Why I Fundamentally Disagree With ALG (Dreaming Spanish)

What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the channel. Now, I want to talk about ALG, automatic language growth method, once again. I know I constantly talk about it on this channel, but as I've said many times before, it is a big part of my journey in learning Spanish via the Dreaming Spanish Method, which is essentially just a rapper for ALG.

Now, one thing I am constantly accused of, uh, by, I don't know, people who are not happy with my progress in Spanish using this method, is that I do not actually understand ALG, or maybe I do understand it and I'm misrepresenting it, and I should go watch the speeches of David Long. For those who don't know, uh, he basically took over. Like, you can literally see it's over here. Okay, so this is the guy who invented it, uh, Jay Marvin Brown. And if you just do a search on this very page, this is Wikipedia. Okay, David Long. You can see that David Long is the coordinator for AUA, the Thai program, which is, he basically took over from, uh, Marvin Brown here. So, we're going to sit down and we're going to watch the speeches of David Long about the ALG method, okay? And as you can see, I've already seen these because, well, I watched them ages ago because I clearly wanted to know what the method entailed. Okay? So, we're going to do it together because I'm sick of being accused of not knowing this and not seeing the speeches or not covering what's actually said. So, I figure if I do this in a video, next time I'm accused, which will probably be in the comment section of this very, very video that we're watching here together, I can just say, "Watch the video, Brad. I've reviewed them. My community's reviewed them. We know what is required." Okay, so let's begin.

Now, we're going to smash our way through these. I'm going to go on, I think I've got it on 1.25. I may end up speeding it up a bit because obviously, you know, this is going to, it's gonna be a long video. You guys want a long video. We're having a long video. Make sure you sub to the goddamn channel. Okay, sub. It helps. Trust me. Makes me feel loved and wanted.

>> ALG or automatic language growth began in Bangkok in 1984.

Okay, I'm going to put lots of jokes in, but I will also add serious comments to this based on my current journey and also my experiences with learning other languages. But straight up, the first thing is when I watch this video, it reminds me of those, um, military introduction videos where they'll be like, "Today we're going to talk about an IED. An IED will kill you." You know, this type of thing.

>> for teaching Thai to foreigners who are coming to Thailand to live. The method since been used teaching English, Chinese, Japanese both to adults and to children and, uh, has gained mild to to, uh, great interest in some cases, uh, among people in the language learning community.

Okay. So obviously on this channel, it has gained great interest because it is a big part of one of the languages I'm learning.

>> Our program is unique because, and on what adults do in order to acquire language, uh, we focus on something completely different. In all recent research that we, we are familiar with, uh, in, in terms of brain research or, uh, linguistic research.

Now, he will reference linguistic research. If you are a linguist, please comment down below if he says something that is incorrect or is now out of date. Okay? Because obviously this is an older video and I'm not a linguist. I'm going to be responding based on my actual experiences.

We find a tremendous consistency with our basic foundations and, uh, what we're learning today in modern science. The foundations of ALG are very simple. In fact, uh, we believe that adults, in fact, can learn like children. In, uh, uh, the historical kind of reasoning of people has always been, oh, adults can't learn anymore like children. The age of four, five, and six are the years when you have to gain a second or third language to really be proficient. Dr. Brown, Dr. uh, J. Marvin Brown began ALG when he realized that through years and years of practice, no matter how much the adult practiced, no matter what the background of that adult was, they never could achieve anything close to what the young child could do. Naturally, people have seen this over and again, and we find out that the reasoning that comes from that, or the, the conclusions we've drawn from that as a, as a society is, adults can't learn like children. Dr. Brown looked at that conclusion and through the research of men like Steven Crashen and, uh, many others, realized that there were some problems in that reasoning that adults can't learn like children, uh, may not be, may not be the case at all. The reasoning went something like this here: children, young children gain a second language or third language, they become proficient or very fluent in a short amount of time. Adults trying to gain that same language, uh, never become proficient and take as long as a lifetime and achieve much less results. The reasoning seemed to be faulty in that what children do and what adults do completely different things. And so Dr. Brown decided to, to, to design a program based on the idea that adults need to do what children do in order to gain the same results in a second language acquisition. Uh, that's what ALG, uh, uh, is. The ALG is the product of that determination.

>> So, as you can see, they're basically trying to with ALG mimic how children learn.

Now, I do want to inject a little bit here, okay? Because I have been learning Spanish via the website Dreaming Spanish, okay? This service called Dreaming Spanish. And Dreaming Spanish says that they implement ALG. There is a slight difference between ALG and what Dreaming Spanish does. So even though I am testing ALG, I am testing it to the best of my abilities because the way that they did it is it was in a classroom environment with teachers. So you would all, you would essentially be stuck in 100% almost cross-talk. Although it's not really cross-talk because it'd be one teacher with multiple students, but the, the teachers would be engaging the students' interactions. You know, did it look like they were visually understanding as they were progressing through the program? Obviously, when we're more sitting here in front of a computer watching content, uh, that doesn't work so much. So, technically, everyone who does ALG, not in a classroom environment, is actually not doing ALG to the letter of the word. But most proponents of ALG are not doing it in a classroom environment anyway. So, we can't really use that to, like, I just want to put that out there. I just want to put that out there because those who tell me I'm doing it wrong are probably doing it wrong themselves. If you're going strict by the way the system was designed.

>> the idea that adults and children do different things is not new. And if we look at at a simple picture in just take this house for example, everyone comes to, uh, to language learning with some goals in mind. I think everyone wants to speak. Most people, or maybe not most, but many want to learn to read and of course to write. If we look at these, these abilities, we say, yeah, we're learning a second language to speak, or to speak and read, or to read and write, or to write, or to speak and read and write. This is common everywhere. The idea that adults got to, must, must try in order to, to be proficient. Practice makes perfect is the old, uh, concept, if you will, is what most language programs are actually based on. Uh, conversational English always seems to focus on how do you say it correctly, and it creates many, many problems for the student, uh, not the least of which is a fear of saying it wrong, the self-consciousness, and the, the tenseness of that kind of a setting that we've often, if we've gone through.

I just want to point out that is an assumption about a student. Not every student is fearful of saying things wrong. I'm not scared about saying things wrong. If I say something wrong, fine, whatever it is, okay. But that is a base assumption that's actually not true across the board, across the board. Okay. Now, it's probably applies to most students that they sit there, they're afraid of saying things wrong, but it's actually not true for all students. So, it's just, uh, an interesting point.

>> That process of of trying to learn the right thing and remember the right thing, then go out and practice the right thing is very strenuous. And in all of modern, uh, uh, research and psychological research, no one claims that that sort of stress is helpful in the learning process. So when we look at.

Also, I'm not sure if the science backs that up. I'm not a scientist, anything. Okay. But I do know that people generally learn better under stress. Like I've seen plenty of articles about that. And I know through my experience in the military that a very, very stressful environment can actually cement things a lot better than just a more chill environment. This is why people when they go through like a super traumatic, stressful event, they never forget it. Like they, they remember every detail of it. By the way, I'm not saying we need to traumatize our students, guys. I'm just saying that it's, it's not black and white.

>> When we look at, uh, the goal, it's important that we understand how to achieve the goal we seeking to achieve. If you ask a writer, how do I become a very good writer? Everywhere in the world, the writer would say, read a lot. So here we have a case where input produces output. Is it possible that speaking is the output and the input is something perhaps in this case below ground that we fail to look at? Everyone talks about the listening ability. We want to submit that understanding is the key element of input that must be gained in order to speak well. Our program of.

