Any particular reason?
So, I’m coming from dreaming spanish where going from english to spanish takes about 1500 hours of comprehensible input.
At the beginning of last year I had logged 1800 hours and I took a hard look at my listening/watching practice and I was not impressed. I listen to podcasts while taking walks and realized how often I zoned out thinking about a bird sitting on a pole or a cloud or groceries. I realized no matter how well I understood it and no matter how much I enjoyed it, I only really paid attention about two thirds of the time. I was too easily distracted or I’d start thinking about the implications of some cool point that they made and go off on my own spiral.
With TV it wasn’t as bad, the visuals would keep me focused better but I’d still open a quick tab and check headlines or look up something referenced, or check my phone for email. And I’d still go off on my own spiral if a cool point was made or get lost looking at the fashion or landscape and lose focus on the language.
then there are the credits, fight scenes, long shots of people walking in desolate landscapes, other languages, and my own lack of comprehension.
I briefly tried to take all these things into account on a case by case basis. Sometimes I really was 100%, sometimes I just didn’t pay attention to anything. But I quickly realized that was too much work. 25% allowed for the great days to average out the days when I missed huge amounts or the show was half in portuguese/english/etc and I didn’t have to delete time for closing credits or fight/chase scenes.
As someone who really likes comprehensible input and has started to learn a second language with this technique, this is one of it’s major weaknesses. It has to be comprehensible and you have to pay attention. For me, 25% undercount is my attempt to admit to my failures in this regard.
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But otoh if you spiral out and can continue later on without much of a problem, that is a sign, I’d say, that you actually became good in that language.
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Interesting. We have somewhat different philosophies in this regard, but I can see where you’re coming from.
One similarity, as I mentioned, I put all anime episodes at 20 min (remove OP & ED), unless something has a bizarrely low word-density (like some episodes of Evangelion). I also had some video game cut scenes I didn’t log last month, the I didn’t have a way to verify how the amount of time (I think it was like 2 hrs, but I will time in the future)
For audio-only content (podcasts, voice actor radio), if I felt like I couldn’t focus the majority of the time, I’d either not log it, or cut it in half or something. But otherwise, having a stray thought or few seems natural. (as an aside, groceries can be surprisingly thought intensive!!)
Can I ask what exactly you mean by “comprehensible input”? I don’t really see how this is different than learning anything else - whether math, music, how to cook, code, rock climb, etc, in this regard… or even formal textbook learning, it seems like it would still be the case there?
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at the risk of over simplification, comprehensible input is a language learning process that skips grammar, text books, vocabulary lists and memorization in favor of immersive story telling (input) that is understandable (comprehensible) at whatever level you’re at.
You start with stories geared toward itty bitty kids like “see the bee, the bee likes flowers! buzzz! bees fly and buzz! buzz! they make honey. I like honey! yummy honey” with drawings of the bee and flowers and work your way up from simple to complex and learn vocabulary, grammar, structure etc through exposure alone … more or less how we learned our native language for the first 10 years or so before we learned how to diagram sentences.
youtube is filled with people praising and slamming it.
pablo at dreaming spanish is one of the more strict interpreters with delayed reading until 1000 hours, delayed output (speaking/writing) until 1000 hours, no notes, no dictionary, no subtitles in native or target language and an extreme emphasis on listening. just listening. and since it’s just listening if you’re not listening/paying attention you get nothing. there is no backstop of flash cards or grammar explanations to fill in the gaps.
and youtube is filled with people who praise and slam him, too.
I like it.
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it’s always good to accentuate the positive!
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Thanks for clarifying. I ask bc ppl seem to use that term very loosely, a lot of the time
I’m pretty sure the 1st 10 years of all our lives involved plenty of written and verbal output. So I don’t really think that’s an accurate claim. But I get the acquisition vs learning thing
Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of that sounds like it has no basis in Krashen’s theories, and is this person’s own construct. I know Krashen very heavily encourages reading, and I’ve never come across anything about delaying reading or not using a dictionary or subtitles. So I don’t think I’d call that “strict interpretation” (by which I mean “strictly/fastidiously adhering to the original”). If anything I’d call it extremist/reinterpretation (not necessarily a criticism)
In any case, I’m loosely in the comprehensible input camp, but feel it has its limits (like the ones you mentioned, or matching “i+1” with “content im interested in”) - in which case supplemental material like textbooks, explanations, targeted flashcards/SRS, etc, will help bridge that gap.
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I’ll mostly point to my line about “at the risk of over simplification”.
and I’m neither a linguist nor am I in a tangent field so I can’t get deep into krashen’s theories.
so I’ll just say that pablo’s delayed reading/speaking is meant to limit the transfer of our native phonics onto the target language by first developing our ear for the target language rather than to discourage reading/speaking in general. Based on my own experience, I agree with this.
the remark about 10 year olds and diagramming sentences (is that taught anymore?) was not meant to be about output but the difference between functionally fluent and knowing the specifics of grammar. But, yeah, there is a need for targeted supplemental materials (later in the process) to clean up confusions like its/it’s, infer/imply and"strict interpreter"/“extremist reinterpretation” … while ridding the world of “anyways” … though that’s a lost cause.
