Can you get fluent just by reading?

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How to learn a new language with stories

⏱ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro
0:25 - StoryLearning® = Reading only?
0:58 - Why speaking is a PHYSICAL skill
2:12 - How reading helps you learn to speak
3:25 - Input-based learning vs. speak from day one

[ofgodzeus]

The second graph is exactly what happened with my English. What's funny is that it happened by chance. I didn't care nor think about learning/improving my English or talking to English native speakers when I first started reading books. I just found super cool novel genres that happened to be originally written in this language. However, when I did start using it to communicate, I wouldn't say I spoke fluently from day one but I was definitely at an advantage and it didn't take me long to reach fluency in speech.

[josepha]

I started reading books in English when I was 12 years old in order to improve my grades. Within a year I went from the bottom of my class to the top of my class. After about two years my grammar was flawless and my vocabulary was much more advanced than that of my peers. I think the biggest benefit I gained from reading was an intuitive understanding of the language, close to that of a native speaker.

[Name-oefq]

I learned english by reading smut on wattpad and I'm gonna do the same with french🧚‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️

[thedavidguy]

I delayed speaking for a long time for the very practical reason that no matter how well you speak, you can't have a conversation if you don't understand the other person. I waited until I had about a B1 level of comprehension, which was probably later than necessary. Since then, I've become completely convinced that an input heavy method is the only way to achieve a very high level in a language for all the reasons you mention.

[abrorvalihanov]

İ don't remember where, but İ came across an interesting statement:
"İt's impossible for someone, who understands almost everything he hears (direct speech, News, Movies and passerbys conversation), not to be able to speak fluently. İt might be awkward and slow at the beginning, but in no time fluency will come"

[greengalaxy]

You are 100% right. I started learning English in the early seventies during my school days. No social media or even computer existed at that time. I had only access to books and a shortwave radio. I continued with reading, occasionally listening to English news on the radio. Almost no speaking at that time. But I read thoroughly including many English classics like Charles Dickens, Robert L. Stevenson, and Agatha Christie. But later on when I attempted speaking my background knowledge of what I read gave me a tremendous boost. However, I must point out that listening to dialogues is also very important, specially for those languages where the gap between the written and the spoken is large.

[paulhogan]

Very well said, Olly. I am a 78-year-old native speaker of English, I am still learning and absorbing the language.

[marnixlourens]

When reading, try read out loud. You might not be able to understand, but you'll train your mouth to make the sounds required for the language, partially taking care of the physical aspect of speaking.

[gogakushayemi]

My Mandarin went like the Story graph. I did Duolingo, textbook and then watched tv for 5 months. And then I tried speaking and BOOM!!!

I think Speak from Day 1 can work as long as you add something when you start to plateau.

Good point on the physical tiredness. A lot of people don't realise that making new mouth shapes is hard. Also, the amount of concentration to produce language and sounds you never made before exhausts your brain.

[sikamaru]

Thing is if you're nervous about speaking you don't actually have to start by actually speaking, you can communicate by typing on social media sites and later on in chat rooms. You have way more time to write a comment and you can be anonymous, so a lot of the pressures associated with outputting are no longer there. Not to mention you can check if you're correct in whatever phrase you're saying, so you'll avoid getting some bad habits that way. Also, being able to write well in your target langue is an useful skill, maybe even more useful than being able to speak in it, so this will be useful and kind of necessary anyways.

[Andrei-voeq]

Reading stories helps, but it is not a panacea. I would also read other things like poetry, newspapers, scientific papers, books, magazines, and so on. Listening is also important and people should do a variety of things like radio, podcast, movies, music, television and so on. Reviewing the grammar without obsessing about it could also be beneficial. Doing exercises for the mouth, reading outloud, shadowing, accent reduction, listening and repeating also can have a positive impact on the physicality aspect. Once you have developed an intuition so you do not make mistakes, have already had a ton of input so you understand pretty much anything you hear, then you can start outputting and doing a lot of it would make you better each time at speaking the language. In the end it is not about one thing but a combination of things and a lot of time.

[hiraijo]

i live in austria and have some friends who came from other countries because of work. they took their children with them. the children went to kindergarden and were exposed to the german language a lot. of course just listening. but none of them would talk from day one, though they seemed to enjoy their time with the other kids. after about 4-8 months they would start sentences, no accent, almost like a native child of the same age. i don`t remember the name of the linguist who said that their is a silent period of language learning in children. be it their first or second language. i can remember a boy of 8years. he spoke 4 spanish(father), german(living in had them and some other friends over for dinner and we were talking in english. the boy was bored and suddenly burst into the conversation . his mother was surprised. they never tried to teach him english because they thaught he would be overwhelmed with too many languages but she and her husband mostly talk in english because that was their language when they met. so the boy must have been listening for years before he was ready to speak.

