What of the folks who have watched countless hours of anime, but still can't speak Japanese? Input alone is not enough, at least not for adults wanting to become fluent from what I've seen.
The key is that the input needs to be comprehensible.
If you bootstrapped those people with a month or two of 1:1 lessons with a native speaker and then started them watching anime aimed at young kids with no subtitles, slowly moving them up to more complex examples, still without subtitles, they would end up learning to understand Japanese passably well after enough hours of it.
If you just dump them “countless hours” of complicated Japanese which they can ignore while reading English subtitles, then they’re going to end up learning a few words and phrases but not really becoming fluent.
If they started with poor English reading skill it’s not a completely useless way to practice that though. (Reading books would be better, but reading anime subtitles is better than nothing.)
When they do that, they are focusing on the English subtitles and effectively filtering out the Japanese. If they tried to hide the subtitles and only glimpse at them occasionally they would start to see gradual improvement. Many people won't because they'll find they suddenly can't understand most things and it becomes exhausting. by that that's what it's like when you are really learning.
That being said it's still a slower way to learn because the language in anime is quite removed from a typical real conversation you will get in to.
I believe Krashen's theory is easy to misunderstand. If you only take a brief look at it you may think it's over simplified. The theory isn't just input in the sense that you've at least got the language going in you're ears. The "comprehensible" part means that you are comprehending via the language, using context to fill in the blanks. I don't think you learn from outputting language, but outputting is essential for producing the ideal comprehensible input.
For example, BTBurke's third point is to ask questions to a native speaker. Note that here, the native speaker is doing the speaking, and BTBurke is learning when listening, not when asking the questions. But asking questions to a native speaker like this and refusing to give up and go back to your native language engages the human brain in a way that simply watching some videos doesn't, and provides important context. Krashen calls this compelling input.
In BTBurke's first point, they say production is essential, but I think Krashen would say this so-called production (talking to native speakers) is really just using production to get ideal comprehensible input from native speakers when you listen to them speak back to you.
As for the 5 minute minute presentation. I would say that this 5 minute presentation is mostly just testing one's current ability, but the preceding the presentation there would be hours of looking up (and inputting) sentences that you wish to say rather than learning randomly, and that's where most of the real learning occurs.
I apologise for the "It's both right and wrong at the same time" kind of answer. In summary I believe BTBurke is a fantastic language learner, but if you look closely at what they are doing, you'll see they are providing themselves with plenty of comprehensible input, and the production/output as actually a more minor part that facilitates this input.
Ask pretty much any Croatian who was a kid in the 90ies and they will probably say that watching Cartoon Network as a kid on their satellite dish helped them learn English. Only 3-4 national channels were available on the terrestrial TV at the time, which made the huge variety of satellite channels novel and exciting for a kid. These foreign stations didn't have subtitles, so you had to try and pick up the language to follow the shows.
Children learn language at the same time they are learning how to be little humans. Neurological connections are being forged, deep pathways for life. Watching my son go through that hyper growth stage was mind blowing. He's trilingual. His recall and attention to details is remarkable. In contrast I've got my head in the (internet) clouds.
So no, I don't think we ever have that same level of growth and rapid learning.
> I apologise for the "It's both right and wrong at the same time" kind of answer. In summary I believe BTBurke is a fantastic language learner, but if you look closely at what they are doing, you'll see they are providing themselves with plenty of comprehensible input, and the production/output as actually a more minor part that facilitates this input.
Language is not a one way street. Being able to manipulate another person's actions and words through speech is as much a part of language understanding as being in a position to have others manipulate your actions and words.
Part of knowing a language therefore is being able to speak and write it. In order to learn how to speak and write it, you are not going to get away without speaking and writing it.
And even if Krashen's hypothesis that input is ultimately the whole story were true (which by definition it isn't), production would still play a critical role in memorization. Every time you struggle to find a word and eventually conjure it, it gets reinforced.
Krashen never said that you can learn to speak and write just by listening and reading. He has said that it's a waste of time to speak too early, before you have understood a lot of input. You still have to produce a lot to get better at it. There's also a huge number of studies that show that people who read a lot in their native language speak and write better and studies that show the same effect when learning foreign languages. There's also the practical point that it's useless to be able to speak well if you can't understand the responses you get.
The input certainly helps which explains the divide between English levels in countries that subttle and countries that dub English language shows and movies.
I think that’s more of a lack of initiative to learn. They may not know how to speak Japanese, but they can listen to it and be able to discern words from each other and be able to grasp ongoing conversations. After years of watching anime and learning kana and even a number of kanji, Japanese doesn’t seem hard at all anymore. I just lack the initiative or immediate need to advance my skills since I live in America. Now French, they speak so freaking fast. I wonder if that’ll change after I watch enough French content.
I agree about lack of initiative, I just don't want people thinking if they just listen to enough music/TV/whatever they'll magically be able to speak and understand. That only seems to work in children (at least to seem like a native speaker to other native apeakers). It takes work for is adults! For French, it will seem slower after time, don't worry! French in particular has a lot of slurring, but it is predictable after learning the rules (and there are rules!). I recommend the book "The Sounds of French". The new "Ad Vitam" on Netflix is entertaining and you can hear some reasonable-speed modern French. I have some beginner book/audio recommendations if you want.
> That only seems to work in children [...] it takes work for us adults!
It takes a lot of hard work for children too. They just have no other choice, and usually some adults going way out of their way to help as much as they can.
> beginner book/audio recommendations if you want
Please! Anything with an easy level but appropriate subject matter for young kids?
I studied French in high school and would like to start reading some French kids books to my 3.5 year old, but I haven’t made the effort to find any yet.
Well, those little boogers sure don't make it seem like hard work :) As for a book with audio, I'd recommend "French Short Stories For Beginners" by Frederic Bibard (www.talkinfrench.com). It also includes audio downloads of normal speed and slow version of all of the stories in the book, so you can check your pronunciation. Content is kid-appropriate basic stuff like shopping, school, etc.
You’ll be a JCJ pro with that kind of attitude towards the difficulty of learning Japanese. You’re at the very, very tip of being a beginner with what you’ve said here.
