#alg method

[rigelmejo]

Updated 6/8/2025 - List of Comprehensible Input Chinese Resources:

Comprehensible Input Wiki - this wiki includes tons of Comprehensible Input Lessons linked for many languages. I go back to this regularly. Go to the Chinese sections for Chinese.

Vidioma.com - a person made this site to make it easy and convienient for people learning Chinese to find CI Lessons for their level of understanding. I think they were trying to make something similar to Dreaming Spanish's site to help encourage learners to start/continue by making it easy and in one place. Time watched is tracked on the local device you're using it on, there's no account sign up, and the website makes no money - it links youtube videos of youtubers that teach Chinese.

r/ALGMandarin Wiki - includes playlists made by learners of the content, sorted for beginners.

r/ALGhub Aural Resources List - includes comprehensible input lessons and learner podcasts for many languages, go to Chinese - Mandarin section.

Lazychinese.com - Su Qing made this website, her youtube channel is Lazy Chinese. Like Dreaming Spanish, it is Comprehensible Input Lessons on a website where paying a subscription will unlock more lessons. This website is still growing, the payment goes directly to Lazy Chinese and the teachers making the lessons. (As it is still growing, I recommend also checking out each teacher's youtube channels too, for example I love Xiaogua Chinese channel).

r/ALGhub What Is Automatic Language Growth? - page that explains ALG if you want to to it. (My quick summary is ALG is using only comprehensible input lessons that contain ONLY the target language, until you can use materials for native speakers, avoiding thinking about the language such as anaylzing/translating in your head/using translations and explanations, and waiting to speak and read until you feel you have a good grasp of listening skills. So 600-2000 hours depending on the language, ALG Thai courses typically recommend waiting 1000-2000 hours, Dreaming Spanish typically recommends waiting 600-1000 hours. Note: ALG is stricter than Krashen's input hypothesis that "we acquire language by having meaningful experiences we understand in the language" and therefore CI is not a synonym for ALG. ALG is comprehensible input, but comprehensible input is a much BROADER category than ALG. ALG was invented by Marvin Brown, who felt it is ONLY comprehensible experiences in the language we acquire language from, and nothing else is necessary or beneficial. Brown felt the other activities were detrimental to success. Brown also felt speaking early, or any explicit study and analysis of ANY language would damage ultimate ability in languages. This is the controversial point - as many other teaching programs that include Comprehensible Input Lessons still feel there's a place for grammar study and translations and explanations. Most learning programs for learning a language, do not worry that explicit study will damage their ultimate result, and do not care when one begins to read or speak).

Dreaming Spanish Method - includes the roadmap I'm often referencing, Dreaming Spanish Method is the ALG method, just a bit more lax. Dreaming Spanish also says to avoid explanations and translations, but to look you at them if curious then it won't hurt. Dreaming Spanish says you should wait to read and speak 600-1000 hours, but if you need to do it earlier then do, or if you will give up unless you do them early then just do them. (This is basically why I prefer going to r/dreamingspanish, their more lax approach to the ALG method means I can find more learners who are using Comprehensible Input Lessons alongside other study activities or study history, which is more compatible with my own experiences).

*personal note: think ALG's ideas are a bit extreme. I do not think explicit study, translations, speaking early, or reading early will create an insurmountable block for most people's language goals. I am not doing pure ALG. If you feel like doing pure ALG though, it will work. There's plentiful examples on r/dreamingspanish of people doing pure ALG to successfully reach B2 level, and people doing additional things that contradict ALG and successfully reaching B2 level. Dreaming Spanish's method and roadmap are a slightly more lax approach to ALG if you'd like to try it out without completely following the ALG rules, and you can find many people to connect with who also did ALG somewhat but not purist in that learning community.

My recommendations are: no matter who you are, the linked resources above are ALL useful for Practicing Extensive Listening. You'll need to practice listening to improve your listening skills, and many of these resources will have easier options for beginners and intermediate learners to practice with. These linked resources also are great ways to learn words/grammar in visual context with no translations, and learning more is always useful. If you enjoy learning from context, you may find these resources suit how you like to learn. So I think anyone studying could find these useful.

[squeakygeeky]

Three months of Thai

I've reached a weird point where listening to Thai, even native content like unsubbed actor interviews, definitely feels like I'm listening to normal speech with words, but where only some of those words are familiar and only some of them have real meaning to me. Definitely a contrast to Vietnamese, where I can pick out a few basic words, but it still just sounds alien overall, and Spanish where I understand the majority of what I hear. What I do know isn't just nouns and a few verbs, I've started catching functional things like 'but' and 'like this.'