[durabelle]

I find these videos so validating! I'm from Finland, so my own language was never going to help me communicate with anyone except other Finns. On top of that there wasn't a huge number of interesting new books to read, series to watch or even music to listen to in Finnish. I started studying English in school when I was 9 and after six years still felt I knew nothing. At that point I started reading books in English and it opened the language on a totally new level! Later on I started watching series and movies without subtitles, which also helped. Now I live in England and use the language for everything without a struggle. (Although I still frequently bump into words I can't pronounce having only learned them from books 😄)

When learning other languages later on I've started reading from a much earlier point. I like to start with translated stories I already know, especially murder mysteries, because they hold my interest for long enough, and having read it in another language before helps so much. I've playfully called it Agatha Christie method, because her books have been translated into so many different languages, there's loads of them, and I can read them over and over again (even after I know who did it). The downside of my choice of study material is that my early vocabulary leans heavily towards words I rarely need, like murder, death, poison, weapons etc. 😆

[RobertKnighton]

Excellent video.
To get rid of the shopping list: scribble over it with your dry erase marker and then erase both. It should come right off!

[TheDailyMemesShow]

Well said, Olly!
Listening is not enough.
Reading is not enough.
In order to be fluent in a new language, we need to combine input and output to produce a highly effective level of fluency!

It took me years to reach a very decent command of the English language.

[deepblue]

"Can you get fluent just by reading?" "Yes, you can!". But that's my fluency experience. Now I am going to listen to you carefully, because you are never too old to learn.

[nicoletasurdu]

"Pronunciation is a motor skill." - I'm glad I found this idea in your video, formulated in other words, but it's there :). For each language we must do different things with ourselves, with our articulators to train them for that specific language. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of "articulatory setting".
My students love your books; I use the ones for German & English with them.

[jimsmitherman]

I agree with much of what you say in this video. However, below is my system, which adds ear tuning exercises to get the student to hear the language well on an immediate basis, as well as a strategy to absorb language the quickest. (which includes large amounts of passive listening to stories you are learning in the target language.)


To learn a language fast, you need to get into three habits, listening passively is one of those habits. This habit takes no time at all. Specifically, you have a story playing in the background, in the target language, but totally ignore it. Study math, watch your tv shows, eat, do chores, browse the internet, play games, all while having the target language playing lightly in the background, not interfering with any of your normal day.

Habit two is ear tuning exercises. This is an invention of mine, something I basically stumbled into really. The first time I did ear tuning exercises, I did not know I was doing them -my ear tuned into Spanish at full speed speech. I examined what I had been doing, then repeated it with German then French. It worked. But, it took me another several months working with this method before I fully understood how it all works. Ear tuning exercises go like this: You tell your student to do the impossible, or well, actually, keep attempting to do what seems impossible. You provide the student with a string of about 70 ear tuning syllables, written in english letters. These syllables represent the sounds, syllable by syllable, of a native speaker's voice, in their target language. The student is told to repeatedly play that thirty seconds or so of speech, from the audiobook that has the story they are learning, that correspond to these 70 ear tuning syllables. The student is told to attempt to always keep their eye on the ear tuning syllable that is being spoken at each exact moment. This is of course impossible to actually do, since the student's ear is not tuned to the target language yet. But the student is told to keep struggling to catch up to the voice. For most languages, just an hour a day, for two days, is enough to where the student's speech center will click into the pattern of the target language. Though now the student can follow those ear tuning syllables, they are told to keep doing the ear tuning exercises - because a tuned in ear is not a native ear and its a native ear that you always strive for. (one additional instruction, use this pattern: 5 times trying to follow the ear tuning syllables, then 5 times close your eyes and just listen carefully. keep repeating until a half hour is done)

(ear tuning exercises is not training as such, but rather feeding your speech center data that it needs to tune into the language. Note, you are always continuing hours per day of passive listening, along with daily ear tuning exercises. Ear tuning exercises should always be an hour per day for the first week, but then you do less and less; but never less than 40 minutes per week.)

In all, these first two habits take very little time.

The third habit can take some time daily - associating the target language with a known language. The associations can be written for the known language end, but must be both written, and spoken, for the target language end. Specifically, you read (or listen to) the translations / explanations, given in your known language, then listen and read that story you are learning from the audiobook in your target language.

