What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?

Comprehensible input is a phrase that you might hear when you start studying a language, and it’s certainly something I talk a lot about.

However, it can be a little confusing to understanding what it actually means, so I will be going through exactly what it is all about.

What Is Language Input?

In language learning there are two basic concepts: Input and Output.

Input would be any form of language that you take in, so this would be reading and listening.

Output would be the opposite and this is where you have to produce the language yourself, the language comes out of you, so this would be speaking or writing.

The theory is that you first need to input the language before you can output. You need to fill yourself up with the language before you can start using it.

It makes sense a lot of sense. If you have never seen a word, or learned a certain concept, then how can you produce this yourself?

You need language input to learn a language and understand what is going on.

(You can read more about – The Input vs Output Language Learning Methods)

What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?

Comprehensible input is still input, it’s just reading and listening. The difference is that you are able to mostly understand it.

The immediate question that is raised from this is “How can I understand it, if I don’t know the language?” this is very true, but you do not need to understand it fully, but just enough to get a grasp of what is going on.

As you progress with your studies, you should be able to understand more and more.

The aim is to find input that is just above your current level of understanding. The theory is that the more comprehensible input you get, the more you will start to learn the language.

This theory was developed by Stephen Krashen who basically explains that language is acquired, not learned.

If you take in enough of the language you will start to naturally acquire the language, you do not need to actively learn it.

Your brain is able to grab on to the little bits it does know and then it tries to decode the rest subconsciously.

Language is a communication tool and our brains are set up to try and understand the messages, so given enough exposure to a language, it will work it out.

It’s Language Acquisition, Not Learning

Stephen Krashen theory about comprehensible input explains that this style of input is not learning, its acquisition.

When you are listening or reading material that you can just about understand your subconscious is processing it all and doing a lot of hard work.

Your brain is a pattern recognition machine and it is building links and connections from what it knows to make sense of what it doesn’t.

Just think about what happens if you read a word you’ve not seen before in your own language, you can still sort of understand it and would be able to read the word with no problems.  

Your brain is set up to communicate so it will see any language as a puzzle and it is going to try and decode the message and make sense of it, even if it is your own language or a new one you are learning. 

This makes learning a language like nothing else we learn. When we learn some other subject at school, like physics, our subconscious isn’t trying to decode the theory of gravity to relate it to some other theory you know. You would need to do this consciously.

When you learn a language your brain will try and do this and if you give your subconscious enough data (in the form of comprehensible input) it will be able to work out the connections.

What If It Is Not Comprehensible Input?

Unfortunately if the input is not comprehensible, it doesn’t help you.

You cannot just turn on a foreign radio station and listen to a new language until you understand it. This will not happen.

Well it might, but you are probably going to be doing that for decades before you might see some results.

Your brain will be frantically trying to decode what it is hearing, but if it has no reference points it is going to really struggle. 

If you listen to enough it might start to recognise some patterns, but just think how vast a language is, this is not going to be easy to start to see patterns.

If you start to learn some words, you brain is going to start to be able to see the patterns much more clearly and start to see the bigger picture of the puzzle.

Should You Still Learn A Language In The Traditional Way?

This is a tricky one. As I’ve just said, you need comprehensible input to learn a language. Your subconscious will do most of the work for you and start to make sense of things.

However, you do need to know some of the language to help this happen. Like I also just explained, you can’t just acquire a language from zero, your brain needs some sort of reference points.

So learning the language in a more traditional way can help. 

I would certainly focus on learning vocabulary words. The more words you know, the more you can start to understand.

Learning grammar rules can also help, although not much. I would not get caught up on trying to master these.

Just read over the rules and get a basic understanding how they work. This can help your subconscious brain spot the patterns more quickly, since you’ve basically told it what it needs to be looking for. 

The interesting thing is that you really only need to do this at the very start. Once you do have some knowledge behind you, you can start acquiring the language through comprehensible input. You can pick up new words and grammar structures naturally by reading and listening more.

Since you will not understand everything, there is always going to be new things you are going to be exposed to.

How Long Will It Take To Acquire A Language?

This is a pretty hard question to answer as everyone is different and every language is different, but basically the more comprehensible input you get the faster it will happen.

