so as a beginner learning Japanese
should you be immersing yourself with
content which is comprehensible to you
well let's go into this a little bit so
according to stephen krashen xinput
hypothesis you acquire language when
basically you comprehend something which
you previously couldn't so if I hold up
a ball a red ball and say the English
sentence this is a red ball and let's
say for example you didn't know the
English word ball but you knew the rest
of the sentence this is a red blank then
you can probably make the inference oh
the word ball probably means ball and
now you just be due to the extra context
clue of me holding up the red ball
you're able to comprehend this sentence
comprehend that the word ball means ball
and then according to the input
hypothesis you'll be able to acquire it
so acquisition is all about
understanding things which you
previously couldn't understand so now
when we're thinking about well should
you be immersing in content which you
understand like ninety to ninety percent
of already or is it okay to immerse with
content that you only understand 30 40
50 percent of is one better than then
the other are they about the same when
we're thinking about this question we
have to think about well which one will
provide us with the most opportunities
to comprehend things which we previously
weren't able to comprehend well the
reality is that I don't know and nobody
really knows because there haven't been
any sort of scientific studies conducted
on this topic but I'm gonna talk to you
about my speculations and my theories
with this topic based off my own
experience and my models of how language
acquisition works so I actually don't
think as a beginner of Japanese this is
different once you become like late
intermediate to advanced but as a
beginner of Japanese I don't think that
it's actually any better to be
understanding 90% versus say 30 40 % and
it might actually be even more useful to
have 30 40 % when I was learning
Japanese for the entire period where I
was beginner I pretty much exclusively
immersed with content which was way
above my level you could say right I was
only understanding
probably 10 20 30 percent in the
beginning later on like 50 60 70 percent
for the first long while I almost never
understood a hundred percent because I
was watching anime and dramas and
Japanese movies which I wanted to watch
and I thought were cool I wasn't really
thinking about was it gonna be too hard
or not because everything was kind of
too hard and I found that I made very
rapid progress right it didn't seem to
be a problem that I was only
understanding 20 or 30 percent that
didn't seem to be a barrier that kept me
from progressing and the reason why this
is is because like for example when I
understood 30 percent of Japanese you
know then there was certain sets of
words and phrases which I had down pat
every single time I heard it I knew what
it meant like ah combing gonna eat you
up
so am I saying like stuff like that
every time I heard it I instantly
understood it I could not understand it
right I had completely acquired it and
my brain was very good at picking out
those pieces of language from the whole
and at any given point there was this
new layer that was just beyond my
cutting edge where I would start
noticing these words or sentence
structures right like one day I would
notice some word like maybe like Kai
said suit I would notice the word Kai
Setsu and then once I noticed it once
I'd be like oh yeah but kind of sounds
familiar I feel like I've probably heard
that before I started noticing it all
the time like multiple times per day
because I mean that's just how it works
with the baader-meinhof phenomenon right
once you notice things once then you
just start noticing it all over the
place you know you're thinking about
getting a certain type of car suddenly
you start seeing that car everywhere you
go even though you never noticed it
before you thought about maybe buying
that car that's just how kind of the
brain works and so once your brain
unlocks a word and this would happen all
the time right because your brain just
starts noticing things your brain is
always starting to notice new language
structures and patterns which are just
beyond your cutting edge and so I would
notice words like this
I use the example concepts I would just
notice where it's left or right all the
time every day there'd be three four or
five new words which I noticed for the
first time that day and once I I notice
notice them I noticed start noticing
them all the time multiple times per day
usually and so it was inevitable that I
learned the meaning of those words right
because your custom that often
eventually you just figure out what they
mean
or even if you don't wait until you
actually figured out the context you can
just look it up once get the meaning and
then you can't forget it because it just
gets reinforced every time it comes up
it's like a natural SRS and so I had no
trouble going from 30 percent to 31
percent and from 31 to 32 and it didn't
matter that I was only at 30% and there
was actually a majority that I wasn't
understanding because I was constantly
improving what I was understanding all
the time and here's the thing with
comprehensibility is that it's not a
yes-or-no thing right it's not like you
hundred percent understood an entire