This 3rd habit, associations, is done most efficiently by having two audiobooks open. One is explaining / translating the story, while the other is just the story in the target language (with text). Depending on your level, you work with anywhere from one sentence at a time, to an hour of story at a time. Lets say you are just beginning:

Listen to the translation / explanation for the first sentence from the first audiobook. Now go to the second audiobook, the one with just the story. Play that first sentence up to 12 times - in this pattern: read while listening 3 times, then just listen with your eyes closed 3 times. Repeat 1 to 3 more times. Move onto the next sentence. This is not studying - but rather feeding data to your speech center. Let your speech center do the real work, as you sleep each night.

Association work each day should be done on new material half the time, and on old material half the time. Its the repeated revisiting of old material that eventually really teaches you it.

This method may sound slow - but is actually very, very fast - your level continually goes up, in a constantly accelerated fashion. The more target language words you know, the quicker new words stick. And your ear is always going more toward native, helping to further accelerate the absorption of the language. That passive listening you are doing is more and more fully understood by you, helping to boost the learning rate even further. By the 14th audiobook, just listening to the explanations once, followed by listening to while reading the one hour audiobook just once, and you know that audiobook. By the17th audiobook (one hour long each), you just already know the audiobook, just by listening to it. (yes, some new words - but we all read novels, and enjoy them, without looking up the occasional word we don't know. And yes, if you come across an audiobook on totally unfamiliar subject matter, of course you will need to look some stuff up.)

Now, notice, I said nothing about speaking. My method has you soaking up the language fast, has your ear native, and automatically the ability to speak it correctly - that is a function of speech center. But to get fluent, you have to actually start speaking. Find a language partner, or if on your own find audiobooks with lots of conversation; and speak all the parts yourself. There are also methods, such as the "short story method" you can look up and try. Regardless of how you go about getting yourself to speak the language, you should be using my method to soak up the language. And I strongly suggest using my method for a month (which is listening / reading only) before making much attempts at speaking. (so to avoid speaking with any accent from your native language.)

My name is Lee Sohlden. I am learning, and teach what I know, 19 languages. My method is born of two things. One, stumbling across parts of "natural language acquisition" in the course of my studies, and two, experimenting to optimize each thing I stumbled upon. This process had me stumbling upon more of my program, as a result of the experimentation to optimize the first "discovery". Most of my system was "discovered" and optimized from mid December 2018 to mid March 2019 at which time I switched all my students to this new method. The method works across all 19 languages I teach. No way I would ever go back to telling anyone to "study" a language to learn it. Kids never study to learn their native language, so why should you. As an adult, you have an amazingly strong speech center, that already knows a complete language. My system basically just teaches you how to operate this language super computer you are born with. PS, anyone can contact me on facebook messenger if they have any question on my system, or help in learning a language. No, I do not charge anyone for help. Languages are just my hobby, here in retirement. People have always taught me freely, in language exchanges - and I still do language exchanges.

One more thing about me, over 50 years of language learning, and teaching means that I have tried a myriad of ways to go about learning languages. Lots of ways can be fun, and I'd never discourage anyone from using what gives them joy in learning a language. But, I'd suggest my method does not take much time - you can continue what you are doing, and add in my system. Everyone have a great day.

And if you have read this far, one more thing, hinted at above. Habit 3, associations, can be done with almost zero time. Indeed, that is the very first "accidental discovery" which led to my whole system. Lightly going over something, then putting it on loop for passive listening, can teach you an audiobook full of associations between the target and known languages. Cutting out almost any active listening will slow the process down of absorbing a language - but it does work, over time. And its a good option for those who do not want to invest much of their time on learning a language. Now, its not magic. You still have to do the ear tuning exercises regularly, and you still have to loop the actual story you are learning a lot, as part of your passive listening. And you do have to carefully listen once to the video giving you the associations; and maybe a few more times - but you can let passive listening to the associations do most of the association work. Discovering how powerful the speech center is in picking up a language in this fashion, was again, my very first discovery leading to my system.

[kiragillett]

Me encanta leer, me da mucha información: el contexto para aprender nuevas palabras, la habilidad para tener experiencia con la gramática y también la oportunidad así que puedo desarrollar la fortaleza para hablar. Yo leo en voz alta y creo que me ayuda mucho con el aspecto físico de hablar.

[servantrose]

Dude - I wish I had seen this video a year ago when I started ;_; also maybe this video could be titled something else like "How to actually understand and start speaking a foreign language"... or "Feeling stuck? This is why you can't speak the language you are learning". I've seen your videos floating around but I decided to watch this one and I'm so glad. I'm 1000% on the comprehensive input but I always battle with how much should I be speaking. You are completely right about the dotted line bc I've done that and it's a monster to try to speak in a real conversation when you only understand a bit of grammar and some vocab or phrases you basically memorized. what you say at 7:03 man! okay. exact.