs to be replaced with a multilingual perspective, overemphasis on input (due to theories based on outdated, pseudoscientific notions of a language organ in the brain, an acquisition/learning distinction, etc.) has caused many to avoid output, leaving critical weaknesses, one of which requires an o+1 approach to make right.

darkjapanese Wrote:Learning through input alone is relatively slow and fragile. As Nation and other researchers have noted, words are learned through input at a very low rate, even with graded readers and glossing, and learning a word through context requires knowing around 98% of any given stream of input, and fully learning it this way requires seeing the word many times (10-20) in different contexts.

darkjapanese Wrote:Output practice promotes an independent kind of learning from input. It encourages a bottom-up, syntactic kind of processing. This rather than top-down and semantic input learning, where often getting the gist, glossing over errors, is good enough, and frequently you don’t know what you don’t know. Output inclines you to notice the gaps in your knowledge, which you parlay into noticing how others accomplish the same task, thus improving intake/uptake.

Word of caution: don't jump straight into output, try to use words you know, i+0, input is first output after, etc.

darkjapanese Wrote:Input alone doesn’t lead to much productive ability, and it leaves many gaps in your learning.

Input is necessary for a basic grasp of the language, but truly understanding something requires application and use. Recognition can only get you so far.



Here's the blog post/article. I do recommend reading it. He says a lot more that can't be copy and pasted (and I suck at explaining), including how you can use anki for output besides cloze-deletion.

http://darkjapanese.wordpress.com/2013/0...e-complex/



EDIT:
There are four aspects of language learning. Reading, listening, writing, and speaking. All four reinforce one another.

Language learning is "fastest" when all four aspects balance and converge with one another.

Animosophy Wrote:"Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition"
Read voraciously

One might be tempted [...] to say that one learns to speak by speaking, as we have said about other skills, and that would be true in general. However, research studies are beginning to show something else that is quite interesting. Many good speakers did not acquire their speaking skills by a lot of speaking practice; rather, they acquired them by doing a lot of reading (Badawi, 2002; Leaver, 2003a), then using what they had read in speaking.

Good post.

Everyone who I know who got really good at Japanese really quickly did tons of output.

I agree with the post.

I think someone once mentioned:

'Output is difficult of course. There are multiple ways to translate a single word/sentence. But doing output-based flashcards is making the best of a bad situation.'

I think unambiguous words (green) are easier than ambiguous ones (big/huge/gargantuan). I think pictures help a lot for similar words.

If a music teacher were to tell his or her students to only play music when they've had sufficient input--a silent incubation phase--the landscape of music education would be markedly different.

nest0r has a lot of interesting information. He also has a tumblr.com account @ http://darkjapanese.tumblr.com/

When it comes to reading about language learning, from the perspective of a fellow learner, you may well come across a different perspective or something at least a little different then what you may be used to in relation to these sort of discussions in a general forum environment.

This is another post which I think it relative and insightful:

http://darkjapanese.wordpress.com/2012/0...cognition/

An interesting passage I took note of in "Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition". I think it's relevant here...

Quote:Read voraciously

One might be tempted [...] to say that one learns to speak by speaking, as we have said about other skills, and that would be true in general. However, research studies are beginning to show something else that is quite interesting. Many good speakers did not acquire their speaking skills by a lot of speaking practice; rather, they acquired them by doing a lot of reading (Badawi, 2002; Leaver, 2003a), then using what they had read in speaking.

This also might be obvious to everyone here, but I took better notice of it after seeing it written. Input and output are mutually reinforcing so it only makes sense to bring them together as much as possible.

After all his theorising, did Nest0r actually succeed at learning Japanese? I guess we'll never know.

nadiatims Wrote:After all his theorising, did Nest0r actually succeed at learning Japanese? I guess we'll never know.

