Passive learning is the opportunity to just listen to or read something of interest, without having to interact with anyone, do drills or exercizes, or answer comprehension questions, or say anything when prompted.
It is a tremendous way of learning because;
- you can do it anytime, even, in the case of listening, while doing other chores
- it is relatively stress-free, and usually enjoyable
- you do not have to go to a class or make an appointment with a teacher
- you can choose what to listen to and read
- if you read or listen to a variety of sources on related subjects, you can reinforce your understanding almost effortlessly
- you can tune in and tune out and you will still learn, especially if you blend different sources of similar information
- it is inexpensive
- it is easily controlled by the learner
- technology has made it easier than ever
- you reinforce the power of listening by reading and vice versa
Benny the hyper Irishman has what he terms a “bombshell” of a rant on passive listening. He tell us that
“A whole industry of language learning products is based on something that I have to frankly say that I think is absolute rubbish.
Some people swear by it, and yet it rarely ever produces any useful results.
The shocking truth is that passive listening is never going to get you to fluency in a language. What’s even worse is that it won’t even help your ability to understand.”
As he often does, he constructs a straw man situation, that ” a whole industry of language learning” has thousands of people listening to unintelligible language content, and then delivers the shocking truth that this won’t work. He claims that he failed in the oral portion of his recent Geman exam because he had the German radio on in the background while he studied grammar or something. Well what did he expect?
I just scanned his article but found very little earth shattering there. Just putting a language on in the background is not going to help all that much. But realistically few learners rely on that to learn.
However, passively listening to content that you then can read as a transcript as we do at LingQ, and then listening to that content over and over, is a tremendously powerful way to learn, even if you tune out now and again.
The problem with Benny’s article is not so much what he says, but rather the impression he tries to create, that passive listening is brain dead listening, and that we have to find a native speaker to speak to before we can learn. That is simply not true.
3 comments on “In praise of passive learning again.”
Comments are closed.
Yes, I listened to the Irish PolyGot vs LingoSTEVE on the audio channel that Steve provided and it just illustrates more and more the common sense approach Steve Kauffman has developed and WHY it works becuase if you don’t put any water in the well, so to speak, then you have nothing to draw on to formulate one thought in another language let alone a sentence to speak with! I lived in Ireland for a few years and sometimes that culture would like to be RIGHT more than seek what is RIGHT and what really works unfortunately. Good and sweet people, indeed; yet, sometimes when people are desperate to be right the propensity to trample on what truly inspires and really works unfortunately becomes elusive. Benny has a great spirit he wants to move forth and think on new things and such and such; yet, the basis of the approach is weak in the face of Steve Kauffman who has mastered and speaks langagues and yet he is humble to know that one must keep at it or what we don’t use we lose and LingoSteve has a very wonderful way with his development of LingQ to get us to being putting water in the well where we might draw from with conversational endeavor in any language! Steve just frankly inspires us every day to develop the discipline and learn more and more the hows to get to the WHYs of the reason for learning language in the first place!
I think I have to agree with Benny that “passive listening” is not useful, either for comprehension or speaking. I don’t know how many countless hours my mom has spent watching Korean dramas and she understands no Korean. The same can be said for thousands of American anime enthusiasts. This doesn’t just apply to language learning. If “passive viewing” was an effective learning method then a large chunk of the American population would be expert football players, decent dancers, and martial arts experts.
I think what you are advocating is what I would call “active listening”. You are not just letting the sound roll over you, you are intently listening and trying to comprehend, you listen over and over again until you understand. If you are really actively listening you are also actively looking for words and phrases you can insert into your own conversations later. I’ve used this method and it is very effective and like most effective methods works in other areas like dance and sports as well.
Just read this article again in 2018 as I revisit passive learning as a study method. Of course, passive listening on its own is almost pointless but in combination with other methods, is a very powerful and efficient tool.
I say almost because I am a firm believer that it can, on its own, be a very good way to adjust one’s ear to a foreign language. You may not be able to understand, but after some time you become familiar with the sounds specific to the language. I have suggested passive listening for many young ESL students in the past and I use t myself. I do not understand or speak Japanese or Korean, but hearing enough of it does allow you to a) be able to identify what you are listening to and b) start being able to imitate the language – very useful in improving pronunciation and becoming comfortable with vocalizing in the foreign language, even if you don’t have much vocabulary.
As an advanced learner I find Steve’s approach very useful and typically go back to LingQ every now and again because the use of passive listening when you are already somewhat familiar with the content is a great way to revise. It may not be as effective as active revision, but, in my experience, it is certainly more efficient. I may not pay much attention to a lot of it, but when I hear a vocabulary or a sentence structure which I am working on becoming more familiar with my brain usually directs attention to it. This shows me that even if the listening feels passive, I am in fact devoting just enough attention to make it useful. Of course, this is anecdotal evidence, but it certainly has worked for me.