up:: Languages MOC, Language Acquisition
A person asked this question in a telegram group:
How can you listen to a podcast, understand nothing from it and then acquire the language? How’s that?
I replied:
Because people are able to discern patterns. In languages(grammar, vocab), text, memories.
Through pattern recognition we facilitate our learning and understanding of the world.
Moreover, there is this concept, in learning how to learn field, called Prior Knowledge that refers to all information about the field/domain of knowledge/problem available in addition to the data or input.
So, when you receive comprehensible input or, in other words, when you listen to a podcast you basically start recognizing patterns of the speech/conversation/grammar structure. Even if you’re not noticing it. You become capable of using certain grammatical structures without even learning grammar. Moreover, you’re building up your prior knowledge.
Then, you decide to learn some grammar and what happens is that you combine Memory reconsolidation and Prior Knowledge. These are also concepts known in memory/learning research domains. And there are bunch of papers on these topics.
So basically If you know something related, your brain will make use of existing information to speed up the process. Therefore, it gets easier to make sense of new information. For instance, after intense hours of listening to podcasts you might notice that learning a particular grammar structure becomes easier for some reason. It almost seems like it’s something familiar to you. Or, oh, I’ve heard this one somewhere and so on.
This happens due to aforementioned processes in your brain. The more prior experience/knowledge we have, the more cues we have to connect it with new information that will facilitate our learning and long term memory.
In fact, this is why it is crucial to start listening to authentic materials as soon as possible. Even if your comprehension isn’t good enough yet.
It’s fascinating to do and experience things, and later, find out what’s underneath it. If I didn’t know English, I would never have learned or read all these studies. English, huh)
Reference:
- Prior Knowledge
- New stuff is learned in a way to make use of existing stuff
- Interconnected information is learned and retrieved easily
- What is comprehensible input?
- Memory reconsolidation