I did have an actual lesson where I spoke enough to answer yes/no questions and say how may things I had and what color, so I feel like that proved to myself that speaking can naturally arise out of listening to a some degree. I do have another lesson tomorrow but I'm thinking of stopping. It's making this feel a little more like a REAL THING I'm doing and not just a weird little side project and I'm not sure how much mental capacity I have for taking on a REAL THING right now because REAL THINGS can make me stressed in a way thing things that aren't really a thing don't.

I'm sick of beginner content, but I'm not ready for anything more interesting, so I just have to plow through. I'll have some much less time/energy after this coming weekend so no more 2hrs a day, I'll be lucky to manage 1 and I'm sad about that despite how much of a slog it can feel like. There's also a part of me that wants to try a new language now now now, but I also love Thai and would miss it.

[rigelmejo]

I might start learning Spanish.... or rather, continue learning...

I am so easily mm how do I say it. I started Death Stranding 2 and there's some spanish in it and now I'm like "well you know, it would be so useful, I could help more students at work, more people in libraries, just generally would be pretty useful" idk idk

Not that usefulness has ever motivated me particularly much. 79 languages are spoken in my city's school district, so statistically most any language studied could help students, could help in random public situations. The french I knew in college actually helped a ton, all the middle school kids I tutored spoke French from childhood so it helped if English wasn't understood. Korean, Arabic, Spanish, French, Swahili, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, would all be extremely useful in terms of how much it would help with community events locally.

Nah I am more motivated by what the fuck do I want to read/watch/listen to. I'm nosy. Translations just do not tell me all the information as it was originally intended. Translations always change something. Reading in particular I am very motivated by....

Idk idk we'll see. There's a lot of Spanish stuff lately I'd really like to understand. So I guess if I want to understand enough, I'll spend some time on it...

In other news - yes I will continue studying Mandarin, I really am serious about the goal to understand any audiobook I want. I am getting closer. I also have several cdramas on my to watch list...

And for Japanese. Well. It is going to take a huge time committment. I have found lots of cool stuff lately. I guess it depends on if I can just watch the lets player I like, and understand the games I'm playing enough to be happy, or if I'll feel I need to cram study for a while to see the improvement I want. My favorite japanese Lets Player has just started Kingdom Hearts 2 which I'm super excited about. I also have many an audio drama cd I'd like to understand... mmm.

Okay final topic change: my opinion on learning ONLY from Extensive Listening to Comprehensible Input, based on my experiment results so far this year

1. I do think speaking NEEDS to be practiced as it's own skill

2. That said, doing a lot of listening practice seems to help the words be closer to Active Vocabulary, to be able to switch words into Active Vocabulary faster with practice. Compared with reading, where I rarely felt the words were easy to recall when I wanted to speak.

3. Reading skills ALSO NEED to be practiced as it's own skill. Dreaming Spanish Roadmap acknowledges this. I already have some reading skills, so this is not an issue for me.

4. Writing skills ALSO NEED to be practiced as it's own skill. Obviously, you say. Who the fuck wouldn't know this, you ask. Well a lot of people apparently.

5. CI Only study plans (like Dreaming Spanish) are heavily criticized for developing good passive skills (listening, reading) but almost no active skills (unless one practices them). CI Only learners sometimes claim with enough input (passive skills practice) they'll output better. While I do think to a degree this is true, in that more listening practice and learning more words makes speaking easier, it seems most people need 100-300 hours of specifically Speaking practice to speak at a B2 level. So even with tons of input, expect to need to practice speaking (and practice writing) if you want to be competent at those skills. I do think between reading and listening, listening definitely puts words easier to "recall" in the mind to then go practice speaking and writing. At least for me.

6. CI Only study is GREAT for building an ability to passively understand the language, I have now done a lot of reading AND a lot of listening, and I definitely have built up my passive skills for understanding a LOT. It's fine if this is your goal, and if you're happy once you can understand what you want. It's a very achievable goal. If you either A. Study the basics of grammar and 2000-6000 common words, then intensively read/listen to regular stuff (look up words) or extensively read graded readers/listen to learner podcasts, you will eventually build reading and listening skills. Or B. Just extensively read/listen to content made for learners (CI lessons, Graded Readers, Podcasts for Learners) and pick up the basic grammar and words through those, then extensively read/listen to regular stuff you understand.

7. You can intensively or extensively listen to/read things you understand JUST the main idea of, and over time you will learn more purely from the context of what you understood. This means that while you may feel frustrated, over time (hours of practice) you will see improvement. As long as you're using a material you understand the main idea of - or even just SOME main ideas. You can either look up words (intensively study) to understand the main idea, or just already understand the main idea (extensive) of the materials you pick.

8. Progress seems to be noticeable every 20-40 hours of listening practice. Sometimes every 10 hours if you're in the beginning. As you learn more, there's a 20-40 hour cycle of "recognizing more and feeling you understand more" and "recognizing how much you still don't know and feeling you understand less."

