#comprehensible input lessons

[rigelmejo]

Oh by the way, if you ARE learning Mandarin using Comprehensible Input Lessons, I'd love to hear from you!

Whether you're just using CI Lessons as a supplemental practice, or as your main study material! Either way, I'd love to hear from you!

Whether you're a beginner building a foundation of understanding in the language, or you know some Mandarin and CI Lessons are helping you improve.

There are so little experiences shared of people learning Mandarin who use CI Lessons, particularly beginners. So it would be great if people want to share what it's like. What they like about it, dislike, what feels easy or hard, what they've been doing that's working for them (or not working). Just you know - experiences others can learn from, and maybe try what is working for others, and notice what is different for everyone. (I'm so for real, feel free to just reblog this post with your own experiences added on, or however you want to share. If you tag me, I'll reblog your post about it).

[rigelmejo]

Dreaming Spanish

Because I talk about it a lot, I'm going to link Dreaming Spanish's site, their youtube channel, and the subreddit r/dreamingspanish. (And fyi Dreaming Spanish site is free to use and tracks which videos you complete - the premium version just has more lessons, the youtube is free and has the same free lessons as the website, and the subreddit is quite welcoming to people who study using DS lessons in addition to whatever else they're using - I've found them to be one of the most friendly and least gatekeeping language learning subreddits I've visited so far).

So here's my thoughts narrowed down to their most basic: I think the type of lessons Dreaming Spanish makes - which are designed to help a learner understand what's being said with visuals for context - are a wonderful way to learn a language for people who enjoy learning things by doing them, and guessing from context. If you were the kind of kid who learned new words by reading books and fanfiction, from watching shows/movies with your parents, playing video games with your older siblings and then trying to play them without your sibling around, and guessing what the new words meant? Then you're the kind of person who will likely enjoy this type of lesson. I love learning from context. I love learning by doing. I like to learn something by doing it with someone - and learning by trying to do the thing, to understand how it's done AS I'm doing it. Learning by simply listening to the language being spoken, and by using the surrounding context of visuals/physical gestures/words you know to figure out what the rest of it means? My favorite way to learn. Oh sure, I also like reading explanations of how things work, but I prefer to learn by doing if that's an option. If you're also the kind of learner who enjoys learning to understand a language BY immediately listening to that language and trying to understand? Comprehensible Input type lessons are excellent. (And will be much EASIER than just trying to make yourself watch a show or read a novel in the language with zero aids to help you). If you're the kind of learner who hates ambiguity, who hates trying to figure things out from context and prefers to have a task explained before trying it? If you're the kind of kid who looked up most unknown words in a dictionary or into google growing up? Then Comprehensible Input type lessons are probably NOT going to be enjoyable for you. And that's fine, there's many other types of lessons that may suit your preferences more.

*A side note, that if you do enjoy comprehensible input type lessons, this wiki has links to those kinds of lessons in many languages: comprehensibleinputwiki.org (And the old Nature Method textbooks one can find on archive.org, and Ayan Academy on youtube, also teach using comprehensible input)

I think the Dreaming Spanish roadmap is also quite applicable to many language learners - how many hours it recommends to study, and the kind of skills you can expect to be capable of, at those amounts of study hours. Yes, it's a rough guide, it's not perfect. Yes, the guide is more applicable to you if you're studying with Comprehensible Input lessons and/or listening to and reading stuff you understand the main idea of, as your main study activities. But I find the level hours recommended matches up fairly well with estimates like FSI has, and ALG courses mention. People who study Dreaming Spanish the way the lessons are instructed to be used ('purists') and people who study Dreaming Spanish lessons in addition to other methods (duolingo, formal classes, word-translation tools, graded readers, anki, tutors who explain with translations, textbooks, grammar guides etc.) all report on r/dreamingspanish experiences that roughly align with the study hour level milestones expected by Dreaming Spanish's roadmap. So even if you're not studying with comprehensible input type lessons, or not exclusively studying with those kinds of lessons, I find the roadmap's suggestions for 'study hours to reach X skills' useful to a degree. Again, I want to repeat: I do not think you need to use Dreaming Spanish's lessons (or any comprehensible input lessons) as your only method of study, I think reaching milestones in terms of skills can be reached in a variety of study methods, and using other methods won't change your progress that much. I think comprehensible input type lessons can be completely ignored if they're not you're cup of tea, and the Dreaming Spanish roadmap might still be roughly useful for you to gauge how many more hours to study to be able to do X.