Now, I don't disagree with this. In fact, I'm pretty sure most modern ways of learning are based around this. Like if you're looking at a more traditional, when I say traditional, I mean just non-ALG. Okay? When you look at pretty much every other approach, it's about understanding, right? Like we still achieve understanding. We just do it in different ways. Maybe it's via, you know, Anki with flashcards or grammar study. Like that achieves understanding. It's just their way of achieving understanding is different.

>> over 20 years has shown many, many students, many cases where with large amounts of understanding, the experiences, the activities that go on, they're able to have an output that's both natural and fluent and very easily to understand, understood, and the whole aspect of practice is completely lost in this, in this, in this program. This puts the student at ease, not required to test them. All we require to do as an organization, as an, as a, a program here is provide the students with the right kind of input so they understand. If we can consider two aspects below the ground, then of our program here at AUA. Um, we are thinking about producing the best speakers possible. We're looking about becoming fluent in reading and writing. Uh.

Also, I want you to pay attention to how this is structured. Understanding leads to speaking. Once you've got speaking down, you lead to reading, which once you get that down, you lead to writing. Okay, that's the flow that they've got there. Again, this is another point where Dreaming Spanish Roadmap actually diverges. Okay? Because if you look at the Dreaming Spanish Roadmap at 1,000 hours, and don't worry, we'll get into the hours and everything. Okay? Uh, this is where they actually introduce where they recommend that you start both, uh, speaking and reading, which if you were to apply the logic that they're applying here, is like once you've reached a certain point of understanding, then you start to speak, and once you reach a certain point of speaking, then you start to read. But from what I've noticed, most people who are trying to follow the pure method of ALG online, they actually go to reading before they go to speaking, which isn't really following ALG. So, like, if you were to actually follow ALG, you would go to speaking, get to a certain point of that, like a good point, then go to reading, which if you're following the logic of ALG, actually makes sense because once you're able to speak well enough, that means you know the, the most common words and how to say them. So when you start reading and the whole vocalization of the words on the page come out, you're going to vocalize them correctly because the only time you're going to start speaking is when you're speaking with someone. The assumption is here. Okay? And you're going to in some way inadvertently be corrected, either by the situation because a person won't understand you, or maybe they will actually correct you. Or well, actually, the ALG assumption is that by the time you start speaking, it just kind of rolls out naturally, but we'll get into that in a moment.

>> But there's an order here. It must be made right. The common order in second language programs seems to be starting with an alphabet, learn to read and write, and then to practice words and practice and practice and practice until we build up enough vocabulary to form sentences and, uh, so on. And the idea is that forms the basis for second language use. In our experience, the opposite is true. Our experience is that when we provide the student with large amounts of understanding, that forms the basis for all these other things to develop in a natural way. We see this with young children at the age of one to two years old. Children develop naturally from a basis of understanding, and that develops into speaking, and later on they learn to read and write. And so there's a natural process here that we want to replicate. The two elements of, uh, uh, things here that we want to look at over here, we'll say time, because later on, as we look at what questions students often ask in our.

Yeah. So you can see he's added the, the line there to say, you know, you go from understanding to speaking to reading to writing. Okay. So that's where Dreaming Spanish again diverges. They don't tell you that you should be starting with speaking and then at some point go to reading. Like they're very clear about the, the input side of things, the understanding, but then they're just like, when you hit 1,000 hours, you just start speaking, reading. Now, they say you can start earlier and stuff, you know, depending on if you speak already a similar language, but essentially they, they don't point out that there's a difference here according to ALG. So, Dreaming Spanish, like my Dreaming Spanish reviews, it's hard because they don't quite follow the ALG model, and that's like, I'm trying to test both.

>> program. How long does it take? How much understanding do I need? And we'll come back to that in a moment. The other, uh, aspect here are, um, uh, abilities, if you will. The ability of a student.

You can edit that out, I'm sure.

I guess what he's trying to say here is that as your time increases with understanding, your ability with understanding increases.

>> The ability of the student is an important thing, but what must the student be able to do in a traditional program where we're learning words from from letters. We start with letters or alphabet, we go to words and then phrases. Student ability is very important. One of my own personal experiences, um, is is I was not a very good language student. In fact, in all of my English classes, which were my first language classes, um, I could easily say it's my worst subject. Later on in school, I came into, um, uh, Spanish, Spanish classes, and even in my life, I was surrounded by many Spanish-speaking friends. The Spanish classes were worse than English. Later on in school, I came into.

Oh, by the way, I just swapped to the second video in that series now. So, we'll just jump ahead a little bit because they, for some reason, they don't clip it perfectly.

>> Uh, in college, I actually began to study some ancient Greek. If a modern language, a used language isn't bad enough, going into an ancient language is 10 times worse. It's not even used anywhere. And the, the amount of memorization, uh, and the amount of work and effort that goes into all of those classes, whether it's English, Spanish, Greek in my case. I think that I think that the T or the abilities that were required in those classes and the abilities we find necessary in a, in a natural language acquisition class, completely different abilities.

He's not pointing out something here, okay? When you're learning a language at school, at least for me, when I was learning Japanese at school, we had one class a week that was one hour a week, okay? Like you're not going to learn a language like 50, like it's not even 52 hours a year, but like, you know, 45 hours a year. You can't do a comparison to their method which requires hours of work per day. Um, in fact, for them, they found the, the happy point to be around six hours.

>> So what abilities does a student need in order to develop natural language, whether it's Thai or English or what have you? Uh, the first ability for the student is is very simple, and the amazing thing about these abilities is we all have them. The first ability will be to look. If we analyze what is it that the baby does in acquiring their native language? It's very simple. They look at everything. They're looking around and looking and just soaking in everything they see. All right? It's a very simple ability. You have that ability, there's hope for you to gain a second language naturally. The second thing they do is they listen.

Okay. Now, if we compare to my current journey with Dreaming Spanish at 850 plus hours, what have I done? Obviously, a lot of looking. I'm watching the content and I'm listening.

>> It's amazing to me that we expect good pronunciation without listening to the native language speaker. Well.

I don't think anyone expects that. Like, for example, when I learned Chinese, I knew I could not pronounce certain sounds, and I would listen to a native speaker, in this case being my wife, and I would get her to say the sound. I would repeat it back, and she would tell me literally where I was getting it wrong. Okay, so again, getting to the, like the objective is the same, just the path that I took to get there was different, and that's how I can pronounce the sounds of Chinese now.

>> Listening only a little bit. The whole pattern of the language is found in being exposed to experiences where that language is. If you're not exposed to a language like Chinese, how will you ever be able to speak a language like Chinese? In our, in our understanding, you must have input, looking and listening, building understanding in order to speak well. The third ability is very simple as well, but very important. The student must guess.

Now, I want to pause here because often in my videos, people will say, "Oh, it looks like Evil D is just guessing the meaning." Well, guys, that's actually part of the ALG method. It's a fundamental, like pillar of the method. Okay? So, often when people are like, "Oh, he, he's only, he's just guessing the meaning, you know, based on his other languages or whatnot." And it's like, "Yeah, okay. I get what you're saying. Uh, that's helping me a lot." But other times, I'll say, "Oh, he's just using, you know, like the images to try and figure it out and guess." And that's actually how the method works. It's a guess method. That's what your brain is doing. It's just guessing constantly based on context.

