One of the core components of the mass immersion approach philosophy is the idea of input before output.
This is basically the idea that if you want to become fluent in a foreign language,
in most cases the most efficient way to go about that is to for the first long while
Completely put off trying to speak and write the language,
and focus solely on learning to understand the language through listening and reading.
and there are multiple reasons why this is the case,
I'm actually not going to go too into detail on that on this video
But the basic idea is that:
when you first start learning a new language, if you try to speak that language
you're gonna make a lot of mistakes.
and, when you make the same mistakes over and over these mistakes actually become ingrained habits that are really hard to overcome later.
On the other hand, if you just focus on understanding the language and building an intuition for that language before you start to speak,
Then, by the time you do start speaking, you'll already have a pretty good sense of what's correct and natural and what's not correct and natural,
and so you can basically train yourself to only say things that you know are natural and correct.
Therefore bypassing the whole process of making bad habits that you'll have to overcome later
So said succinctly, it's a lot easier to create good habits the first time than to create bad habits, and then have to go back and fix them.
Now, although I think this is really true and really important,
from what I've seen some people in the mass immersion approach community,
I think take this idea a little bit too seriously.
To the point where it actually causes them a lot of anxiety and suffering.
I see a lot of people who seem to be afraid to even speak a single word in their target language,
out of fear that will somehow permanently damage them.
But I really don't think that's the case, right.
I think that if you're speaking your target language even pretty early on, you know
Let's say once a week, or you know a few times a month, then as long as you're getting lots of input each day
That's not really gonna do any serious long-term damage.
So let's just say that you're are living outside of the country where your target language is spoken,
and you're on the bus and you see a couple of native speakers speaking your target language,
Then hey, if you feel inspired, maybe go and strike up a conversation, right?
Because that's something that you don't have the opportunity to every day,
And it can be really motivating and exciting.
And that is what I would say. The one true perk of early output is that it is very motivating, right?
Even if a conversation you have with the native speaker is very broken and slow,
Still just the fact that you were able to communicate with someone,
who you wouldn't have been able to communicate with if you have been studying this language,
That alone is very Motivating.
And it can lead you to feel really inspired to continue to study that language and become fluent in it
and I think you know
This is especially true if you're an extrovert and you really get a lot of your energy from interacting with other people
So I would say although you definitely don't need to go out of your way to seek opportunities to speak the language
in the first six months to two years of studying the language,
if you're someone who is really motivated inspired by that but you know,
maybe a few times a month,
you can find an italki *teacher and
Speak your language a little bit. I think that's gonna be totally fine
As long as it's not on a daily basis or multiple times a week for multiple hours, right?
That's when I think you really start getting into a kind of a danger zone
of making a lot of habits that are gonna get sticky and hard to fix later.
Now when we're talking about early output
there's an idea that I think is really important to understand
This is basically the idea that I talked about in my last video called "language isn't math", that the way that native speakers speak is:
'Highly specific in unpredictable ways', meaning that whatever idea or concept that you might want to express in your target language
There's probably a given set phrase that native speakers say every time to express that idea
That you're not going to be able to just predict ahead of time.
if you're thinking in your name of language and translating or maybe even you're pretty good at your target language
And you're not really thinking in your native language, but you're just guessing based off of how much of your target language you know
You're probably gonna end up saying something that's unnatural and incorrect
Even if you are understood.
[barely comprehensible accent example] "special ability, like a... spider. for example... wrist... spread... lines."
This whole idea of input before output is like I said at the beginning of this video to make good habits the first time
By only saying things that you know are correct.
And the way that you know whether something is natural and correct or not, is because you've heard multiple native speakers say that thing
multiple times, in the sort of context that you are currently in.
And so for example, in English, like I mentioned in my last video,
We commonly say "I need to go to the bathroom"
and so if you were someone studying English and through your interactions with native speakers, or...