[rigelmejo]

Japanese Comprehensible Input, How Many Hours of Content:

As a companion to my last post, this post is going to link a ton of comprehensible input lessons and other resources that can be used as comprehensible input, and how many hours of content it adds up to. I'd like to shout out r/ALGhub that has a list of Aural Resources for Japanese, and CIJapanese has a Resources Page of other materials besides their own lessons that can be used for getting comprehensible input in japanese. CIJapanese.com has more videos on their site for a paid subscription, and a free youtube channel with lessons, I've only counted the youtube lesson hours in this estimate. I appreciate the cijapanese.com website and teachers, and may pursue using their paid video lessons in the future.

ALGhub Aural Resources for Japanese: https://www.reddit.com/r/ALGhub/wiki/index/auralresources#wiki_aural_resources_for_japanese

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yPzDDRQD6o (ALG demonstration class for Japanese)

https://cijapanese.com/ (Japan) (147 hours and 49 minutes - 2024/08/09 - all videos, taken from this: https://youtu.be/NebtveWRFGM&t=11m46s )

https://www.youtube.com/@cijapanese/featured (Japan) (27 hours and 45 minutes - 2024/09/02 - all videos)

https://www.youtube.com/@easyjapanesewithyuri2033/featured (Japan, some videos have coverable text on the right side) (13 hours and 6 minutes - 2024/09/02 - all videos)

https://www.youtube.com/@JapaneseTomato/featured (Japan, some videos have coverable text on the bottom) (0 hours and 57 minutes - 2024/09/02 - all videos)

Hours of CI lessons listed above (I have excluded links on ALGhub that were in the list below, I counted only full hours of the sources above): 187 hours Note that not all of the lessons on the channels listed above are beginner lessons.

Listed Resources on CIJapanese (Videos): https://cijapanese.com/resources (I highly recommend this page for finding videos, audio, and reading materials) Note that the resources list on the CIJapanese website lets you sort by level (Beginner, etc) so you may want to sort it by level then pick material to use.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_lynzl0m1QQD3ggIDgYCEw (Akiko_Japanese_Conversations, 8.96 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0_bMpdJ8966au9PvrNaRw (Chienowa Japanese, 13.19 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMNVKIaw8hV8ln3dDE5z-hA (Daily Japanese with Naoko, 8.42 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC16-9M0osgdFbLKXvCwpXaw (Easy Japanese Podcast, 240.03 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj9JcUbwQt86EIbI9HimAIw (Fuji Japanese School 富士日本語学院, 9.83 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCauyM-A8JIJ9NQcw5_jF00Q (Haru no Nihongo, 172.82 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIciBLpZ6BP2XNYTFXb6eRQ (Japanese Immersion with Asami, 36.36 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKxpbf50vI49HF8GSRhz7bg (Japanese with JUN, 11.05 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0h7U8zQwWpR1LyNSZVGJ1g (Japanese with K, 3.37 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu6sZrHyl4hSS2PvlUo2XZA (Japanese with Shun, 106.97 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJBvtvWM9-PdqTIO6mmgmIQ (Japanese! わたしの いろいろな はなし, 1.64 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUGSWuUfiTjvSTNzwb9xPw (Kiraku Japanese, 3.82 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTogTfvAp2KrCW2-9vuoFpQ (Kotsu kotsu Nihongo, 29.87 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFvMt22k_CAIcx6MIJGiHkw (Mei's Nihongo Classroom, 6.69 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Xtu6v_op552SsOr5_jWrg (Nihongo-Learning, 12.18 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx1pODtr3fv_WtVKst7mwYQ (OkkeiJapanese, 20.63 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc8dYnHr_xJsZGndDz1vTig (pekopeko vlog, 4.93 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqMY-cp1He6IAi1cIz-gX1g (Sakuri Saying, 73.28 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW2voLcEvpmicxRufe4s5tA (SeikaのJapanese Room, 29.40 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2fAVBdw5_dCArVba3grDzg (Simple Japanese Listening with Meg-めぐ-Smile, 8.99 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/@SpeakJapaneseNaturally (Speak Japanese Naturally, note there are many non-japanese language videos on this channel and the hours estimate includes those videos, 38.76)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRaqPghoTEqqhqKA5n88mgQ (Yui's minano nihonngo, 1.52 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaYX_KdvYlylMr2wZ03DMfA (優花 Yuka chan, 27.12 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCFixPTSdtURBJJPST3ClxA (【桜の間　日本語ルーム】 @yukijapanese00, 70.51 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh-GhnQ7qDQmS6Bz3pGc1Mw (あかね的日本語教室 @Akane-JapaneseClass, 125.19 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkwJXqFl-9VVvK9udYCFjMw (【アニメ】あたしンち公式チャンネル [Anime] Atashin'chi Official Channel, 52.58 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7LVTjJJuDB_Qo0BAOQ8NFg (しのせんせい Easy Japanese Audiobooks, 43.32 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdaFyOoPLyKwW8kvEvbHCwg (杏/anne TOKYO, 31.95 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8UzOZ2NreKl5BaehyIm7w (hukumusume, 28.66 hours)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdW9Xi-leDtqqF6D-IkNJH2UPt3Wbls3Q (Peppa Pig in Japanese, 21.16 hours)

