Learning a language happens through exposure to language you can mostly understand; classroom drills feel productive and build nothing.

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Where this collides

• Cannot both be true

  Speaking is learned only by speaking a lot; no amount of study substitutes for it.

  Lewis says speaking is learned only by speaking a lot and that no amount of study substitutes for it. Kaufmann says learning happens through exposure to language you can mostly understand, and that drills which feel productive build nothing. This is the input-versus-output argument in its plainest form, and both men have decades of languages behind their answer.

• In tension with

  Refusing to speak English is what makes immersion work: it compresses years of language learning into months.

  Young credits a no-English rule with compressing years of learning into months, which is an output-first account of what did the work. Kaufmann credits comprehensible input and says classroom drills build nothing. Immersion supplies both at once, which is why the two men can point at the same three months and disagree about what caused the result.

Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.

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• A lack of education makes women's talk insipid and their solitude unbearable; learning is necessary to make them useful company MAMary Astellc. 1694–1697education
• A practical science of nature's forces could make humans the lords and possessors of nature RDRené Descartes8 Jun 1637education
• A puzzle whose categories can only be seen by the broadly educated is elitist by construction. RKRaph Koster2 Sept 2023education

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