The ability to guess is something lost on many adults. In our education today, modern education forces us to have the exact correct answer in order to be right. Of course, everyone knows being right is vital if you're going to learn anything. Uh, in fact, all modern research is seeming to point to the idea that we take in in our brains way too much, and we have to shed out the stuff that turns out to not be right. Take in everything. And if that basis, uh, of learning is true, that that is actually how we learn. Language is developed by taking in everything, guessing about what's right, and shedding off or forgetting the rest. Letting the rest die off as we make guesses that are closer and closer and closer and closer to the right one. We wind up with what's right, and all the other links that go with it, uh, in a natural fashion. This is what we.

Now, I'm going to say, so far, based on the 860 plus hours I've done as of recording this video, the way he's talking about the experience of an ALG learner is exactly how I've experienced it so far.

>> You see happening in the ALG problem. Looking doesn't sound like much work. Where does IQ fit in? In fact, we don't think it does. Babies of all IQs, unless they're seriously handicapped, learn to speak their native language. Young children learn to speak a second language naturally, efficiently, fluently. Why can't an adult? Our belief is the adult has gained some things that the child doesn't have.

I would say it's just that for a child, at the end of the day, learning a language is critical. It's the most important thing in the world to that child because without a language, it is unable to communicate its wants, desires, needs. It's like everything else is dependent upon that. Like, let's say we pick up someone out of out of America and we drop them directly in middle, middle kingdom China, okay? You know, like just straight in there, back in time, okay? So there's no way English is of any value to them. They will find a way, probably in record time, to speak that local language because it's going to be critical to their survival, which leads back to stress, by the way, guys.

>> So the fourth ability is the ability to put the adult, uh, the adult, um, what word should we use, the adult abilities to rest. We want to take the adult ability to translate and set it aside. We don't want to use it. We want to take the adult ability to analyze, what does this word mean? How does it connect with everything else consciously? We want to make those conscious connections in the ALG program. We want the student to be the receiver. Sort of like going out and standing in the rain, letting the rain wash over you without worrying about what is this drop and where is it hitting me and what does it mean when it hits. Just let the water wash over.

And that's why, for example, you'll see in the video where I do the Spanish test, I'll say, I've heard this word so many times, I have no idea what it means. Like, I was literally asked in the Spanish test as part of it, and people would be like, "How? How can you not just know?" I'm like, "That's literally how the method works. You're just meant to sit there and let the language wash over you."

>> You're exposed in an experience upon experience upon experience upon experience. Let the experience and all that it has sight and smell and sound and the sense, the emotion. Let all of that just wash over you. In this way, the student guesses, he looks, he listens. He guesses. And in this way, he gains everything that can be gained from that experience. As you gain an experience upon experience upon experience, you develop a basis of understanding. Along with that, the culture. Along with that, the language. It's very, very simple. Language is so complicated. If we set out to learn the language and it's all its bits and pieces, learn a lifetime. You never know everything. In the AG program, does a student learn everything? No. By fluency, what do we mean? Does it mean knows every word in the whole, uh, vocabulary of a language? Of course not. But when we say fluent, we mean 100% Thai, if it's a Thai language. If we say fluent, we mean 100% Chinese, 100%, uh, Japanese, 100% German, 100% English. What does that mean? I was born and raised in the United States of America. I'm 100% fluent in our sense of the word in English. I was born and raised in an English environment. And my pronunciation, my vocabulary use, is it perfect? Is my grammar perfect? No. Do I think about it? No.

So, you can see here, basically, the objective of ALG is to bring you up to native level speaker. That's why when people talk about ALG and some people say, "Oh, it's not about reaching native level." It is. It's about basically replicating what a child goes through to become the equivalent of a native. Everything's building up to this.

>> Only if I get in front of a camera or making a speech to a large group of people do I even begin to think about the mistakes I'm making. When we think about language proficiency, if a person has the ability to speak and be understood, uh, communicate like the native speaker, it's a pretty good goal. How accurately, it depends on the person. But I know that many people, uh, in, in a place like America, many different places, all the different places, all the different people express themselves differently. Who's right? What's the standard? When we say 100% fluent, we're not trying to create a standard of fluency that says you have to be able to do this.

Yeah. So, basically, you're just saying that you can just use the language fluently without thinking about it, just as a native would, whether they learn, you know, the non-standard version of the language or whatnot.

>> What we are.

I got no problems with any of that, by the way. You know, like their objective.

>> saying is that if you can express yourself naturally, natively, like a Thai, or like a Chinese, or like an English person, or like a native, uh, Spanish. That's a good goal to have. Most language programs will compare the student with the other student. With ALG, we want to compare you with the native language speaker. That's an interesting how. I'm just, h, just the, the.

Okay, the reason I'm like, I do remember hearing this before, but the reason why I'm just like, it sets such a high bar. Such a high bar. What that means is that when you are compared from the start to the finish, the goal is 100%. How close are you to that? If you start out doing what the child does, going through understanding, guessing, looking, listening at all what's going on around you, given that right basis here, can you develop speaking the right kind of output that says that person is a native speaker in that language? Yes, you can. So they're basically saying that if you follow this path, you can reach the output of a native speaker. Again, the promise is you'll be like a native. What about accent? What about pronunciation? What about grammar? What about the, the, just the fluency? What about thinking in the language? All of those things we find are much higher with ALG than they, uh, were in previous programs that we developed here at AUA. Impact. And so our, our whole comparison, even in Thai programs and Thai methods of of teaching Thai that we used initially, um, in other methods, structured methods where we practiced and practiced and practiced, what we do with ALG, um, in Thai, in Japanese, in English, in Chinese, goes far beyond what we were able to accomplish before. Having said that, understanding the job of the student is much different now. What does the student do? What does the class look like? Basically, we want to create interaction between the student and the teacher. What?

Okay. So you hear that interaction between student and teacher. We'll dig into that.

>> The teacher, the teacher is a Thai person, or an English person, or a Spanish person, native speaker in the target language. So you're here to learn Chinese. We provide a Chinese environment. Subject matter ranges anywhere from from, uh, uh, holidays to bad experiences to great experiences to anything in between. Sometimes it's activities done together. We want to replicate life and in enough experiences so that you develop understanding. We want.

Okay. So the, the reason I wanted to, uh, just, well, pause it technically at this point is because again, this is in a classroom environment. Everyone, nearly everyone universally who's doing AG is not doing it in a classroom environment. So if anyone does come to me and says, "Evil D, you're doing it wrong." Well, then pretty much everyone's doing it wrong. Actually, from memory, the school doesn't even exist to teach. Well, the school exists, but it doesn't teach like this anymore. So, you can't really use that as something to say that I'm doing it wrong. I'm doing it to the best of my ability. And if that means I'll never reach, you know, full native level because I don't have the interaction with the teachers, well, then that's the best I can do. Now, that's where we get into cross-talk. And he'll talk about cross-talk a little bit more later, but I do want to point out that I have actually been doing quite a bit of cross-talk. So, I've got this series which is for members only at the moment. And this doesn't include every single cross-talk session I've ever done, but I've got hours and hours of cross-talk. Like, I, I think over 10 hours of cross-talk so far, okay? Which is probably a lot more than most people, and definitely will be a lot more than most people by the time I hit 1,000 hours because it's going to become a major part of what I do moving forward with many, many creators.

>> Want to replicate life and in enough experiences so that you develop understanding. How long does it take to begin to speak? Students have many questions.

Okay, so this is the part that I find to be that I want to really stress about how long does it take to speak because we'll see what he says.

