#alg method

Comprehensible Input Wiki - this wiki includes tons of Comprehensible Input Lessons linked for many languages. I go back to this regularly. Go to the Chinese sections for Chinese.

Vidioma.com - a person made this site to make it easy and convienient for people learning Chinese to find CI Lessons for their level of understanding. I think they were trying to make something similar to Dreaming Spanish's site to help encourage learners to start/continue by making it easy and in one place. Time watched is tracked on the local device you're using it on, there's no account sign up, and the website makes no money - it links youtube videos of youtubers that teach Chinese.

r/ALGMandarin Wiki - includes playlists made by learners of the content, sorted for beginners.

r/ALGhub Aural Resources List - includes comprehensible input lessons and learner podcasts for many languages, go to Chinese - Mandarin section.

Lazychinese.com - Su Qing made this website, her youtube channel is Lazy Chinese. Like Dreaming Spanish, it is Comprehensible Input Lessons on a website where paying a subscription will unlock more lessons. This website is still growing, the payment goes directly to Lazy Chinese and the teachers making the lessons. (As it is still growing, I recommend also checking out each teacher's youtube channels too, for example I love Xiaogua Chinese channel).

r/ALGhub What Is Automatic Language Growth? - page that explains ALG if you want to to it. (My quick summary is ALG is using only comprehensible input lessons that contain ONLY the target language, until you can use materials for native speakers, avoiding thinking about the language such as anaylzing/translating in your head/using translations and explanations, and waiting to speak and read until you feel you have a good grasp of listening skills. So 600-2000 hours depending on the language, ALG Thai courses typically recommend waiting 1000-2000 hours, Dreaming Spanish typically recommends waiting 600-1000 hours. Note: ALG is stricter than Krashen's input hypothesis that "we acquire language by having meaningful experiences we understand in the language" and therefore CI is not a synonym for ALG. ALG is comprehensible input, but comprehensible input is a much BROADER category than ALG. ALG was invented by Marvin Brown, who felt it is ONLY comprehensible experiences in the language we acquire language from, and nothing else is necessary or beneficial. Brown felt the other activities were detrimental to success. Brown also felt speaking early, or any explicit study and analysis of ANY language would damage ultimate ability in languages. This is the controversial point - as many other teaching programs that include Comprehensible Input Lessons still feel there's a place for grammar study and translations and explanations. Most learning programs for learning a language, do not worry that explicit study will damage their ultimate result, and do not care when one begins to read or speak).

Dreaming Spanish Method - includes the roadmap I'm often referencing, Dreaming Spanish Method is the ALG method, just a bit more lax. Dreaming Spanish also says to avoid explanations and translations, but to look you at them if curious then it won't hurt. Dreaming Spanish says you should wait to read and speak 600-1000 hours, but if you need to do it earlier then do, or if you will give up unless you do them early then just do them. (This is basically why I prefer going to r/dreamingspanish, their more lax approach to the ALG method means I can find more learners who are using Comprehensible Input Lessons alongside other study activities or study history, which is more compatible with my own experiences).

*personal note: think ALG's ideas are a bit extreme. I do not think explicit study, translations, speaking early, or reading early will create an insurmountable block for most people's language goals. I am not doing pure ALG. If you feel like doing pure ALG though, it will work. There's plentiful examples on r/dreamingspanish of people doing pure ALG to successfully reach B2 level, and people doing additional things that contradict ALG and successfully reaching B2 level. Dreaming Spanish's method and roadmap are a slightly more lax approach to ALG if you'd like to try it out without completely following the ALG rules, and you can find many people to connect with who also did ALG somewhat but not purist in that learning community.

I've reached a weird point where listening to Thai, even native content like unsubbed actor interviews, definitely feels like I'm listening to normal speech with words, but where only some of those words are familiar and only some of them have real meaning to me. Definitely a contrast to Vietnamese, where I can pick out a few basic words, but it still just sounds alien overall, and Spanish where I understand the majority of what I hear. What I do know isn't just nouns and a few verbs, I've started catching functional things like 'but' and 'like this.'

