[0:00]Fluency, after all, isn't the ability to know every word and grammatical pattern in a language; it's the ability to communicate your thoughts without stopping every time you run into a problem. When I first started learning English, I believed fluency had to be hard, that it had to be earned through boring drills, grammar charts and exhausting study sessions. I thought I had to suffer to get fluent, but it doesn't have to be this way when it comes to language learning. If something feels easy, lazy, but it works, that's a sign you're doing it right, that's a sign of efficiency. In this video, I want to show you exactly how I used comprehensible input, watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading stories, I actually enjoyed to become fluent in English. And by fluency, I don't mean knowing every single word and every single grammar rule, I mean being able to express yourself even when you face a challenge. Hi friends, and welcome to my channel. I'm Veronika and here I share my language learning journey to help you become fluent and more confident in your target language. Not through pressure or perfection, but with real practical habits that actually fit into your life. And if you're currently on your language journey and want some extra support, you're going to love my Language Learning Notion template. It's designed to organize your study routine, keep track of all of the vocabulary you're learning, and have all of your languages in one place. The link to check out the template is going to be in the description. Okay, so let's begin today's video and talk about why you probably haven't heard of comprehensible input. Last week, after yoga, I had a conversation with some of my friends about our Spanish learning journeys, because we all live in Mexico City, even though we're not originally from Mexico. And my friends were sharing their methods, how they're taking classes and they're learning grammar, and grammar in Spanish is so complicated, and it's really boring for them. And so, when they asked me this question, how are you learning Spanish, Veronika, I just said the exact same way I learned English, the exact same way I became fluent in English, with comprehensible input. And you know what? My friends had no idea what I was talking about. They have never heard this phrase before. And I talk about this method so much on my channel, because I believe that it is extremely effective, but still a lot of people are just not familiar with it. And I think right now, language learning channels on YouTube are starting to talk about comprehensible input more and more, and I'm really happy to see that. But the thing is, the reason why this method is not taught in schools is because traditional language learning is built around teaching you a language, not helping you acquire this language naturally. That means you're doing grammar, you're learning vocabulary lists, and you're doing a lot of textbook exercises, and those systems are designed for classrooms, not real life communication. And maybe you're wondering, okay, if we know this, why can't schools just teach us languages differently? Why can't they make it more real, more human, more effective? The truth is, a lot of schools are trying to change, but the traditional classroom model has its limitations. When you have one teacher and 30 students, it's hard to give each student the exact kind of exposure and context their brain needs to acquire the language naturally. Plus, many school systems are focused on testing, not real-world communication. That means students are often learning to pass an exam, not to have a conversation, not to acquire a language. And even though the science has been around for a while, the systems just move slowly. And honestly, that's why so many of us still feel like we studied English for years but still can't speak. But the good news is, you don't have to wait for the school systems to change. You can change your own method starting today. You can take the responsibility back and own it, create your own language learning journey. And I know that this idea of just listening to things you actually enjoy can feel almost too simple, because a lot of us have been taught that struggle equals to learning. If you're struggling, if you're sweating, if you're working hard, that means you're learning. If something feels too easy, no, learning cannot be done this way. But neuro science tells us a completely different story, and that's true for language learning and honestly for productivity too. And one tool that has helped me build systems that actually support me without burning me out is Akiflow. And I want to say a huge thank you to them for sponsoring a portion of today's video, because lately Akiflow has been helping me organize my time in a way that feels easy, but is actually efficient. Akiflow is a digital planner and calendar that takes all of your events and tasks from different apps like Gmail, Notion, Zoom, Slack, and brings them into one organized space to simplify it for you guys. Akiflow is a hub for all of your daily organization, all of your productivity apps and planning tools. My favorite feature of Akiflow is that you can pull different tasks from different apps and see everything in one organized space, your universal inbox. Their main goal is to save your time and reduce switching from one app to another. You can drag and drop tasks directly into your calendar, which makes it super easy to see where your time is going, what you're doing all day, and how to protect your energy. Their Stats feature shows me how I'm actually spending my time, what tasks and events take up my days, which has been eye-opening, especially when I say I'm busy, but I haven't done anything that is actually super important to me, work-wise and life-wise. Their AI Copilot learns how I work and starts auto scheduling tasks for me. It's like having a digital assistant who understands what I do every single day and keeps me on track without making me feel overwhelmed. So if you're working on simplifying your productivity systems, I highly recommend giving Akiflow a try. I'll leave my link so that you can explore it for yourself and you can also get access to a one-on-one onboarding call to help you get set up. Alright, let's now move on to comprehensible input and why I think it is so important, why I think it's the most important method to become fluent in any language. So, comprehensible input is a method where you immerse yourself in a language that is just slightly above your current level, not too hard, not too easy. The key word here is comprehensible. You can mostly understand it, thanks to visuals, or maybe context or familiarity. Think of when you're watching a YouTube video, maybe a vlog, and you can understand everything that is happening there, because the YouTuber is showing you everything, you know, they're having breakfast, they're showing you