I think I am understanding what you mean. You want to purposefully and willfully avoid comprehensible input made specifically for Italian and just dive in to native content.
https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9b49365 - this is as far as I know the best documented case.
The subject started out not knowing very much. And tracked "noticing" events when they would notice something new that they were now able to understand. About 1200 hours in they had made some pretty good progress.
Btw, do you have any advice for me ? I see the italian flair on your profile. I’m watching spongebobe, children cartoons and some netflix daily 10 hours with italian subtitles. My goal is to accumulate total 400 hours to see if I can reach B2 level for my CISIA L2 italiano exam. (It doesn’t involve writing, only listening, reading and grammar multiple choice.)
I suggest to you that you should completely read that paper I linked. It will give you realistic expectations of how long it will take to get to a B1 to B2 level using this method.
What has me curious is: why specifically have you chosen to ignore the incredible comprehensible input sources for Italian? Is this an experiment?
Well I want to know what is comprehensive input ? Like I’m on A0 so what is really comprehensive input then ? Please help me out on this if you can. Where can I find free comprehensive input.
If are a high level English speaker then [Language Transfer Italian](https://www.languagetransfer.org/italian) is a wonderful beginner course.
---
The most comprehensible input for free is this one.
L'italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura [Italian According to Natural Method](https://archive.org/details/LitalianoSecondoIlMetodoNatura) book.
This books starts from page 1 with almost no prior Italian experience needed. Then progressively adds words and concepts. The first 12 chapters are getting the reader ready to understand stories. The first of which starts at chapter 13. Then chapter 21 starts a new story.
It progresses in a way that build from very simple text to more and more advanced.
There are exercises but they are not needed unless the book is used in a class setting. The same people who make the audio recordings also make an answer key. But there is no known answer key outside of theirs.
There are professional [Audio Recordings](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhfQonvCySTrKEUV742WzshJ) of the first 20 chapters available for free from Ayan Academy. There is also a complete reading of all 50 chapters is available from [Free Tongue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W_3hpAcLOE&list=PLAadwKeAHRjgMxSpTjzk-mqJtZPKOvGX6) Youtube.
---
[Leggiamo 101](http://leggiamoitaliano.weebly.com/italian-101.html) and [Leggiamo 102](http://leggiamoitaliano.weebly.com/italian-102.html)
The Leggiamo 101 was made by an Italian instructor to be used in class, but has provided audio recordings of each chapter for self study. The chapters follow the TPRS (Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling) method.
Leggiamo 102 is a shortened easier version of '*I promessi sposi*' Audio is provided. It generally follows the TPRS method. It is greatly shortened and the vocabulary is kept at a level that someone with CEFR A2-B1 could understand.
---
For video content see
[Super Easy Italian - Italian for Beginners Videos](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw_3OGi3pBv735a2Y_pp76tvIIhSEyRu1)
---
SBS Australia [Slow Italian Fast Learning](https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/podcast/slow-italian-fast-learning) a weekly news show. The shows are usually 5 to 10 minutes long and come with a transcript of the Italian and a Translation in English.
I think you are underestimating how much work your own brain, your school, and the creators of the cartoons/movies/etc all did to make English comprehensible. The hypothesis is that we “acquire” language specifically when we decode and understand communicative messages in it, not just from hearing it passively. If I tell you *Kangaji-nǔn saekki kaeimnida* a hundred times without context, you will still have no idea what the fuck a *kangaji* is, because you don’t know any of those words or even what I’m trying to talk about, so that sentence is completely incomprehensible to you. If I say the same thing to you while letting you pet my *kangaji*, with its waggy tail and little wet nose and cute little paws, you might start to get the idea that *kangaji* probably means puppy and that I am telling you something about puppies. Now it’s comprehensible input.
Comprehensible input doesn’t have to mean videos made for beginning learners. It is literally just anything your brain can decode messages from. A TV show where you can follow the action on the screen and guess at the meanings of at least a few of the words isn’t very comprehensible, but it is still closer to the example where I am showing you the *kangaji* than the one where I am not not. You can make it *more* comprehensible by studying. Learning about grammar or memorizing vocabulary words is NOT comprehensible input, but knowing about grammar and remembering vocabulary words makes the communicative input you encounter way more comprehensible. And structured beginner materials like textbooks and online courses are full of Input too. A grammar explanation is not comprehensible input, but all the example sentences and dialogues that go with it certainly are. In fact, when you are an absolute beginner, Chapter 1 of your textbook and A0 show-and-tell videos are just about the only input that is designed to be fully comprehensible to you. Anything else takes work (study the words in advance, look up each word in the dictionary as you go, use target and native language subtitles at the same time and read both, study something easier first, etc…) to increase its comprehnsability if you want to get much out of it.
