Understanding Spanish: How to Make the Transition from Input To Output
After publishing my fifth newsletter, readers David and アカン (Akan) asked me how I made the transition from input mode to output mode, and how I’m able to understand specialized vocabulary (for example while watching the news). In the article in the newsletter in question, I talked about how far audio-based immersion can take you and what you should do after you hit a certain point.
Some people like to believe that audio-based input is all you need, and that you’re as fluent as in your native language after getting enough hours of input. Although listening a lot will make you fluent indeed, it won’t give you adult-like abilities in your target language. More is needed, like polishing your grammar and getting a bigger (specialized) vocabulary.
David asked me how I transitioned from input mode to output mode, because my Spanish was so “amazing”. I can’t really judge how good my Spanish is, as I simply imitate native speakers I know. But it seems to sound very natural. The truth is that at first (when I started learning Spanish) I wasn’t in input mode at all. Everything I did was geared towards producing Spanish, as I thought that speaking would actually improve my Spanish.
The result was a messed up accent, and a messed up grammar. It wasn’t until I discovered the Input Hypothesis that I shut up and started to get some serious input. I don’t know if this proves that a bad accent can actually be fixed by listening a lot, but it helped me. Still, I continued to speak Spanish on a daily basis at college, while listening as much as I could. The only “silent period” I had was during the summer, when I had time to shut up for over 6 weeks and get audio-based input 10 to 15 hours a day.
About a year later I had my second semi-silent period when I was in Spain for an internship. My internship was only part time and I would sit in my apartment for the rest of the day, watching episode after episode of Lost, Friends, etc. I would also study some grammar (as I already was fluent in Spanish) to get rid of the small mistakes in my Spanish, and would add the example sentences from the grammar book to Anki.
However, speaking actually helped me there, and during my time in Spain the trasition was pretty smooth. At first I was the silent guy at work, only speaking when it was really necessary. Then co-workers started to talk to me and I had to respond. Still, my accent wasn’t good and some new people I met weren’t afraid to tell me my accent sucked, or at least that it wasn’t natural. So what they did was telling me exactly the sounds I had trouble with, after which I’d practice at home to nail down the correct sounds. Just like I learned how to roll my R, I’d simply put the new sounds to practice, which helped me a lot.
Anyway, I believe I had to do this because my accent was already messed up. There are enough reports that prove that having a solid silent period has a natural and native accent and intonation as result. I have to see that myself while I’m learning French on my own, but I believe the massive input combined with the gradual transition from being a shy idiot to an outgoing guy (in Spanish) definitely helped.
Now アカン (Akan)’s question. How am I able to understand (for example) the news in Spanish? First of all, because the news was/is part of my immersion environment. Also, specialized vocabulary not only appears in a news broadcast, but also in the newspaper. I love reading El País, so specialized vocabulary I pick up from reading the articles are also useful when I’m watching a news broadcast.
Still, Spanish is a pretty amazing and logical language when it comes to coming up with names for things and persons. In English (and Dutch) we like to invent seperate words for everything we can think of. In Spanish they just use compound words using the word de.
Using the preposition de it’s very easy to come up with new words, so Spanish speakers do it all the time. It also makes it easy to understand a compund word. Traje de gala is a evening dress (a dress you wear to a gala) and traje de novia is a wedding dress (a dress your fiancee wears). Of course this is an extremely simplistic example, but it is pretty much how the Spanish language works.
Nevertheless, you need to expand your immersion environment. Watching Friends or The Office dubbed in Spanish leaves you with a great sense of humor, but it will also limit the vocabulary you understand and can use. Adding some news broadcasts, newspapers, fiction and non-fiction to the mix does wonders and will greatly improve your understanding of most things. Yes, you won’t understand quantum mechanics in Spanish if you don’t study it, but isn’t that also the case in your native language?
I always say: you can’t produce what you didn’t input first. This is also true for input: you can’t understand something you didn’t hear/read before (repeatedly). I can guess what traje de baño means, but not until I see an advertisement for a swimsuit or hear people talking about it while seeing a swimsuit I can be sure.
Maybe my answer to Akan’s question is a bit vague, but what I’m trying to say is: you can only understand the news in Spanish if you’ve watched it a lot. You can only understand a Spanish newspaper if you’ve read many Spanish newspapers. You can only understand a Spanish comedy if you’ve watched loads of them.