9. For reading the time to notice improvement may be less. I noticed an improvement in reading skills around every 50,000-100,000 words read. Similar cycle to the above one - first you notice more and feel you understand more, then you realize what you don't know and feel you understand less, and the cycle repeats.

10. Save some stuff that felt very HARD for you to understand, and come back to it every 50-100 hours. To notice if you've made improvements. This will be the easiest way to quickly check if what you are doing is giving you progress on understanding the things you wish to understand as your goal. You might save several "hard" things - one that feels ALMOST understandable for main idea and all details (as in you understand all of the main idea but not the details), one that feels ALMOST understandable for main idea (as in you understand some of the main idea but not all), one that feels incomprehensible currently but you recognize an isolated word/phrase here and there, and one that feels totally incomprehensible (due to speed/accent/topic whatever).

[rigelmejo]

Basically... no one online who's policing what's pure ALG or not is putting themselves out there to prove what they say with their own results. The ALG schools are, in that you can find teachers to ask about the ALG program (like David Long). But of course, when you find actual student results they tend to be B2 (which is great! Excellent results! Just not "like a native speaker" like marketed). I personally would recommend Not doing ALG unless you are doing an ALG school/program (and if you are - there are people you can find on youtube and reddit Thai subs sharing their experiences so far so you can see what to expect).

Dreaming Spanish has a lot of people sharing their experiences and results, so I personally find the Dreaming Spanish Roadmap useful if you're planning to use it as a self study plan, and want to do mainly extensive listening to comprehemsible input as your study activity. You can see on youtube and reddit many people who share their experiences during each Level in the roadmap, and get an idea of what's worked for people and what's realistic.

[rigelmejo]

Okay I've been playing with the Mandarin From Scratch blog post's ALG language acquisition equation, from a paper by Marvin Brown about ALG.

y = C(1-e^(-kx/L))

Below the cut, a bunch of me messing with the ALG equation and comparing it with Dreaming Spanish estimates to try and figure out WHAT is an accurate estimate of time it will take to learn a language with comprehensible input.

Y is understanding/fluency, which their goal is to get to 88%. I wanted to look at how many hours it would take me to reach 88%, then something over 90%, then something approaching my estimated "ceiling". Average ceilings were 95% - after which point students struggled to improve further. So I set mine as 0.95.

(Note: they say their goal for students is to reach 88% fluency/understanding, but I am not sure if that's B2, or lower, or higher. My goal is around upper intermediate/B2 so that's kind of fucking important for me to know... I want to be able to read, listen to audio, watch shows, and eventually have conversations about anything on my mind in at least a basic way - which would be B2 conversationally and possibly higher comprehension for passive skills)

C is the ceiling.

y is how much language they know (1 = native). If you have a ceiling, then y would never surpass the ceiling.

x is how many hours they have understood.

k is the acquisition constant: .0018

e is the natural logarithm base: 2.718

I plugged in a few potential amounts of hours I could study:

It looks like if I aim for 1500 hours, I'll hit 88% fluency. This seems a bit low for my goals, considering thats only 600 more hours from where I am. But it sure would be nice if that's all it took.

When I solved for x instead I got ~1448 hours.

If I aim for over 90% comprehension, then it looks like I'll hit that around 2000 hours.

If I solve for x, setting understanding y =0.90, then it would take ~1636 hours

And if I wanted to get as fluent as I possibly could? Which would be around 95%, assuming I have some ceiling like ab average learner, then 2600 hours will get me close to as much as I could hope to be fluent.

If I solve for x and set goal fluency y to 0.94, then it would take ~2530 hours.

This is significantly LESS TIME than FSI estimates - which would be 3520 hours of some form of Chinese study. I do have 1500 hours of prior study if we don't count comprehensible input. So 1500 hours prior study, plus the comprehemsible hours I currently have 913, would total to 2413 hours so far... so with FSI Estimate, I have to get ~1107 more hours of Chinese study (in some form) to reach B2/upper intermediate.

The ALG estimate assumes NO explicit study, and the Ceiling value in fact decreases with significant explicit study. So who fucking knows, maybe my true ceiling would be 88%. Or something.

I do find it interesting that ALG estimates it's going to take me 1448 hours to 2530 hours for "fluency" of 88% to 94%. I suppose wherever I stopped seeing progress, would indicate when I hit my true "ceiling."

These are both lower estimates than Dreaming Spanish gives. Dreaming Spanish predicts for English spealers they'll need 3000 hours of comprehensible input in Chinese to reach B2. Dreaming Spanish, like ALG, assumes the learner is only learning with comprehensible input and no explicit study. So I am curious why Dreaming Spanish's estimate is ~500 hours longer than ALG's.