Whether or not Nest0r achieved anything from the collected information does not reflect the value of the information- which, is very strongly based on a collection of data and research, insights and concepts from a range of people, as indicated in the ever present list of links to papers and what not. If you were to make the statement, it would be more accurate to point out that it was not "his theorising" (or hypothesizing, realistically) but the collective work of many others in which the individual merely explained their ideas, along with his own opinion of them, in a format accessible to those without the related scientific papers, articles, etc. Whether or not you find these sources useful or not, it would be at least a basic measure to acknowledge that the ideas stem from others, and are not entirely original ideas and concepts of the blog author.

This personalizing is hardly relevant, if anything, entirely misses the focus of the information presented. The individual success or failure to utilize a tool or tool set correctly does not provide a casual assessment of the value of the tools.

mmhorii Wrote:If a music teacher were to tell his or her students to only play music when they've had sufficient input--a silent incubation phase--the landscape of music education would be markedly different.

Input in this case would be listening to music, which we all do. I get the feeling that if someone who'd been living under a rock and never been hearing music would go to a music teacher to learn, the teacher would first and foremost give him something to listen to.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Input in this case would be listening to music, which we all do. I get the feeling that if someone who'd been living under a rock and never been hearing music would go to a music teacher to learn, the teacher would first and foremost give him something to listen to.

If listening to music is analogous to listening to a language in terms of the learning process, it shows how little simply listening to input does. Most people can't distinguish intervals despite a lifetime of listening to music, even though with a couple of weeks worth of dedicated practice they can start to do it pretty easily (when limited to two notes). In fact, a lot of people can't even tell you which of two pitches is higher without having ever gotten instruction in music (unless, of course, the two pitches are very far apart).

But yeah, probably if you wanted to start teaching someone music who didn't know any, you would begin by having them listen to songs which illustrate specific intervals to get them started on ear training (something like Silent Night, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Here Comes the Bride, and Star Wars, to start going down the major scale).

@nadiatims
Some of his points support your argument against SRS, mainly your arguments about its inefficiency.


He does claim to have reached a level of fluency in his "about me".

I don't think he would lie. We'll never really know though.

mmhorii Wrote:If a music teacher were to tell his or her students to only play music when they've had sufficient input--a silent incubation phase--the landscape of music education would be markedly different.

If a Physics teacher were to tell his students to start designing airplanes before learning all the relevant laws of Physics, he'd be wasting everyone's time.

See how easy it is to come up with an arbitrary association that seems to validate any side of an argument? That's why using analogies as evidence is a logical fallacy.

Language and music are just as far apart as language and physics. Using either to try and make an argument about language is pointless.

darkjapanese Wrote:Learning through input alone is relatively slow and fragile. As Nation and other researchers have noted, words are learned through input at a very low rate, even with graded readers and glossing, and learning a word through context requires knowing around 98% of any given stream of input, and fully learning it this way requires seeing the word many times (10-20) in different contexts.

The 98% claim is false. I know, because I haven't read a single Japanese text, nor have I listened to or watched a single Japanese piece of media where I knew 98% of it. And yet, I learned new words from reading and listening to Japanese. (I also haven't seen any mention of that number, anywhere in the free link he provides, so, as it stands, it's just an arbitrary claim; arbitrary claims have the same value as false claims).

Having to see something 10-20 times before learning it doesn't seem like a "very low rate". I'd love to compare it to the efficiency of the methods he proposes. Unfortunately, I can't find any links to studies that measure that efficiency, which is odd, since he starts out the article by calling the other side "unscientific". That's fine, so long as you then hold your own advice to the same standard, and make sure it's scientific.

Stansfield123 Wrote:If a Physics teacher were to tell his students to start designing airplanes before learning all the relevant laws of Physics, he'd be wasting everyone's time.

See how easy it is to come up with an arbitrary association that seems to validate any side of an argument? That's why using analogies as evidence is a logical fallacy.

Language and music are just as far apart as language and physics. Using either to try and make an argument about language is pointless.

You're disagreeing a bit too strongly.
First of all, argument from analogy is considered legitimate in logic. However, a false analogy is a logical fallacy. It's not as simple as all analogies being logical fallacies.

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

Second of all, as someone who plays music and learns Japanese, I can't think of anything quite as similar to learning a language as learning an instrument. So, while they're not the same, in many ways they are similar and can make for apt analogies for each other.

