Comprehensible Input Wiki

4 months ago 3

Welcome!

This wiki is intended to provide a list of resources for people hoping to learn a language using comprehensible input.

For a good summary of the comprehensible input based method and how it works, visit dreamingspanish.com/method.

Comprehensible input is the key element for language acquisition: we acquire language when we understand what we hear or read in a natural communicative context (A situation like "Teacher holding a pen and asks student what it is" is not communicative). The concept of Comprehensible Input comes from the Comprehension Hypothesis of Stephen Krashen in the field of Second Language Acquisition.^[1] But it's not invented by Krashen, as he admitted.^[2] Sometimes, comprehensible input is misunderstood as a choice of a certain method. In fact, it's a necessary element to acquire a language.

Comprehensible input based language learning is characterized by listening to or reading content in the target language, at or slightly above the level where the learner can understand everything that is being said.^[3] Ideally, the learner's native language is not used or needed. Visual cues, such as pictures or hand gestures, assist the learner in connecting words with their meanings. The focus of the method is on input (listening, reading) rather than output (speaking, writing). Speaking practice can come after the learner is fairly comfortable understanding what they hear. Likewise for practicing writing after becoming comfortable reading.

As opposed to more traditional language learning methods (for example grammar study, rote memorization, etc.), comprehensible input closely resembles the natural language acquisition of children in their native language, and thus may be more effective and efficient for acquiring new languages. It is certainly easier and more fun than most other methods, as the learner is engaging with content that they almost completely understand already.

This is a wiki, so if you feel like it, you have the power to improve the website in various ways.

You can add a page for a new language if it doesn't exist here yet (use the input box on this page so that the correct format is preloaded for you).
You can add links to comprehensible input resources on the language page (for example, YouTube channels or podcasts focused on Comprehensible Input).
You can add other relevant information or links on a language page (for example Chinese has information about the language itself). Or create a page that provides details about a resource (for example, see You Can Chinese).
You can write articles related to comprehensible input (for example, a page that discusses the research behind comprehensible input). Just enter the name of the page you would like to create in the search box at the top of the page, hit enter; and as long as the page doesn't exist yet, a link will be provided to create a new page with that name.
You can improve the wiki in a more "meta" way, such as by improving the visual style of the website, changing the organization of language pages, or creating a more welcoming Main Page for new visitors.
You can provide suggestions or feedback, or ask questions, at CIW:Community Portal.

If you are at all familiar with the way Wikipedia works, you'll notice that this website runs on the same software as Wikipedia (called MediaWiki). So editing content works the same. Formatting can be added to pages with wikitext or HTML. No need to create an account to edit if you don't want to, although that's useful for keeping track of previous edits, and an account lets you add comments at the bottom of pages.

If you want to add links to a language that you see on this page (Main Page), do it on the language's page, not here. The Main Page will automatically display the links from the language page (it may take up to five minutes for the Main Page to catch up).

Just getting started in a language?

Look for the icon next to a link. That means it starts teaching from zero. Not all such beginner links have been labelled with the icon, so you might find more starter resources if you look around.