And if 95% fluency is ONLY B2 that doesn't seem to make sense... Marvin Brown estimated his own fluency at 95% and guessed most people who explicitly study can never improve past 90% - so many C1 learners would be 90% at best, according to Brown. Brown taught Thai, so he had exceptionally good Thai, and he considered himself 95% fluent. So 95% being only B2 would seem... low.

B2 fluency I would consider like... 80-90% maximum. But 1500 hours for an English speaker learning Spanish is only going to get them to B2, based on all the results people have shared (C1 for English speakers learning Spanish through comprehensible input seems to take 2500 hours). And I imagine ALG's equation estimate would say less than 1500 hours for Spanish... hold on I'm going to plug in some more numbers.

Okay ALG estimates the L number, language similarity, to be 0.4 for European languages like English to Spanish. So plugging in the numbers for an English speaker with a average ceiling of 0.95 to achieve as high a fluency as they can (arouns 94%) would take: ~1011 hours

But we know, from all the progress updates people post on reddit.com/r/dreamingspanish, that at around 1000 hours most people are only a B1 level. Maybe B2 in comprehension, but not able to speak at a B2 level for another 500-800 hours (500 more hours of input, and 300 hours of some combination of reading and or speaking practice).

A blog post from ALG World may have answers for us. A Thai learner shared that he studied about 1150 hours at AUA Thai School, and his comprehension was good but he could barely speak, his grade for comprehension was 70% (this is for Thai not Spanish, and so 70% for 1000 hours is pretty average... Thai is expectee to take 1800 hours of comprehensible input to reach 88% comprehension of the language). He said after another 1.5 years living in Thailand, he finally felt he could speak about whatever he wanted, "My speaking ability followed along the same curve of development as my listening had, at a gap of about 800 or 900 hours." So lets give him a total of 1150+900=2050 hours to express himself however, with some writing practice with a tutor as part of those later 900 hours.

So perhaps it took him 2050 hours to reach B2 overall, including speaking skills, which is closer to what I might expect from Dreaming Spanish's results. However, this guy never mentions if his comprehension improved from 70% to something better/higher... and I have to guess 70% isn't B2 in passive comprehension yet. Since he had around 1000 hours as an English speaker learning Thai, and 1000 hours for English Speakers learning Spanish only gets them to B1....

Unless we make the guess that 1000 hours in Dreaming Spanish actually makes listening skills B2, and 1500 makes their listening skills higher than B2. So that assumption would mean 1000 hours of an English speaker learning Spanish through comprehensible input results in passive B2 skills, active A2-B1 skills.

But then... does Thai even take much longer? 1000 hours perhaps got that guy to B1 skills in listening, and A2 skills in speaking, and then his 900 hours later got him to B2 listening skills and B1+ speaking skills? Resulting in more hours needed for Thai, which is what we expect.

Perhaps, making a guess, if he had done 1800 hours as recommended by ALG to achieve 88% fluency, then 900 (or double so 1800 hours) continuing to engage with Thai in his life, so 2700-3600, he would achieve C1 listening skills and B2 speaking skills. Which is closer to what Dreaming Spanish predicts for English speakers learning a language like Thai or Chinese. And perhaps its where Pablo got the estimate of 3000 hours, double the roadmap. He learned Thai through ALG, and that influenced his estimates I'm sure.

I think the real answer is... the ALG formula probably underestimates, or it's percent fluency value needs more work. I think the formula needs to more clearly define what percent fluency values match up to A2, B1, B2, C1. But I know they're not going to care what I think lol ToT

For fun:

Lets calculate using the ALG formula, and Dreaming Spanish values, and figure out what percent fluency actually matches B1 and B2 and C1. Which in Dreaming Spanish is 1000 hours, 1500 hours, and 2500 hours, from users mentioning in progress updates the tests they could pass at different hours of comprensible input.

I'm going to set L to 1 just because it may help me get the percent fluency levels to something more realistic for B1, B2 and C1.

I feel like I'm reverse engineering whatever Pablo did to give his roadmap estimated hours.

Okay so for 1000 hours for Dreaming Spanish, we get a fluency percent of 79%. This seems like a value that might be realistic for B1. B1 is what a DS learner can pass after 1000 hours (although for some people their passive understanding is B2 and their speaking is A2)

For 1500 hours Dreaming Spanish, we get a fluency percent of 89%, which is somewhere in the 80s range, we know 1500-1800 hours for many Dreaming Spanish learners (if they read and speak a bit) is enough to pass a B2 test. (With some people's passive comprehension higher and closer to C1, and some people's speaking closer to B1)

For 2500 hours of Dreaming Spanish, we get a fluency percent of 94%. People pass C1 level around 2500-3000 hours into Spanish comprehensible input.