There is no such thing as a magic pill or magic formula that enables you to understand everything in Spanish that crosses your path. It takes input, both in audio and written form. That’s how I learned to understand the things that interest me in Spanish. That’s how natives learned about things that interest them. If something doesn’t interest you and you don’t get input regarding that subject, you probably won’t understand a paper about it when it uses specialized vocabulary. However, the same counts for a paper on that subject in your native language. Does that mean that we’re not fluent? No, it only means that we don’t think it’s important to spend time on that subject.
I’m fluent in Dutch because it’s my native language and because I’ve been using it on a daily basis for the last 20+ years. Still, I won’t understand a magazine about model trains, simply because it’s not something I enjoy reading about. I can’t explain role playing games like World of Warcraft in Dutch either, because I lack the Dutch vocabulary to do so. Ask me about World of Warcraft in English or Spanish, and I can hold a three hours conversation about it in those languages. It’s because I played the game in both English and Spanish, simple as that.
To recap this long-ass article and the questions David and Akan asked me:
How did I make the transition from input mode to output mode?
It went gradual, while getting a healthy dosis of input every day during my transition from input-only mode to output mode.
How am I able to understand specialized language in Spanish?
Simply because I studied the subject (even the role playing thing), got a shitload of specialized input, used it in conversations and got some more input. That’s the key, nothing else.
Further reading:
- Understanding Everything Shouldn’t Be Your Goal
- Have a native accent? Good!
- Intentions for Spanish in 2009
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Related posts:
- Input vs. Output
- Is Using Flashcards Bad?
- “Listen First” Equals to “Never Going to Speak”?
- Learning Spanish the Easy Way
- Learn Spanish CD or Downloadable Audio Course
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Very good point you make about doing things to get better at them. I’m guilty of blaming myself all the time for not being able to do something in my third language (Japanese) that I can do in my second (English). Still, there are a lot of things (and I mean a whole lot of things) I can do in English that I can’t do in my native tongue. I consider myself to be “fluent” in both.
I guess it’s the same story for output. It is pretty foolish on our part to expect a perfect native-like accent with zero grammatical errors on our first try when we’ve never conversed in our target language before.
Anyways brilliant post as always!
Ramses, thank you for the great post! It seems that the “silent period” and gradually beginning the “output phase” are important keys to success. What I also picked up on, if I am correct, is that the “input phase” does not stop just because one is starting the “output phase”. Also, I can see where the listening (input phase) would cause a more natural pronunciation once one starts talking (output phase), although I had never really thought about it until reading it in your post.
Wow, that was a really good post.
And thank you, Igor. That actually cleared some things up for me that have been happening lately in my second language. I’ve experienced just exactly what was described there.
The Din in the Head hypothesis: Comments on de Bot (2008)
Stephen Krashen
Modern Language Journal (in press)
The Din in the Head, first noted by Barber (1980), is an involuntary mental rehearsal of a language that occurs after we have had extensive comprehensible input in that language.
I present here three comments on de Bot’s discussion of the Din in his recent article in the Modern Language Journal (de Bot, 2008):
de Bot gives me credit for coming up with a “catchy title” for my 1983 paper. I used Barber’s original way of describing the phenomenon, which is quoted by de Bot: “the linguist in me was noticing a rising din of Russian in my head” (p. 172). Barber deserves the credit, not me.
de Bot states that the “Din in the Head” hypothesis relates to the idea of a “critical stage that turns receptive knowledge into productive knowledge.” The Din in the Head hypothesis claims that the din is the result of stimulation of the language acquisition device, a sign that language acquisition is taking place (Krashen, 1983). I noted that the Din experience correlates with less reluctance to speak the language, but did not make any hypothesis about a sudden “critical stage” that leads to a “sudden and massive restructuring” as de Bos claims (p. 173).
de Bot states that there is no research providing evidence for his interpretation of the din. There certainly is published research confirming that the predictions made in Krashen (1983) are correct: Bedford, 1985; de Guerrero, 1987, McQuillan, 1996, McQuillan and Rodrigo, 1995; Parr and Krashen, 1986; Sevilla, 1996.
http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/din/all.html
great post interesting ideas.
i had not heard about silent period before