Thursday, July 22, 2021

Dreaming Languages

This morning I was curious about a comment I had read on the Dreaming Spanish YouTube channel. According to the channel, by listening we develop a native-like intuition for grammar, vocabulary together with clear pronunciation. The method is based on the ALG method developed by Dr. J Marvin Brown and Stephen Krashen's Comprehensible Input theory.

To learn more about the method:

Dreaming Languages

In one of his posts, he shares an excerpt from the book "The Listening Approach" which defines the ALG method and used in the AUA school in Bangkok to teach Thai.

Two teachers talk to the class and to each other as they do things in clear close view of the students. There are no books. What they do and say must be both comprehensible and interesting. (In Krashen’s terms, the teachers provide comprehensible input.) The students sometimes participate and sometimes do not, but they always look, listen, and try to understand what is going on, with as little conscious attention on the language as possible. This means not only that they don’t take notes or try to remember sounds, words, or patterns; it also means that they don’t speak—not until words and phrases come to them without their conscious attention. This may take several hundred hours.


I stumbled upon this video that discusses the difference between learning and acquiring a language. Mihalis talks about this also. All of this together makes me feel like I can let go of my need to study grammar and focus more on listening, since my goal is to be able to speak not teach. How freeing! 

3 comments:

  1. Wow, as always,, great insights!
    It will be hard to wrap my head around acquiring, rather than studying!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It made more sense at 3:30 in the morning. Ultimately I've decided to add more listening to my daily list of things to do Spanish.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Second try…
    I can comment on this post, but not your post from yesterday !

    ReplyDelete

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