Your word "ownership" reminds me of something I've seen among flash card enthusiasts. Experienced language learners who use flash cards for learning languages just about always (in my experience) swear by handwritten cards, though they all have a different stated reason for it. (This is less true of medical students, who love their Anki decks.) I'm not saying that any of those reasons are wrong. It's probably very true that it's good to engage your muscles in learning a language, and that it's great to be able to easily use various colors and sorting methods. But it seems to me also that when you hold a flashcard in your hand that you yourself made, and see a word in your own handwriting, you have tangible proof that at least for a moment you knew it. The card confirms your ownership of the word.
Having said some nice things about flashcards, though, I also want to spotlight what you said here: "Most novice language learners ... would do much better starting off with a programme of listening to and reading easy material in the language for six months, and only then progressing to the apps, classes, and grammar books." Taking several months to do only comprehensible input was my 2025 strategy for Old English, and I'd vouch for it, even as I admit that it built up a surprising appetite for grammar. As I said to our mutual friend Logan, "Grammar is more fun like this than it is in the world of grammar/translation — it's more like being a natural historian trying to determine which squishy tide-pool creature you're looking at, and less like you're arming yourself with grammar tables in preparation for doing battle with the lines."
In fact, I've been recognizing many parallels between learning language and learning the natural history of a place, not least of which is that there's a surprising amount to be gained by just getting out there and looking around. Part of the natural-history game is to let your attention become attuned. Wandering around looking at things doesn't have the trappings of rigor, but one day you realize you know an awful lot that you didn't even notice yourself learning.
That's a beautiful analogy! Creatures in tide-pools indeed. Knowledge seems to be retained more easily when there's an obvious reason to keep it. The human mind seems to be a ruthless purger of what it deems irrelevant. This is why I think the input => explicit grammar order works better than the reverse. The input primes you for the grammar more readily than the other way around.
I am a late convert to flash cards myself. It's only once I realized that, for me at least, the creation of the flash card seemed to be doing at least half the work, that I began to understand how they fit into my practice. The other thing that has helped me is that I refuse to make a flashcard for a word I didn't in fact know at once point. And this is the biggest argument against using premade decks. Having my first encounter with a word in flash card form has never been particularly effective for me, and led to a lot of "associative interference": mixing up the meanings of two cards I learned in the same session. This was very frustrating, and put me off using flash cards at all for years. Although, of course, I would imagine this is an area where there are ample differences between learners.
Multiple things are necessary for learning a language to a high level. Right now "Comprehensible Input" is the "one neat trick" of language learning on line. somewhat like that special berry that if you eat two cups a day you'll lose fat and gain muscle. Sure, it helps a lot. However, at some point you need to do more than consume content to progress. There is no one neat trick. I'm currently at that step with Latin. I still consume a lot of content. But when I found that I wasn't progressing, I spent a month translating some Livy into English every day. I've seen my ability to read classical Latin improve noticeably. YMMV.
Another thing which you don't talk about (maybe it's obvious) but people have very different skills with language acquisition. So, while we can agree that memorizing declensions and conjugations as an initial focus isn't helpful, what comes next varies. And knowing the grammar helps certain folks (like me).
I've learned two languages to conversational fluency - Hebrew and French. (I maintain my Hebrew, my French knowledge is primarily passive right now). In both scenarios, I had friends who had much better "ears" for the language -- they sounded native. When it came to knowing the subjunctive in French or parsing a piece of Talmud, I really excelled. I find grammar to be cool. I have learned to speak and develop an accent that's not obviously American. When I speak the language, folks don't switch into English. It was a much longer process.
Thanks, Adam! I completely agree with you. I’m of the opinion that input is necessary but not sufficient, at least for most people to get where they want to go. Activities such as those I’ve described as imparting “ownership” are necessary as well. I think you’re also correct to point out that individual differences can come into play: some people seem to be helped by learning explicit grammar, others by written composition. I’m sure all of these activities do help, but, since people have different affinities and limited time, most people figure out before too long what works best for them.
