The Grand Pre-Outputlian Input Hypothesis

Guest   Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:24 pm GMT
<You speak English fine and naturally. I detect no errors in your writing.>

I never stopped writing even I was a zero beginner (someone who only knows greetings). During my whole learning process I never stopped writing. I kept writing emails and compositions all the time (perfect or not). On the other hand, I kept reading and listening stuff that held my fancy all the time. Infact, writing helps me a lot to fix my newly-acquired vocabulary and I have some extra time in my hands to go over each sentence if I want to. I read, listen, watch, write but I don't speak that well because I was disillusioned into thinking that speaking skills will emerge from nowhere as long as I could accumulate lots of comprehensible input. So I did not bother to practice. I did not open my mouth. Now I am forced to repeat myself by Americans during conversations. I want to communicate in the language effortlessly, that's the ultimate goal of every learner but you know, I screw it up, I am not good at speaking. My passion for language is flagging and nowadays I am thinking along these lines: "What's the use of learning a language when you can not speak with nativespeakers in real life?" What's the use of wasting a lot of time into learning a language for nothin' when the net result is zero?

Here is my massive input that I have gone through over 5 years period.

1. All seasons of "Friends". I watched them with subtitles.
2. All seasons of "Prison Break".
3. Two seasons of "Sex and City". I watched them twice.
4. Four seasons of "Seinfield". I watched them with subtitles.
5. 150 Hollywood movies.
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. I watched them with subtitles. 11 hours long, can be bought at Amazon, produced by Grenada.
7. Casual listening of Discovery Channel, BBC, CNN and Reality TV.
8. I was a big fan of Jerry Springer. I watched most of his shows on a regular basis. Probably around 25.
9. Unabridged Audiobooks of Crime and Punishment, Ten days in a madhouse, and The Adventures of Sherlockholmes. I completed them with listening-read method(when you listen to a text while reading.)
10. Sports commentaries.
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Reading:

1. I read two short novels of Lucy Mongotmery by Pause and Think method.
2. I am not a fan of reading newspapers because they carry a tone of pessimism and that puts me off big time. As I am an avid watcher of sports, so I was restricted to reading sports related articles.
3. Forums, websites and blogs.
4. Read two short e-books on "speed-reading."
5. Read 3 computer related magazines.
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Reviewed 9,000 English sentences by Supermemo for vocab retention.

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I wrote emails often.

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I spoke only 8-10 times in my whole life. I was forced to repeat myself almost on all occassions.

The final outcome is not very pleasant and I am not sure what to do. Give up language learning and spend the same amount of time on something else.

beneficii, here is a question for you. Was my input massive or not? If it isn't, how would you modulate it?
Guest   Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:44 pm GMT
My goal is to hold a decent conversation for 5 minutes without being forced to repeat myself. The day that happens, I would continue to learn the language like a madman. For the time being, I am far from it.


beneficii, I am not the other guest who posted Tom's German article.
beneficii   Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:00 pm GMT
Guest (please post under an actual unique name, as I have hard time figuring out which Guests are you and which aren't),

In that case, you should look at what you're doing pronunciation wise. Try imitating a native speaker (say, a recording of them), then record your voice and watch the differences. Now, you probably know pretty well how each word is pronounced, even words like 'colonel', because of all the reading you've been doing, so getting a dictionary which tells you what phonemes compose each word may not be most helpful. Instead, you should just keep modifying your pronunciation of words.
Mr. Who   Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:27 pm GMT
beneficii, do you recommend "shadowing" (search it on google)for imitating a native speaker? I am frustrated now because i had a conversation with one of american teenagers on the phone a while ago-- he told his mother that he could not understand me. And I overheard this. All the while his mother was being polite and pretending that she could understand me fully. So, you see, I have a problem with my pronunciation/accent.
beneficii   Fri Aug 24, 2007 2:45 pm GMT
Mr. Who (thank you for using a name),