sentence it's it's overall meaning how
the grammar works what the individual
vocab means it and you either understood
it yes or it was all gibberish to you
right that's not how it works
you can understand the general gist of a
sentence but not really know what some
of the individual words mean or how the
grammar is interacting you can
understand half of a sentence and note
okay this word this partisan this means
this that this is happening
grammatically but not know the other
half of the sentence right so
understanding is a very messy thing it's
not a yes/no type of type of deal and so
even if you're only understanding 30% of
like the overall language there's still
gonna be language that's on your cutting
edge all around you all the time like a
few months ago when I was learning
Chinese I do is just immersing for like
a few months and I was still at a very
low level like only understanding 20-30
percent but there was like almost
something from for my brain to do on
almost every sentence because there was
either one word in each sentence that
sounded familiar and I was thinking wait
what does that mean I feel like I've
heard that before do I know that word or
like some grammatical structure where I
was like oh wait was that the structure
I heard before like how is this going
here right so even though that I was
only understanding 30% of the total hole
I was constantly bombarded with
opportunities to learn new things and
that was what what's important right
what I mentioned at the beginning is how
much opportunities are you being given
to comprehend things which you weren't
able to comprehend before so it's this
idea that going from 30 to 31 is it's
the same amount of progress as going
from 95 to 96 and it's not necessarily
harder to do it's actually in a sense
easier to do because you're being
bombarded with so much that you don't
understand right
if you understand 98% of something and
you don't only understand 2% then you
only are presented with the opportunity
to learn that 2% and yes it might be
easier to learn that 2% because it's a
clear or what it means because you
everything surrounding the 2% is already
clear but if you only understand 50%
then half of all you're listening to is
stuff that's new to you and you have the
potential to pick up so in a way you're
you have more opportunities to learn and
like I said it's not very hard to pick
up things that are right beyond your
cutting edge and so I think having the
extra exposure to constant you don't
understand at the beginning stages might
actually lead to you picking up more
more quickly because when you think
about it babies who are learning their
l1 they start out with a 0%
comprehension right they're not
understanding 98% filling of the 2% they
understand nothing at the beginning and
they slowly work their way up given
completely incomprehensible mostly adult
input right like yeah adults speak to
babies and baby-talk but that's like 2%
or less of all their input most of their
learning happens through hearing adult
conversation and so the brain is kind of
built it has strategies built in to
learn how to work its way up the
comprehension hierarchy right from 0 to
1 2 3 4 7 5% physics percent your brain
has the tools it needs to do that
built-in and because the unconscious
mind because you know language
acquisition happens unconsciously that's
what stephen krashen tells us and what
my experience tells me your unconscious
mind doesn't work in a strict linear
fashion like your conscious mind does it
can be working on multiple issues at
once it can be working on multiple
layers of abstraction at once and so at
the very beginning part of your brain
could be working on phonetics and
parsing the differences between little
sounds part of your brain could be
dealing with what individual words mean
part of your brain could be dealing with
the sentence structure and this could be
happening simultaneously right in a kind
of parallel processing fashion because
we know that the brain does process
things like many multiple things at the
same time like psychology tells us this
and so like at the very beginning right
if you're only exposing yourself to what
you already understood that what would
that be like hello this is a pen and you
have such a limited range of input
that's all the other
the structures in your brain which are
equipped to decode full-on real language
and and extract the underlying
principles from that input it's not
going to get a chance to really activate
if your input is so thin and easy right
so I think that you can work with your
brain by replicating the process of
first language acquisition of basically
doing what your brain was built to do
which is figure out how to swim while
it's drowning you could say but then
again at the end of the day this is just
my hypothesis based off my own
experience I mean what I can tell you is
that if you immerse with things that
only you only understand 30 40 % of you
will get good and pretty quickly because
me and my other other people I know who
did a jet got good very quickly never
using basically watered down baby
materials but I can't say definitively
that's the better strategy maybe who
knows hypothetically if you always
understood 90% of your input or 95% of
effort then you would get better even
faster because the it'd be easier for
your brain to learn what was missing I