Hi Stansfield123,

I understand where you’re coming from, and I agree with you in principle. I also appreciate feedback so I can improve my thinking. Most of my days are spent in a muddle of confused and illogical ideas and thoughts, so any suggestions are helpful. My post wasn’t intended to support an argument or to make an argument; it was simply an observation. However, I can certainly see how it might be read as such, so chalk that up to my writing style: I’ll work on making my prose more “scrutable,” at least when I intend to be “scrutable.”

Not to delve too far into best practices in pedagogy, but I must ask: Are you so sure that if a physics professor were to teach introductory physics via a hands-on approach of building an airplane, rather than force-feeding Newtonian physics to students, that the students wouldn’t have a better understanding and intuition of physics concepts by the end of the course?

To expand on Tzadeck’s comments about the similarities between language learning and music, there is a strong relationship between language learning and music improvisation—in particular, jazz improvisation—and insights can be gained by looking at how jazz improvisation is taught. As an example of this, consider the following link that discusses jazz improvisation. I find that the ideas resonate equally for language learning and music improvisation.
http://jazzadvice.com/10-jazz-improvisat...-remember/

Tzadeck Wrote:First of all, argument from analogy is considered legitimate in logic

No. Logicians may analyze analogical reasoning, but it's not a valid kind of reasoning that can be used to prove anything in logic. It's a heuristic argument at best.

Analogy can be valid in science (except in mathematics if it counts as science) if there is enough supporting evidence. But in a more logically rigorous field, you need to, for example, prove that there exists an isomorphism between the two structures you use in your analogy such that the validity of each allowed logical step is preserved or use category theory to formalize the concept of analogy and comparison. For instance, a sharp difference between physics and mathematical physics is that the former accepts arguments from analogy while the latter does not. So, a "proven theorem" in physics can be an "open problem" in mathematical physics. Logic is even more rigorous than mathematics in this regard.

With that said, I can see how learning a foreign language and learning an instrument are similar, and also think that you can make a very good informal analogy between them, albeit to a limited extent. But there are some stark differences too. An obvious one is that humans are capable of acquiring all the necessary passive skills through listening alone while this is not the case for "passive" musical skills such as identifying chords and differentiating two slightly different notes. So, for example, if you compared active skills in language with singing at some amateur level, it'd have made slightly more sense to me because in both cases you can acquire very basic passive skills through listening alone that are prerequisites to start learning active skills effectively. There are many sutler differences that seem to invalidate direct analogy between learning a foreign language and learning an instrument too (e.g., if you start learning an instrument as an adult, your brain is already quite familiar with the kind of music you want to play to the extent that you can identify the genre while in a foreign language learning, often the time you're unfamiliar with the basic phonological and phonetical features so that you may not be able to tell the difference between the target language and another completely different foreign language).

[Zgarbas]

^^... While it is easy to tell a pop song from a death metal song, it is not so easy to differentiate more similar genres if you have little to no music knowledge. Talk about a single instrument and it's basically impossible. Similarly, it is preeeety easy to tell when a person is speaking, say, French as opposed to Chinese, though Spanish as opposed to Italian would be harder.

Also, if you listen to a language just like you listen to music normally, you would not advance any more than you would with your knowledge of music playing. Listening to music for the purpose of enhancing your ear and music skills is a completely different thing from listening to music in general. Listen to enough of a language and you'll pick up a thing or two (all the anime kids learning terms like baka, omae and whatnot are a good analogy here imgo), listen to music and you'll pick up some very basic aspects. But as a whole, it's useless. Listening to music whilst focusing on an instrument or on the way it works, or listening to a language whilst paying attention is a different thing. Add some basic theoretical knowledge and the benefit increases. And, eventually, you can make your own. People rarely compose or improvise when they're beginners; they focus on input and on mimicry. Real output starts later on. Of course, the finer line between types of output is harder to place in music.
Am I truly singing if I just read a score and mechanically assort it to my previous knowledge and play it accordingly? Or if I hear a song and repeat it by ear (which is a buttload of a task for many people, mind you)? Or is it only true output if I am composing, feeling or making my own version?