Hours total of the CIJapanese website recommended video resources (excluding their own videos): 1,243.20 hours

Total of combined hours in this list: 1,430.20 hours

I would suggest that in addition to all of these video resources, you supplement using audio-only resources like the podcasts listed on https://cijapanese.com/resources, https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page#Japanese, and any other podcasts you can find and understand.

Other options to get more comprehensible input: children's cartoons if there's visual context clues, vlogs especially if they're vlogs about what they do in a day/the visuals directly relate to what's going on, audio books of graded reading materials you're reading (or TTS of the graded reading material if that's the only option available) - an app like Satori Reader with graded reading material and audio would work well, rewatching shows in japanese that you've seen before (japanese dubbed shows, anime in japanese dub, jdramas), replaying games in japanese that you've played before, watching let's plays of games you've played/seen before, new shows in japanese if your level of comprehension is enough to follow the main idea (shows where the visual context is related to what they're saying will be easier - such as romance shows, slice of life shows, some reality shows, cooking shows, action shows where they talk about what they're doing, crime solving shows where they talk about the objects in the scenes).

[rigelmejo]

Mandarin Comprehensible Input, how many hours total of youtube lessons, and some other notes:

I found this site https://ytexplore.com/ that lets you find the total hours of video on a youtube channel or playlist, so I went through several Mandarin comprehensible input channels to see how much content they had. I looked through the Comprehensible Input wiki for these channels, and tried to pick channels that had more content and less non-target language used in their videos.

Comprehensible Input Youtube Channels At least some lessons on these channels are suitable for beginners, upper beginners, and intermediate learners.

Lazy Chinese https://www.youtube.com/@comprehensiblechinese Total hours of video: 25.80

Acquire Mandarin https://www.youtube.com/@acquiremandarin Total hours of video: 23.08

Blabla Chinese https://www.youtube.com/@blablachinese7526 Total hours of video: 46.43

Comprehensible Mandarin https://www.youtube.com/@ComprehensibleMandarin Total hours of video: 181.10

ALG Mandarin Online on Magic Ship https://www.youtube.com/@ALGMandarin Total hours of video: 104.92

Jiayun Mandarin https://www.youtube.com/@JiayunMandarin Total hours of video: 3.42

Simply Chinese https://www.youtube.com/@SimplyChinese Total hours of video: 1.76

Story Learning Chinese with Annie https://www.youtube.com/@annieluo1307 Total hours of video: 25.97

You Can Chinese 语感中文 https://www.youtube.com/@youcanchinese3992 Total hours of video: 12.37

CommonsenseChinese https://www.youtube.com/@CommonsenseChinese Total hours of video: 7.32

Comprehensible Taiwanese Mandarin https://www.youtube.com/@ComprehensibleTaiwaneseM-cd3rg Total hours of video: 3.44

Jun - Stickynote Chinese https://www.youtube.com/@Stickynote.Chinese Total hours of video: 4

Little Fox Chinese - Stories & Songs for Learners (Little Fox Chinese also has graded readers on their website https://chinese.littlefox.com/en) https://www.youtube.com/@LittleFoxChinese Total hours of video: 171.90

If you watch all of the content above, you'll have watched: 611.51

Children's Cartoon Channels The content is audio-visual and children's cartoons tend to mostly be language about things going on in the story, so it can be used by beginners if they need more visual content. Probably more suitable for intermediate learners.

