Comprehensible Input (How Much Do I Need to Understand?)

What percentage of a foreign language needs to be comprehensible in order for material to be useful?

This is a topic of much debate in the language learning community. I really think it depends what you're trying to do.

Robin MacPherson's video about reading:
   • The Secret To READING In A Foreign La...  

Matt vs Japan has some good videos about this, as do other language learning channels. The specific question I answer in this video is whether a comprehension level of 5% is still worthwhile and to that I answer "no". It may be of some benefit but it's not worthwhile, because you could be doing something that would increase your understanding of the language much faster.


Resources like Duolingo boast having a lot of material but in truth, there are more words to learn in the opening two chapters of a novel than in the entire Duolingo course whether you are learning French, Swedish, Russian, German or Esperanto. So it's important that we understand when the best time to start reading that novel or listening to that podcast or watching that YouTube video is, because tools that can give your comprehensible input are much more effective than Duolingo.



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