>> One of perhaps the most often asked question is, how long does it take to begin to speak? If we say that a one-year-old develops through to two years old and at 22 months begins to speak. This would be the average around the world in a native language. 22 months is the average. So at 22 months, you know, 1.8 years or something, okay, doesn't matter the language, a child starts speaking.

Interesting because the Dreaming Spanish roadmap gives you different time frames for when you should start speaking dependent on if you speak a related language. Now, if we're actually learning like a child, that should not happen. No matter our background, all speak the language or start speaking the language at the same time, right?

>> Some people begin to speak earlier, yes. Later. Sure. In the end, are they all fluent? Equally. In fact, it's often seen that those who speak later often have, uh, deeper thought processes.

So, here this leads into a point I often see discussed where people are like, "Oh, I'm not quite ready to speak." And the, the general response will be, "Well, that's fine. Don't speak yet. Just hold off." And that's why you'll have people holding off to 2,000, 2,000 plus hours no speaking because they're waiting for that moment at which they feel they are ready to speak. And he'll get into that in a second. But I, I do want to stress that point where here he's talking about the fact that no matter the language, a child, children in general start all speaking during this period of time. Yet with ALG, why are we for English speakers double the time for Chinese? Is like is the given as opposed to Spanish? That there's something going on there, right? They're.

>> doing a lot more thinking. That's not a problem. It's just the fact that some people speak early, some people speak late, but in, in a native language environment, they all become fluent. The student comes in is worried, how soon will I begin to speak? When will output happen? If we define speaking as the ability to form a unique sentence, that would be about 22 months.

So, at 1.8 years, where am I at? If you have a look at my Dreaming Spanish series, okay, so I made my first video a year ago. Okay, I believe it's, uh, what was the actual date on this video? So February, uh, last year, we're past February. So I'm like a year and a month or so. Okay. I am not at 1.8 years. Yeah. Okay. But it, he doesn't talk about hours. So I prefer hours as a discussion. But from memory, in the classroom, they do six hours. Like that was kind of what they did.

>> If we look in terms of this picture, that's about ground level. All right. Before that, a few words, simple phrases. Sure.

So he says before this, you will start saying a few words and a simple, and simple phrases. Now, you guys have probably laughed at my few words and simple phrases in my actual Dreaming Spanish series, but again, in my cross-talk one in here, I actually have started saying some simple Spanish phrases and words. Okay. So I'll, I'll say things like, "no," or I'll say, um, "maspalas," something like that, or, um, "chistas," or something, you know, I'm not even saying them correctly, but like, I have the desire to say some things, but not, not too much. Now, the reason I'm stressing this is because they don't actually say that there's a point where you just start speaking, like that's the speaking date. You're meant to actually go through a phase where it's like English, English, and then a little bit of Spanish, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and then mainly Spanish, and then fully Spanish. Like that's the assumption here is like you kind of go through this conversion period into the, into your target language. Okay? Where again, this is where Dreaming Spanish diverges, and they basically say, "Okay, 1,000 hours, you just, you got to start speaking." And people kind of take that as a hard cut-off. And this is the problem for me. I now need to make a choice. At 1,000 hours, do I just force myself to start speaking with, you know, speaking partners? And if I do that, well, then the claim can be, well, he didn't let it naturally occur. It didn't like naturally come out of him. He's actively partaking in essentially lessons. Maybe like I'll be with a teacher like Spanish Boost Gaming, and I'll be like, "Hey, um, I don't know how to say this. Can you just say it?" Oh, okay. So it's this. And then I'll say that's essentially a form of shadowing. That's not me naturally just being like, you know, "maspalos," you know what I mean? It's not like just it's naturally coming out. However, if I then go, well, I'm not ready, and I just wait and I wait and I wait and I get the 2,000 hours and I'm still just not ready to let it come out, then I can be accused of, well, you should have started ages ago. That's what Dreaming Spanish says, you know, like, why did you wait so long? Because I do want to test ALG, but the ALG method is just let it naturally come out. And I get the feeling in a thousand hours, I might have some more stuff naturally coming out, but it's not going to be ready to just start speaking. But at ground level, you compared with a 22-month-year-old child. In our program, at this time, that's at about 700 to 800 hours. Okay. So, at 700 to 800 hours, you should start to speak. What am I at? I'm at 860 hours. Yes, I've started saying simple words and phrases here and there.

>> You say, "Wow, 700, 800 hours. That's a long time to develop."

By the way, I want to stress that I am literally on point for ALG. My progression up until this point has exactly matched what they've said. Now, the reason I want to state that is because I do get comments from some people who will say, "How the [ __ ] are you so bad, bro? Like, I'm doing AOG and I'm way ahead of you. I'm like, [ __ ] I'm at only 400 hours and I'm already like, [ __ ] B2 level speaking." I'm like, "Come on, bro. Like, you've obviously done more. Why are you pretending?" Okay? Like, I'm following ALG, the method. Okay? And according to literally the godfather of the method, well, he's not the godfather. Who's more like the, um, anointed son. This is where I should be at, and that's where I'm at.

>> Of understanding, perhaps if a student's studying six hours a day, five.

Okay, so there you go. Six hours a day of weeks, 30, uh, 25, 26, 30 hours a week, something like that. In a year's time, you'll pass that mark. But let's say counting holidays, you, you get to this point in a year. The understanding has now risen to a.

So, I'm even within the similar time frame, within one year, I reached just over a year, year and a month, I reach 850 hours, and he's saying, you know, if you study this amount of time, accounting for holidays and stuff, because remember this was a school program, you will within a year reach this. Like, I'm literally doing exactly them. Now, obviously they're doing Thai and I'm doing Spanish, and Thai's a lot more difficult of a language, okay? But again, if we're basing this off of what children do, and children all start speaking at the same time, it shouldn't really matter, right?

>> Level at this, at this ground level, understanding of the language, what you're hearing in a native environment should be between 60 to 70%.

So, in a native environment, you should be understanding 60 to 70%. I'm understanding 60 to 70% of a dub TV show. In fact, I would say I probably am understanding a bit more. When it comes to gaming, I'm definitely understanding more. Like, I can listen to fast-speaking Spanish, like mainland Spanish, um, gamers, and I understand at least 60 to 70%. So, it's like I'm in line with that as well.

>> That means when you're out and about and you're hearing, let's say you're in China, you're learning Chinese, you're gaining, guessing, looking, and listening at Chinese, your understanding for one year to about 700, 800 hours, your understanding of Chinese with your eyes closed going to be 60 to 70%. And you'll start to speak.

I have a question for the Mandarin ALG learners, cuz I know some of them follow me. At 700, 800 hours, were you understanding 60 to 70% of spoken Chinese from natives? Not CI content, from natives that I am very curious about.

>> We think about this percentage of understanding as a volume. At that point, 60 to 70%, it's like they're little holes throughout on the side of the cup, and things start to come out at that point.

Okay, I would say this, like, I'm pretty much in line with it. Maybe I'm a little bit ahead because I'm at like 860 hours. Okay, like things have only really started coming out maybe in the last 50 hours, like the, the random little bits and pieces here and there. But then again, I'm not in a classroom environment. So I don't have a teacher who's like catering the content to me, my, my specific level. So that you would assume that there's some inefficiency in the fact that I don't have a teacher that's essentially, you know, constantly adjusting for me.

>> As it builds and builds and builds, the real flow and ability to communicate comes. Whenever we see students doing what children do, it follows this pattern. Whenever students combine, uh, pardon me, speaking or reading and writing early on, the pattern is different. Okay, we're talking about natural language development. Can we speed up the speaking process?

