Very Long Report of English Acquisition: 3000+ hours (and words)
Introduction
For many people, learning the most popular language in the world comes automatically. Either they have the advantage of being born in an anglophone country, or they acquired English in childhood or early adolescence, seemingly by magic. Yet some people haven't been so fortunate; they weren't exposed to English from young age and only started engaging with the language in late teens or adulthood. Although I've been in contact with English since I was 10, it wasn't until around seven years later that I discovered the power of comprehensible input (CI) and began acquiring English for real. Before that, the only experience I'd had with English was in a classroom. This report is mainly concerned with the transition from formal language learning to proper language acquisition, and my personal implementation of CI.
Who am I writing this for?
I'm under no illusions. This report a bit long-winded, and it's probably not packed with dense and extra useful information. So to reduce cognitive resonance, I'm writing this, first and foremost, for myself. Most people document their progress from the base camp. I've already climbed a mountain or two, yet another, even greater challenge always looms ahead. This journal entry freezes my current abilities in time and aides future recollection of my "modest beginnings".
I decided to post it online because a) I think progress updates of learning English is underrepresented; b) some non-native English speakers may feel identified in what I have got to say; while c) some natives may get a better appreciation of what it is to learn their language. (Admittedly, these are substantial rationalisations.)
Outline
Let me outline the structure of this piece.
- I touch on language learning prior to discovering comprehensible input method.
- I describe the beginnings of true language acquisition and my motivation to learn English.
- I thoroughly document the development of the four modes of language acquisition (learning, reading, writing and speaking). I discuss what I'm capable of doing in English, and I demonstrate my current speaking ability with an audio file of me reading the introduction above.
- I sketch out my plans going forward.
Disclaimer
Note that the timeline of the events described below may not be accurate. I'm writing this from memory, and some of the important events date to pre-pandemic times.
The Dark Ages Before Comprehensible Input
Self-Labeling And Native Language Self-Isolation
"I'm bad with languages." I don't think anybody has said that to me directly, or even indirectly, but I sure have attached that label to myself on many occasions. In middle school, I spent most of the lessons looking up words in my bilingual dictionary because I didn't understand even basic words. My pronunciation was all over the place: I mispronounced words like "beard" or "push". And it wasn't just my inability to reproduce: the words sounded wrong in my head to begin with.
At that time, the English world-space was closed off to me. I watched YouTube content and played games in my native language; the very few books I managed to read were also written in my native tongue. Then, in my mid-teens, my English teacher was replaced. My class, who initially had the worst teacher in school, was suddenly rewarded with one of the best available.
This must have somewhat altered my view. If I recall correctly, I started to look forward to the next English lesson. It transformed from being something I dreaded to something that I wished had lasted longer. (Don't even mention to me the double lessons with that incompetent teacher.) (By the way, the lessons became less focused on grammar and explicit vocabulary teaching; instead, they constituted in topic discussions and occasional fun activities.)
When The Tables Turned
The pivotal moment came, however, a year or two later when I had to do a small research for my school project in an another language class: the Spanish class. During my online research of the Spanish culture, I stumbled upon a video by Pablo from Dreaming Spanish. It was literally the only video in Spanish that I could comfortably watch on the topic in question. I had been learning Spanish for a few years at that point, but I couldn't retain basic vocabulary and struggled with verb conjugation. It was another evidence that all languages, not just English, aren't my friends. But this video planted the seed of a profound realisation: I can understand Spanish, if it's spoken slowly with gestures and pictures.
The YouTube algorithm then did its magic and there I was binge-watching Dreaming Spanish instead of doing my Spanish homework. After being explained the method behind these videos, I was soon on board. It didn't take long, I suppose, to realise that this could work with English as well. I was encouraged by Pablo's advice to proceed even if I'm no longer a child that can effortlessly "absorb languages like a sponge". (I think I seriously thought at one point that I was too old to learn. Seems somewhat funny now, but to this day it resonates with some people, despite it being a common misconception.)
I'm not sure what motivated me to learn languages, but it would have been a combination of getting better grades; of helping me make better use of the time I sat in class – "If I'm forced to learn it, I might as well do it properly with CI."; and of enjoying the journey of learning for its own sake. It was probably only later – I'm not really sure – when "utility" entered the picture; knowing English opened up a world hitherto undiscovered. If you want to access any kind of knowledge, English is the way to go. It's rather obvious, but I'd say (almost) unique to English.
Comprehensible Input Made Concrete
Early Input: 5-7 years ago
Listening
The exact events have surely escaped my memory, but I probably started listening to some podcasts for learners. No-one knows why but I began to tune in to podcasts for natives as well (like Hidden Brain and Invisible), when I probably had to concentrate too hard to follow along. In hindsight, it was a terrible decision to begin that early, but I most likely enjoyed the topics, which made it tolerable.