I’m one of the grammar likers as well, but then again, I am a linguist, so that’s not entirely unexpected!
Thanks for posting this, Colin! I've stumbled onto the first two a bit by running into dead-ends learning German via The App That Shall Remain Nameless but really seeing my comprehension rise via reading books and watching kids' shows on YouTube.
I also recently decided that I was going to finally start learning Old English and Latin (two languages I've been fascinated by since I was a kid) this year, and to that end ordered "Osweald Bera" two days ago. I can't wait for it to arrive!
I hope you enjoy Ōsweald! I wrote it as a practical implementation of the ideas in this essay, so, with luck, you should see a similar effect in Old English as you've seen with your German! God spēde þē! (Godspeed!)
Thank you for this. I recently retired and have been considering learning a new language, probably Spanish, as a project so it is timely. You don’t say this, but your analysis leads me to think kid’s books and comics might be a good place to start.
Definitely! Materials for kids are a great place to start. You'll likely also become an expert in the names barnyard animals along the way (for some reason, we love telling kids stories about barnyard animals), which is an added bonus.
Oh this is so, so helpful and confirms why after years of trying to get my geek level understanding of Spanish grammar to convert to production and to become more fluent, podcasts have been a recent revelation for me. I'm listening with interest, learning about the culture and current affairs while occasionally clocking a particular use of the subjective. It also means I'm listening to native speakers with the same accent as my partner's family and friends which helps my listening comprehension too. And I can do it in dead time while walking or driving. Winning all round!
Amazing! And with Spanish there's so much good content out there. And, as it sounds like you're at the level where you can just engage with the content automatically, rather than puzzling things out, you can start to convert more and more of your dead hours into Spanish time. You'll get your contact hours in easily that way! Winning all round indeed!
I tried using Wheelock's and was quickly overwhelmed. I tried the App, but felt like I was going in circles. I found Legentibus which is graded readers with audio following the written words. When I used it regularly I learned a lot, but I tended to push on through. I would read and listen to a lesson and review it maybe once and move on. I think I need to slow down and do more review and make sure I understand what is going on. They include La Familia Romana as well as things they have written. Life happens and I was unable to keep reading regularly. Now I have time and am starting over so this article was just what I needed to reassure me that reading and listening is the way to go. Some of the readers allow you to show English under the Latin which I think I used too much in the past. They say not to worry about vocabulary and grammar. Do you need to keep track of vocabulary and review words so they stick? I also like the margin notes in La Familia Romana that point out some grammar such as adding -ne. How do I know when to add flash cards? When to go deeper into grammar? After reading and reviewing several lessons should I go back to the beginning and review again or keep moving forward? Thanks again for a great article.
Thank you! These are excellent, practical questions. Let me take each in turn:
You don't, strictly speaking, *need* to keep track of vocabulary and do review as long as you keep reading. That said, if you're finding that you're looking up words you know you've already had to look up in the past (and you find that frustrating), you might want to start using something like flash cards. It all depends on how it impacts your reading. If it's no big deal, then you might just want to keep reading and not bother with flash cards. But, if having to look up words over again stops you from enjoying yourself, then flash cards (in a spaced repetition system like Anki) are a great way to help you retain words.
As for grammar, I would suggest you wait until you've seen a form or construction "in the wild" and start to feel curious about what's going on there. Then, in that moment of curiosity, look it up in a grammar resource. You'll be primed to absorb the grammatical explanation well by the fact that you've seen the construction used already in a text.
As for when to progress and when to re-read in a reader like Familia Romana, I'd keep going until your comprehension drops below 95% (you can get a feeling for what that's like using the passages in this article). Then, once that happens, go back until you get to a lesson where your comprehension is at 100% and read forward from there.
On the topic of That App, I have found it very helpful. I learned Spanish from it.
(My aural comprehension of real-world conversation sucks, but it also sucks in French which I took in school and unlike so many reports of school-language failure, actually learned really well for reading and writing at the least. (I’m not particularly eloquent speaking, but am quite functional for using both languages when traveling.))
