💭 The 3 Schools of Thoughts of Language Learning
An intro for beginners and learners who feel lost
Dear reader,
Lamont from Days and Words released another banger video. You should totally watch it if you’re a language learning nerd and have half an hour to spare.
If you don’t have time to watch a 30-minute-long video, I’d like to share my favourite point from the video. He explains very clearly what he called the 3 schools of thoughts of language learning.
🗣️ Approach 1: Speak Early, Speak a Lot
Advocates for immediate conversational immersion, prioritizing practice and interaction.
Advantages: Rapid improvement in speaking confidence. This method can get you over speaking anxiety.
Drawbacks: Limited feedback on errors and areas of improvement. You may rely a lot on basic verbs and vocabulary that are just enough to get by.
📙 Approach 2: Skill-Building
Focuses on systematic study of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary for comprehensive understanding. This is the approach in most schools, structured curriculums and level-based language learning apps.
Advantages: Comfortable and guided, easy to see progress, ability to analyse sentences and identify grammar points.
Drawbacks: Rigid, slower progress towards fluency.
🎧 Approach 3: Self-Administered Mass Immersion
Emphasizes extensive exposure to authentic language materials for passive absorption. In short: listen and read. A lot.
Advantages: Natural acquisition of language patterns, exposure to authentic usage.
Drawbacks: Requires patience for results, lacks immediate feedback.
Which approach should you favour?
As you might have noticed, a lot of “hardcore” language learners tend to rely heavily on mass immersion. The results get you so much closer to fluency, it’s worth it to push through the uncomfortable listening sessions.
However, there is no right or wrong way to learn a language. For a friend who’s learning a little of Japanese for an upcoming trip, skill-building is fine. They don’t want to be fluent, they want to get by.
You don’t even have to choose between any of the 3. I know I sometimes get speaking anxiety, so I might try speaking a lot when learning Romance languages I’m most comfortable with. Korean and Mandarin are really far from my native language, so using a set curriculum with levels is a great way to get started and complement my immersion. Here’s what it might look like for my current languages:
Korean
97% immersion 2% speaking 1% skills
I listen a lot. I used to do lots of textbooks as well, but I barely need them now.
Italian
80% immersion 19% speaking 1% skills
I speak more thanks to yearly travels and the language being close to my mother tongue, it’s great to boost my speaking confidence.
“Skill-building / grammar is like medicine. You can have a little bit to cure a specific problem. But medicine is not food! Mass input is the food.”
- A viewer who commented on the original video
I hope this short introduction can help you navigate the different approaches you can take to learn languages. Let us know in the comments which works best for you! If you have questions, our fellow language-learning readers and I will be happy to share our experience.
I hope you have a lovely week.
Best,
Lou
✍️ Dear language learner
Learn your target language with useful phrases! Here are a few to translate to test yourself. If they’re relevant to you, you can add them to your notes or spaced-repetition system.
🌱 Beginner
I’m at level 2 of my Chinese textbook.
🌿 Intermediate
I try speaking to get over my fear.
🌳 Advanced
Listening a lot is the only way you can pick up native-sounding patterns in a language.
📚 Learn more
My template to find goals that matter to me, that is fun and motivating to use.
A mini tutorial to have a voice call with AI - for free.
A small learning game I played to dabble in a new language for a month.
Thank you for reading “I heard from Lou”. It can be hard to find people who share your passion for learning. If you have friends who might like this letter, let them know.
I think the efficacy of each school of thought depends on the contex you're in. Immersion schools work because you have no other way out except speaking early and speaking a lot. But having a rigid schedule imposed on you helps. Speaking a lot when moving to another country is also what helps recent transplants integrate. Folk in language-heavy college courses learn the language, while understanding the mechanics of the language better. Self-Administered Mass Immersion makes sense if you're not in a hurry to learn a language and you're basically doing it for fun. But that's just my 2 cents :)
What a great framework!
Looking back, I think I tend to start with approach 2 and then as soon as it becomes too boring, I will blend in approach 3. Then once I’m comfortable, I will introduce approach 1.
They seem to complement each other really well when mixed at different stages.