Peppa Pig Mandarin (165 videos) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIBGRuWcCrZ7cuLwdQN9kqmxyUmZcN-jt&feature=shared Total hours of video: 14.64

简中 Little Chinese Learners [Simplified Chinese] https://www.youtube.com/@littlechineselearnerssimpl4680 Total hours of video: 12.41

熊熊乐园 Boonie Cubs Full show playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4egc7s5z_o&list=PL7Mo6zwP_iN2dpTb78hAzfGnDWHiW99NB Total hours of video: 11.71

Shimajiro Qiao Hu Full show playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyYSBfFp63EKlH__aaASmIHtaCYtyKec Total hours of video: 29.80 hours

Total hours of all listed cartoon channel playlists: 68.56 hours

Additional resources that can be used as comprehensible input once a learner is upper beginner or intermediate:

Some of these have english in the transcripts or on the videos, just use as a listening resource if you are trying to do purely comprehensible input. Also, some of the spotify podcasts have some episodes locked for only people paying membership.

Maomi Chinese Podcast https://open.spotify.com/playlist/17W0woUfmMw4mpSZIAlWvG

Learn Chinese Through Stories Podcast (The easiest episode names start with 1, then 2 as more difficult, then 3) https://open.spotify.com/show/04re9FvL1xviHGWvXKoAhZ

Learn Chinese Through Vlogs https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLToqbzfhNVNqwSTxzmT9idncllckh25Zg Total hours on youtube: 1.1 hours

Talk Taiwanese Mandarin with Abby, Intermediate Chinese Podcast (HSK 4-5+ / TOCFL BAND A-B) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIy2zw_HVkZ9wFezMg_fW_2b70ktYXjvb Total hours on youtube: 18.36 hours

Talk Taiwanese Mandarin with Abby, Upper Intermediate - Advanced Chinese Podcast (HSK 5-6 +/TOCFL Band B - C) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIy2zw_HVkZ_WjG8vBVOHIdbpTJ9nefNH Total hours on youtube: 9.71 hours

Mandarin Corner Audio Podcasts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7VdqFXO0LzfkppQUNIgbd7hSrYsRJHFn Total hours on youtube: 35.73

Chinese with Da Peng Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/4Xgf5VBTn1azv5yFOX1EPI

TeaTime Chinese Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/6mJNegfDGmNaG1mWJtZJed https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhRGJL8iF6uQ3-R-HRblNT2fMd-OoMfJi Total hours on youtube: 28.13 hours

Talk to Me in Chinese Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/31VvYsaas7ijlHhR2dqB25

Chinese Podcast with Shenglan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUy2LT9PiME&list=PLiciRgVuKV1AXFuGYkHSBp3ENbiNfzGq1 Total hours on youtube: 30.44 hours

Dashu Mandarin Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dashumandarin/ Total hours on youtube: 198.35 hours

For curiosity's sake I ran some other comprehensible input lesson youtube channels through ytexplore.com to see the hours of content they have.

Comprehensible Japanese Total hours of video: 28.33 hours (Comprehensible Japanese has a website that has more videos for a subscription)

French Comprehensible Input Total hours of video: 153.38 hours

Dreaming Spanish Total hours of video: 190.41 hours (Dreaming Spanish website subscription has more hours of content)

Comprehensible Thai (Out of all the channels I looked up, this comprehensible input channel has the most hours of lessons by far and the only one where I can see a learner using just this and then content made for native speakers once they understand enough. The other channels I looked at either have way too little content on their own to get to 1000-1500 hours, or require a paid subscription to get close to enough hours of lessons) Total hours of video: 1,254.92 hours

Comprehensible Russian Total hours of video: 50.18 hours