Definitely guilty of spending too much time watching language youtubers instead of just learning the target language LOL.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

We've all been there! I found language KZreadrs in my TL is a good use of time! Here's me now hoping you're learning English to keep watching my vids 😬

@TheRealMartin

Жыл бұрын

@@matt_brooks-green hahaha. My native language is English and the language I'm meant to be hardcore concentrating on is Castillian Spanish. I'm also very distracted by Russian and Ukranian (have always wanted to learn it but current events make it all the more interesting) and it doesn't help i can sometimes understand about half of what is said in Ukrainian in speeches and news from my knowledge of Polish. But. Must. Get. Over. The. Hill. With. Spanish. No more distractions!

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

@@TheRealMartin Mr Beast Español to get started 🤷‍♂. You know where to find me if you need to top up the English any time 🤣

@trichechus20

Жыл бұрын

I've been looking for language youtubers in my target language as well. lol. Now I can get my fix of learning how to learn a language.... except in Spanish.

I find myself stopping too frequently to check the meanings of words. For me, the hardest part right now is telling myself that it's OK that I don't understand 100% of what I am reading and to just continue on getting as much input as possible.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Definitely. If the material is too hard that is where a lot of the problem comes from in my opinion. Lots of easy content gives you a feeling for the language naturally so you don't have to look up so much and can often understand from context alone. I also think it is more enjoyable too (which also makes it more sustainable)

@epb0394

Жыл бұрын

@Matt Brooks-Green How many hours do you currently have of comprehensible input? I just started with dreaming spanish and I am wondering at how effective this method actually is? Do you find that you can understand a lot more of the language as your hours of input have increased?

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

@@epb0394 currently I am at 627 hours of input (still not speaking). I understand a huge amount. I can’t say if it is more or less efficient than other methods. What is interesting though is that there is no translation. When I do understand things I understand it instantly, almost as if it were in English

@epb0394

Жыл бұрын

@Matt Brooks-Green So you're not translating in your head when you understand it? That's good to know. Also, I was wondering if supplement with anything outside of dreaming spanish and then add the time in manually?

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

@@epb0394 exactly. I understand it without having to translate. It obviously does take a huge amount of input and following the method of using the appropriate level of video. Yeah, I update my hours in my profile each time I do a crosstalk lesson or watch KZread content. If my level of comprehension isn’t high enough I don’t count it as realistically I know I am gaining significantly less from whatever I have been watching

Matt, this video resonates plenty with me. Languages are complex and filled with nuance, which is in turn a window to a different way on understanding the world. We need to let context, time and our powerful mind make sense of the puzzle. Checking boxes is a bad way of progressing in language learning in my humble experience. Thank you for sharing your reflections.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Thanks Vladimir ☺️

Im looking forward to the day when you upload a video about how to start speaking because I think it is a topic that´s not so much brought up in the language immersion community enough and I just can´t seem to know how to do it especially since I don´t talk to much in my native language to begin with, it´d certainly be interesting

@Sprachliebhaber-Languagelover

Жыл бұрын

You can do shadowing to train your muscles and ears (speaking/listening). Regarding producing (talking), you can start talking to yourself (the safest way to start).

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Hi Cho, I will do at some point. If it is to do with confidence then maybe speaking to yourself is the way to go. Try talking to an online tutor - they don't know you and have no reason to judge you if that is your fear. There is a degree of getting your mouth used to making the right sounds of course but that is secondary to large amounts of input where you get accustomed to the sounds and therefore have a better sense of the sounds you are trying to mimic. If there is a subject you are interested in then you are more likely to be able to talk at length about it so maybe that would be the segway into getting some output with an online tutor or language exchange

Wow, the production value is off the charts. Love this, very sound advice.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

You'll make be blush! So glad you liked it!

Consistency is so huge! Doing something, even if it's only a little, every day is the best way I've found to achieve something (language learning or otherwise)

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Very true!