However, it is not a fast process. It can take months. You really need to listen to hours and hours of the language to allow your brain to absorb things and process it all. The more the better.

Also, if we think about how some languages are “easier” than others it can help us understand why some language will take longer than others. It’s not that certain languages are any “easier; it’s just that you can comprehend more things in certain language right from day one.

Let’s say you want to learn French and Japanese, but you know nothing about either of these languages….

So let’s look at two sentences – 

Où sont les toilettes?

and

トイレはどこですか

Which one of these do you understand? Probably the French one, right?

Both are saying the same thing, they are both “Where is the toilet?”

French isn’t easier, it’s just a lot more similar to what you already know in English and your brain is already able to start decoding the message. It is more comprehensible.  

This will give you a huge head start and can make your French journey a lot quicker than your Japanese one.

This is why you will hear figures like it will take you 600 hours to learn French and 2200 hours to learn Japanese.

As you can see both figures are quite high, even the “easier” French will require a large commitment to reach this amount of input, but it is certainly not impossible to reach rather quickly.

Immersion Techniques

If you have heard of immersion you will start to realise the connection with comprehensible input and language acquisition.

Immersion is just surrounding yourself as much as possible with the language you are trying to learn so that you basically cannot escape and have to start understanding it.

If you think of someone who moves to a country where they do not know a language, they always seem to learn it pretty quickly. This is because they are exposed to huge amounts of the language and while it’s is maybe not always comprehensible; it usually is a bit more in context.

They are going to be surrounded the by the language and very quickly their brain is going to start decoding what is going on around them. They cannot communicate if they don’t. 

Immersion really is the comprehensible input method at work, it’s just called something different.

We all know immersion is popular, as it works and since it is the same as the input theory, it shows that that this theory works too.

Just take in as much of the language as you can and you will make progress. 

(You can read more about – Learning A Language By Immersion)

How Much Should You Be Able To Comprehend?

This is another hard question to answer and there is no real right or wrong answer.

It is really going to depends on what you are reading or listening to and at what stage of your language journey you are at. You will find that being able to comprehend around 80% should be what you should roughly aim for.

If you are reading a page you really you want to get the general idea, but maybe a few words don’t register.

The goal would then be to learn these new words and fill in the gap. Then when you next re-read it, you should be able to understand 100%.

If the level is much lower, say 20% you are probably going to be more lost and struggle. Sometimes this will happen, but you will make slower progress if this is the bulk of your input.

The opposite is also true, if you only aim to read things that you 100% know. While this is still great practice and strengthens what you do know, it doesn’t expose you to any new words.  

You need that little bit of a knowledge gap, so you can grow and acquire these missing pieces.

Problems With Comprehensible Input?

While it’s great, it’s not always perfect because of the following reasons:

It Can Be Hard To Find

When you are starting out as a beginner, you are really going to struggle to find comprehensible input.

Basically everything is going to be too hard, even simple children’s books are going to be too much for you.

There is ways around this, but basically until you are about intermediate; it’s hard to find good resources.  

(Read my other article about – How To Find Comprehensible Input For Language Learning).

There Is No Output

The biggest problem with lots of input is that there is no output for a long time.

Comprehensible input builds up your passive language skills, but does not really help with your active retrieval skills, which you will need for producing the language yourself.  This means your speaking and writing skills can suffer.

If you do decide to focus on comprehensible input as your main learning method then you need to see it as a two part mission. The first stage is of course to input, but you must not forget to then move into a more output focused style of learning after.

Output is important when learning a language. You do actually learn a lot from trying to use the language yourself. You will quickly notice lots of mistakes or holes in your knowledge, so it’s a very good way to measure how much you actually know.

The good thing is that you should find output much easier as your solid base of input knowledge will really help you.  

(You can read more about – How Important Is Speaking When Learning A Language?)

Conclusion

Comprehensible input is vital when you are learning a language. Allowing your brain to slowly decode what you are reading and listening to is really going to help you get better at the language.

It can seem unbelievable, but it really works. So long as you can understand the majority of what is going on, your brain will process the rest. Just trust in your unconscious and you will get there.

It takes times, but it will happen.

(You can read more about – Why It Is Important To Track Your Language Immersion)