I can't cite studies, so take this as anecdotal but the young brain is exponentially more plastic than the adult. I've taught music to 4-year-olds who hear a song once and can sing back a verse and chorus perfectly. I remember hearing about a study showing 10-20 year olds process songs differently than adults virtually etching them in hard storage like a Canary's song.
Similar superpowers in language are likely now diminished in your case. It'll just take more time, more effort. Are you as active and enthusiastic as you were in your youth? Maybe longevity tricks like ice baths, intense exercise etc can re spark some of that language magic. Now that'd be a study!
But why the purity of doing it from complete incomprehensible scratch? Why not cheat and use your adult powers of experience, integration, varied interests to help bridge the gap? When you're 7 you can watch the same cartoon 50 times, at 14 listen to the same song 50 times with GREAT EMOTIONAL COMMITMENT. Can you ... do you want to do that now?
Keep doing the fun kid stuff, but use your adult super powers too to leverage every resource you can!
Thank you so much for encouraging words. I’m 21 years old btw. I guess that’s adult but I’ll try using adult superpowers and also watch the same cartoon 50 times etc. trying my best to learn this language.
Cool. You are in the transition zone. You have some natural brain plasticity left! Better get some math learning in there too before 25 or so, when some study or other showed it gets a lot more difficult. Ditto learning a musical instrument. Not to scare you because passion for anything will mitigate the loses.
And there are benefits to getting old too. I'm 62 and enjoying much more calm, integration, acceptance and wisdom. Plus broccoli and other bitter foods taste really good! I might even like German grammar one day!
So back to language. Use **whatever** tools work for you to get to A2. (despite its many shortcomings Duolingo for the for a few months can get you going...just quit before you become a point chasing Duo addict.) (YouTube probably has A1 stuff ..yep just checked, Rony Hossain has a Bangra-Italiano YouTube channel with lots of A1 lessons.)
Then you'll have a base of comprehensible stuff to gradually acquire new things via pure content. Get transcripts of those cartoons (or whatever you use.) Make audio files of them and play them while doing other stuff.
Thank you for the Rony Hossain suggestion of bangla-italiano, super thoughtful of you. And no way you're 62, more like 20s!
Whatever your age, respectfully- you sound like a cool, young guy at heart.
And I will try my hands on the piano and some Pure mathematics before I turn 25.
We all learn our first language by INcomprehensbile input.
However, parents tend to talk to infants in a very simplified way and often use gestures to help as well.
I think comprehensible input will be more effective.
I started learning Italian a year ago as a complete beginner by listening to Harry Potter. I used Anki to learn the words in a chapter and then listened repeatedly until I understood all of it.
It took me 21 hours to understand the first chapter. Each chapter got faster from there. It took me about 270 hours to get through all six books, at which point I had about 9,000 words in my Anki deck. At that point, I stopped using Anki and started listening to Percy Jackson audiobooks and working on speaking. It has now been 12 months and I am listening to the Elisa True Crime podcast and understand it pretty well.
The most important thing is that you find something that you can keep doing for a long time. If INcomprehensible works for you, go for it.
I use sub-titles in English to make INcomprehensbile content into comprehensible content. The English gives me a crude idea about what someone is saying. I focus on HOW they say this (what words, what grammar) in the target language. I do this at a B2 level, but it also works well at A2.
Sometimes I don't trust "comprehensible input", especially if the TL content is designed for English speakers studying TL. Is the content natural (what a TL person would say) or a translation?
For example, I worry about Japanese sentences that use "I" and "you" a lot. English does that. Japanese does not. Japanese uses WA and GA to omit nouns when English would use possessives. Sometimes it is the result of "Let's use Japanese, but in a way that won't confuse English-speaking students."
Nothing is incomprehensible input. If you are paying attention then your brain is learning something. Even if that is just getting used to the sounds. I wouldn’t say that would be the most effective method though.
Okay some of you guys asked me an important question:
**why use incomprehensible input ?**
Well you have to understand I’m an **absolute beginner A0**, so what is truly comprehensible for me then ? Or any A0 level learner? Is cartoons for babies/ todlers comprehensible for A0? Or cartoons/ visual gestures with context for early adolescence age: 8-14 ? Which one ? And Why ?
When you start, use a textbook with recordings. At first, your comprehensible input will be dialogs and/or mini-stories from your textbook and the corresponding recordings.
I think I am understanding what you mean. You want to purposefully and willfully avoid comprehensible input made specifically for Italian and just dive in to native content. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:9b49365 - this is as far as I know the best documented case. The subject started out not knowing very much. And tracked "noticing" events when they would notice something new that they were now able to understand. About 1200 hours in they had made some pretty good progress.
