My oldest child is home for a month from college, and she brought with her an affinity for Korean music and television. Korean music became popular a few years back after the release of the song “Gangnam Style” by Psy. It turns out that there is a whole genre of music, aptly called K-Pop, and television shows, which my daughter says are called K-Dramas, that we in the US can listen to and watch.
After a few months of watching and listening to Korean in songs and television shows, my daughter is reporting that she has started picking up some Korean by watching K-Dramas and music videoswith English subtitles. She has not done any formal language instruction, although she has downloaded an app to help her learn the Korean writing system, which is called Hangeul (By the way, I have done a bit of research on the writing system and it is surprisingly not as complicated as it looks. If you’ve ever been interested in learning Korean, don’t let the writing system scare you off). “I’m at the point where, when I’m watching a K-Drama, I can sometimes tell when the English translation is wrong or missing part of the dialogue, and I can recognize common expressions,” she says. All this from exposure to compelling, comprehensible input.
In other news, my husband has decided to brush up on his Spanish, which he is doing by reading La Clase de Confesiones by A.C. Quintero. It is a reader designed for students of Spanish. It took him about four hours to get through the first chapter, but as he has read more and more he is getting through the chapters more quickly and reports that he doesn’t need to look up as many words as he did when he was working through Chapter 1.
My husband is not completely convinced that comprehensible input is the way to go. He is the product of traditional language classes and isn’t so quick to discount that instruction, even though I am quick to quote Bill Van Patten, who says, “Explict instruction does not lead to implicit knowledge.” And also, in typical husband fashion, since he only hears about comprehensible input from me, he needs to hear it from other people to whom he is not married before he will buy into it fully. Nevertheless, he is enjoying the book and is looking forward to reading Mira Canion’s El Escape Cubano next. With enough reading and acquiring of language, I’m sure that eventually he will see the light!
I Heart Input 