| I’m referring to the way language students are taught, which is usually in a classroom setting involving lots of grammar drills. As a personal example, when studying German in high school, I had to rotely memorize charts for article declension [1], prepositions [2], etc. Being able to regurgitate these charts helped me pass standardized tests, but they didn’t actually improve my ability to speak German. Similarly, students of English are encouraged to painstakingly study rules such as those differentiating ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘me’, ‘mine’ and ‘myself’. [3] Personally, I learned English through immersion instead, acquiring these rules subconsciously rather than consciously studying them! This is what input-based learning gets at. The theory goes that understanding input, and not conscious learning, is the only way to increase linguistic competence. [4] (again: not a linguist, any errors are mine) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declension#Articles [2] https://www.fluentin3months.com/german-prepositions/ [3] https://www.espressoenglish.net/i-my-me-mine-myself/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis |