2024: The Year You Finally Learn Spanish

January 11, 2024 1:47 PM

The team at Dreaming Spanish use Comprehensible Input to help learners acquire Spanish the way most children learn their first language - by listening to real native speakers.
posted by sleepy psychonaut (35 comments total)

I've started one of the beginner videos. Since I took 5 years of Spanish in middle school and high school, it is difficult not to start auto-translating what I can and just, like, let the words flow over me. But I'm trying! And I think this is a great way to experience the language, better than just watching Spanish-speaking TV thanks to the slower, more deliberate speech.

This is good stuff!
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:26 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

But is that how children learn their first language?

Because my admittedly limited experience with being around pre-language humans, and even early language humans, is there is a constant amount of input from adults around them that is word meaning reinforcement. The word "bear" isn't being learned because people are using the word bear repeatedly. it's being learned because people are pushing this stuffed toy at the child and saying the word "bear" over and over. It's similar with colors, shapes... Adults cannot HELP but try to teach words to pre-language humans.

I'm all for language immersion programs. I think they are really great and can do a lot to most language fluency ahead well beyond what simple instruction can achieve. But I don't believe that anyone learns a language just by listening to native speakers have conversations. Children learn because people around them teach them vocabulary all the time whether they are wanting it or not.
posted by hippybear at 2:28 PM on January 11 [8 favorites]

That Natural Order hypothesis of grammar acquisition is a bit of a head-scratcher. I don't understand why that would matter for learning a second language, or how it would work with 1st & 2nd languages with very different structures.

Generally CI seems kinda controversial.
posted by Baethan at 2:31 PM on January 11

A bit more googling around, it looks like this is related to Input hypothesis which does seem to have some basis in practice but isn't entirely accepted as real.
posted by hippybear at 2:33 PM on January 11

it's being learned because people are pushing this stuffed toy at the child and saying the word "bear" over and over. It's similar with colors, shapes... Adults cannot HELP but try to teach words to pre-language humans.

I noticed with my daughter that I spent a lot of time paying attention to what she was looking at and using the words for that. Dark irises on white eyeballs are handy for teaching.
posted by clawsoon at 2:39 PM on January 11

If people ARE wanting foreign language sources that are spoken more slowly so they can be helpful for a language learner, I can say the News In Slow series is an interesting thing. New content every day because it's the news! Comes in Spanish [Spain and Latino], French, Italian, and German.
posted by hippybear at 2:39 PM on January 11 [11 favorites]

I noticed with my daughter that I spent a lot of time paying attention to what she was looking at and using the words for that.

Or I'm thinking about times I've seen an adult correct a child's sentence and asking them to repeat it back to them correctly before they can proceed.

Language learning in young children is not gained by listening to people talk. That helps, but adults are educating and correcting children ALL THE TIME!

Honestly, if I as an adult language learner were corrected as much as I might see a 2 year old have their language corrected, I might be a more than a bit bothered!
posted by hippybear at 2:42 PM on January 11

Just as a note: I've learned and been fluent in, and subsequently lost, a second language.

I took German in high school from a VERY good high school german teacher, and I was an eager student. German has all these fussy bits that were fun for me to learn, and there were grammar charts showing verb changes or gender whatever...

But this WAS backed up by being privileged enough to have parents who could pay for me to go to the optional statewide high school german student weekend retreat, which was 4 days of top students from across the state coming together and doing a really intensive language instruction thing. In these weekends, the "stammtish" tables were where ONLY German would be spoken during meals.

Anyway, I later spent a year in Germany as an exchange student, and my thorough classroom grounding in German grammar and vocabulary really served me well and within just a couple of months I was dreaming in German.

There were a couple of exchange students in my weirdly large cohort of US exchange students into this one Gymnasium who had ZERO German before they landed in the country. They were taking emergency language classes even while they were taking high school classes in German.

Maybe, you'd think, this would be the way they learned the language?

Neither of them ever got fluent in German. The cross-cultural student exchange stuff was great for broadening their minds, I'm sure, but as far as a language things goes, yeah, didn't happen for them.

For myself, coming back to the US means I don't use German much so... I can grammar the hell out of everything but my vocabulary is basically gone.
posted by hippybear at 2:49 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Well, I'm kind of afraid to comment now, but here goes. I really enjoy the Dreaming Spanish videos. It is very satisfying to watch one and realize you actually understand a good bit of what is being said. You can choose from four levels of difficulty, and within each level you can sort from easier to harder. The topics are incredibly varied, and you can filter by topic or speaker or country of origin or dialect. There is a paid version, but there are also a lot of free videos. So whether or not you believe you can become fluent by this method alone, it is still a very interesting and rewarding way to hear comprehensible Spanish and learn about a wide variety of cultures.
posted by a fish out of water at 3:03 PM on January 11 [10 favorites]

I'm glad to learn about this resource; I've similarly enjoyed the Duolingo podcast which takes a more sophisticated approach -- native speakers recount a story in intermediate Spanish, which the host introduces or occasionally pauses to comment on in English in order to help provide context for the forthcoming conversation.

Fluency can mean a lot of different things for people -- I think this is a nice approach for building working memory for vocabulary and maybe inducing the creation of some correct grammatical speech without formally teaching it, which is great for my purposes -- but I'd be surprised if you can get to fluency much beyond an intermediate level for general conversations, such as reading a novel or writing grammatically correct text, or studying or working in Spanish.
posted by Theiform at 3:24 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Parents and teachers spend a lot of time correcting children, but children also ignore a lot of the corrections. The research shows that most of the time, parents and teachers don't correct mistakes, but just respond to the content of the speech; and often, children are pretty oblivious to the corrections.

(I think the canonical example is something like:

Child: We helded the rabbits

Parent: You held the rabbits

Child: Yes, we helded the rabbits.)

My own experience of language learning is that comprehensible input is a really important thing, and the more you can get the better, but some amount of formal grammar teaching can also be helpful and is probably necessary for most people to compensate for the fact that it's difficult for most second language learners to get hours and hours of comprehensible input a day for years.

When I was in high school Japanese, I broke the curve on our midterm test so badly that our teacher said, "Well, Jeanne got a 97 on the test, so I don't think the test was that hard, I think the rest of you just need to study more." I wasn't studying grammar or vocabulary outside of class, at all. I was just reading manga for hours on end. (And this, in the end, is maybe one of the best arguments for comprehensible input: if you can find a book or a TV show or a comic that you absolutely fall in love with, you can convince yourself to spend a lot more time "studying" than all but the most intensely self-motivated people can spend on vocabulary flashcards and formal grammar study.)
posted by Jeanne at 3:28 PM on January 11 [12 favorites]

If the post didn't say this is how "most children" learn languages, we wouldn't be having this overly hostile derail. The site is clearly for adults. I think it is a good post and perhaps we should drop the "well actually" stuff about how kids learn.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:30 PM on January 11 [10 favorites]

I'd add that this approach to language learning is aided by the fact that the majority of English vocabulary comes from Romance-language sources, meaning that native English speakers learning Spanish will hear a plentitude of cognates, so that often, producing correct speech is just a matter of applying a different pronunciation and maybe some small changes due to grammar to word you already know (see the Michel Thomas method, which helped me get to a awful and error-filled, but ultimately conversational, level of French with a patient interlocutor) -- but its a whole other matter if you're learning Japanese, or even German.
posted by Theiform at 3:35 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the post!
posted by latkes at 3:58 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

I love learning things, especially languages (currently practicing - badly and slowly - Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese). I also enjoy learning about the science on teaching and learning things ... and over time, I've come to see it as having some similarities with studies about diet and nutrition:

* there are hypotheses that can be tested
* there are results that can be broadly generalized
* pretty much every result is controversial, to one degree or another
* what matters most is what works for you

I think, based on my own personal experiences only, that there's considerable validity to the Comprehensible Input approaches, and I certainly have different experiences when I'm trying to parse input where I know 95% of the vocabulary, vs. input where I'm missing a lot of the vocabulary, vs. input where people are speaking quickly, vs. input where they're speaking slowly. It's interesting to me to play with pedagogical ideas for myself, to see what works for me, but - as with dietary advice - I presume there's science in there somewhere, but I don't have a huge investment in whether a given theory works widely or only for a smaller fraction of learners. I care what works for me.

(Also, If the post didn't say this is how "most children" learn languages, we wouldn't be having this overly hostile derail. I agree, grumpybear69.)