can't say that for sure but here are
some potential problems that strike me
when I think about trying to think that
other strategy I mean the biggest issue
is that I mean when you're true beginner
no content is gonna be like 90%
comprehensible right except if it was
like literally baby talk of just
individual words but I mean once you get
past that space right it's like what
Dora the Explorer Blue's Clues like
those are the shows that we're talking
about and for most adults that's
extremely boring and tedious to watch
and engagement is extremely important
stephen krashen
and Steve Kaufman talked to talk about
this all the time your attitude and your
engagement and your motivation to
comprehend what you're listening to and
your actual interest in it greatly
depend how much you're going to acquire
and so even if hypothetically going from
95 to 96 was more efficient than going
from 30 to 31 which I said there's no
real reason to assume that that's the
case but even if it were then it still
might be the better strategy for to go
from 30 to 31 if that allows you to be
immersing with content that you're
actually engaged with right because it's
pretty much extremely unlikely that
you're gonna get anywhere if you're
forcing yourself to immerse with
materials that you don't like unless
you're
meditation master which pretty much none
of us are and then besides interest
right like how are you going to find
these materials like that would mean
that you're constantly looking for the
material that's perfectly adjusted to
your level even though you're getting
better all the time and I think that
it's not a very realistic strategy in a
real life right because that means that
you're gonna be have to spend so much
time chasing down the perfect material
that you're gonna be spending more time
looking for materials than actually just
immersing with them so that's kind of my
main thoughts on this topic what I do
think is that you know stephen krashen
when he was talking about
comprehensibility he was talking about
understanding messages he emphasized
that a lot he wasn't talking about you
understand all the nuances of grammar
and vocab like if you look at some of
the lectures he's given on YouTube he
will give the example of two different
lessons that he gives in German or
something and one of them he just speaks
German and the other one he's like
showing you like with visual clues what
he means but he's still speaking in full
sentences right he's speaking on full
blown German in that example just
because of the hand motions and the and
emphasizing certain parts of the
sentence you can tell what the overall
meaning is and so like I said before
that is it a difference between
understanding the message of what's
being said and understanding actually
the grammar in the vocab right like you
from just context alone even if you have
the sound off you can get the message of
what's being said in certain situations
even if the vocab and grammar is beyond
you and I think that's what chris
stephen krashen emphasized as the most
important component for acquisition
because again like figuring out the
grammar and the vocab that happens
unconsciously through like extremely
complicated inductive computational
processes that are way beyond what we
can do with our conscious brain right so
basically I think what stephen krashen
was saying is to engage those processes
you have to understand the message of
what's being said and then the
unconscious mind will do all the rest
and I do think there is something to
that and so that's why I think for
example watching a TV show that you have
watched in your native language before
like watching the Japanese dub of your
favorite American movie watching an
anime that you had watched before with
English subtitles
washing the raw without the subtitles or
even going on Wikipedia and reading the
episode descriptions of each episode
before you actually watch the episode
that can help a lot too or even on
Netflix you know they give you
each episode has a little paragraph
description of what happened in the
episode you can read that beforehand and
then get it just of what's happening and
so these are tools you can use to make
the message of what you're watching more
comprehensible and I do think there's a
lot of value in that I think that is
more important than actual
percentage-wise of how many words are
you understanding and things like that
and so to summarize in conclusion I
think that although we can't know for
sure which is the more optimal strategy
having almost full comprehensibility and
filling in the last spot or just having
less comprehensibility and working on
your cutting edge but we know that that
method at least has to work because it's
worked for me and on many other people
that's like the basis of the original
agent philosophy so it's proven to work
then we know it works pretty quickly at
them at the very least and in a way your
engagement with the material is much
more important than the
comprehensibility so I think I can say
pretty definitively that no matter what
you end up watching you should
prioritize your engagement over how much
you're understanding but when you can
using the tools I talked about before
like episode summaries on Wikipedia can
help make things more comprehensible in
a message kind of way and I do think
that is value so yeah