I did have an actual lesson where I spoke enough to answer yes/no questions and say how may things I had and what color, so I feel like that proved to myself that speaking can naturally arise out of listening to a some degree. I do have another lesson tomorrow but I'm thinking of stopping. It's making this feel a little more like a REAL THING I'm doing and not just a weird little side project and I'm not sure how much mental capacity I have for taking on a REAL THING right now because REAL THINGS can make me stressed in a way thing things that aren't really a thing don't.

I am so easily mm how do I say it. I started Death Stranding 2 and there's some spanish in it and now I'm like "well you know, it would be so useful, I could help more students at work, more people in libraries, just generally would be pretty useful" idk idk

Not that usefulness has ever motivated me particularly much. 79 languages are spoken in my city's school district, so statistically most any language studied could help students, could help in random public situations. The french I knew in college actually helped a ton, all the middle school kids I tutored spoke French from childhood so it helped if English wasn't understood. Korean, Arabic, Spanish, French, Swahili, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, would all be extremely useful in terms of how much it would help with community events locally.

Nah I am more motivated by what the fuck do I want to read/watch/listen to. I'm nosy. Translations just do not tell me all the information as it was originally intended. Translations always change something. Reading in particular I am very motivated by....

Idk idk we'll see. There's a lot of Spanish stuff lately I'd really like to understand. So I guess if I want to understand enough, I'll spend some time on it...

In other news - yes I will continue studying Mandarin, I really am serious about the goal to understand any audiobook I want. I am getting closer. I also have several cdramas on my to watch list...

And for Japanese. Well. It is going to take a huge time committment. I have found lots of cool stuff lately. I guess it depends on if I can just watch the lets player I like, and understand the games I'm playing enough to be happy, or if I'll feel I need to cram study for a while to see the improvement I want. My favorite japanese Lets Player has just started Kingdom Hearts 2 which I'm super excited about. I also have many an audio drama cd I'd like to understand... mmm.

Okay final topic change: my opinion on learning ONLY from Extensive Listening to Comprehensible Input, based on my experiment results so far this year

1. I do think speaking NEEDS to be practiced as it's own skill

2. That said, doing a lot of listening practice seems to help the words be closer to Active Vocabulary, to be able to switch words into Active Vocabulary faster with practice. Compared with reading, where I rarely felt the words were easy to recall when I wanted to speak.

3. Reading skills ALSO NEED to be practiced as it's own skill. Dreaming Spanish Roadmap acknowledges this. I already have some reading skills, so this is not an issue for me.

4. Writing skills ALSO NEED to be practiced as it's own skill. Obviously, you say. Who the fuck wouldn't know this, you ask. Well a lot of people apparently.

5. CI Only study plans (like Dreaming Spanish) are heavily criticized for developing good passive skills (listening, reading) but almost no active skills (unless one practices them). CI Only learners sometimes claim with enough input (passive skills practice) they'll output better. While I do think to a degree this is true, in that more listening practice and learning more words makes speaking easier, it seems most people need 100-300 hours of specifically Speaking practice to speak at a B2 level. So even with tons of input, expect to need to practice speaking (and practice writing) if you want to be competent at those skills. I do think between reading and listening, listening definitely puts words easier to "recall" in the mind to then go practice speaking and writing. At least for me.

6. CI Only study is GREAT for building an ability to passively understand the language, I have now done a lot of reading AND a lot of listening, and I definitely have built up my passive skills for understanding a LOT. It's fine if this is your goal, and if you're happy once you can understand what you want. It's a very achievable goal. If you either A. Study the basics of grammar and 2000-6000 common words, then intensively read/listen to regular stuff (look up words) or extensively read graded readers/listen to learner podcasts, you will eventually build reading and listening skills. Or B. Just extensively read/listen to content made for learners (CI lessons, Graded Readers, Podcasts for Learners) and pick up the basic grammar and words through those, then extensively read/listen to regular stuff you understand.