So for Spanish:

B1 is 1000 hours, is lets say 75-79% fluency

B2 is 1500 hours, is lets say 85-89% fluency

C1 is 2500 hours, is lets say 91-94% fluency

What would it be for a language unlike one you know already? Well fuck. I would need to start messing with the L number. I tried 3 instead of 1, and the hour estimates are way too high.

My guess is that if Pablo used this formula, he used L=2 for languages very unlike ones you know. Because L has to be 2 when I plug in the hour estimates on the roadmap doubled. (Which makes sense lol - double the time, double the L number)

[rigelmejo]

Picking up a second language from television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning

I deeply appreciate this experiment one person did with their own language learning, Picking up a second language from television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning, and it's free to read if anyone else is curious.

The writer did the following: attempted to learn French by watching TV shows in French with no subtitles, and no word lookups or translations, for 1200 hours. They started with shows for adults, and realized children's cartoons were much easier to learn new words from initially as the visual context and slow speech helped them figure out word/phrase/grammar meanings, and then watched children's cartoons for a while until gradually increasing difficulty of shows again. While in the first several hundred hours, they watched some cartoons by repeatedly watching certain sentences and scenes over and over, attempting to understand as much as they could, such as with the cartoon Calliou. After 1200 hours, they started reading French, talking to people in French, and reading some grammar explanations at that point. They passed a B2 test at the conclusion of 1500 hours, with the first 1200 being watching French TV with no tools/explanations and then the last 300 hours including speaking and finally looking up some explanations and seeing french writing.

This account of their experience is incredibly interesting to me. It shows a few things which (at least for me) can be learned from.

1. That a goal of aiming for over a thousand hours spent trying to understand materials in your target language is useful.

2. The time they spent engaging with French is (very roughly) similar to FSI estimates if you include the hours of outside-class study recommended, 750 class hours plus time spent studying outside of class (2 hours outside of class per class hour is the FSI recommendation - which would be 2250 for French). The time it took him to pass B2 is in the 1000+ hour range, which is similar to classroom time plus outside study time expected. Automatic Language Growth type courses tend to suggest 1000-2000 hours to speak on an adult level and understand others, with 1500 being the suggested study length Dreaming Spanish suggests and ALG Thai programs recommending 2000 hours. Some learners who've done DS and ALG Thai programs suggest they feel they can understand people and discuss things on a basic level at those hours, but feel they need more hours to really be 'fluent'. I think that aligns well with the 1500 hour French study linked above, where he felt 1500 hours felt intermediate and capable of talking with others/working/understanding others but by no means fluent. So my personal thoughts on this is... the French 2250 hour estimate (FSI class-hours estimates added to 2 outside-class hours per hour as FSI suggests) is probably roughly in line with people's experiences.

And the earlier goal of 1500 (1000-2000 depending on the individual, and the target language) being a good initial goal for basic ability to do all things in the language (but not necessarily well and not mastered). Perhaps this number could be several hundred hours, and less than a thousand, if your target language is similar to one you already know or you have experience learning languages already. But the thought I am concluding from all of this is: expect 1000 hours or more trying to understand stuff in your target language if you wish to be able to understand the main idea (or more) of most things, and communicate your main idea with others.

(And for the sake of curiosity, FSI estimates 2200 class hours for Japanese and Chinese, so 6600 hours total, for an English speaker. So probably...at minimum 1000 hours to start speaking, like ALG Thai learners notice, at minimum 2000 hours to start understanding the main idea of most things, and based on FSI estimates... perhaps 3000-3300 hours minimum to start feeling similar to that level achieved after 1500 hours studying French or Spanish).

3. He studied French with zero aids like grammar guides or translations or even the French alphabet and a pronunciation explanation. He mentions in his paper, that being able to look up translations, or even see French subtitles on the TV shows, may have potentially sped up his progress. (Or perhaps not, as he didn't try those tools until 1200 hours in). Many of us learners HAVE used such tools already. The lesson I take from his experience is...even if you use NO tools or aids to learn, if you dedicate 1000+ hours to attempting to understand visual-audio situations (videos or classes or your life experiences in a country) you will make progress and increase your understanding of the language. If you initially focus on more-visually understandable things, like children's cartoons or ALG teachers who visually attempt to explain or a person helping you through a situation (like a native speaker talking to you as they help you grocery shop), then your initial progress as a beginner will be FASTER. And it may well be necessary to understand a certain amount, as a beginner, for the target-language input to be useful. You don't need to understand 100% or even 90%, but you do need to understand enough to hear at least 1 word or phrase or grammar piece every couple minutes that you can GUESS at the possible meaning of. At least, to learn in a timely manner.