I’ve also learned some basic German and Portuguese from it. (And it’s only basic because I didn’t take either of them for very long, for various reasons unrelated to The App.). It’s enough to orient me to those languages when I encounter them in written form, so even though my comprehension may be low, I now understand the structure of what I’m reading. This is very satisfying, and allows me to understand simple texts.
I supplemented the app with looking up Grammar concepts that puzzled me. I’m not sure if that disallows me from saying I learned these languages from The App? Maybe at least I can say, I have successfully used The App As Long As It Is Judiciously Supplemented?
But I also don’t know if the fact that my school French learning was successful, where I know it was not as successful for many of my classmates, means I’m just an odd duck for language learning?
Thank you for writing this, Colin. I have so many thoughts and questions. But my biggest question is this: how does doing lots of comprehensible reading, as suggested here, square with the recommendation to do both intensive and extensive reading that is sent as part of the series of advice emails to students in ALI 101 and 102 classes?
I hate Hate HATE intensive reading, so I struggle massively with that recommendation. So what should an ideal balance be?
~~~~~~~~~
The following is a sort of ridiculously long postscript, but might illustrate some of how I relate to this:
Regarding your category of ownership, I’m reading Ōsweald Bera for the third time and *finally* able to grapple with the grammar handouts from ALI E-101 and E-102 (which I’ve each taken twice). So now I’m hoovering up information and writing out charts and paradigms that (feels like it) is helping me take my comprehension to a new level. But I couldn’t have done that before.
I have always found Ōsweald Bera to be fun to read, not only for the story (which I looooove), but also because from the beginning I have experienced it as extensive reading. For example, when I first took E102 and got chapters 15-28 (right around the time Ōsweald Bera was published, so I hadn’t had them before), I read them entirely through before class even started.
Thanks, Colin!
Your word "ownership" reminds me of something I've seen among flash card enthusiasts. Experienced language learners who use flash cards for learning languages just about always (in my experience) swear by handwritten cards, though they all have a different stated reason for it. (This is less true of medical students, who love their Anki decks.) I'm not saying that any of those reasons are wrong. It's probably very true that it's good to engage your muscles in learning a language, and that it's great to be able to easily use various colors and sorting methods. But it seems to me also that when you hold a flashcard in your hand that you yourself made, and see a word in your own handwriting, you have tangible proof that at least for a moment you knew it. The card confirms your ownership of the word.
Having said some nice things about flashcards, though, I also want to spotlight what you said here: "Most novice language learners ... would do much better starting off with a programme of listening to and reading easy material in the language for six months, and only then progressing to the apps, classes, and grammar books." Taking several months to do only comprehensible input was my 2025 strategy for Old English, and I'd vouch for it, even as I admit that it built up a surprising appetite for grammar. As I said to our mutual friend Logan, "Grammar is more fun like this than it is in the world of grammar/translation — it's more like being a natural historian trying to determine which squishy tide-pool creature you're looking at, and less like you're arming yourself with grammar tables in preparation for doing battle with the lines."
In fact, I've been recognizing many parallels between learning language and learning the natural history of a place, not least of which is that there's a surprising amount to be gained by just getting out there and looking around. Part of the natural-history game is to let your attention become attuned. Wandering around looking at things doesn't have the trappings of rigor, but one day you realize you know an awful lot that you didn't even notice yourself learning.
That's a beautiful analogy! Creatures in tide-pools indeed. Knowledge seems to be retained more easily when there's an obvious reason to keep it. The human mind seems to be a ruthless purger of what it deems irrelevant. This is why I think the input => explicit grammar order works better than the reverse. The input primes you for the grammar more readily than the other way around.
I am a late convert to flash cards myself. It's only once I realized that, for me at least, the creation of the flash card seemed to be doing at least half the work, that I began to understand how they fit into my practice. The other thing that has helped me is that I refuse to make a flashcard for a word I didn't in fact know at once point. And this is the biggest argument against using premade decks. Having my first encounter with a word in flash card form has never been particularly effective for me, and led to a lot of "associative interference": mixing up the meanings of two cards I learned in the same session. This was very frustrating, and put me off using flash cards at all for years. Although, of course, I would imagine this is an area where there are ample differences between learners.