7. You can intensively or extensively listen to/read things you understand JUST the main idea of, and over time you will learn more purely from the context of what you understood. This means that while you may feel frustrated, over time (hours of practice) you will see improvement. As long as you're using a material you understand the main idea of - or even just SOME main ideas. You can either look up words (intensively study) to understand the main idea, or just already understand the main idea (extensive) of the materials you pick.

8. Progress seems to be noticeable every 20-40 hours of listening practice. Sometimes every 10 hours if you're in the beginning. As you learn more, there's a 20-40 hour cycle of "recognizing more and feeling you understand more" and "recognizing how much you still don't know and feeling you understand less."

9. For reading the time to notice improvement may be less. I noticed an improvement in reading skills around every 50,000-100,000 words read. Similar cycle to the above one - first you notice more and feel you understand more, then you realize what you don't know and feel you understand less, and the cycle repeats.

y = C(1-e^(-kx/L))

Below the cut, a bunch of me messing with the ALG equation and comparing it with Dreaming Spanish estimates to try and figure out WHAT is an accurate estimate of time it will take to learn a language with comprehensible input.

I deeply appreciate this experiment one person did with their own language learning, Picking up a second language from television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning, and it's free to read if anyone else is curious.

The writer did the following: attempted to learn French by watching TV shows in French with no subtitles, and no word lookups or translations, for 1200 hours. They started with shows for adults, and realized children's cartoons were much easier to learn new words from initially as the visual context and slow speech helped them figure out word/phrase/grammar meanings, and then watched children's cartoons for a while until gradually increasing difficulty of shows again. While in the first several hundred hours, they watched some cartoons by repeatedly watching certain sentences and scenes over and over, attempting to understand as much as they could, such as with the cartoon Calliou. After 1200 hours, they started reading French, talking to people in French, and reading some grammar explanations at that point. They passed a B2 test at the conclusion of 1500 hours, with the first 1200 being watching French TV with no tools/explanations and then the last 300 hours including speaking and finally looking up some explanations and seeing french writing.

This account of their experience is incredibly interesting to me. It shows a few things which (at least for me) can be learned from.

1. That a goal of aiming for over a thousand hours spent trying to understand materials in your target language is useful.

2. The time they spent engaging with French is (very roughly) similar to FSI estimates if you include the hours of outside-class study recommended, 750 class hours plus time spent studying outside of class (2 hours outside of class per class hour is the FSI recommendation - which would be 2250 for French). The time it took him to pass B2 is in the 1000+ hour range, which is similar to classroom time plus outside study time expected. Automatic Language Growth type courses tend to suggest 1000-2000 hours to speak on an adult level and understand others, with 1500 being the suggested study length Dreaming Spanish suggests and ALG Thai programs recommending 2000 hours. Some learners who've done DS and ALG Thai programs suggest they feel they can understand people and discuss things on a basic level at those hours, but feel they need more hours to really be 'fluent'. I think that aligns well with the 1500 hour French study linked above, where he felt 1500 hours felt intermediate and capable of talking with others/working/understanding others but by no means fluent. So my personal thoughts on this is... the French 2250 hour estimate (FSI class-hours estimates added to 2 outside-class hours per hour as FSI suggests) is probably roughly in line with people's experiences.

And the earlier goal of 1500 (1000-2000 depending on the individual, and the target language) being a good initial goal for basic ability to do all things in the language (but not necessarily well and not mastered). Perhaps this number could be several hundred hours, and less than a thousand, if your target language is similar to one you already know or you have experience learning languages already. But the thought I am concluding from all of this is: expect 1000 hours or more trying to understand stuff in your target language if you wish to be able to understand the main idea (or more) of most things, and communicate your main idea with others.

(And for the sake of curiosity, FSI estimates 2200 class hours for Japanese and Chinese, so 6600 hours total, for an English speaker. So probably...at minimum 1000 hours to start speaking, like ALG Thai learners notice, at minimum 2000 hours to start understanding the main idea of most things, and based on FSI estimates... perhaps 3000-3300 hours minimum to start feeling similar to that level achieved after 1500 hours studying French or Spanish).