So as a beginner, visual-audio input is much more useful than audio only - especially if you don't have cognates to use to make guesses. And visual-audio input where the speaking is ABOUT something in the same scene/experience/event so it's easier to guess what bits of the language mean. And if you choose to use tools like a translation app/site, if it's helping you figure out meaning of bits of language then it may be particularly useful as a beginner. (There's certainly language learning camps that think using translations lessens your actual learning of the language, but based on his paper... I at least think, what I take from it, is that those beginning few hundred hours it's most important you find a way to UNDERSTAND the main idea of the target language material. My take is that, even if that involves translation tools for 300 hours initially, it's worth it. You can abandon translation tools once you understand enough stuff in the language - like a few hundred key words or pronunciations etc - to start understanding really basic main ideas from kids cartoons. But if you can't even guess "cartoon character is pointing to bike, seems to want bike, even though I have no idea what words they're saying, maybe one of those words was bike..." then you aren't going to comprehend enough to guess word meanings. It seems like after the first few hundred hours, the need for translations and/or kid cartoons is less. Once you have some small base of words/phrases you've guessed the meaning of, then it's possible to start guessing the meaning of conversations even when there's no visual context to indicate what's going on - such as adult shows where they discuss off-screen abstract topics, and audio only materials).

4. There is no huge need to pick the 'perfect' study method or materials. After the initial beginner stage of learning some key words/phrases from visual context (a few hundred hours), you WILL continue learning and make progress as long as you keep engaging with the language and trying to understand the main idea. So study/watch/listen to whatever you like that, that you can get yourself to engage with for 1000 hours or more. Some people will want to keep looking up word-translations, do that. Some people will love cdramas or anime or shows and just want to watch tons of shows. Some people will feel more comfortable watching/doing easier things like a tutor that matches your comfort level (like crosstalk), immersion with someone helping you navigate, watching cartoons, watching stuff for learners (like Comprehensible Input youtube channels). Some people want to jump into the deep end and go for audiobooks or podcasts. If you are able to even just GUESS a word/phrase/grammar point meaning every 1-3 minutes (or more often) then you'll likely keep improving your understanding. No need to be perfect, just figure out a way to keep yourself engaged. Because it'll take a thousand hours or more.

5. I hate to say this because I love reading... but to develop listening comprehension... you need to listen. Having visual-audio materials as a beginner is critical. Even if that means graded readers you read paired with an audiobook. And you'll need to keep listening for at least 1000 hours to build good listening comprehension - it takes time to get used to hearing the pronunciation, to mentally separating it into phrases/words, to adjusting to various speeds, to emotional meanings and implications, to adjust to understanding various accents. His paper indicated he struggled with understanding faster speech until he'd studied enough hundreds of hours, and then struggled with slang and accents much longer. Listening comprehension is critical to: conversing with others, speaking and being understood, listening to shows and audio. So it must be worked on. That is not to say you can't study by reading - I sure did! And still do! But that the hours spent reading WITHOUT audio will not contribute to some of those critical listening and speaking skills.

Reading on it's own will help prime you to pick up vocabulary when listening faster, help with increasing vocabulary, help with getting used to word usage and grammar. But based on his paper... for him, at least, it seems reading skill was picked up Extremely Fast after already having a good ability to listen and speak with people. He picked up reading skills within months! From my own experience... I mostly studied with reading ONLY activities, in French and Chinese, and improving in my listening skills takes A LOT of hours. It will not be as good as my reading within a few months. I think I may pick up listening skills Somewhat faster than someone who's read less, since I am primed to learn listening comprehension of words I understand in reading faster than trying to comprehend brand new words. But so many listening skills are lagging significantly. My Chinese listening skills are much better than my French listening skills, since I did often listen while reading when I studied. But there's still so many key aspects of words that I don't have natural ability to simply verbalize without thinking, like instantly saying the right tone, or instantly knowing the right pronunciation for some words I can read fine. And comprehension of listening to people is way lower than my ability to read and comprehend.

[rigelmejo]

i know my posts discussing ALG are niche. Lol so niche. Just... like... if you ever run into 'automatic language growth' theory online or in person, I think it's useful to know it is 1. just a theory made by Marvin Brown, a Thai teacher, based on his own learning experiences and his students. 2. It's not really done perfectly by anyone, except for maybe some Thai ALG school students (for the students who choose to approach learning exactly as ALG theory recommends). 3. There are a few people online who are trying to do ALG theory as strictly as possible. Aside from reddit user whosdamike and Comprehensible Thai ALG student David Long, I have not seen anyone document or share their experience with ALG in depth. Pablo Roman has discussed his experiences with ALG in learning Thai, so you can hear his results for yourself. His experience definitely informed his design of the Dreaming Spanish Method (which he refers to as "the OG Immersion Method" and some DS learners have called 'comprehensible input method/CI Method").