All the TV shows you watched / the books you've read, you've heard native speakers Say the exact word for word phrase
"I need to go to the bathroom" multiple times,
Then you can be 99% sure that if you say I need to go to the bathroom when you need to go to the bathroom
Then it's gonna be natural and correct.
and this is how you go about building good habits the first time,
you only say things that you know are correct because you've heard them
But the thing is if you are trying to output early on you're not gonna be able to do this for a lot of things
You want to say right?
There are going to be a lot of things where I need to get this idea across because I'm in the middle of a real-life conversation,
but I don't know how to say it.
and so you're gonna be forced to basically get creative or make something up.
And of course,
because native speech is highly specific in unpredictable ways
You're gonna be wrong most times when you're in the situation where you're getting creative making stuff up.
But the thing is if you understand that native speech is highly specific in unpredictable ways
then you can be 99% sure when you're saying something that you know is correct and
For everything else you can assume that you're probably wrong.
And as long as you have this awareness while you're speaking then even if you say something wrong
it's probably not gonna become a bad habit
because you know It's probably wrong.
in a sense if you understand these ideas, then when you are speaking and you do have to get creative and
an alarm bell is gonna be going off in your head:
"Oh crap. This is probably wrong. This is probably unnatural...I hope they understand me"
and if this alarm bell is going off, you're probably not gonna make a habit out of it, right?
What's gonna happen is that either, after the conversation, you're gonna go look it up and see what the correct way to say that was,
or even if you don't do that, once you go back to your immersion
and that idea comes up and you hear it expressed in a natural way, then you'll probably realize:
"oh, this is that thing I wanted to say, that's how you say it".
and then you can say it correctly the next time.
and so basically, even if you do engage in a decent amount of early output,
as long as you have this awareness of
What you sure on and what you're not sure on, and you kind of just assume that what you're not sure on is probably wrong,
Then you're gonna be pretty safe when it comes to bad habits because you're probably just not gonna make a habit out of something
That you think is probably wrong.
now, This isn't a surefire technique, right?
Because just the fact that you've said something made it more likely that you're gonna say it again because you've kind of just created
Some kind of neural pathway in your brain, but overall, I think you're gonna be pretty well off
And so I think this is extra important for people who are for example
Living in the country where their target language is spoken as they learn the language and therefore are pretty much forced to output everyday
I think it's really important to
Stay really strict in your mind about
What you know is correct and what you're not so sure about and that way you won't make habits out of any of the things
That could be wrong.
And the last thing I want to talk about in this video is
what to do if you're someone who wasn't really aware of any of these ideas and
Started learning foreign language outputted a lot from day one and have a ton of bad habits in your target language
How do you even begin to go about fixing these?
well
I would say probably the best technique that you can apply and this is something that I first heard about on antimoon.com
is to go through a silent period just completely stop speaking your target language stop writing your target language and
Continue to get lots of input in that language and then after a few months, maybe six months to a year probably
Because you haven't been speaking
A lot of those old habits will die out and they'll naturally start to be replaced by correct speech that you're getting
exposure to through your immersion
and in fact
This actually happened to me because when I was learning Japanese for a six-month period pretty early on I was living in Japan
Living with a host family and was forced to output each day now
first of all
I did have this awareness of when I was
saying something I was sure about and when I was saying something that I wasn't sure about but I think I also did make a
decent number of bad habits, especially when it comes to pronunciation and so on but when I came back from Japan
I entered the silent period that lasted for over where I was reading Japanese books and listening to Japanese every single day
But not speaking at all
And then when I was truly ready for output about a year and a half after I had returned from Japan
I found that I didn't really have any bad habits and I could speak quite naturally and easily and so I think that
overall
Although it's again not gonna be perfect
if you take a good silent period that can really help you kind of ditch a lot your old habits and
Start off with this kind of new approach of only saying what you know is correct
So yeah, that's what I wanted to say in this video
Of course in general avoid output in the beginning focus on input build up your comprehension abilities and your intuition
but a few times a month not gonna do any damage, you know don't condemn yourself for
Speaking the language here there don't condemn other people for speaking in here there
but most of all try to be sure about when you know
You're correct, and when you're not so sure and as long as you do that
Then you won't be deluded and you probably won't build too many bad habits