3. He studied French with zero aids like grammar guides or translations or even the French alphabet and a pronunciation explanation. He mentions in his paper, that being able to look up translations, or even see French subtitles on the TV shows, may have potentially sped up his progress. (Or perhaps not, as he didn't try those tools until 1200 hours in). Many of us learners HAVE used such tools already. The lesson I take from his experience is...even if you use NO tools or aids to learn, if you dedicate 1000+ hours to attempting to understand visual-audio situations (videos or classes or your life experiences in a country) you will make progress and increase your understanding of the language. If you initially focus on more-visually understandable things, like children's cartoons or ALG teachers who visually attempt to explain or a person helping you through a situation (like a native speaker talking to you as they help you grocery shop), then your initial progress as a beginner will be FASTER. And it may well be necessary to understand a certain amount, as a beginner, for the target-language input to be useful. You don't need to understand 100% or even 90%, but you do need to understand enough to hear at least 1 word or phrase or grammar piece every couple minutes that you can GUESS at the possible meaning of. At least, to learn in a timely manner.

So as a beginner, visual-audio input is much more useful than audio only - especially if you don't have cognates to use to make guesses. And visual-audio input where the speaking is ABOUT something in the same scene/experience/event so it's easier to guess what bits of the language mean. And if you choose to use tools like a translation app/site, if it's helping you figure out meaning of bits of language then it may be particularly useful as a beginner. (There's certainly language learning camps that think using translations lessens your actual learning of the language, but based on his paper... I at least think, what I take from it, is that those beginning few hundred hours it's most important you find a way to UNDERSTAND the main idea of the target language material. My take is that, even if that involves translation tools for 300 hours initially, it's worth it. You can abandon translation tools once you understand enough stuff in the language - like a few hundred key words or pronunciations etc - to start understanding really basic main ideas from kids cartoons. But if you can't even guess "cartoon character is pointing to bike, seems to want bike, even though I have no idea what words they're saying, maybe one of those words was bike..." then you aren't going to comprehend enough to guess word meanings. It seems like after the first few hundred hours, the need for translations and/or kid cartoons is less. Once you have some small base of words/phrases you've guessed the meaning of, then it's possible to start guessing the meaning of conversations even when there's no visual context to indicate what's going on - such as adult shows where they discuss off-screen abstract topics, and audio only materials).

4. There is no huge need to pick the 'perfect' study method or materials. After the initial beginner stage of learning some key words/phrases from visual context (a few hundred hours), you WILL continue learning and make progress as long as you keep engaging with the language and trying to understand the main idea. So study/watch/listen to whatever you like that, that you can get yourself to engage with for 1000 hours or more. Some people will want to keep looking up word-translations, do that. Some people will love cdramas or anime or shows and just want to watch tons of shows. Some people will feel more comfortable watching/doing easier things like a tutor that matches your comfort level (like crosstalk), immersion with someone helping you navigate, watching cartoons, watching stuff for learners (like Comprehensible Input youtube channels). Some people want to jump into the deep end and go for audiobooks or podcasts. If you are able to even just GUESS a word/phrase/grammar point meaning every 1-3 minutes (or more often) then you'll likely keep improving your understanding. No need to be perfect, just figure out a way to keep yourself engaged. Because it'll take a thousand hours or more.

5. I hate to say this because I love reading... but to develop listening comprehension... you need to listen. Having visual-audio materials as a beginner is critical. Even if that means graded readers you read paired with an audiobook. And you'll need to keep listening for at least 1000 hours to build good listening comprehension - it takes time to get used to hearing the pronunciation, to mentally separating it into phrases/words, to adjusting to various speeds, to emotional meanings and implications, to adjust to understanding various accents. His paper indicated he struggled with understanding faster speech until he'd studied enough hundreds of hours, and then struggled with slang and accents much longer. Listening comprehension is critical to: conversing with others, speaking and being understood, listening to shows and audio. So it must be worked on. That is not to say you can't study by reading - I sure did! And still do! But that the hours spent reading WITHOUT audio will not contribute to some of those critical listening and speaking skills.