i have been studying spanish consistently, everyday, for the past year. i am currently lower intermediate when it comes to reading and writing. i know, roughly, 2000 words. i listened through the language transfer audio lessons in full almost 3 times (which are absolutely amazing, in my opinion) and use full sentence flashcards with native speakers reciting each sentence to learn words and passively learn grammar. i learned a lot of words in context from that style of flashcard and since i shadow each sentence i hear, i’ve developed a pretty good spanish accent. but, at the one year mark of my studies, i released i still had huge difficulty understanding spoken spanish. so, i decided i needed to work on that and luckily i discovered dreaming spanish last month randomly when i saw it mentioned in a comment on a spanish podcast video that i was trying to watch (which i could barely understand). now, i am about 30 hours in and i can already understand 95% of what is being said in most beginner videos. i’m not sure if i came into it with an advantage because of my previous year of study, but i really wish i knew about comprehensible input a year ago. it has been absolutely amazing for me so far and it’s only been 1 month. i’m very excited to see my progress in a year from now, now that i’ve shifted my focus to daily CI. more new language learners need to know about CI since, unfortunately, it is not a very popular topic. especially when you’re starting from scratch and not sure where to begin. so your channel is a really great addition. hopefully it will help more learners find the path of comprehensible input. thanks.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing Solomon. I'm at just under a year of Dreaming Spanish and many of the advanced videos are comprehensible for me (depending on the speaker!). It is a great method to use. I'm not speaking yet so can't comment on what my accent is like!

@solomongumball7562

Жыл бұрын

@@matt_brooks-green thanks for responding! just curious - how much time per day do you listen to CI? right now i’m listening to about 45 minutes to an hour a day, but i have a feeling that as my listening level improves, i will naturally start listening to even more daily. mostly because of more interesting content.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

@@solomongumball7562 I am for about 2 hours of listening. This is my main input for the day as opposed to any study or reading. Some days I get more, some days I get less but I keep my headphones with me pretty much 24/7 so sneak in input whenever I can

@Sprachliebhaber-Languagelover

Жыл бұрын

Being able to understand depends on many factors. A very important one is the characteristics of the resource. I am a native speaker of Spanish, and even so I have trouble understanding when I listen, mainly because of the accents, not only from other countries, but also from my own country. And it's worse when it comes to songs, because the pronunciation can change a lot when singing. The diction of the speaker is key to understanding.

Very sensible advice, especially about vocabulary. For a long time, I assumed, based on most language courses and the overwhelming majority of language you tubers, that anki decks and flashcards were the gold standard for expanding your vocabulary and making progress. Its only reading much deeper into the research (and my own experiences with struggling with Japanese and French and Irish and dabbling with Korean) that its only through deep immersion that you can really learn words and, more importantly, how to use them. Ultimately, language is not vocabulary plus grammar rules - its a pattern, and you can only imprint the pattern on your brain by constant exposure.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Exactly that Philip! I wish I knew this stuff ten years ago; I could have saved myself so much time!

@tedcrowley6080

10 ай бұрын

I tried ANKI. It didn't work for me. ANKI is designed for remembering things you already know. ANKI doesn't TEACH you anything. Simply testing doesn't TEACH me: if I didn't know it yesterday: I still don't know it today.

I've been trying to learn Italian on and off for FAR to long... and honestly ready to give up - but keep seeing your videos as a source of inspiration.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Thank you so much. Comments like this are why I wanted to make videos because I used to feel like that. Find something you like doing ie, watching KZread videos, reading or listening. Then start easy. The easier the better at first in my opinion. Then just get as much as you can. It’ll become a habit and you’ll look back and realise your perception of easy changed as you naturally became accustomed to the language. Good luck chap!

@atomixspeaks

Жыл бұрын

@@matt_brooks-green Grazie mille.

hmm....the more time I spend watching videos about learning language, the more time I'm not actually learning the language!

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Yep! Language YT in your TL? Or get my videos dubbed? 🤣

Down to earth advice. Planning to learn a language is not actually being in that language or learning zone, time wasted. It just builds procrastination and fear. And will seep into all aspect of to do in your life.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Bias to action is something I always try to do these days. Momentum builds over time

Solid advice, I’ve been trialling the storylearning with Portuguese and seeing it happen in real time, as my brain connects the patterns together in the background, is really exciting and quite fascinating. Love your channel man keep it down to earth like this! Thanks for the content 😊

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Cheers Mani! Appreciate you checking out the video

@patfromamboy

Жыл бұрын

How do you understand Portuguese without translating everything into your native language? I’ve been studying Portuguese for over 8 years now and visited Brazil 18 times but I still can’t read or converse yet even though I’ve been practicing every day with my girlfriend for over 5 years now and she only speaks Portuguese. I usually learn very quickly but this has been very difficult. Everything sounds like gibberish except for an occasional word which I then have to translate into English to understand it. My son can converse and he’s never studied Portuguese, he just picked it up when visiting Brazil with me several times. What’s the secret? Thanks

Super useful hints that I wish I knew 3-4 years ago😊

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Me too 😂. Thanks for checking out the video John!

I studied Mandarin using online courses for 3 years, got burned out, stopped for a year. Then I started again, using an approach close to your recommendations: finding things I like (or at least don't hate) to get daily written and spoken input. After 3 more years, I'm intermediate, but not likely to burn out. Personally I hate memorization -- so I don't do it. I would rather look the word up again. After you look it up 3,4,5,6 times, you know the word. And you've seen how it's used.