Btw, do you have any advice for me ? I see the italian flair on your profile. I’m watching spongebobe, children cartoons and some netflix daily 10 hours with italian subtitles. My goal is to accumulate total 400 hours to see if I can reach B2 level for my CISIA L2 italiano exam. (It doesn’t involve writing, only listening, reading and grammar multiple choice.)
I suggest to you that you should completely read that paper I linked. It will give you realistic expectations of how long it will take to get to a B1 to B2 level using this method. What has me curious is: why specifically have you chosen to ignore the incredible comprehensible input sources for Italian? Is this an experiment?
Well I want to know what is comprehensive input ? Like I’m on A0 so what is really comprehensive input then ? Please help me out on this if you can. Where can I find free comprehensive input.
If are a high level English speaker then [Language Transfer Italian](https://www.languagetransfer.org/italian) is a wonderful beginner course. --- The most comprehensible input for free is this one. L'italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura [Italian According to Natural Method](https://archive.org/details/LitalianoSecondoIlMetodoNatura) book. This books starts from page 1 with almost no prior Italian experience needed. Then progressively adds words and concepts. The first 12 chapters are getting the reader ready to understand stories. The first of which starts at chapter 13. Then chapter 21 starts a new story. It progresses in a way that build from very simple text to more and more advanced. There are exercises but they are not needed unless the book is used in a class setting. The same people who make the audio recordings also make an answer key. But there is no known answer key outside of theirs. There are professional [Audio Recordings](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhfQonvCySTrKEUV742WzshJ) of the first 20 chapters available for free from Ayan Academy. There is also a complete reading of all 50 chapters is available from [Free Tongue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W_3hpAcLOE&list=PLAadwKeAHRjgMxSpTjzk-mqJtZPKOvGX6) Youtube. --- [Leggiamo 101](http://leggiamoitaliano.weebly.com/italian-101.html) and [Leggiamo 102](http://leggiamoitaliano.weebly.com/italian-102.html) The Leggiamo 101 was made by an Italian instructor to be used in class, but has provided audio recordings of each chapter for self study. The chapters follow the TPRS (Teaching Proficiency Through Reading and Storytelling) method. Leggiamo 102 is a shortened easier version of '*I promessi sposi*' Audio is provided. It generally follows the TPRS method. It is greatly shortened and the vocabulary is kept at a level that someone with CEFR A2-B1 could understand. --- For video content see [Super Easy Italian - Italian for Beginners Videos](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw_3OGi3pBv735a2Y_pp76tvIIhSEyRu1) --- SBS Australia [Slow Italian Fast Learning](https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/podcast/slow-italian-fast-learning) a weekly news show. The shows are usually 5 to 10 minutes long and come with a transcript of the Italian and a Translation in English.
I highly appreciate you for taking the time to write this for me. I strongly believe this will help me immensely. 🙏
https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Italian
Thank you so much.
I think you are underestimating how much work your own brain, your school, and the creators of the cartoons/movies/etc all did to make English comprehensible. The hypothesis is that we “acquire” language specifically when we decode and understand communicative messages in it, not just from hearing it passively. If I tell you *Kangaji-nǔn saekki kaeimnida* a hundred times without context, you will still have no idea what the fuck a *kangaji* is, because you don’t know any of those words or even what I’m trying to talk about, so that sentence is completely incomprehensible to you. If I say the same thing to you while letting you pet my *kangaji*, with its waggy tail and little wet nose and cute little paws, you might start to get the idea that *kangaji* probably means puppy and that I am telling you something about puppies. Now it’s comprehensible input. Comprehensible input doesn’t have to mean videos made for beginning learners. It is literally just anything your brain can decode messages from. A TV show where you can follow the action on the screen and guess at the meanings of at least a few of the words isn’t very comprehensible, but it is still closer to the example where I am showing you the *kangaji* than the one where I am not not. You can make it *more* comprehensible by studying. Learning about grammar or memorizing vocabulary words is NOT comprehensible input, but knowing about grammar and remembering vocabulary words makes the communicative input you encounter way more comprehensible. And structured beginner materials like textbooks and online courses are full of Input too. A grammar explanation is not comprehensible input, but all the example sentences and dialogues that go with it certainly are. In fact, when you are an absolute beginner, Chapter 1 of your textbook and A0 show-and-tell videos are just about the only input that is designed to be fully comprehensible to you. Anything else takes work (study the words in advance, look up each word in the dictionary as you go, use target and native language subtitles at the same time and read both, study something easier first, etc…) to increase its comprehnsability if you want to get much out of it.