Dreaming Spanish has some things in common with ALG, such as recommending students WAIT to speak and wait to read until they have a solid mental understanding of the pronunciation and sounds of the language, and teaching entirely with Comprehensible Input Lessons with only visuals to communicate meaning (no translations, no explanations), and recommending students to do extensive watching/listening of CI Lessons and Learner Podcasts, and then transition to extensive watching/listening/reading to materials for native speakers that they can understand, as their understanding improves. Dreaming Spanish also recommends not analyzing the language and translating in your head, which is in ALG. But Dreaming Spanish is much less strict with it's recommendations, saying it's fine to look up a word if you're confused and it would help you understand the material, and to speak and read earlier if you need to for life situation reasons, or just really want to.

I think in the long run, more lax study approaches like Dreaming Spanish are going to catch on. ALG is not done strictly in the Thai schools that teach in that manner - while they recommend students don't speak early, and don't read explanations of how Thai works or use translations, many of their students do speak (since they often live in Thailand) and have studied Thai with explanations and translations before finding the ALG Thai classes. Some students go through ALG Thai classes and attempt to do ALG strictly, like Pablo Romano and David Long.

I think there's use in trying to stick with ALG theory if you're doing an ALG lessons program - it's how the school recommends you will have the Most Likely chance of success and best outcome with the lessons they teach. Just like there's use in trying to stick to any study program's advice - their advice is what they are most confident will result in the outcome you came to them for and are hoping they'll deliver. That said, if you take out all the theory... if you aren't a nerd like me who's into reading about language learning research and different teaching methods...

ALG has some suggestions on how to think/approach the material you're engaging with - which you can take or leave. The actual teaching method though? That is simply Comprehensible Input Lessons (that use visuals and no explicit translations), and extensive watching/listening to material made for learners, then later materials you understand that are made for native speakers. That's all the ALG lessons are. And you can find CI Lessons free for many languages on youtube, or on Comprehensible Input Wiki. So you are free to try out the recommendations ALG gives and make your own study plan and decide for yourself what's useful to you.

As far as I can tell, ALG's teaching method would work. CI Lessons work - they're used in ESL programs in my country and work great, and they work for classes made up of students with various native languages so they're extremely useful if translations aren't a useful option to teach students who speak 70+ native languages (that's the situation in my city). Extensive Listening works great - Learner Podcasts are PLENTIFUL, and help build up listening skills and review things you've learned, if you pick podcasts you can understand the main idea of (aka are comprehensible input to you). So it makes sense a teaching program entirely made up of those things, would work. It would teach vocabulary, grammar, and since all lessons are audio-visual or audio, then their strongest skill would b listening skills. So the student would still need to go practice speaking, practice writing, and practice reading outside of those lessons, if they want competency in all 4 language skills.

I think outside of Thai ALG classes, Automatic Language Growth is not going to catch on. Because a few of the people that are doing it for other languages, are just so intense about it and the way they talk about it tends to turn people off.

I think that's why things like Dreaming Spanish market themselves as the 'comprehensible input method' instead of ALG - one, because Dreaming Spanish is less strict than ALG, and two, because the main strategy of the Dreaming Spanish method is to watch comprehensible input lessons that use visuals to explain what the lessons mean (extensive listening to things you understand), until you can understand regular materials for native speakers and continue learning with those. With the special addition to 'not speak for 600-1000 hours' and 'not look at translations and explanations' which is what Dreaming Spanish gets from ALG which it's based on.

Dreaming Spanish is, as I mentioned, less strict than ALG. And of course it's less strict... in the end the goal of teachers is to TEACH their students! And any way a student can successfully learn is GOOD ENOUGH. Plenty of people use Dreaming Spanish in plenty of ways, and most are successful if they stick with it. So Dreaming Spanish's creator Pablo, I don't think cares deeply if students are 'purist' about following his advice or if they use the Dreaming Spanish CI lessons while also doing other things. I think, like most good teachers, he just hopes they are successful and learn to do what they want to do.