I enjoy the Dreaming Spanish episodes I've checked out, and I'm glad they provide this material. I've enjoyed the CI content I've found for other languages, too, especially Natürlich German and Comprehensible Japanese.

I hope other MeFites who are interested in learning languages will at least try out some of the Comprehensible Input-style videos that are out there. I find them an enjoyable way to practice listening, and as with so many things, the best approach is the one you'll actually keep doing.

Thanks for posting this, sleepy psychonaut!
posted by kristi at 4:08 PM on January 11 [3 favorites]

If you're curious about learning more about the theory behind comprehensible input, Stephen Krashen's book Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition is free online. I think it's useful - and I do happen to think that Krashen is mostly right about this stuff, but it's also a good corrective to some of the sillier ideas about comprehensible input that are floating around online.

("I spend two hours every day doing comprehensible input by watching Korean dramas. I am a beginner and I know about twenty words in Korean. Why isn't it working?")
posted by Jeanne at 4:09 PM on January 11 [2 favorites]

Thank you for this! As a dyslexic second-language learner*, I've been waiting for a well developed program based on this theory for a long, long time. Michel Thomas is great but the courses are only beginner level and since he died there haven't been any new additions. I have gone through several humiliating decades of intensive foreign language learning, and have tried pretty much every method out there. I'm excited to give these a go!

*This video is the very best description I've come across of what it's like to try and learn second languages as a dyslexic adult.
posted by EllaEm at 4:18 PM on January 11

I think it was back in the 70’s, on 60 Minutes, they showed a segment on a “controversial” professor of French, who was supposedly a very effective teacher. He taught vocabulary using very physical means. He would pick up a chair, say the French word for chair, and then hurl it across the room. He held up an egg, said egg in French, and then smashed it on a student’s head. After showing this, they interviewed a bunch of students. They all loved the class and said they were really learning French. And their grades showed that they were. They didn’t show how he taught grammar though… But whatever he did that must have worked too.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:26 PM on January 11

It is interesting that Krashen, the main proponent behind this kind of language learning is really AGAINST "whole language" reading instruction, which as someone who used to work in early reading in an elementary school feels like it would be a close cousin to the kind of second language acquisition he espouses. I'm not sure what the differences might be in his mind.
posted by hippybear at 4:31 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

It seems perfectly plausible to me that if you hear conversations repeatedly where you understand say 50% of it, you will start to consciously and unconsciously infer bits of the missing 50% from context, from stuff you already know, even without external cues like pictures and gestures. If you hear "big rain clothes blorgle", then you guess blorgle probably has something to do with being wet, and if not, maybe stained or uncomfortable. I certainly know people who have learned languages this way, and in places where different languages collide and there aren't formal instruction courses, I suspect that's a normal way to pick up another language.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:35 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Hippybear I read his arguments in that link to be refuting the critics of whole language. Now I am going to read the whole thing.
posted by mai at 4:36 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

It's possible I have misinterpreted that, I will have to read more closely.

If he's backing up whole language, that's sort of a red flag for me.
posted by hippybear at 4:38 PM on January 11

I wasn't studying grammar or vocabulary outside of class, at all. I was just reading manga for hours on end.

Uso!

Just chiming in to say I did the same thing with Japanese in college, and I'm now doing this with Spanish. Comics in one hand, GTranslate in the other, and it's working.

Admittedly, two weeks in Japan got me the biggest gains. Just making an attempt to turn thoughts into this totally foreign language, and getting the reinforcement of other people actually understanding me upped my level to a height it had never gotten to before. I've mostly lost the Japanese, but Spanish is turning out to be waaaaaay easier. I'm not studying rules so much as running into the same patterns again and again and letting them sink into my brain.
posted by fnerg at 4:46 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

2024 is the year I'm going to learn Spanish! I'm doing it through the old fashioned method of going to evening classes, but I look forward to adding some of these videos to the mix. Thanks for posting this.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:20 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Holy shit. This is what my Japanese 101 teacher, way back in college, was doing!

I still remember that very first day much better than, well, any particular day in any of my classes. We sat down in desks arranged in a square and the professor, after a very brief intro that included no language instruction, said "from this point on, I will only speak Japanese". He then began with the words for "listen," "repeat," and (impliedly) how to politely request something with "kudasai", using the context of language learning to help us understand the words he was teaching us. He used hand signals, cupping his ear for "listen" and open-palm gesturing from his mouth for "repeat", and drew a few things on the whiteboard too.

