*This was a blog that I originally wrote on medium Dec 27, 2022* https://stephenbuggy.medium.com/90-days-of-learning-portuguese-with-comprehensible-input-57b55aebbca9 ![[Comprehensible input rage meme.png]] In September I began to study Brazilian Portuguese. Since then I have read over 115,000 words and listened to over 70 hours of Portuguese. This has helped me make faster progress in a foreign language than I ever thought possible. In school I was not good at languages. I was a smart kid, but when it came to both French and Spanish I would work hard but struggled to pass tests. What made the difference with Portuguese was learning a better way to learn languages: [[comprehensible input]]. # Learning Algebra If I want to learn how to do algebra I must first learn the [order of operations](https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-sixth-grade-math/x0267d782:cc-6th-exponents-and-order-of-operations/cc-6th-order-of-operations/v/more-complicated-order-of-operations-example#:~:text=The%20order%20of%20operations%20is,(from%20left%20to%20right).) (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction). I can then do some practice exercises. In the beginning I might put a reference sheet of the rules beside me while I work through exercises. This is slow and requires conscious thought about the rules. With time, I will start to learn the order of operations off-by-heart and will no longer need my reference sheet. We go through a process of learning rules and then practising until these rules become automatic. # Learning to ride a bike So, when I want to learn to ride a bike, I read about Newton’s basic laws of motion. It’s a little bit difficult to balance my copy of _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica_ on the bicycle handlebars, but I refer to it regularly as I practice cycling. Doing the velocity equations is difficult, but if I don’t calculate “the force acting on a body is equal to the mass of the body multiplied by the acceleration a of its centre of mass” how else could I know how fast to move the pedals? With practice, I learn how to cycle so well that I don’t need to use the the reference textbook and I can cycle without it. Wait… I don’t do any of that. I don’t worry about understanding the physics of how to cycle a bike. The rules are too complicated. I just practice cycling as soon as I can. Even if I become a master cyclist, I’ll never need to learn Newton’s laws of motion. Even if I did understand the rules of cycling it wouldn’t help me learn to cycle. The rules are difficult to apply and I can’t think through the laws consciously as I cycle: if you stopped peddling to check equations you’d fall over. What I might do is put on some training wheels to make cycling easier while I learn, but there is no short cut to mastery: practice is all that matters. # Languages are not algebra Most people act like learning a new language (your “target language”) is like learning algebra, but it is a lot more like learning to ride a bike. - The rules of language are so complicated that linguists don’t understand the rules fully - Even when linguists do understand the rules they may be too difficult to teach - Even if the student has learnt the rule, they rarely have enough time to consciously apply the rule when using the language Students who consciously study grammar rules do better in formal grammar tests, but that’s not the point of learning languages. The point is to be able to use the language to communicate with others. There, the evidence is pretty clear: students pick up grammar forms much faster from reading and listening. Some studies have found very small effects of grammar study on communication but most don’t find any statistical effect. Grammar study is a waste of time. Learning off vocabulary does somewhat better. People can improve written and oral comprehension in their target language if they’ve learnt vocabulary lists, but it’s still questionable if it’s the most efficient use of time. Again, it comes back to rules. For some definitions (“Frango” means “Chicken”) we can understand the rules and translate fairly easily. But other words don’t translate well at all outside of context. “Mesmo” translates to both “same” and “very”. To me these definitions seemed like opposites. It’s only after reading many examples in context that I started to understand what it means. If grammar study doesn’t work, and drilling vocabulary doesn’t work, then what does? The thing that is most predictive of how fluent someone becomes is how much time they spend **understanding messages in their target language**. Anything you hear or read in your target language is called **input**. Input alone isn’t enough. It has to be easy enough for you to comprehend it. If I listen to the Portuguese Radio I’ve got some target language input but I don’t have much context I’ll not understand anything. But if I’m watching a Brazilian TV and it’s raining and a character says, “Está chovendo.” I might understand that it means “It’s raining.” The context has made the language understandable. This is called **comprehensible input**. Over time your brain will begin to notice patterns in the language and you will learn the words and grammar unconsciously. It sounds too good to be true, but the evidence is strong: **The most effective way to learn a language is to read and listen in the language.** The bad news is that you are going to need a lot of input. There are no shortcuts. Hundreds of hours of reading and listening to reach B2 intermediate level and thousands to reach high-level fluency. You are going to make a lot of mistakes. You are going to misunderstand a lot of your target language. Accept that. You can’t wait until you are prefect. The path to mastery is covered with mistakes. You might be wondering where speaking and writing in your target language comes into things. It mostly doesn’t. Research in comprehensible input says that that speaking and writing isn’t how you learn a language, but the _result_ of learning the language. Most people who learn a language outside a classroom spend a long time just listening and reading before they ever learn to speak. You should expect to understand a lot in your target language, reading and listening, before you are able to fluently speak or write in it. Early practice won’t make much of a difference to how quickly you learn to speak fluently. At 90 days I’m really very early on in my language learning. The main app I’m using is LingQ. It allows you to import text or audio from anywhere and you can make the language more comprehensible by looking up words in the online dictionary. I’ve enjoyed learning from children’s myths like _A Menina dos Brincos de Ouro_; BBC Brazil articles, such as those on Brazilian election; subtitles of Netflix TV shows I watch, like _Coisa Mais Linda_; and podcasts, like _Fala Gringo._ My reading has come a long way. I’m able to read quite a lot of simple things like memes and jokes on Instagram without any dictionary. The reading I do LingQ has become faster and more fluid. My listening is improving, but there’s nothing I could confidently listen to without a transcript. No speaking and no writing yet. I’m happy with this. I’m not in any big rush. LingQ say that I know 4987 words. It estimates that I am at an A2 language level and I’m 1700 words from B1 (intermediate level). I think I can hit something like a B1 level (early intermediate) in a month or so for reading. B1 listening won’t be too much longer after that, but I really should do more listening every day. I expect to have some opportunities to practise speaking in a month or so, but I’m expecting to continue to speak terribly for a lot longer. I’ve made at peace with that. I’d love to visit Brazil sometime in late 2023 to test my progress. It’s going to be a long road, but with comprehensible input I think I can reach the end. [https://www.lingq.com/](https://www.lingq.com/) — LingQ, my favourite language learning app. By the way, the has a built in flashcard system but I never use it. Steven Kaufman, the founder, doesn’t even use it. It’s there because people expect it in a language app. [https://www.lingq.com/?referral=stephenbuggy](https://www.lingq.com/?referral=stephenbuggy) — They have a referral system. I’ll get a small bonus if you sign up through this link. [https://www.memrise.com/](https://www.memrise.com/) — Memrise, an app I use for learning common vocabulary. Despite what I said above about the limits of vocabulary lists, I think flashcards have their place for learning the most high frequency words. [http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles.php?cat=6](http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles.php?cat=6) Stephen Krashen’s webite, one of the most important theorists in this area. Most of his academic articles are available online for free. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKvMqPl6j4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKvMqPl6j4) A short video of Stephen Krashen explaining some German vocabulary through comprehensible input Bill Van Patten has an excellent series of videos explaining clearly about how we actually learn languages: What Everyone Should Know About Second Language Acquisition [https://tprsquestionsandanswers.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/the-research-supporting-comprehensible-input/](https://tprsquestionsandanswers.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/the-research-supporting-comprehensible-input/) An amazing list of evidence for comprehensible input. [https://refold.la/](https://refold.la/) Refold is a great community of learners trying to learn various languages through a method pretty close to comprehensible input. It’s a wonderful place to find resources and get support.