So, for those who don't know, this is why I have not done any reading. It's why obviously I haven't done any writing, and I haven't done any speaking. I am following this roadmap.

>> process. Sure. By attaching guessing about a word and saying that word sounds like this and making links and the mental things that we do as adults. Sure, we can build up speaking ability quick, but the end result is never as good.

So, essentially he's saying, listen to that exactly again. This is important. This is why you can't do word lookups. Okay? Why ALG is against word lookups.

>> Guessing about a word and saying that word sounds like this and making links and the mental things that we do as adults. Sure, we can build up speaking ability quick, but the end result is never as good.

So, he's essentially saying if you link a word with an understanding of that word in your native language, so, you know, a translation, yes, it will be faster, but it will never be as good. Okay? Like, that's their assertion. I'm just, I'm just stressing this. And this is why, uh, AOG is like, don't do word lookups. Don't do word lookups because you will associate with the English meaning. Okay? If we think about two things here, let's, we'll come back to this in a moment. I want to think about something with you for a moment. If we think about building, let's, let's imagine that we're native English speakers. So, our, our native language here is going to be English. And we want to learn a language like the Thai language. There are two ways to do that. We can build a new house where we have speaking, reading, and writing. Building understanding of experiences down here until we can speak. This is the output, and then we have input and more output and so on. We can build a new Thai house, new culture, new customs. Or we can link all these Thai words to the house we already have.

Okay, this is where I don't think this is true. Okay. So he's saying there's two ways to do this. You can either start from scratch and build up Thai, and the assumption is by just understanding and then, you know, doing the ALG method, that you will develop this language completely independently in your brain. Or you could do a more traditional approach where you know, you do translations or associations, whatever it is, okay? And you're just going to piggyback off of your native language, you know, make connections like, what is the word for, I don't know, apple and Thai, and then what is it in English? Okay, now I know the translation, as opposed to seeing someone talk about apples in the language and then hearing that word and then associating with that specific, you know, image. This is where I think that I don't agree. Like, this is not possible as adults because as an adult, you have English or whatever your native language already in your brain. The, the child doesn't. They don't have a conceptual map of the world. They don't have all those associations, and the human brain is a pattern-matching machine. Okay? So even if you try to try to avoid 100%, like you see them talking about apples, you see the green shape of it, the red ones, and you hear the word over and over and over, eventually you're going to associate it with that image. But at the same time, your brain's going to go, that's just an apple. And it's going to associate with English. Like, there's, there's no way of getting around that. Now, you may notice with time watching lots and lots of Thai content that what they call an apple is actually slightly different to what they call an apple in English. Like I'm just making an assumption, okay? And then you'll be like, "Oh, okay. So like the, the meaning is more expanded in Thai, but essentially your brain is still going to go, that's an apple, bro. Like you can't get away from the fact that it's associated. This is where I fundamentally disagree with ALG's, uh, assertion that you, you're building something separate. I don't think you are. Now, I'm not a linguist. I, I can't say if there's been any studies on this, but like, just based on my own experiences, even with ALG up until this point, the more something cements in my brain via ALG, the more I can just easily translate that if I want. Like, for example, the, the balas before, you know, bullets. Like I know that's bullets. I didn't translate that word, but I know it's bullets. I've seen it, and therefore my brain's associated it. Like you can't, you know, help it, bro.

>> ALG is, to my knowledge, the only program that actually seeks to build a new house altogether.

It may seek to do it, but I don't think it actually does.

>> Let me give you an example from Thai that I find interesting. When I say the word in Thai, moo, and I say the word that translates from moo into English is pig, there are two completely different feelings that.

Come with that word.

And here's here's an example. Okay, so he's using pig. So that's the same in Chinese. Okay. Um, jewel, the meaning for pig can be used different to the meaning for pig in English. Yes, obviously associated with the animal, but there are other meanings that it can be. And I learned it via traditional sense. So you can expand your understanding of the word once you've learned the word.

In Thailand, I find many people who have the nickname moo. For example, my wife sometimes would just say juju, which is like a cute way of saying pig. Okay? You'd never say, "Hey, piggy pig," you know, to your child in English. Okay? But in Chinese, it actually feels cute. But I never learned it via AG. I just learned it via translation and found out later on. I just saw people calling their little kids, you know, and I was like, "Oh, that's so cute." Like, like they thought it was cute and therefore I thought it was cute.

Oh, what a cute name. Usually they're a bit rotunded or fat around people. It's exactly the same as Chinese. Uh, what's your name? Moo. Ah, nice to know you, Moo.

When we think about that word in English, pig. I've never met anyone in an English country or English-speaking country that, "What's your name? Pig." No, why not? Pig is a is a word that we might use in an English context as a put down. I might I might be angry with you and you, you're a pig is a is a quite rude, coarse kind of a of a of a again.

So this is a point where I disagree with them because the assumption that's being made right now is that once you associate it with English, you are unable to expand the semantic bounds of that word. You're just like, it's locked into whatever its English definition. No, the English definition gives you a hook, a mental image to hook it with something. But once you've hooked it, you can then expand it like over time. It's even what happens in our native language. Like when you learn something, okay, a new concept, you'll be like, "Okay, so it's basically like this." And they'll be like, "Yeah, yeah, it's like that." And then you've kind of got a mental hook, but then you realize it's used in more context as opposed to, you know, that other thing. In fact, when you're learning, one of the best ways to learn is to associate with something you already know in order to create that mental hook and then expand upon it.

Of a word to use towards a person. Why in Thailand can we use it as a nickname and it's cute? Because the underlying social values, the underlying culture coming up to the word pig or moo are completely different. Now, if I learn the word moo means pig like most language programs would would encourage us to do. What is moo pig? What am I doing? I'm actually linking a Thai word like moo. I would we'll do it in an English writing for or Arabic writing here in moo means pig. I'm linking it to the English word of pig. And you know the crazy thing is like you've already done this bro. You've linked it to pig. You've done it. You've done it right now. If you had not actually linked the concepts in your mind together like moo or however you say it to pig, then you would not see this connection. You would not be able to draw this connection. But your brain is smart enough to go, oh, so that thing that's got like a little [ __ ] tail and it's all ears and it goes oink is the same thing as the the one in English pig. Okay. So, it's just pig. Like, you've already done that linking. That's what I I don't get with this. Okay. Like, you're talking as if you can't link it when you've already you've done it. You've shown us. You've proven that. You've linked it. Like, in my mind, something that is unlinkable is a word that's not translatable. Like, at least not in a single word. For example, in Esbranto means to crocodile in English. What the [ __ ] that in English? Okay. It's very cultural specific to Espiranto. It literally means to speak another language when Espiranto was more appropriate to the situation at hand. There's no one word in English for that. Okay? So, you can't link that. You can kind of translate the entire meaning and the feeling of it because it's very cultural specific. But for something like, you know, portico pig and then just English pig like you your brain's going to link it.

Once I make that link, what have I done? I have associated this with my culture, my language, my writing, English pronunciation. That's where that's where um.

Okay. So now what he's talking about is association with my writing and pronunciation. So this implies that you have not learned the pronunciation of the language. This is why I always talk about at the beginning you should spend a little bit of time learning the actual phonetics of the language so you don't do this mistake. Uh, pronunciation problems come from accent problems come from I've associated the word moo to English writing. I've associated the meaning to an English word and by doing that I've taken all of my English culture and put it into this Thai word. So when I say moo, what I'm really saying is pig in a new way. Is that.