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Cool - sry for being nitpicky
To be clear, I’m not criticizing Pablo. Just saying that I don’t think what he’s advocating is particularly representative of CI. I also delayed output (but not reading), and am sorta “all roads lead to Rome” about this stuff (ie it obviously works for someone, usually multiple someones even)
I never learned sentence diagrams when I was in school (90s/2000s) - only heard of them afterwards. So no idea
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Got through two more episodes of しかのこのこのここしたんたん; I decided to turn the volume up by a notch and I think I picked up more with it being a bit louder. Halfway through! I was going to start Eye Love You S1 | L23, but I didn’t realize yesterday that its episodes are 45m long, and the pilot’s an hour, so I’m going to put that on the back-burner for the moment. Instead I started 君に届け S1 | L24; I remember the manga being really cute. The first episode was actually not bad listening-wise, but Sawako’s internal monologues are so quiet I might put the subtitles on. It’s a shame, because I’d love to see what I can pick up without them, but I don’t want to have to constantly turn the volume up and down whenever she speaks.
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I have nothing to add to this thread (yet)…but every time you post about this show, eefara:
I start hearing the theme song in my head over and over again for the next 10 minutes 
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It’s pretty catchy, haha. As soon as I saw your comment it infected me, haha.
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Anime are often kinda bad about this, and I wonder how Japanese viewers deal with it? Like do they just have really good hearing, cuz they’re used to poor sound balance? Do they just not know what’s being said sometimes? I guess TV has optional subs, even if streaming platforms sometimes don’t?
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I think the brain ends up compensating and assuming what it hears a tooon when you’re fluent in listening. It feels like I can hear everything crispy clear if I listen to an English audiobook in my car, but put on a similar quality Japanese audiobook at the same volume, and it’s night and day.
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So my first week of this challenge is done! A short week since only 5 of them are part of January 2025,
So what did I listen to this week?
Week 1 - 2025-01-01 (Wednesday) - 2025-01-05 | Week 2 
| Name | Type | Amount | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
 ダンジョン飯S1 |
 Anime (BAC) |
4 Episodes |
 1h40m |
 4989 American Life |
 Podcast (PC) |
3 Episodes |
1h30m |
 のんのんびよりS2 |
Anime (NNBC) |
6 Episodes |
2h30m |
| Total |  5h40m |
(Also if anyone has a suggestion of a better emoji for a club let me know, on WK I use the durtle emote, but obviously that’s not here. The closest two are 
or 
, but not sure they really fit, so I just picked the emoji with a bunch of people on it)
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I’ve found it a bit easier to focus on listening by tracking it for the week, rather than individual days this time so hoping that continues. I am noticing things being clearer to hear even if I don’t fully understand the meaning. I’m understanding a bit more as well for the more common vocab and grammar without having to second guess it.
Listening for this week:
Wed 1st: 90m of Zenitendo episodes 1-10
Sat 4th: 120m of Naruto episodes 5-9
Sun 5th: 96m of Naruto episodes 10-13, 79m of 雲のように風のように
Total listening for the week: 6h 25m
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I watched the first episode of 오징어 게임 S2 | L25?? with korean subs today (omg yes the marketing got to me - plus I love Gong Yoo and was curious to see Jo Yuri’s acting). The episode was 1 hour but I’m just going to count it as 30 minutes to account for the times when no one is talking.
I could follow pretty well just using subtitles which made me happy! I haven’t used kdramas as audio input very much in my Korean study journey so far just because they’ve fairly out of reach, but I think my vocab has gotten to a point where they’ve become viable comprehensible input.
I tried to focus on the mouths of the actors and understand what I was hearing for most of the episode. If I missed something, I would glance at the subs afterwards and try to figure out why I couldn’t hear it the first time. It’s a pretty active way to listen and watch but I want to understand what they’re saying!! 
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Finally finished しかのこのこのここしたんたん S1 | L26! I definitely need to pick something easier next, haha, but looking at my options, I’m not really sure what I want to go for. I’m assuming something like チーズスイートホーム | L16 has very little dialogue? A lot of these lower-leveled anime I have access to seem to be pretty much just children’s shows; on one hand I’m kind of hesitating really considering them, but on the other maybe they’re actually a good way for training listening? Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
Otherwise, I suppose I might check out ポケットモンスター | L23 or 五等分の花嫁 | L23; I’d go for 君に届け | L23, but I I don’t want to double up since I’m currently watching the live action adaption. I wish Natively would let me mark an episode as Finished without moving the whole show into Watching status. I understand why it does, but I feel like it ends up limiting me. “Oh, I can’t track this test episode with everything else, might as well not watch it.”
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Have you watched Fruits Basket? It’s ~25 looks like. Also a good deal of the romcoms on Viki are pretty low level, can just poke through them and see which first episodes seem approachable.
I don’t think super low density content is worth while as listening training personally, but if you enjoy the show then by all means go ahead. Just don’t force it on yourself in the name of learning, since it’s pretty inefficient 
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Looks like I don’t have easy streaming access to the old Fruits Basket, and the new one I only have access to on Hulu, which iirc hardcodes English subs. (I’d love to learn if there’s a way to turn them off!)
Live-action wise I’m good! I’m hunting specifically for something animated atm.
That’s very fair, and why I’m hesitating committing myself to one. I’d rather watch for pleasure, and I unfortunately don’t have the skillset for that yet.
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