What people on korrents have said about language learning, in their own words —
33 claims from
6 people.
Steve Kaufmann, Luca Lampariello, Benny Lewis, Lýdia Machová, Gabriel Wyner, Scott H. Young
Five views·our reading; the words are theirs
The language goes in before it comes out, and understanding is what does the teachingI came to the same conclusions independently before I encountered Krashen's work, and decades of learning across 20+ languages have only reinforced them. The research supports the intuition: input is where acquisition happens.— Steve Kaufmann, by 2026Steve Kaufmann7 claims
Claims that listening and reading you can mostly follow are the mechanism, and that studying about a language is not.
Their wordsI came to the same conclusions independently before I encountered Krashen's work, and decades of learning across 20+ languages have only reinforced them. The research supports the intuition: input is where acquisition happens.
Their wordsSure, language classes can provide social benefits and feedback. But the real means of learning a language is consistent, ample amounts of listening and reading.
Their wordsIf you are starting a language completely from scratch, authentic media is just noise. You’ll absorb very little. You need highly repetitive, simple input.
Their wordsClassroom activities like grammar drills and vocabulary tests feel productive. You are doing something. But none of it builds the network your brain actually needs.
Their wordsMost people hear that story and think: he must have lacked talent, or commitment. I don’t think that’s the right conclusion. I think he was never taught how second language acquisition actually works, and so he spent hundreds of hours doing the wrong things.
Speaking starts before you are ready, and what stops people is embarrassment rather than vocabularyThe no-English rule was largely what made the difference. Although there are many ways of learning a language, going for full immersion made it possible to learn what would have taken years in just a few months.— Scott H. Young, 2014Scott H. Young, Benny Lewis7 claims
Claims that production is the thing being learned, that it cannot be postponed until you are good, and that the barrier is social.
Their wordsThe no-English rule was largely what made the difference. Although there are many ways of learning a language, going for full immersion made it possible to learn what would have taken years in just a few months.
Their wordsI learned a long time ago that speaking like “Tarzan” is an absolutely necessary stage to go through, so you get used to using the language in SOME way. You learn to get used to the embarrassment and get on with learning quicker.
Their wordsPerfectionist and elitist learners will never accept being perceived as less than geniuses the entire time, so they will never expose themselves to sounding “stupid”, as they may perceive it.
Their wordsBut it's HARD to start this. NOT because of all the academic reasons of lack of vocabulary and grammar, but because you need to be cool with the fact that you are not going to know the simplest of words.
Their wordsAll auxiliary tasks can help move you in the right direction, but will not ultimately help you speak unless you find a native, put yourself in front of them and force yourself to start to communicate.
There is no best method in general, only the one a particular person will keep doingafter 30 years of learning languages and 10 years of coaching people to do the same, I am 100% positive when I tell you that there is no absolute best and fastest way to learn a language.— Luca Lampariello, 2020Luca Lampariello, Scott H. Young8 claims · 2 changes of mind
Claims that the question is badly posed — that enjoyment and persistence decide the outcome, and that a method has limits its holder had to find out.
Their wordsafter 30 years of learning languages and 10 years of coaching people to do the same, I am 100% positive when I tell you that there is no absolute best and fastest way to learn a language.
Their wordsWhile there is no absolute best and fastest way to learn a language, there definitely is a best and fastest way FOR YOU, personally, to learn a language. A method that is tailored to your likes and dislikes, your learning style, and your schedule.
Their wordsFor your health and sanity, do not force yourself to learn a language using a method you hate, no matter how good other people say it is. Trying to do so will only lead to disappointment, and ultimately burnout.
Filed here becauseFiled under this current because of how it ended: its holder abandoned the universal claim for the reason the current names, that the method was his rather than everyone's.
Recalls holdingWhen I first developed my Bidirectional Translation method, I applied it to each and every language I decided to learn.
Their words nowIn hindsight, what I should have done then was be flexible. I should have taken my Bidirectional Translation method and attempted to adapt it to better suit Japanese, rather than the other way around. Instead, I remained rigid and inflexible in my learning strategies, in terms of the resources I used and how I used them, and that’s why I failed.
Their wordsThe main takeaway I made from all of this was: Asian languages are hard, and attempting full-immersion without sufficient preparation is usually not going to work.