Actual ALG schools are ALSO less strict than the enthusiasts online. ALG World has interviewed students, and many of their thai students studied other ways, or continue to study other ways afterward, and speak early since they students are often living in Thailand. ALG has a few students they interviewed who stuck to the ALG directions fairly well, and they had good results. And there's people like whosdamike on reddit who's trying to stick to ALG for Thai, while taking ALG CI Lessons, he's having good results so far. Pablo Romano, founder of Dreaming Spanish, tried sticking to ALG directions for Thai as he wanted to test out the ALG theories.

I think Pablo did designed his Dreaming Spanish method to be less strict, because he was focusing on 'good practice' advice to recommend students do for success - it's pointless to mention ALG believes students have 'permanent damage' from studying explicitly if the students you plan to teach OFTEN have prior explicit study of Spanish. Better to just tell your students 'please wait 600-1000 hours before trying to speak, to help give you the best chance to have a good mental model of the sounds of the language before speaking and ingraining habits' while also telling them 'if you have to speak, speak.'

Because of how Dreaming Spanish Method is written, and the varied results amongst people who've done it, it's the best proof of how 'comprehensible input lessons with no translations and explanations' and then 'extensive listening to comprehensible input' work for a study plan, regardless of what else a person does and how they 'think' about the language when studying. I'd say the results are overwhelmingly positive, almost all students succeed at getting a B2 or higher listening skill, and their strong listening skills and strong understanding of the language to help them reach solid reading, speaking, and writing skills within a few hundred hours of practice for each of those other skills.

Because Dreaming Spanish is more lax than ALG, has an hours roadmap, and is able to be done all over the world as the lessons are videos, it has a much bigger pool of 'successful students who've completed the program' than ALG World (Thai) or any other ALG-based study program I've seen. ALG World is the only other well known ALG-based study program, and all they have is a few anecdotal stories from students. Not very convincing - although I would say ALG Thai classes work, because they are enough hours of well designed CI Lessons from beginner to advanced difficulty, and we've seen CI Lessons success with Dreaming Spanish so ALG Thai students should be having similar success.

No one can say if strict ALG adherence gives significantly better results on a broad scale, compared to Dreaming Spanish's 'extensively watch/listen to CI Lessons, and then use material made for native speakers you understand' which tons of people's experience has shown does work. We know it works, regardless of how people use it, whether they also use translations/explanations or not, whether they speak immediately or wait, whether they think consciously about language features or not. We know it works for most people, at least to develop listening skills and a foundation of language knowledge. (Weak spots of Dreaming Spanish are, of course, that learners have to figure out how to practice reading, speaking, and writing on their own for a few hundred hours until those skills catch up to their listening skills).

I think ALG is going to be lost to time. An idea Marvin Brown had, that a few people read into, and some Thai programs adopted as their study programs. I think it's lasting impact will be an increase in language teachers making Comprehensible Input Lessons - which I think is a good thing, as they're great as either main lessons or supplemental practice.

I think ALG has added to the idea of 'waiting to speak' which other study plans like Refold also made popular. But also we are in the age of the internet, where plenty of people are shy to speak to others, but the demands of listening to/watching/reading something are much less daunting. So I think we'd see an increase in the idea to 'wait to speak' for at least a while, in more study plans, no matter what. Outside of in person classes and necessity, people are just not forced to practice speaking early so many people will probably Prefer to wait to speak - speaking is embarrassing, is scary, and involves exposing yourself mistakes and all to another person.

TLDR: I read Marvin Brown's book and his theory of Automatic Language Growth, and because of how people online talk about it I do not see it ever getting more mainstream. I think it has led to an increase in teachers making Comprehensible Input Lessons, and encouraging students to practice more hours, which has been a net positive though.