what they're having for breakfast. So even if you don't know every single word, you can still get what they're talking about, your brain starts to fill in the gaps. And this method is so great because it mimics how children learn their first language. They don't get grammar lessons when they're very little. They just listen, watch, and then slowly start repeating. And that's the thing. Children get a lot of comprehensible input for free. You know, adults talk to them, their parents, their teachers, there's no pressure, everyone is just talking to them. And in the process, they are absorbing this language. They are starting to understand more and more. But for some reason, what I see happen very often is that adults don't want to do that for free. Children get a lot of comprehensible input for free. Everyone is talking to them, everyone is showing them videos and reading books to them. But adults prefer to pay someone else like a teacher to create this environment for them. There is nothing wrong in taking classes, but I really want you to think about it. If you only take English classes once per week, and that is your only source of comprehensible input, that's just not enough. You can create this environment for yourself every single day absolutely for free. The point is not to never ever take language classes. The point is to be brutally honest with yourself. Do you create this language environment for yourself every single day, or are you only relying on your language classes that happen once a week? If you are, then that is the reason why your progress is not happening as fast as you would like it to happen, because your language classes shouldn't be the only place you get your comprehensible input from. I mean, technically, you can start taking classes every single day, but the problem with that is that you will have to pay for your language classes every single day, and a lot of us just don't have the budget for that. And so instead of trying to take classes every single day, why not create this comprehensible input environment for yourself every single day, absolutely for free. This idea of comprehensible input comes from the work of linguist Stephen Krashen, who developed the Input Hypothesis. He found that the way we actually learn the language, the way we acquire the language is through understanding messages, not through memorization. In this video, I'm going to show you guys, he shares an amazing example to actually explain why comprehensible input is so powerful. We acquire language in one way and only one way when we understand messages. We call this comprehensible input. A lot of us often feel obligated to start speaking from the very beginning, and that means that we're going to start feeling very worried, very anxious, but we still push ourselves to speak, even in the situations when we're not surrounding ourselves with enough comprehensible input. And I really like his idea that speaking is not the beginning of your language acquisition, it is the result of all the comprehensible input you get over the months and years of you learning the language. If you want to improve your speaking, guys, you have to focus on your comprehensible input first. Because a lot of you always ask me this question, how can I improve my speaking skills in English? The question that you guys should be asking yourself is, are you getting enough comprehensible input every single day on a regular basis? Is this language a part of your daily life, or is it something that just happens once a week during your class, and that's it? And if that is the case, that is also okay, but you have to be honest with yourself and realize that if you're only studying the language once a week in a classroom, you're doing grammar drills and grammar exercises, and you're reading your textbook, you're not actually enjoying the whole process. The process of language acquisition is going to be slower for you. Again, it's not good, it's not bad, it's just a fact, and if you want to, you can accept it, if you don't, you have to change something about it. And now let's talk about why input sometimes doesn't work. Because there is actually a concept that explains why comprehensible input sometimes doesn't seem to work, even if you're doing everything right. It's something that I personally wish more people knew about, because it's something that I struggled with like five years ago. I felt like I was getting enough comprehensible input, but something was still not right, something was not working, and I didn't know what it was. And it's called the Affective Filter Hypothesis, and it was actually also developed by Stephen Krashen. A lot of people know his comprehensible input theory, but not a lot of people talk about this other super important theory, the Affective Filter Hypothesis. Let me try to explain this idea in very simple words, because I know this video is already very sciency. So your brain has this little machine inside, responsible for your language acquisition, and this machine is called your Language Acquisition Device. And so now imagine you're getting all of this comprehensible input every single day, you're watching something, listening to something, and you're getting all of this information into your brain, into your Language Acquisition Device. All of the comprehensible input is trying to get to there, but between all of this comprehensible input and the machine inside your brain, there is a filter, and this filter is your Affective Filter Hypothesis. This filter is made of your emotions, things like stress, anxiety, boredom, sometimes a lack of motivation. All of those things can act as blockers and actually block all of this amazing comprehensible input from reaching your Language Acquisition Device. And maybe first, when you just hear this, you're like, I don't know, Veronika, I don't think that's the reason, but think about it a little bit more. When you have to do something in your target language that you don't really like, you're experiencing some emotions, maybe you feel bored, you have to do this grammar exercise, and you feel extremely bored. So you're not actually acquiring the language in this process, because there is this filter, this filter of negative emotions. I remember when I first moved to Mexico, I was so stressed out. I was extremely anxious, and so for the first six months, I could not learn Spanish. Like nothing was working. I was trying to memorize things, I was trying to acquire the language as hard as I could, but because that filter was so strong, nothing was really working. Like all of this comprehensible input wasn't really getting into my Language Acquisition Device. And so often, the problem isn't comprehensible input, because this method is amazing. I truly believe it's one of the best methods there is to learn a language, to acquire a foreign language. I think it's the emotional state you're in while you're trying to learn this language, and that is why I always tell you guys, you have to choose the materials that you genuinely love.