Recalls holdingWhen Vat and I initially made plans, neither of us were confident that it would be possible to reach a conversational level in any of the languages.
Their words nowThe fact that I can confidently say I reached a conversational level in Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, and a near-conversational level for Korean is far above what I originally thought was possible.
A language is a skill to be built, and nobody can build it for the learnerSome people think CI means you reject grammar books. I disagree. I often reference grammar materials and find these explanations useful. However, the focus of my learning is not to “master the rules”. Grammar resources simply help me notice and make sense of patterns in the language.— Steve Kaufmann, by 2026Steve Kaufmann, Lýdia Machová, Luca Lampariello6 claims
Claims about what is actually being acquired — abilities rather than facts — and about what a teacher can and cannot do.
Their wordsSome people think CI means you reject grammar books. I disagree. I often reference grammar materials and find these explanations useful. However, the focus of my learning is not to “master the rules”. Grammar resources simply help me notice and make sense of patterns in the language.
Their wordsI'm convinced that it's not possible to teach anyone a language. A good teacher can help you on this journey – but they cannot give the language to you on a silver platter.
Their wordsThis is an important detail that often gets overlooked, because language learning is, first and foremost, about acquiring skills. About learning how to read, write, speak, and listen, along with all of the countless subskills that any competent language speaker has in his or her toolbox.
Luca LamparielloItalian language coach who speaks more than ten languages…In traditional classroom settings, the development of skills often gets overlooked in favor of facts. Facts in the form of conjugation tables, word lists, grammar explanations, the names of verb tenses, and so on. All of these things are related to language, but it’s important to realize that knowing these things has nothing to do with speaking and using a language productively.↗3 Steps for Effective Translation to Learn Any Languagelucalampariello.com · 19 Aug 2021All korrents from this piece
Their wordsIn traditional classroom settings, the development of skills often gets overlooked in favor of facts. Facts in the form of conjugation tables, word lists, grammar explanations, the names of verb tenses, and so on. All of these things are related to language, but it’s important to realize that knowing these things has nothing to do with speaking and using a language productively.
What has to change is in the ear and the head, not in the vocabulary listBut that can’t possibly be true. Singers and actors learn new accents all the time, and they’re not, on average, smarter than everyone else (and they certainly don’t all start before the age of 7).— Gabriel Wyner, by 2019Gabriel Wyner4 claims
Claims that hearing a language's sounds gates what can be remembered, that an adult accent is trainable, and that translating in your head has a ceiling.
Their wordsBut that can’t possibly be true. Singers and actors learn new accents all the time, and they’re not, on average, smarter than everyone else (and they certainly don’t all start before the age of 7).
Their wordsThere is a limit to translation. You can make your translations more and more complex, and you can get very fast at them, but it will never be as fast or as fluent as simply thinking in the language.
Read together·our reading of the record — ours, not theirs
Between them they speak fifty-odd languages, and still disagree about how anyone learns one.
What is a view?
Our reading of what a group of claims have in common. Nobody holds a
belief about language learning as such; people hold beliefs about the handful of live
questions the name stands for, and each view is one of them. The claims are printed
under it, so the sentence can be checked against them.
Claims are filed here — never people. Somebody is named on a card because a dated
claim of theirs sits under it, and somebody whose claims sit under two views is
named on both. There are no counts of who believes what: the people under a view
are the names printed there.
Where the views collide
Asserted relations whose two claims sit under different views — each
with the curator’s reason, never computed.
Lewis says everything other than talking to a native speaker is auxiliary and none of it gets you speaking on its own. Kaufmann says the practical instruction that follows from the research is to listen and read a great deal. They are giving a beginner opposite advice about what to spend the first months doing.
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.
Lampariello says there is no best method in general, only a best method for each particular learner. Lewis makes exactly the universal claim Lampariello denies is available — that speaking is the one thing that works, for everyone. A claim that no universal answer exists and a universal answer cannot both stand.
Kaufmann says authentic material is noise to a beginner, so the start has to be graded input. Lewis says there is no threshold to cross before speaking begins and that the change is a decision rather than a level reached. Both are about the very first weeks, and only one of them has a stage that must be got through first.
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.
Read, and under none of the views
On this subject, but saying something the views above do not cover.
Matched by wording, not yet read into a view. The archive grows on its
own — the watcher adds claims every two hours — so this is where new ones wait for
somebody to read them.