Alas I could only take Japanese that one year, so it's nearly all gone, but he was using comprehensible input! And it worked really well. I was sad that graduating on time wasn't compatible with further study -- he was certainly the best language teacher I've ever had.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 7:29 PM on January 11 [3 favorites]

That sounds like amazing language instruction, but I'm not sure that's what is described in this FPP?

I'd love to learn Japanese from this instructor!
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM on January 11

For a fun narrative (and 2nd person POV video) to go along with your Spanish learning, Mi Vida Loca (mefi previously) is available on youtube here.
posted by juv3nal at 9:42 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

Also Destinos (mentioned in that mefi thread) is here.
posted by juv3nal at 9:46 PM on January 11

When I was in high school Japanese, I broke the curve on our midterm test so badly that our teacher said, "Well, Jeanne got a 97 on the test, so I don't think the test was that hard, I think the rest of you just need to study more."

I used to get this in school. It did not result in the other kids studying more, but rather in them kicking the shit out of me in the playground.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:21 PM on January 11 [4 favorites]

I just watched a few videos and it's a great resource. Listening to native speakers is one of the hardest aspects of learning, and the level progression (plus the variation on dialects) should indeed make it easier. Hard to judge for sure since I'm at their Advanced level... they should have a Challenging level, such as a party I was at a year ago: attempting to understand a conversation shouted over extremely loud Colombian music.

I do like this idea: "According to the Input Hypothesis, a learner improves best when the material is one step ahead of their current level. If their knowledge could be described with ‘i’, then the optimal learning level would be ‘i+1’. The materials, in short, need to be just beyond their current abilities."

What I don't agree with is the idea that the way kids learn is better, easier, or appropriate for adults. Kids' advantage is that they have to learn, and they are exposed to language all day long, and have ten years to do it. But better methods are available to adults. You can't sit a child down with the conjugation of conocer, but it saves an adult a whole lot of time and frustration.

Also, those of you reading comics: amen! I learned real French, the type people actually speak, mostly from bandes dessinées. Stuff you actually enjoy is the stuff you learn best with.
posted by zompist at 12:47 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

"If the post didn't say this is how "most children" learn languages, we wouldn't be having this overly hostile derail. The site is clearly for adults. I think it is a good post and perhaps we should drop the "well actually" stuff about how kids learn."

This FPP is so thin on content that it is perilously close to looking like an ad. Digging into the theory of CI and talking about Krashen's controversial input hypothesis seems like the bare minimum for discussion.
posted by Baethan at 6:07 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]

I used this a while ago and kind of forgot about it, so thanks for posting this. I’m trying to learn two languages at once (Spanish and German), which is probably stupid, but I’m doing it anyway, and I figure every bit helps, even if the method of instruction isn’t perfect.
posted by O Sock, My Sock at 9:32 AM on January 12

O Sock, My Sock: I briefly tried to do that on Duolingo by setting "my" language to German and the language I was learning to Spanish. I do not recommend that method.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:53 AM on January 12

Grimp0teuthis, I taught ESL to kids (Pre-K - high school and a few college kids) nin Korea for about 8 years and I did a lot of that with the beginners. We also did a lot of music and dance (think head shoulders knees and toes) to learn vocab. I only spoke English, mostly because I only spoke survival Korean (and swear words).

Now in ECE, I do a lot more vocab teaching in preschool. But in the infant room, label label label. Lots of repetition. There's a toddler who loves asking "What's this?" and "What you doing?" and he cracks me up. But he's learning fast and has a great vocabulary for a 19 month old.

Also going to check out the resources in this thread. I'm definitely getting bored with DuoLingo and won't be renewing my plus subscription. I swear I've been working on past tense for 6 months.
posted by kathrynm at 4:51 PM on January 12

Just another data point, I'm 30 hours in at super-beginner level. It's a nice analog to DuoLingo but I'm not entirely convinced that this alone will get one to a decent level.

There is a video of Pablo interviewing a student that has reached a very high fluency level.
posted by asharchist at 11:23 PM on January 14