[13:54]Because when you're choosing the things that you actually enjoy, you often forget that you're even learning a foreign language, because the message becomes more important than the language. It's, you know, how sometimes you talk to a person in a foreign language, and the conversation is so interesting, you're so engaged and so focused on this person that you don't really feel self-conscious. Like if you make a mistake, you make a mistake, it doesn't really matter, because the language is not the most important thing right now. The most important thing is communicating with this amazing person because you're enjoying the conversation so much. And I remember when I was still in high school and middle school, and I had to talk in class, I had to practice English in a classroom. I was so anxious, I was so scared. I was scared of making mistakes. The language was definitely way more important than the message, because all of the exercises I had to do like the speaking practice exercises, they were boring. Like I actually did not like the message. And when you become more focused on the message than on the language, that's when real learning, real language acquisition starts to happen. So if you want comprehensible input to actually work, you need to start choosing content that lights you up, that you would still would want to consume even if you weren't learning a foreign language. I remember that time when I started making the most amount of progress in my English. It was in around 2019. And that was the time when I became deeply passionate, obsessed with veganism. I was literally reading every single book on becoming vegan, on veganism, I could lay my hands on. And obviously, all of those books weren't translated into Russian. Russian is my native language, so I had to read those books in English. Because for me, the message was so much more important than the language. In 2019, my English level was definitely lower than it is right now, so reading books in English was in general more challenging for me. But because I was so deeply interested in this topic, I did not care. I wanted to understand the message. And for me, English was just a tool to actually get all of this knowledge and to to learn everything I could about this topic as fast as I could. And so, what I'm trying to communicate to you guys here is that I really don't want the language to stop you from getting the message, from getting the knowledge you want to get, or maybe the entertainment you want to get. Because earlier, probably in 2015, I became very interested in watching American YouTubers and their vlogs, and it was really entertaining for me. And since we're talking a lot about comprehensible input, and input means all of the information you're putting into your brain, I think we also have to talk about output. Because a lot of people push themselves to speak too fast when they feel too anxious and too uncomfortable. When I dug deeper into the concept of comprehensible input, I learned that Stephen Krashen tells everyone to wait, like don't worry about speaking, and don't worry about writing, because those things will come eventually. And this may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, certainly came as a surprise to me. Talking is not practicing. Speaking and writing are the result of acquiring a language. They are not the starting point. Because when at the beginning of your language learning journey, you're fully focused on comprehensible input, what happens is you're feeding your brain, you're feeding your language acquisition device. And just like a sponge, it starts to absorb everything quietly and gradually, but it is happening, and it is only possible when this Affective Filter is low. When you're in a calm state, when you're actually interested in what you're doing, when the message becomes more important than the language. So now imagine what happens when you force yourself to do something that you don't want to do, when you force yourself to speak and write, even though you're not ready, even though you don't want to. Again, I'm talking about at the very beginning of your language learning journey, because when you become more and more advanced, obviously speaking and writing, those things starts to happen naturally because this language starts to become a part of your life. So here I'm talking about forcing yourself to speak, to create complex sentences, when all you really know how to say is hello, how are you? So what you're doing is you're trying to speak and write without enough input. You feel nervous, your mind blanks, you start translating all those things happen naturally, because there's not enough comprehensible input inside of your language acquisition device yet. And so what does this do? It raises your Affective Filter, which means that the input that you are receiving, can't really reach your brain. It's blocked. It's blocked by this Affective Filter, by all of the negative emotions you're experiencing in the moment. So instead of learning, instead of continuing your amazing language learning journey, you tense up, you feel anxious, and you stop. You start turning something natural into a very stressful situation. And so that is why the message I want to share in this video is let your output, your speaking and writing come naturally. Speak when you feel ready, write when you feel curious. If you keep feeding your brain the right kind of input, meaningful, interesting, and just a little bit challenging, your brain will start to produce output. You will start to speak, you will start to write, and those things will happen naturally. They will feel effortless because you are ready, and you will start creating sentences that just flow, and that is fluency being born. Okay, guys, I think it's going to be it for today's video. If you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. If you have some feedback to share with me, some comments, anything you want to share, please leave me a comment. Don't forget to check out my language learning Notion template if you want to organize your study routine and keep track of everything you're learning. Also, if you want to simplify your productivity systems, I highly recommend Akiflow. You can use my link in the description and get access to their one-on-one onboarding call to help you get set up. Okay. So today I said that comprehensible input is the most important method to become fluent in English in any language you're learning. And you can practice comprehensible input by reading something or watching something or listening to something. And I actually have a video on my YouTube channel where I talk about why listening is the only skill you need to become fluent. And so if you want to learn more, make sure to click right here and keep on watching.
