Double Input: How To Improve Foreign Language Skills
When a young Slovak student decided to improve her foreign language skills, she took a Spanish course at her hometown university in Bratislava. After a few weeks in this class, she concluded that it was not going to work. The professor barely spoke the language herself, and the class only met for a couple of hours a week, which clearly wasn’t enough. So the student decided to do an experiment: try to learn Spanish on her own.
She picked up her favorite book – Harry Potter – in Spanish and resolved to devote at least 20 minutes a day to it. She also found an audiobook. And so began her evenings: listening to and reading Harry Potter in Spanish day after day, week after week.
At first, it was frustrating. She could only understand three words: Harry Potter, Hermione, and Voldemort. Everything else remained obscure. A few days later, the student made her first progress: now she could grasp little chunks of text like “Harry didn’t understand” or “Hermione was curious“. She remembered the story, and her familiarity with the context helped her to fill the gaps. After all, it was her favorite book that she had read multiple times in Slovak, her mother tongue.
In a matter of weeks, the student learned to read in Spanish as if it were her native language. She spent two more years polishing her Spanish skills until she became fluent in the language.
This student is Lýdia Machová, and by now she is fluent in seven languages.
How to Improve Foreign Language Skills
I just finished watching Lýdia’s TED talk, and the whole story is quite telling. Although most of us are brought up thinking that taking classes is the only way to learn a language, nothing could be further from the truth.
Taking classes doesn’t help you learn foreign languages, even if you are in a Translation & Interpretation program where you are expected to speak several of them fluently. In fact, traditional language classes almost always fail to provide three crucial elements:
Input. A three-hour class once a week is just not enough. For comparison, FSI programs for American diplomats are typically designed for 25 hours a week, and diplomats, unlike most language students, end up actually being fluent.
Iteration. The human brain relies on repetition to learn anything. And yet, language classes try to expose you to as many topics as possible. It’s no surprise the brain has a hard time picking it up.
Interest. Language textbooks are boring, and boredom is not the best companion for learning. If you don’t care about Jose and his red car, black hair, and big nose, textbooks won’t be much help.
People like Lýdia manage to master several languages because they do things differently. Polyglots organize their language learning program based on these three "I's": Input, Iteration, and Interest.
One way to accomplish this and improve foreign language skills is the Double Input Method.
The Double Input Method
Reading in a foreign language for fun has been the favorite tactic of many polyglots, including Kato Lomb, who spoke more than 20 languages. In her guide to language learning, “With Languages in Mind: Musings of a Polyglot“, she explains:
Texts of general-interest books and articles are natural; they are not limited to the meager vocabulary of beginning textbooks. They speak to the normal reader. The great variety of books and articles gives us the luxury of choosing one that suits our interests or relates to our profession or hobby. These texts are reliable because they don’t use the artificial language of textbooks. They are dynamic because no simplification breaks the whole into colorless and odorless particles.
—Kato Lomb, With Languages in Mind: Musings of a Polyglot
Reading is indeed a great way to combine all types of language input, iteration, and interest into an appealing language-learning mix. However, in the 21st century, we have the opportunity to improve upon Kato Lomb’s “bookworm” strategy. How can we do this?
By combining reading with simultaneous listening to an audiobook.
Reading while listening
An audiobook sets the pace, making you read faster and "swallow" larger amounts of input. Due to the high speed of the recording, you have to scan the text and process it in chunks rather than word-by-word. As a result, you acquire new words in their natural environment, which is better than in isolation.
Additionally, audiobooks keep you going. Many people who want to improve their foreign language skills make the same mistake. They get too engrossed in creating vocabulary lists. They read with the sole purpose of writing down words they don't know. However, this reading-and-writing approach slows down your reading speed to that of a snail, causing you to lose interest and miss out on potential input.
With the Double Input method, you have to keep going even if you don't know half of the words. Pausing an audiobook every time you want to look up a word is too much of a hassle.
Neuroscience Behind the Double Input Method
During reading, the human brain carries out the task of decoding words. It recognizes written words on the page and associates them with corresponding verbal forms. The faster your brain establishes these connections, the better your reading fluency and vocabulary become.
Word recognition depends on two mechanisms. The first is lexical processing, which involves using a "mental dictionary" of written forms to recall the meaning of a word. This ability is well-developed in strong readers. The second is phonological processing, which involves using the pronunciation form of a written word. Non-readers primarily use this mechanism, as most of their vocabulary comes from verbal conversations.
Language learners have neither an extensive "mental dictionary" nor a mental database of verbal forms. You build both automatically through extensive exposure to the target language, such as reading and listening. When you combine these two activities, your brain processes both written and verbal forms of a word simultaneously, creating stronger associations between the two. Consequently, the next time you see the same word, you recall it faster.
And this is how you can memorize new vocabulary more effectively.
Three Steps to Better Comprehension
To improve your foreign language skills, follow these three steps:
Find your favorite book in your target language.
Get the accompanying audiobook.
Commit to reading and listening to it for at least 30 minutes a day.
The Double Input Method is not a language hack. It's just a smart and reasonable way to combine your interest in languages with your other interests in life. This approach allows you to start using a foreign language daily, which is what everyone wants to achieve.