Similarly, you can read a sentence out loud and it's not necesarily "true" output, or shadow. Talking on your own is a whole different deal though.

Man, you can really go everywhere with the language-music simile. Let's hope the language part works out for me better than the music part did*.

*despite all the "work hard enough and you'll get there" things people tell you, if you're as truly talentless in music as I am, no matter how hard you work you won't get anywhere...

A better analogy is jamming; if you're listening skills are sub-par, your output is also likely to be sub-par; wrong key, style etc.

[Zgarbas]

Exactly! No matter how well you can mimic what's on the sheets, working with other instruments is a completely different thing. Not to mention if it's the kind of jam where you're not doing a practiced cover.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Having to see something 10-20 times before learning it doesn't seem like a "very low rate". I'd love to compare it to the efficiency of the methods he proposes. Unfortunately, I can't find any links to studies that measure that efficiency, which is odd, since he starts out the article by calling the other side "unscientific". That's fine, so long as you then hold your own advice to the same standard, and make sure it's scientific.

I agree with you, for the most part.


Considering his methods of output use words that you already know, we can infer that his proposed intention for output is not necessarily learning words.

His intention is to provide ways to emulate output, in order to strengthen your knowledge of words and how they fit into sentences.

darkjapanese Wrote:When grading, we therefore want to focus on inflections, particles, and word order, while of course considering the meaning that arises from the construction.

But, yes. Input should not be disregarded, it's a powerful tool to learn words.

It's funny that some tend to see his posts as the truth (or at least as very precise) because he supports his claimings using research and scientific papers.
Seriously, when out of the natural sciences fields, you can pretty much find a whole bunch of articles to support whatever it is that you believe.
Learning language is not exact, it's different for everybody, and I sincerely doubt you can define what is best and what is faster in this subject.

magamo Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:First of all, argument from analogy is considered legitimate in logic

No. Logicians may analyze analogical reasoning, but it's not a valid kind of reasoning that can be used to prove anything in logic. It's a heuristic argument at best.

Ah, yeah, I phrased that badly. I didn't mean that argument from analogy establishes necessary truth in formal logic. I meant that it can be used as a valid form of reasoning in philosophy (or science), so while a false analogy is an informal logical fallacy, argument from analogy is not.

For example, you could be doing formal logic in philosophy based on a series of propositions, and you could try to justify those propositions with argument from analogy and be taken seriously as long as your analogies are good. Of course, it's useful in justifying your assumptions; not as formal math.

@Tyreon

I'm having difficulty understanding your argument.
Especially since he does not define that there is a "best" method.

Whatever argument you seem to be making, output is still necessary to... output.

Also, there's a difference between forming a conclusion based on research papers, and making something up and finding articles to prove your opinion.

Judging his arguments with conjectures is no better than using research papers.

Also, people believe his post because they find it reasonable. Believe what you will, but I find it more odd how someone would doubt something because research was used

Can anyone comment on their attempts to make "production" cards as discussed in the initial post of this thread? That is, cards that focus more on testing the ability to assemble words into proper "patterns" or sentences (or whatever the proper terminology might be). I particularly like the idea of creating cards that have jumbled content and a translation and then require the student to make the proper phrase.

I haven't experimented with this sort of card/prompt at all, but it does seem believable that it would develop something similar to production skills. Also, the JLPT grammar section has similar "jumbled" sentence questions.

Why not just practice output by speaking with people..? you know when there are people to speak with.

When you're actually speaking, there is not necessarily any one correct way of saying something and besides how can you predict what kinds of sentences you'll actually have the opportunity/need to say?

The best way to develop speaking skills is by conversing with people and having solid listening skills. This way you're forced to think on the spot and come up with unrehearsed sentences quickly and without reference to a "correct" answer.

^Not everyone is in a position where they are able to converse with other people in their target language frequently. Surely being able to practice, even if it is not as optimal as spontaneous dialogue, is better than none. Has there been any suggestion to supplant organic conversation with SRS based output practice?

Why not both?