Yes, shadow. Keep hearing it over and over again, until you have a sort of compulsion to imitate, then imitate them exactly as you hear them. I'm trying that now.
beneficii   Fri Aug 24, 2007 4:53 pm GMT
Here's an interesting article that describes shadowing:

http://www.waseda.jp/rps/en/webzine/no%2018/no18.html

Good to see more people are becoming aware of these sorts of methods. ^_^
beneficii   Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:59 am GMT
Mr. Who,

I've had a chance to look at the whole situation and series of posts made by you and others without emotion and I have to conclude your problem is not in your vocabulary and grammar, but in your pronunciation. That is why English speakers have trouble understanding you. Antimoon.com covers this extensively:

http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc.htm
Guest   Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:02 am GMT
Thank you!
Mr.Who   Wed Sep 19, 2007 9:29 am GMT
beneficii, I think you are right. My pronunciation is not probably good.
So, what's the solution?
shadowing or learn how to master phonetic symbols or use perfectpronunciation software. To be honest, I found primary and secondary stress extremely hard to master. I forget where I need to stress more in the word and where less. Nowadays, I am just following listen-read method. Let me get down to business for a month or so in order to efface this pronunciation problem. Thanks for your feedback.
Mr.Who   Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:22 pm GMT
I think people try to avoid you conciously or unconciously if you have a terrible accent/pronunciation. This has been my experience!
Mitch   Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:07 pm GMT
I too have questions about when (and how) to start actually producing output. But to give the "other" side of the story, here are some folds who are similar to antimoon:

Hansebey Ellidokuzoglu used Krashen with great success in Turkey (read all 5 e-mails):

http://users.skynet.be/beatola/wot/hasanbey.html

Marvin Brown (from the sames site) takes Krashen to the extreme--NO output for the first 1000 hours:

http://users.skynet.be/beatola/wot/marvin.html

Krashen's example of a Mexican who learned Hebrew--in a Los Angeles restaurant:

http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/what_does_it_take/index.html

And finally, the Birkenbihl method--see her final steps on the Chorus Method and Shadow Speaking for how to go from all that input to output.:

http://195.149.74.241/BIRKENBIHL/PDF/MethodEnglish.pdf

By the way, I know of a lot of people who did something similar for Mandarin--they listened to every taped dialogue until they understood everything, to the point of memorization, and were able to use it in conversation.
Guest   Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:08 pm GMT
<Marvin Brown (from the sames site) takes Krashen to the extreme--NO output for the first 1000 hours: >

Are they only talking about 1000 hours of reading? or both Listening and reading?
Guest   Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:11 pm GMT
It is something that is attainable, though. One hour listening and two hours reading daily in the target language will easily surpass this limit.
beneficii   Wed Sep 19, 2007 10:24 pm GMT
Mitch,

With Marvin Brown's theory, because of my early experience in learning Japanese, I might as well as well just forget trying to learn Japanese then. But still, I believe that I run into lots and lots of problems with my Japanese listening as present (too much conscious thinking and too much conscious remembering of rules). Perhaps my Japanese has been irrecoverably damaged and that perhaps the best way to learn Japanese would be to commit suicide and hope that I am reincarnated as someone without damage and who can proceed again.
K. T.   Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:05 am GMT
Beneficii,

I think you have to make a conscious effort between input and output. I'm impressed with the writing skills of the guest who watched the sitcoms and (ugh) Mr Springer's show. Unlike many learners who write here for help in English, that Guest can actually write very well in English!

I don't try to memorize a lot of grammatical rules in Japanese. Listen for the patterns that Japanese are using and write down example sentences from books or from your teacher.

People who think they will master the language without wrapping their lips and tongues around actual sounds are in for a rude awakening, but the awakening should just be the start of actual practice.

It took me quite a while to realize how important speaking a language is.


I can understand Italian well and Portuguese fairly well, but I don't say that I speak them or count them as languages I "know" because I haven't practiced them enough. I KNOW that I could learn to speak them in about six months if I worked on output. I think many would-be speakers of English could do the same thing with daily practice.

What's my point? Balance.

Advice to learners: If someone laughs at you, ask that person what mistake you made and learn from it.