Dreaming Spanish has some things in common with ALG, such as recommending students WAIT to speak and wait to read until they have a solid mental understanding of the pronunciation and sounds of the language, and teaching entirely with Comprehensible Input Lessons with only visuals to communicate meaning (no translations, no explanations), and recommending students to do extensive watching/listening of CI Lessons and Learner Podcasts, and then transition to extensive watching/listening/reading to materials for native speakers that they can understand, as their understanding improves. Dreaming Spanish also recommends not analyzing the language and translating in your head, which is in ALG. But Dreaming Spanish is much less strict with it's recommendations, saying it's fine to look up a word if you're confused and it would help you understand the material, and to speak and read earlier if you need to for life situation reasons, or just really want to.

I think in the long run, more lax study approaches like Dreaming Spanish are going to catch on. ALG is not done strictly in the Thai schools that teach in that manner - while they recommend students don't speak early, and don't read explanations of how Thai works or use translations, many of their students do speak (since they often live in Thailand) and have studied Thai with explanations and translations before finding the ALG Thai classes. Some students go through ALG Thai classes and attempt to do ALG strictly, like Pablo Romano and David Long.

I think there's use in trying to stick with ALG theory if you're doing an ALG lessons program - it's how the school recommends you will have the Most Likely chance of success and best outcome with the lessons they teach. Just like there's use in trying to stick to any study program's advice - their advice is what they are most confident will result in the outcome you came to them for and are hoping they'll deliver. That said, if you take out all the theory... if you aren't a nerd like me who's into reading about language learning research and different teaching methods...

ALG has some suggestions on how to think/approach the material you're engaging with - which you can take or leave. The actual teaching method though? That is simply Comprehensible Input Lessons (that use visuals and no explicit translations), and extensive watching/listening to material made for learners, then later materials you understand that are made for native speakers. That's all the ALG lessons are. And you can find CI Lessons free for many languages on youtube, or on Comprehensible Input Wiki. So you are free to try out the recommendations ALG gives and make your own study plan and decide for yourself what's useful to you.

As far as I can tell, ALG's teaching method would work. CI Lessons work - they're used in ESL programs in my country and work great, and they work for classes made up of students with various native languages so they're extremely useful if translations aren't a useful option to teach students who speak 70+ native languages (that's the situation in my city). Extensive Listening works great - Learner Podcasts are PLENTIFUL, and help build up listening skills and review things you've learned, if you pick podcasts you can understand the main idea of (aka are comprehensible input to you). So it makes sense a teaching program entirely made up of those things, would work. It would teach vocabulary, grammar, and since all lessons are audio-visual or audio, then their strongest skill would b listening skills. So the student would still need to go practice speaking, practice writing, and practice reading outside of those lessons, if they want competency in all 4 language skills.

I think any teacher or website that's building a course based on this set up would work fine, for learning knowledge of the language and building listening skills. Provided they actually provide enough hours of lessons for beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Provided they include a broad enough vocabulary and variety of grammar in those lessons. Outside practice will still need to be done for speaking, writing, reading. Just like with any program that exclusively has 1 type of learning material (such as a reading heavy textbook program would likely need to be supplemented with speaking, writing, listening practice).

[rigelmejo]

Thoughts on ALG

I think outside of Thai ALG classes, Automatic Language Growth is not going to catch on. Because a few of the people that are doing it for other languages, are just so intense about it and the way they talk about it tends to turn people off.

I think that's why things like Dreaming Spanish market themselves as the 'comprehensible input method' instead of ALG - one, because Dreaming Spanish is less strict than ALG, and two, because the main strategy of the Dreaming Spanish method is to watch comprehensible input lessons that use visuals to explain what the lessons mean (extensive listening to things you understand), until you can understand regular materials for native speakers and continue learning with those. With the special addition to 'not speak for 600-1000 hours' and 'not look at translations and explanations' which is what Dreaming Spanish gets from ALG which it's based on.

Dreaming Spanish is, as I mentioned, less strict than ALG. And of course it's less strict... in the end the goal of teachers is to TEACH their students! And any way a student can successfully learn is GOOD ENOUGH. Plenty of people use Dreaming Spanish in plenty of ways, and most are successful if they stick with it. So Dreaming Spanish's creator Pablo, I don't think cares deeply if students are 'purist' about following his advice or if they use the Dreaming Spanish CI lessons while also doing other things. I think, like most good teachers, he just hopes they are successful and learn to do what they want to do.

Actual ALG schools are ALSO less strict than the enthusiasts online. ALG World has interviewed students, and many of their thai students studied other ways, or continue to study other ways afterward, and speak early since they students are often living in Thailand. ALG has a few students they interviewed who stuck to the ALG directions fairly well, and they had good results. And there's people like whosdamike on reddit who's trying to stick to ALG for Thai, while taking ALG CI Lessons, he's having good results so far. Pablo Romano, founder of Dreaming Spanish, tried sticking to ALG directions for Thai as he wanted to test out the ALG theories.

