Yesterday I watched a Youtuber speaking Japanese like a local without living in Japan. Interestingly, he didn’t converse using the language until the second or third year of learning Japanese. Most of the time, he acquired new words through Japanese movies, animes and news.
Although I learned Japanese as a teenager, I have never reached a conversational level. I started studying the language because of my love of comics. Dragon Ball, Kaze Densetsu Hikoza and Doraemon were my favourites. I would rather not eat lunch to save money and get the new issues every month.
So when I heard about his method, I became intrigued. Think about it: I can watch 6-8 hours of anime a day and call it “learning a language”— that is super appealing!
The Youtuber followed a language learning method that was first elaborated in the 80s by Stephen Krashen. Krashen described how language acquisition happens in one way and one way only: by comprehensible input. In this old video, he demonstrated how easy it was to pick up some German when he told stories and drew pictures without translating the words into English.
Controversially, he said that talking in the target language is not practicing. His method does not force the students to speak until they are ready to do so themselves. As a result, his approach is not suitable for school. He said that forcing the students to speak too early builds anxiety and reduces confidence.
Then it hits me. I have forced myself to speak every time I want to learn a new language too. I internalised how school taught me to learn a language and wondered why I found it boring.
I regretted that I never mastered Swedish even though I lived in Sweden for six years. I am now learning Chinese and feeling that I’m hitting a wall. It’s hard to reach a conversational level. I can feel my motivation waning but I won’t give up. With this new method, I can restart my Chinese practice by watching some Chinese dramas instead. After all, I can now call it “studying”.