Thanks for another great article. A few thoughts:
Multiple things are necessary for learning a language to a high level. Right now "Comprehensible Input" is the "one neat trick" of language learning on line. somewhat like that special berry that if you eat two cups a day you'll lose fat and gain muscle. Sure, it helps a lot. However, at some point you need to do more than consume content to progress. There is no one neat trick. I'm currently at that step with Latin. I still consume a lot of content. But when I found that I wasn't progressing, I spent a month translating some Livy into English every day. I've seen my ability to read classical Latin improve noticeably. YMMV.
Another thing which you don't talk about (maybe it's obvious) but people have very different skills with language acquisition. So, while we can agree that memorizing declensions and conjugations as an initial focus isn't helpful, what comes next varies. And knowing the grammar helps certain folks (like me).
I've learned two languages to conversational fluency - Hebrew and French. (I maintain my Hebrew, my French knowledge is primarily passive right now). In both scenarios, I had friends who had much better "ears" for the language -- they sounded native. When it came to knowing the subjunctive in French or parsing a piece of Talmud, I really excelled. I find grammar to be cool. I have learned to speak and develop an accent that's not obviously American. When I speak the language, folks don't switch into English. It was a much longer process.
Thanks, Adam! I completely agree with you. I’m of the opinion that input is necessary but not sufficient, at least for most people to get where they want to go. Activities such as those I’ve described as imparting “ownership” are necessary as well. I think you’re also correct to point out that individual differences can come into play: some people seem to be helped by learning explicit grammar, others by written composition. I’m sure all of these activities do help, but, since people have different affinities and limited time, most people figure out before too long what works best for them.
I’m one of the grammar likers as well, but then again, I am a linguist, so that’s not entirely unexpected!
Thanks for posting this, Colin! I've stumbled onto the first two a bit by running into dead-ends learning German via The App That Shall Remain Nameless but really seeing my comprehension rise via reading books and watching kids' shows on YouTube.
I also recently decided that I was going to finally start learning Old English and Latin (two languages I've been fascinated by since I was a kid) this year, and to that end ordered "Osweald Bera" two days ago. I can't wait for it to arrive!
I hope you enjoy Ōsweald! I wrote it as a practical implementation of the ideas in this essay, so, with luck, you should see a similar effect in Old English as you've seen with your German! God spēde þē! (Godspeed!)
Thank you for this. I recently retired and have been considering learning a new language, probably Spanish, as a project so it is timely. You don’t say this, but your analysis leads me to think kid’s books and comics might be a good place to start.
Does that make sense?
Definitely! Materials for kids are a great place to start. You'll likely also become an expert in the names barnyard animals along the way (for some reason, we love telling kids stories about barnyard animals), which is an added bonus.
Thanks!
The timing on this is perfect. I just re-opened Osweald Bera last night.
Very nice! New year, old bear!
Oh this is so, so helpful and confirms why after years of trying to get my geek level understanding of Spanish grammar to convert to production and to become more fluent, podcasts have been a recent revelation for me. I'm listening with interest, learning about the culture and current affairs while occasionally clocking a particular use of the subjective. It also means I'm listening to native speakers with the same accent as my partner's family and friends which helps my listening comprehension too. And I can do it in dead time while walking or driving. Winning all round!
Amazing! And with Spanish there's so much good content out there. And, as it sounds like you're at the level where you can just engage with the content automatically, rather than puzzling things out, you can start to convert more and more of your dead hours into Spanish time. You'll get your contact hours in easily that way! Winning all round indeed!