Thai? No. Well, I can speak Thai. Not really. I have another way to say pig, but it isn't the meaning that Thai have when they say moo. Not only that, I'm blocked from their meaning because I already associate it with my meaning. So my mind is already.

So this assumes that languages are actually separate in our brain. Like you have an English brain and then a Thai brain. But you don't. Okay. What actually happens is that you've just got concepts like all these concepts in your brain and it's all overlapping. And in fact, if you want to see evidence of this, look at the like as someone from India, okay? Where they'll be speaking, let's say Hindi, they'll be talking talking and they'll just be constantly injecting English in maybe entire sentences, single words. Like anyone who does this, I forgot the term for it, okay? There's there's it's code switching. I actually do this quite a bit, you know, English and Chinese. Like I'll just code switch. I'll just randomly throw things out in Chinese and then randomly in English. My brain literally just chooses the path of least resistance. So if the languages were separate, that wouldn't happen. Okay? But because your brain doesn't separate languages. And this is why it can be quite difficult when you're learning two very similar languages, okay? Because it doesn't separate them. The base assumptions here are just fundamentally wrong. Like I'm not a linguist, but like this is so obvious to me.

On my understanding of pig, I don't even have any idea of what they mean. I might have a small idea they're referring in some way to this animal, but I don't understand why people would allow themselves to have a nickname of moo. It makes no sense. And yet you would learn that via context, living in the environment. So basically you've just taken the long route to pick up this word when you could have picked it up a little bit faster and then also used it in context and figured out that it has more and more meanings.

The same thing is true with many words. When we associate across, and I purposely choose a simple, uh, uh, a simple basic noun. Why? Because if it's true with nouns, how much more true is it with things like feelings and emotions and more complex ideas? We have a different culture here. We have a different way of expressing oneself. And if we start by trying to take the words, build it onto our language. What we wind up with here is a new way to say our own language or a new way to speak our own language, say our own words. Is that what learning a new language is all about? At AG, we don't think so. And so we don't.

Yes. So they don't think so. So that's where obviously I fundamentally disagree with them. Like the end goal for every language learner is the same, to be able to speak a language. Okay? How you get there doesn't really matter. They believe it's two fundamentally two totally different languages in your brain in every single way. But I don't.

Strive to build a new way to say what we already what we already can hear. We want a new way to say something new to us. That's why we start with this understanding. That's why we start with ours down here. As a student develops, then we're developing a new house, as you as it were. The last thing that the student here learns is how to translate across, this word means that word. That's one of the last things our students are able to do.

I disagree with that. I have already proven the fact that that's not true. Like literally from video 50, you know, my 50 hours because as soon as I understand something, I can translate it. If you are able to recognize the meaning of a word, you are therefore able to translate it. Because if you understand its core meaning, you are able to figure out what it would mean in your language unless it is such a culturally specific term. And even then, a very culturally specific term like kocadilli, which I gave you in Espiranto, okay? Like I never looked up the meaning to that word, but I know how it's used, so I can just explain it my native language.

The last thing that the student here learns is how to translate across, this word means that word. That's one of the last things our students are able to do. Coming back to time.

I either I've completely [ __ ] up the method like and like we're already over and we're done or this is just wrong. This is not true and I don't see how it could be true.

Then how long does it take?

How long does it take? So, so far you've probably seen based on these videos that I agree that this is what's happened to me at each step of the way. you know, I've done the look, the list, and the guess. Um, I've reached the same amount of hours in about the same year at the same comprehension. Like, I agree. Like, that's all happened. But the foundation on which this idea is built is kind of wrong in a lot of ways. Like, even if I did not know their beliefs originally and you told me like, "Oh, just go listen to a language over time." I would probably tell you that my outcome would be what it is now because like I'd be like, well, if you just listen to a lot a lot of content, eventually you're going to understand it. um because of all the contextual clues and so that's literally what CI is okay but if you never look at never look up and never study the grammar of course you're not going to understand it like just seems logical to me.

Overall our whole program lasts for 2 years. If you have a background of a similar culture or linguistic similarities between your native language and say language like Thai, then that time is lessened. So if you have a similar linguistic background and cultural, then that time is lessened. But that's not true with the babies. Is that because you're just piggybacking off of your understanding of the language and culture from your native language? Something we shouldn't be doing? Like I could understand let's say uh specific sounds. If you have the sounds, then obviously you don't need to learn those sounds. But again, this is you're using your native language in one way or another.

If you let's let's imagine that you want to learn uh Chinese and you are coming from uh perhaps a uh Korean background. There are some similarities between Korean or let's let's say Japanese might be even more clear. You're coming from a Japanese background and you want to learn Chinese. Sure. You're going to go faster than someone like an American learning Chinese.

Okay. If we're basing this on learn like the sounds you need to know from Japanese to Chinese, I actually don't think so. Like I'm pretty sure the sound like the sounds of Chinese and Japanese are quite different. So that that's not true. If we're going to base it on culture, okay, there is definitely a crossover in culture, but that comes mainly to written. Like obviously Japanese takes a lot of words from Chinese. Like sounds wise, you would get a kind of a boost there. But like since writing and reading is like at the back end, um, that shouldn't matter when it comes to comprehension and especially when it comes to culture in the sense of you know, how they see the world. Like there's a lot of leap of faiths going on here, a lot of leap of faiths and it's not really taking into account that whole baby thing he said at the beginning. I keep going back to that because if it's true and I'm assuming it's true that every baby, you know, picks up a language no matter what the language at the same amount of time, it should be true for also a language via ALG if actually using this method and it's completely independent from your native language.

In Thai, if you're coming from the Philippines, not many not many linguistic characteristics that are similar between Thai and Filipino dialects. However, the culture similarities are big and so the Filipino.

So, if the cultural similarities are big, that means you are like if we like how do we not see the contradiction here? Cultural similarities, which means you're piggybacking off those cultural similarities when learning the language, right? Am I going crazy?

Progresses quite rapidly in learning Thai in a way that someone from America does not or someone from Japan does not. So, a native language, but.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, guys. But like to me, there is a lot of contradictions going on here. Let's just imagine that we're learning Thai again and this is an American or someone from an English-speaking background, a native English speaker coming to learn Thai. Takes two years. How fluent to become? You do what the child does. We've had students with an Asian face actually pass themselves off as native Thais. The person speaking to them had no idea. It's not over the telephone, face to face, across the table for long discussions. No, that person was Thai. I'm sure that there.

Yeah, but okay. So, this we're just getting into, you know, like student reviews almost. Um, some of the best [ __ ] speakers of other languages I've ever seen, like they pretty much learn traditional methods. So, like, you can say the same for, you know, any method. Like, there's there's someone out there who's [ __ ] amazing. Like, it's just someone who's put in the work. So, you can't just be like, "Yeah, this only happens with ALG." I'm not sure if he's implying that, but like he's using that as a a thing to say like this this is it works. like the everyone's surprised at how good for.

A student of ours 3 years, four years, 5 years. They spent two years with us and two more years living in Thailand. Thai people thought they were Thai. Good. So two years with you, 6 hours a day during normal school hours, okay, assuming a thousand hours. So that's 2,000 hours. You know, well, he said six, what was it? 7, 800 hours, you know, okay, let's say 1,800 hours worth of study and then spend two years in country and now they sound amazing. Well, yeah. If you spend that amount of time with a language, you're going to probably be [ __ ] pretty good. Like, if you seriously spend that time with a language.