I think Pablo did designed his Dreaming Spanish method to be less strict, because he was focusing on 'good practice' advice to recommend students do for success - it's pointless to mention ALG believes students have 'permanent damage' from studying explicitly if the students you plan to teach OFTEN have prior explicit study of Spanish. Better to just tell your students 'please wait 600-1000 hours before trying to speak, to help give you the best chance to have a good mental model of the sounds of the language before speaking and ingraining habits' while also telling them 'if you have to speak, speak.'

Because of how Dreaming Spanish Method is written, and the varied results amongst people who've done it, it's the best proof of how 'comprehensible input lessons with no translations and explanations' and then 'extensive listening to comprehensible input' work for a study plan, regardless of what else a person does and how they 'think' about the language when studying. I'd say the results are overwhelmingly positive, almost all students succeed at getting a B2 or higher listening skill, and their strong listening skills and strong understanding of the language to help them reach solid reading, speaking, and writing skills within a few hundred hours of practice for each of those other skills.

Because Dreaming Spanish is more lax than ALG, has an hours roadmap, and is able to be done all over the world as the lessons are videos, it has a much bigger pool of 'successful students who've completed the program' than ALG World (Thai) or any other ALG-based study program I've seen. ALG World is the only other well known ALG-based study program, and all they have is a few anecdotal stories from students. Not very convincing - although I would say ALG Thai classes work, because they are enough hours of well designed CI Lessons from beginner to advanced difficulty, and we've seen CI Lessons success with Dreaming Spanish so ALG Thai students should be having similar success.

No one can say if strict ALG adherence gives significantly better results on a broad scale, compared to Dreaming Spanish's 'extensively watch/listen to CI Lessons, and then use material made for native speakers you understand' which tons of people's experience has shown does work. We know it works, regardless of how people use it, whether they also use translations/explanations or not, whether they speak immediately or wait, whether they think consciously about language features or not. We know it works for most people, at least to develop listening skills and a foundation of language knowledge. (Weak spots of Dreaming Spanish are, of course, that learners have to figure out how to practice reading, speaking, and writing on their own for a few hundred hours until those skills catch up to their listening skills).

I think ALG is going to be lost to time. An idea Marvin Brown had, that a few people read into, and some Thai programs adopted as their study programs. I think it's lasting impact will be an increase in language teachers making Comprehensible Input Lessons - which I think is a good thing, as they're great as either main lessons or supplemental practice.

I think ALG has added to the idea of 'waiting to speak' which other study plans like Refold also made popular. But also we are in the age of the internet, where plenty of people are shy to speak to others, but the demands of listening to/watching/reading something are much less daunting. So I think we'd see an increase in the idea to 'wait to speak' for at least a while, in more study plans, no matter what. Outside of in person classes and necessity, people are just not forced to practice speaking early so many people will probably Prefer to wait to speak - speaking is embarrassing, is scary, and involves exposing yourself mistakes and all to another person.

TLDR: I read Marvin Brown's book and his theory of Automatic Language Growth, and because of how people online talk about it I do not see it ever getting more mainstream. I think it has led to an increase in teachers making Comprehensible Input Lessons, and encouraging students to practice more hours, which has been a net positive though.

Semi Related rant below.

(It frustrates me that people call it 'comprehensible input method' because... every fucking language learning study plan EVENTUALLY includes some fucking comprehensible input, and comprehensible input is not JUST CI Lessons, it's also everything you understand! From fucking textbook dialogues with translations, to graded readers, to shows, to conversations, to tutoring sessions, literally comprehensible input is just "input you understand." Whereas DS Method is primarily Comprehensible Input Lessons with no translations provided, until you can comprehend media for native speakers and conversation sessions without translations then you use those to keep improving. But that's another topic).

Xiaogua Chinese on youtube is also marketing herself/her lessons as 'comprehensible input method' which really means, simply, using Comprehensible Input Lessons designed for learners where the meaning is conveyed with visuals (not translations), and encouraging learners to use materials made for native speakers they understand eventually, and talk with native speakers eventually, to keep learning. That's all it is: extensive watching/listening to stuff you understand, with no translations or explanations. of course, it's not as marketable, to explain WHAT exactly the method is... because then people could just go do it on their own, or find other teachers that make CI Lessons, or ask a tutor to do CI Lessons with them, and they wouldn't need the specific teacher marketing the method. (I think Dreaming Spanish and Xiaogua Chinese would still be successful, even if learners understood exactly what 'comprehensible input method' is, and how it's just an existing language learning strategy that's existed for ages. It's just... it's really simple, and I get them not breaking down to learners what exactly the lesson design is, because that's more explaining than typically learners wish to know).