I tried using Wheelock's and was quickly overwhelmed. I tried the App, but felt like I was going in circles. I found Legentibus which is graded readers with audio following the written words. When I used it regularly I learned a lot, but I tended to push on through. I would read and listen to a lesson and review it maybe once and move on. I think I need to slow down and do more review and make sure I understand what is going on. They include La Familia Romana as well as things they have written. Life happens and I was unable to keep reading regularly. Now I have time and am starting over so this article was just what I needed to reassure me that reading and listening is the way to go. Some of the readers allow you to show English under the Latin which I think I used too much in the past. They say not to worry about vocabulary and grammar. Do you need to keep track of vocabulary and review words so they stick? I also like the margin notes in La Familia Romana that point out some grammar such as adding -ne. How do I know when to add flash cards? When to go deeper into grammar? After reading and reviewing several lessons should I go back to the beginning and review again or keep moving forward? Thanks again for a great article.
Thank you! These are excellent, practical questions. Let me take each in turn:
You don't, strictly speaking, *need* to keep track of vocabulary and do review as long as you keep reading. That said, if you're finding that you're looking up words you know you've already had to look up in the past (and you find that frustrating), you might want to start using something like flash cards. It all depends on how it impacts your reading. If it's no big deal, then you might just want to keep reading and not bother with flash cards. But, if having to look up words over again stops you from enjoying yourself, then flash cards (in a spaced repetition system like Anki) are a great way to help you retain words.
As for grammar, I would suggest you wait until you've seen a form or construction "in the wild" and start to feel curious about what's going on there. Then, in that moment of curiosity, look it up in a grammar resource. You'll be primed to absorb the grammatical explanation well by the fact that you've seen the construction used already in a text.
As for when to progress and when to re-read in a reader like Familia Romana, I'd keep going until your comprehension drops below 95% (you can get a feeling for what that's like using the passages in this article). Then, once that happens, go back until you get to a lesson where your comprehension is at 100% and read forward from there.
Lots of luck with Latin!
Gosh, if I just knew of a children's level Anglo Saxon book...... :)
Someone should totally write one! :)
On the topic of That App, I have found it very helpful. I learned Spanish from it.
(My aural comprehension of real-world conversation sucks, but it also sucks in French which I took in school and unlike so many reports of school-language failure, actually learned really well for reading and writing at the least. (I’m not particularly eloquent speaking, but am quite functional for using both languages when traveling.))
I’ve also learned some basic German and Portuguese from it. (And it’s only basic because I didn’t take either of them for very long, for various reasons unrelated to The App.). It’s enough to orient me to those languages when I encounter them in written form, so even though my comprehension may be low, I now understand the structure of what I’m reading. This is very satisfying, and allows me to understand simple texts.
I supplemented the app with looking up Grammar concepts that puzzled me. I’m not sure if that disallows me from saying I learned these languages from The App? Maybe at least I can say, I have successfully used The App As Long As It Is Judiciously Supplemented?
But I also don’t know if the fact that my school French learning was successful, where I know it was not as successful for many of my classmates, means I’m just an odd duck for language learning?
Thank you for writing this, Colin. I have so many thoughts and questions. But my biggest question is this: how does doing lots of comprehensible reading, as suggested here, square with the recommendation to do both intensive and extensive reading that is sent as part of the series of advice emails to students in ALI 101 and 102 classes?
I hate Hate HATE intensive reading, so I struggle massively with that recommendation. So what should an ideal balance be?
~~~~~~~~~
The following is a sort of ridiculously long postscript, but might illustrate some of how I relate to this:
Regarding your category of ownership, I’m reading Ōsweald Bera for the third time and *finally* able to grapple with the grammar handouts from ALI E-101 and E-102 (which I’ve each taken twice). So now I’m hoovering up information and writing out charts and paradigms that (feels like it) is helping me take my comprehension to a new level. But I couldn’t have done that before.
I have always found Ōsweald Bera to be fun to read, not only for the story (which I looooove), but also because from the beginning I have experienced it as extensive reading. For example, when I first took E102 and got chapters 15-28 (right around the time Ōsweald Bera was published, so I hadn’t had them before), I read them entirely through before class even started.