In my way of thinking, that's pretty remarkable. Not a bad goal. Not a long time. Is it long for a for a child? One thing that's always interested me is people look at our program, say, "Two years, that's a long time." I've compared our our students with other long-term programs. And what I've noticed is this. If we gauge progress based on speaking, our program is very slow. Takes a long time. But if we gauge our progress on the end result, here's what I found time and again.

Okay, so this part I cannot talk about like I cannot give you a definitive answer based on my own experiences. We're going to watch it and then I'm going to give you my thoughts, but obviously this is not a this is what's I've experienced.

We'll say this is 2,000 hours and over here we have fluency. So our students will begin speaking at about 60 to 70%.

60 to 70%, which before was like 700, 800 hours.

And they'll.

Which is sorry, which is what I've done so far.

On a curve, something like that. And the more they do exactly what the child does, the.

So basically, let me just map this out. So, at around 80% understandability, okay, which you're going to hit around 1,000ish hours, like if you just look at that line, although you said before, you know, 800 hours, it doesn't really matter. We're just talking hundreds of hours here. Um, so around that point, you're going to let me let me just wait. Maybe I've got this backwards. Okay, let me let me hear him say it.

They get it's not uncommon to see students between 90 and 100% fluency.

So spoken fluency is it you this line is so high for a thousand hours. I must be misunderstanding. I must be misunderstanding.

100% is one in a long time because it's very difficult it seems for people to believe that all it takes is understanding. So basically fluency around 2,000 hours. And I think the Spanish uh dreaming Spanish road map at what level seven, this is 1,500 hours. You can understand any general uh content effortlessly, include newspapers, novels, etc. You speak fluently and effortlessly without thinking about the language. While native speakers might still detect a slight accent, your clarity and fluidity make your speech easy to understand. So he's saying 2,000 hours. um, during Spanish is saying 1,500 hours because obviously their assumption in Spanish is easy for an English speaker. So you you can kind of see what they're they're implying there.

At first that can be hard, but once a student adapts and adjusts to just guessing, listening, looking, they settle in, they progress just about like that. We have other students more commonly our students progress something like uh like this and they wind up with maybe 80% or 85% something like like that. So 85% to 2,000 hours. Oh god, I hope I'm a bit I hope I'm in the upper quadrant.

What I've noticed from other programs is they start speaking rapidly, but the progression is something like this. Sure, they start speaking early, whereas this student started speaking here. This student may have started here. Students who start out like that rarely reach over 50%.

I'm not sure if he means 50% as in your speaking ability or your comprehension like I'm I'm a little bit confused about this, but the point basically the overall assumption is you follow our method. If you're in the upper echelon, you're going to be doing great at 2,000 hours. Uh, otherwise, you're probably going to be like at 2,000 hours and everyone else sucks at 2,000 hours.

Why not? Once we form connections like with pig, it's very difficult to undo.

This. This I feel like this premise is completely flawed. Here's the thing. Okay, so the outcome may actually be true. Assuming you do 2,000 hours of input, you slowly start speaking over time. You put it like you do all of this and it does follow in it happens as per what they say here. Okay. What I feel like actually happened here is they've found that if they do this, you know, they follow this kind of road map that their students do turn out pretty good around 2,000 hours. Okay. And then what they've done is they've gone back in retrospect and made up reasons for why they're good at this amount of time. So like they've built a foundation based on their beliefs that doesn't actually reflect what's going on in the brain. That is my belief. Now I'm not a linguist, but just based on logic and my own experiences up until this point and some of the things he said about them not translating until they're way past this point, which is complete [ __ ] And this association thing, like I can already say that that's not true. That's not how it works. Like just on my own experiences with Chinese, Espiranto and now with Spanish using their method. This is not how it works. Maybe this is true. Maybe I'll slowly go start speaking and I'll start speaking really well and then I I'll have a great accent, you know, because I spent so much time listening. Yeah. Like I believe the part about, you know, if you listen long enough, eventually you'll just be able to automatically say [ __ ] because you've listened so much. You've heard the word so much. I I believe that. But all this other stuff about, you know, this word association and translating, no. And the more of those connections you form, the more problem you have in the end. And it isn't just between two words and how they're defined, but we're talking about things like grammar. We're talking about things like uh pronunciation.

So, okay, hear that.

Fine. But we're talking about things.

He's not just talking about individual words. He's talking about grammar. So, this is why you cannot study grammar as AG or you will fall down. Uh, you will fail. You will not reach that 100% which is the the ultimate goal. Like grammar. We're talking about things like uh pronunciation. We're talking about things like definitions. And so when you combine all of that together, starting out looks like you're doing great by speaking early. But because your foundation of speaking is all in another language, the end result is disaster. This is where in a traditional program we have the word fossilization come in. I've spoken about fossilization on this channel many times before. Fossilization, I like to say, uh, happens only when you allow it to happen. It's basically when you go, I'm happy where I'm at. I'm going to stop trying to improve. That is fossilization. Fossilization is not something that is permanent. It's something that you can constantly improve upon.

We've noticed over and again that second language learners reach a point of fossilization. In ALG, we call that a ceiling. How is the ceiling set? So they're literally saying that if you do not follow ALG method, you will hit a point where you will never be able to get better. Like it's literally impossible. However, if you follow their method completely, don't think about the language, don't make these connections, don't do any form of translate, which I'm going to be honest, it's literally impossible. Okay? Make no association with your native language. Although somehow if you have a related language, that speeds up the process even though there's no associations. Then you will you'll end up like a native. Basically.

Doing the adult thing. You start out as an adult, you're going to be fossil fossilized. What do our students experience? We experience over long range of time in.

You know, here's the thing. Okay, I'm making a prediction for the future. Okay, a thousand hours I will be able to spit out a few more words, but overall I'm going to not be able to say [ __ ] jack [ __ ] Okay, at that point I'm going to have to make a decision with you as a community. Do I hold off and just keep listening, waiting until that point where [ __ ] just starts coming out more and more and more, which may potentially be at 2,000 hours, please by God I no, or do I actually engage in conversation speaking with say, you know, Martin from Spanish Boost Gaming and I when we're chatting, we'll play a game and I'll say, I had you say this, he'll say it and I'll be like, oh yeah, that's how, and then I'll just repeat after him and essentially I'll do real time shadowing with him and then like that will start with simple words, it will go into more complex phrases, but I will actually make very, very fast progress because obviously I do have this whole framework of the language that I built over the last thousand hours. And you know, at 1,500 hours, I'm assuming I'll actually be pretty good at a language. Like, I'm not going to be amazing. I'll probably be a B2 level speaker, okay? And you know, 2,000 hours, I'll probably be pretty damn good because like I'm not going to give up. I'm never going to stop. Eventually, we'll get there no matter what. That is my prediction because I believe if you follow this path, yeah, this is what's going to happen. I just don't believe that the reasoning they're talking about like this linking and this concept like all that stuff. I just don't believe that's the fundamentally what's driving uh you learning. I think it's just mass exposure leads to eventually you hearing something so much that you just remember it and then practice with speaking with someone. If you the more you practice with them, the more you're going to find yourself unintentionally shadowing them in some way or another. Now, I hope this prediction is not true. I literally hope that I come out like a [ __ ] native Argentinian speaker. That is my goal. I I want to be the best non-native Argentinian speaker out there. I want to be so goddamn good that I can mog Spanish Boost Gaming and make a better gaming channel than him and make everyone come to me because they're like, "He's not a true [ __ ] Argentinian. This guy, he's good."