As the years went by, I started watching let's plays in English and other channels (TED talks and TED-Ed, Crash Course, The School of Life), later I got interested in Science channels, like Veritasium and VSauce. My comprehension was quite poor, so that's why I opted for subtitled videos. Alongside these resources I listened to podcasts for learners; these come to mind: English in 10 Minutes, Rock'n'roll English, English for Curious Minds.
I've never been a series binge-watcher, but around 5 years ago I decided to watch Friends with the specific goal of improving English. I tried watching it without subtitles, but I often ended up rewinding and turning the subs on, lest I miss a word or two.
Reading
I don't think I have done much online reading back then, as I wasn't interested in any topic in particular and reading news was boring. But thanks to my new English teacher, I discovered the works of Roald Dahl and (admittedly painfully) read through his macabre short stories for adults. Around that time I discovered the passion for reading in any language, both fictions and non-fictions.
Later Input: 1-4 years ago
Listening
At one point I discovered Not Overthinking podcast (which I'm grateful that one Refold user directed my attention towards), which is a true gem. I've listened to every episode and am always looking forward to the next bi-annually released episode. :P
I watched the full show The Good Place and many seasons of the Taskmaster game show. Otherwise I mostly continued listening to YouTube channels and podcasts mentioned above, while introducing some new into the mix. A lot of input was the side-effect of learning about science, philosophy or math online.
Reading
Over the years, my passion for reading had only grown. As my language proficiency progressed, I often wanted to do truly extensive reading and so I picked books for young adults and even middle-schoolers. They were easy to read and entertaining to boot. Part of my intention was to catch up with books that I neglected as a child, and it was an enriching experience.
Current Input
Listening
As my English improved, I've been able to focus less and less on the language and just do things that pique my interest. English is my primary language in all online communication, content consumption, knowledge accumulation, etc. The exception is talking with friends, with whom I speak in my native language.
Nevertheless, there are at least two situations where I feel inadequate. The first is watching shows. There're at least a few percent of words that I miss (depending on the show could be much higher), and so I will often resort to subtitles for perfect comprehension. (Incidentally, I make the subtitles appear slightly delayed than they're spoken to reduce dependency on them.) Having said that, I'm happy to report that I've just tested my comprehension on some clips from Friends on YouTube and I understood nearly everything. The few words that I didn't catch were clarified when I rewound and listened again.
The second occasion is listening to music. The genre plays a large role, but generally the comprehension ranges from fragments to moderately high clarity of lyrics, but rarely it's crystal clear. In my native language, it's often crystal clear.
Reading
When it comes to reading, essentially no non-fiction book poses any problem whatsoever language-wise; it's the content that is at times challenging to decipher. Prose can still challenge me a bit, although not as much as it used to. I frequently abandoned a book because I found it too complicated, but I haven't encountered the same issue lately. In fact, I tackled some of these abandoned books (e.g. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris) this year and this time lack of general knowledge of English wasn't an issue. Yes, I still struggle with slang, old-fashioned language and jargon, but I have no illusions about it being resolved anytime soon, given the sheer variety and complexity of the language.
On a tangent, I've noticed that I'm not getting much better at spotting English-as-a-second-language writers. For example, I'm sure that plenty non-native English speakers hang out on Reddit, but rarely do their imperfect texts stand out to me.
Some Stats: Hours Of Input and Millions Of Words
If I were to make a guesstimate, I'd say the listening input totals to anywhere between 2000 to 5000 hours (5 to 7 years of 1 to 2 hours of listening per day). It's safe to say I'm way beyond level 7 of the Dreaming Spanish roadmap. It's curious that even if I'm immersed in the foreign language (in the online space), there's only so much pure listening practice I do. You may search on Google, read some articles, and play some games, all in English, but it's not the same as consuming shows, podcasts or courses.
The total number of words I read is also difficult to quantify, but if I summed up all the words in the books I read in English, we would get to around 13 million. If I read a few thousands word per day, we could add a few million to the total. So say the best estimate is 15 to 25 million words.
For the sake of completeness I'll mention that last time I tested my vocabulary size on this page (different sites give vastly different results), I scored above 19k of known word families. (According to the site, the native English speaker scores between 20k and 35k.) I suppose that's satisfactory, although it's a pity that after so much dedication, I'm still on the left-side tail of the bell-shaped distribution. Moreover, it doesn't seem to translate to output very nicely. Which is the topic of the next section.
Output – Past and Present
So far, I've steered clear of the two active modalities: speaking and writing. Let's tackle it head on now.
Writing
The current stage of writing is easily accessible: the text you're reading right now is a faithful reflection of my current writing abilities. I've not used any AI in the process of writing and I looked up at most five phrases for clarification. Granted, the text editor I used for crafting this report has an embedded spell-checker, but you must take my word for it that it highlighted an actual mistake (and not just a typo) two or three times tops. Luckily, spelling doesn't constitute an inordinate share of what makes a good writing; vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and idioms are just as important, yet beyond the reach of a simple spell-checker.