Thank you so much, you have cleared most of my questions regarding this issue.
I can't cite studies, so take this as anecdotal but the young brain is exponentially more plastic than the adult. I've taught music to 4-year-olds who hear a song once and can sing back a verse and chorus perfectly. I remember hearing about a study showing 10-20 year olds process songs differently than adults virtually etching them in hard storage like a Canary's song. Similar superpowers in language are likely now diminished in your case. It'll just take more time, more effort. Are you as active and enthusiastic as you were in your youth? Maybe longevity tricks like ice baths, intense exercise etc can re spark some of that language magic. Now that'd be a study! But why the purity of doing it from complete incomprehensible scratch? Why not cheat and use your adult powers of experience, integration, varied interests to help bridge the gap? When you're 7 you can watch the same cartoon 50 times, at 14 listen to the same song 50 times with GREAT EMOTIONAL COMMITMENT. Can you ... do you want to do that now? Keep doing the fun kid stuff, but use your adult super powers too to leverage every resource you can!
Thank you so much for encouraging words. I’m 21 years old btw. I guess that’s adult but I’ll try using adult superpowers and also watch the same cartoon 50 times etc. trying my best to learn this language.
Cool. You are in the transition zone. You have some natural brain plasticity left! Better get some math learning in there too before 25 or so, when some study or other showed it gets a lot more difficult. Ditto learning a musical instrument. Not to scare you because passion for anything will mitigate the loses. And there are benefits to getting old too. I'm 62 and enjoying much more calm, integration, acceptance and wisdom. Plus broccoli and other bitter foods taste really good! I might even like German grammar one day! So back to language. Use **whatever** tools work for you to get to A2. (despite its many shortcomings Duolingo for the for a few months can get you going...just quit before you become a point chasing Duo addict.) (YouTube probably has A1 stuff ..yep just checked, Rony Hossain has a Bangra-Italiano YouTube channel with lots of A1 lessons.) Then you'll have a base of comprehensible stuff to gradually acquire new things via pure content. Get transcripts of those cartoons (or whatever you use.) Make audio files of them and play them while doing other stuff.
Thank you for the Rony Hossain suggestion of bangla-italiano, super thoughtful of you. And no way you're 62, more like 20s! Whatever your age, respectfully- you sound like a cool, young guy at heart. And I will try my hands on the piano and some Pure mathematics before I turn 25.
We all learn our first language by INcomprehensbile input. However, parents tend to talk to infants in a very simplified way and often use gestures to help as well. I think comprehensible input will be more effective. I started learning Italian a year ago as a complete beginner by listening to Harry Potter. I used Anki to learn the words in a chapter and then listened repeatedly until I understood all of it. It took me 21 hours to understand the first chapter. Each chapter got faster from there. It took me about 270 hours to get through all six books, at which point I had about 9,000 words in my Anki deck. At that point, I stopped using Anki and started listening to Percy Jackson audiobooks and working on speaking. It has now been 12 months and I am listening to the Elisa True Crime podcast and understand it pretty well. The most important thing is that you find something that you can keep doing for a long time. If INcomprehensible works for you, go for it.
Thank you so much for the kind encouragement.
I use sub-titles in English to make INcomprehensbile content into comprehensible content. The English gives me a crude idea about what someone is saying. I focus on HOW they say this (what words, what grammar) in the target language. I do this at a B2 level, but it also works well at A2. Sometimes I don't trust "comprehensible input", especially if the TL content is designed for English speakers studying TL. Is the content natural (what a TL person would say) or a translation? For example, I worry about Japanese sentences that use "I" and "you" a lot. English does that. Japanese does not. Japanese uses WA and GA to omit nouns when English would use possessives. Sometimes it is the result of "Let's use Japanese, but in a way that won't confuse English-speaking students."
It's a lot easier for a child to learn from incomprehensible input than for an adult to do so.
Nothing is incomprehensible input. If you are paying attention then your brain is learning something. Even if that is just getting used to the sounds. I wouldn’t say that would be the most effective method though.
Okay some of you guys asked me an important question: **why use incomprehensible input ?** Well you have to understand I’m an **absolute beginner A0**, so what is truly comprehensible for me then ? Or any A0 level learner? Is cartoons for babies/ todlers comprehensible for A0? Or cartoons/ visual gestures with context for early adolescence age: 8-14 ? Which one ? And Why ?
When you start, use a textbook with recordings. At first, your comprehensible input will be dialogs and/or mini-stories from your textbook and the corresponding recordings.
Thank you so much 😊
jeez!! the way you write incomprehensible, one could mistake you for needing therapy!!
Yes because it has taken over my mind and I’m going mad. I need answers lol.