Clear out of your mind everything you thought you knew about language learning and let me build you a new picture from the ground up.
The most important task that you, the language learner, have is to expose yourself to your target language.
Now keep that in mind for the time being as I tell you exactly what “exposure” means.
What exposure is
Studying is exposure. Repetition is exposure. Reading, watching, listening – All exposure. Exposure is being in the language.
What I mean by ‘exposure’ is that you are in the presence of the target-language in any way, shape, or form. Eavesdropping on a conversation at an adjacent table is exposure. Watching a commercial in a foreign language is exposure. Navigating your way through a foreign OS is exposure.
But there’s much more to the concept of ‘exposure’ than just “exposed or not exposed”.
To be exposed or not to be exposed
I don’t want you to think I’m selling you some magic beans here, Jack. There’s no such thing as language magic, no matter what anyone else tells you. But there is ideal exposure.
Ideal exposure is scaled to the learner’s level. The learner should be familiar with most of the content, and that known-content gives context to the remaining unknown-content.
You show a baby Sesame Street instead of LOST because babies can make sense of big yellow birds introducing the concept of 5 sheep jumping over a fence, but they’re not so good at decoding folds in the space-time continuum and tribal-political-idealistic warring. Sesame street is ideal exposure for babies.
I’m aware of the skepticism of these claims, though. “Exposure’s not enough. Think of all the foreigners who live in X country but can’t speak X language.” They’re right – We absolutely should be thinking of them.
How exposure differs
Consider there to be two basic kinds of exposure: Active and passive. Active exposure entails focus for the purpose of conscious internalization. (I’ll go into the concept of ‘memory tags’ in more detail in a later post) Passive exposure, exposure where you aren’t necessarily investing yourself into the content, should come after you’ve gone through the active stage.
Active exposure can’t be achieved by simply being around the language, which is why living in a foreign country doesn’t absolutely guarantee you to learn the language spoken there. The language literally “falls on deaf ears”.
It’s the same if you’re attending a language class. If you don’t pay attention, you’re not going to learn. As much as I’d like to be able to learn by osmosis, it’s not gonna happen.
But active exposure is important, and it should happen before analysis.
Why exposure before analysis
Because that’s the natural order of things. We experience, then we analyze. After we analyze, we’re free to experience even more.
But this is especially important in language. We should be looking back on what we heard in our target-language to make sense of it instead of digesting it initially through our mother tongue as a filter. That’s what’s wrong with the English curriculum in Japan and Korea, an that’s what was wrong with 90% of my university classmates who, in the worst case, were still studying Japanese in roman characters in our 3rd year into the language.
Active exposure to your target-language first will help you start to “think in the language”. If you’re running everything through your English-filter first, you’re going to be over-processing your language-production.
Final word
It’s important to expose yourself to your target-language, but you’ve got to put in effort to expose yourself “the right way”, and by that I mean “your right way”. If you’re making progress the way you’re doing it, keep at it. But don’t hesitate to try something new. You might find an even more efficient way if you look for one.
What I’m presenting here isn’t based on some theory of language acquisition – It’s what has worked for me. Whether a learning method is criticized or heralded, it doesn’t matter because all methods share the same quality – They’re trends. They’re hailed and debunked and envisioned and revised and reenvisionisedehailbunked. They’re cyclical, terrible, and superb, and sometimes all three.
Listen to people who have gone through the process personally and succeeded, and learn from them.
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This is a great walk through of how to use natural exposure to the greatest benefit. Love it!!
Glad to have you on board for this one, Mike!
lol Hey, I was never not-on-board the last one, just being an ornery git. haha Actually, I can’t find that thread where we were exchanging ideas, but I’d read your last comment but didn’t have time to respond — anyway, I think we see eye to eye on how languages are best learned — we just put it differently. Anyway, keep up with the blogs, as I think they help a lot of learners!!
What you had to say in the previous thread really helped me write this post out, actually. I left a lot of angles open, so I hoped to go back and really define my position on language exposure in this post.
By the way, the other post was this one:
http://victorymanual.com/this-is-how-you-learn-a-language/
lo Alex, wow this is good… u’re just one of the few, who have really put into writing the importance of language exposure before getting to its ultimate goal proficiency of a language…
Kodus to u man…
i just love the way u presented the concepts… keep it up!~
ciao… いつも 안녕…
Thanks for the comment Dave! Hope to see you comment in future posts as well!
ありがとう 해요!
Yep, I agree with your theory on the matter. People think that watching or listening to something in their target language = having to understand everything that is said off the bat. It’s an attitude that is guaranteed to lead to failure and frustration. Language is a learning of mistakes, and if you don’t make them, you never learn.
The most important thing is definately tempering your exposure resources to your ability. You are completely dead on with that assesment. I do get exposure when I can, although time constraints/area I live in do affect it, but the biggest thing that improves my Japanese is creative writing.
The best way to do it is have a set of vocab, and then try to include every single vocab into a paragraph. The topic really doesn’t matter, because you are just trying to write. I vary sentence structure and use kanji as much as possible. If you do this you will rarely ever forget even 1 kanji. It’s because when you write creatively, you are thinking in Japanese (at least for me), and you are using kanji in their natural manner. The most IMPORTANT thing to remember about kanji is: LEARN THEM IN THE NATURAL WAY THEY ARE USED. Learn them as verbs, nouns etc.. If you try, and so many do, to learn them individually with all the sounds at the same time, you will achieve nothing, and forget almost all of them (plus still have to learn vocab anyway). That is the most important thing I have realised about methods for learning Japanese.
Poring over every word of everything that you ever come across in a foreign language may be educational, but it’s also the fastest way to burnout! I’m glad to get some backup on my arguments, Mitch.