For the last 4 years, I've intermittently made entries in my "knowledge vault" and journal, which has served as a reasonable practice in the art of writing (>100k words), besides the benefits writing is alleged to bring. Personally, I'm able to write quite fluidly, although now that I'm focusing my attention to my internal writing process, the words don't flow out too smoothly. I don't translate in my head and I'm usually not consciously employing any grammar rules, although sometimes I'm not sure which verb tense to use or how to make sentences sound more natural. If you're fluent in English, you're bound to have spotted plenty of mistakes and unnatural wordings in the preceding paragraphs.
Speaking
In a slogan: I've made a huge progress since I took learning English seriously and approached it with appropriate tools, but I fall short of being conversant and comfortable speaking in English.
It's worth prefacing that I have a mild speech disorder, so arguably there's a subset of issues that prevent me from sounding like a native speaker in any language, though there're problems that emerge only if I start speaking in English. Lack of rhythmic speaking is beyond mere foreign language incompetency, but mispronouncing words, mixing up tenses, forgetting words, and so on, are mostly confined to speaking in English. (I say mostly, because my native language has deteriorated a bit in the last few years, especially when it comes to retrieval of some common words. They've been uprooted by the avalanche of English words I'm surrounded by every day.)
In the beginning, I used to actively focus on speaking by doing shadowing and the like, but I didn't stick to the routine for very long. I thought input would eventually solve the problem for me. This has been true in certain sense: I distinctly remember I struggled with the pronunciation of "tr" sound in words like "train, contra, travel", but then maybe 2 years ago I unlocked it without any effort. Some morphemes got unlocked this way, but some are still muddled when I speak, notably the voiced "th" sound.
On the one hand, I rarely get to practise English which may account for the underdevelopment, but on the other but when I have the chance to speak, I can usually communicate fairly well and get the point across. Taking the outside view, however, I definitely feel I'm severely deficient in this department. Additional heaps of input seem to have little to no effect, especially as my base is fairly sturdy by this point. I'm not sure to what extent dedicated focus on speaking English would help. In any case, speaking well is not a pressing problem at the moment, though it'd be "nice" to become more fluent.
A Little Test
I did a little test. I recorded myself reading out loud the introduction to this report. The rhythm is weird, some phonemes are off, and the recording contains two alterations because the text was later modified. All in all, though, it sounds better than I imagined. Usually my speech disorder is way more pronounced. I ascribe the difference to the fact that it's not a spontaneous conversation in which one needs to be more agile with the language.
Going Forward: Plans and Aspirations (Or Lack Thereof)
I feel very comfortable listening and reading in English. It's the medium through which I access most information and consume most content. I still occasionally encounter words or phrases I'm not familiar with, but it usually doesn't hinder comprehension. If I challenged myself to read English classics or watch action/thriller films, I'm sure I would struggle. But since it's not something I fancy doing, regardless of the language, I see little reason to do it.
The active language use, however, requires some action if it is to be improved. It's unlikely passive absorption of the language will affect speaking and writing at this stage. I'm not sure what's the best course of action to achieve mastery in these domains. I've had plenty of writing practice but I still feel deficient. My sentences are frequently awkward and complicated, and I'm not a fast writer.
As I already mentioned, I rarely speak in English in my day-to-day life and I'm not doing any solo activities to improve it. Neither am I too motivated to practise it as it's not a clear bottleneck at the moment. I believe that if I were required to use English every day for some reason, I'd quickly get used to it.
One thing that's semi-related to languages is solving Crosswords. Specifically, I'd like to be able to solve a New York Times Crossword without auto-check and hints. I know success is partly dependent on recognising crossword patterns and amassing trivia knowledge, but there's no doubt that a larger vocabulary and greater familiarity with words can help me conquer a Monday Crossword. The same goes with Connections, another NYT puzzle game, in which ignorance of relatively common words (e.g. slang) creates unnecessary hurdles for me.
Conclusion
Currently, I've spent approximately the same number of years learning English the traditional way as learning it with comprehensible input. It's not a fair comparison because the amount of hours vastly differs, but even accounting for that, the CI method crushes the formal teachings in terms of effectiveness.
Often, language sorcerers praise consistency. From my experience, consistency is easy to achieve if you listen to podcasts you enjoy and read books that intrigue you. But at the very beginning, I had difficulties overcoming the regret of not having started sooner. As the Chinese proverb goes:
> The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Is this thought pattern holding you back from learning a language, going back to university, signing up for a swimming class, or any other long-time pursuit? Then pause for a second and truly, viscerally imagine yourself in five years and not having done anything to get closer to the goal. This is an unpleasant feeling, and it's similar to the one you have at the present moment. But you can change your future feelings. Plant the tree now, and reap the fruits in due time.