I think it also important to give yourself some room with what speed you are progressing - I have a full time job and I am usually beat when I come home in the evening. So any language learning I can do, is a win for me. Sometimes it feels a bit frustrating with the media showing lot’s people that progress very quickly, but then I remind myself that I can unfortunately not make language learning my main focus right now, because I have other obligations. As for moving forward with material - I think that is a great advice, but I would also like to add, that if you have no idea or only a minor idea of what is going on in a text, it might a good idea to put it to the side for now, and look for something a little big easier :) Also question: Do you by any chance have a list of the books you used for reading? My Chinese study is on a halt for now, because I focus on Thai, but it might be interesting for other learners.

@Sprachliebhaber-Languagelover

Жыл бұрын

Don't worry, everyone has their own pace to do things. And, just for the record, some (or should I say many?) videos about people bragging about their very quick progress are fake🤨. Remember, consistency is the key, not the amount of time. 🙂

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing! Yeah, we are all doing our own thing so there is no need to worry about sensational videos. For reading material in Chinese, it depends on your level. There is now a TON of stuff in Pleco (dictionary app) that you can buy. There is audio for all of it too - you just have to search for it online as it isn't in Pleco. If you want a physical book I enjoyed this series - geni.us/graded500 but there are higher levels depending on the number of characters you know

are you spying on me? for the last few days I've been struggling with my language learning and this video is the perfect gift haha thank you!

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Hahahahaha.... definitely haven't been living in your wardrobe spying on you. Not at all. Nope. No way 😅👀 Now tidy your room! 😂 ps. Thank you!

I just want to say that it will eventually be frustrating spending a lot of time studying and then realizing that you still need so much to learn. Therefore, we need to have our goals in a language very clear. It can be being really fluent, almost like a native, but it will take a huge amount of time. But it can also be reaching A1 or A2 in a language just to know the basics, just for fun or curiosity :)

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Very true. Enjoy the journey!

Comprehensible input is trickier for less popular languages. Reading in a different script is also tricky because the word shapes aren't as familiar. I understand the theory but doing takes research and planning.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

That's true Kate. I enjoy using ALG for Spanish because it is extremely straightforward (and things are written as they are pronounced). I would be interested to hear if anyone did the same thing with Chinese as I use a lot of translation because of the characters

Hey can I ask what your using for Chinese input? I use DS for Spanish and it's wonderful. Curious if you found a similar resource for chinese

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

I’m not inputting Chinese at the minute but there are a few similar to DS - Acquire Mandain, Comprehensible Chinese & Comprehensible Mandarin

Matt, do you have an opinion on Assimil vs. a proper graded reader system, say Olly Richards' Story learning, for proper development of reading/listening comprehension? Many thanks

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Hi! I would love to say yes but I haven't tried Assimil so am not qualified to compare the two 🤷‍♂️. Sorry!

It's all about the input.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Damn right!

I have to translate everything into English to understand so I don’t know what the context is, I’ve been studying Portuguese for over 8 years now and I still can’t read or converse yet. I’ve visited Brazil 18 times and have practiced every day with my girlfriend for over 5 years now but I still can’t understand her. It’s very frustrating. What can I do to learn without translating? I have classes, read books, use apps, practice with native speakers and watch movies and KZread videos. Thanks

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Hi Pat. Without knowing your level it’s hard to say. If you are getting daily input that you can understand from the context you should pick it up. Did you check out my crosstalk video? That might be worth considering to get you going. There should be some TPRS style videos on KZread I’m sure which will also help if you are in the really early stages

@patfromamboy

Жыл бұрын

@@matt_brooks-green I’ve been studying Portuguese for over 8 years now but I don’t understand anything I read yet, I have to translate everything into English to understand. There isn’t any comprehensible input yet. When I hear people speaking I can’t understand what they are saying and I have to translate everything into English which prevents me from conversing. Any ideas? I have been practicing every day with my girlfriend for over 5 years now but I still can’t understand her. She only speaks Portuguese. I have classes and use apps and read books and watch movies and KZread videos. Any ideas? Thanks

@patfromamboy

Жыл бұрын

@@matt_brooks-green what does TPRS mean?

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

@@patfromamboy have you tried a channel called ‘the sounds of Portuguese’? It might be good just to get a start. The main thing is that the material you use is not too difficult or you only end up translating word for word

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

@@patfromamboy Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling 😊

What I like doing is challenging a native who can finish a book first.

@matt_brooks-green

Жыл бұрын

Hahahaha. Brilliant!