Continual growth and development, just like in a native language. I think that too is a remarkable aspect of AOT. Students always want to know first and foremost, when will I start to speak? And we've talked about the length of time it takes, how uh a student probably wants to spend 700 hours, 800 hours of input before we expect actual language in terms of a sentence, a unique sentence to occur. Some people want to know that in our program, how is it possible to understand? In level one, I come in as a student. I don't.

I actually don't care about this part because I already know because I've already done it. But uh I really want him to get to the speaking part because that's coming up for me.

Any tie and you have Thai teachers teaching the class or creating activities or experiences for me. How am I going to know what's going on? And it's just simple. When a baby or child's born into the world, they don't know anything. How do they learn? Looking, listening, guessing about what's going on.

It's basically direct method without without the directness of it essentially. Because like direct method as a teaching style is I specifically focus on what I'm trying to teach you by giving you the patterns for your brain to figure out. However, with them it's just more around topics and just mass exposure.

I told I spoke for a moment about guessing. Why is guessing important? Here's what we think. One of the key differences between the adult and the child is the adult tries to look for specific, very accurate knowledge. The child never does. Probably can't. The knowledge that the go the adult looks for uh might come down the line of this. If I asked for the word uh uh trust, let's say I was going to define trust, um, or or let me let me change that scenario. Let's say I was going to ask about the word confidence. What does it mean? Someone might say, "Oh, confidence." That's like someone having trust in you. So I think, "Oh, trust and confidence. Are they the same?" Um, not really. We have two words. Well, how is it different? And the adult mind is thinking about this word and this word and this word and how they're different until they hone in exactly what does that word mean? And in a second language, we do that and it's clear to see we do that often. We don't want the adult to do that anymore. We want the adult to do what the child does. They make a rough guess and go on. Why? Because if you don't just guess and move on, you lose what's happening around you.

He didn't specify what he means by guess here. I find that's a little bit strange. What is guess? Do you mean like cuz you can't say they guess the meaning because that's literally the top thing. What he should have actually said here and based on my own experiences is that the context around the word that you don't know, the context around it allows you to kind of understand what the intended meaning was there. That's what they they kind of mean by guess. If you guess, you're going to have some form of precision no matter what. Because that's what a guess is. A guess is picking something. It's not like you can't guess something ambiguous. You know what I mean? Like if I say guess what is this? You're you're instantly going to look at this and make some type of precision, aren't you? You're going to go, "Okay, it's round. It's black. Um, it's got something written on the front of it. Okay, it's a round black thing that you shove on the front of something." And if you see it in enough enough context and you see it me shoving it on the front of my camera, you're gonna go, "Oh, it's a lid." It may be a very broad guess at first, but guess what's going to happen? That guess is going to get more and more precise with time. And for those who are like saying, "Yeah, yeah, but his intention is that like the it may have multiple meanings. Like for example, the one sound that represents this is just blur is the sound that represents this object in the fake language." Blur. But then you find out that blur can also mean this. Well, then your brain would just be like, "Okay, well, blah has two meanings in this language." You know, like, "Wow, whoopdedoo. It just means this thing and this thing." Okay. Um, so it could mean both lid and passport. Like you do that with a normal studying as well. Sometimes you'll be like, "Oh, okay. So there's multiple ways to say this one thing." Okay, cool. And then over time you'll find out that passports look culturally in a very specific way for Chinese.

Time your mind focuses on some word and starts to travel along this path of how is it different? What does it mean exactly? How at all? You're forgetting and not taking in what's going on anymore. The key is to take what's going on around you. And.

So maybe what he means by guess is that you just go, okay, it probably means this and then you don't think about it anymore, which is fine. That happens. You do. You just kind of go, I assume that's a cup. And then you just move on with your life. Like you don't try to like figure out. It's just Yeah, I'm assuming that's what he means.

Just make guesses all the time. In Thai, we have many words that sound the same. It's essentially the same as have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and scared the [ __ ] out of yourself cuz you thought you saw a face in the corner, but it wasn't actually a face. It was just like the lighting in the shadows, but your brain made a guess. That's what he means. Okay? Like your brain made an association out of what it's seeing. Now, sometimes I guess can be wrong. Like there wasn't actually a face there. And it's the same thing with ALG often. And people will point this out to me that I guess wrong.

I don't know about fruits. For example, I don't know what that fruit is.

If I said the difference uh to a non-Thai person, for example, the difference between ma and ma and ma, those are three completely different words. A.

Actually heard three different words in Chinese. Then.

Hears them immediately has three different images come up. The foreigner from an English perspective hears them and says something like that. Some people might say it's like that. None of those are correct because.

I would say the only foreigner who hears it like that is a foreigner who has not done enough input along with their studies because I didn't I didn't hear an like I didn't visualize an MA when he said that. I actually visualized a horse and I visualized mum like like you know those were the things that popped into my head.

M and my ma don't spell with an M and an A. They spelled in Thai completely differently. The sounds are different. The meanings are different. How does a Thai differentiate? Because every experience with ma is one kind of thing. Every experience with ma is something else. And every experience where ma is concerned ah is a different sort of experience. And those experiences don't sort themselves out naturally. Does that happen for the adults? Absolutely. It turns out that one of the things that's the main characteristic difference between the adult and the child. Adults don't like to guess. Let's face it. All of our education and all of.

Is this based on any science? Like how do we know a child is not narrowing down with precision something? I guess like if I was to take this to a logical extreme, obviously they don't speak another language, so this is their first language that they're learning, but we don't know what's going on in the brain of a young child. We don't know if he's going, okay, mom keeps holding this thing and it's kind of like this thing over here. I feel like this is an assumption.

Our background in in learning and testing and being tested teaches us not to make rough guesses. We want exact knowledge here. But what we're learning about learning and how the brain adapts to things is our brains are naturally disposed to make rough guesses and through more.

Okay. So, are we at the end yet? What are we up to? We're up to part four. You know what? I will stop at part four and then we can do part five and six if there's a demand for it because I don't want to have like a [ __ ] hour and a half long video. Okay? Cuz I have no idea how long this is going to turn out. I just wanted to stress with this for those people who say go watch the speeches of you know, Mr. Oh god, I forgot his name. I'm terrible with names. David Long here. Okay, go watch the speeches. I've seen them. I understand their beliefs. I say their beliefs because I don't share all the beliefs. I think what has happened is that they've tried out some things. They've found a method that if you just do enough input, eventually you'll start to be able to say things. And then eventually if you keep saying things, you'll be able to say more. And then eventually the more you can say, then when you move into reading, you learn the letters or whatnot, you'll be able to read because obviously you know how to speak. Okay? Like I believe that they've followed this path and then they've tried to justify it backwards for how it works. And in some cases the justifications seem logical and in other cases I think they're stretching. They've got no evidence of that. And in some cases I I I think it's completely false. But at the end of the day, I'm still going to learn Spanish and I'm going to do it all the way until the end just to see like I'm most curious about the transition from listening to speaking, how that goes, especially into more complex speech. That I am most curious about. But I also don't know if I should start speaking at 1,000 hours cuz if I do, I'm not going to be naturally ready by that point to speak anything complex. And therefore, I'm probably going to end up forcing myself and therefore I am moving further and further away from what is considered ALG. Remember though, I am technically not doing ALG because it should be in a classroom environment with teachers who are managing the level of the content to me. So yeah, I think I've covered off enough. What do you guys think? Let me know down in the comments section below. I'll see you all next video. And again, make sure you sub to this channel. I put a lot of effort into this video. I sat here for a very, very long time talking [ __ ] about this guy. No, no. I I I find the method interesting in a lot of ways.