This is your brain on languages.

The image you see here is a visualization (which is obviously not comprehensive) of how a given piece of information in a language might get lodged into your brain. The piece of information could be anything: a vocabulary word, a grammar rule, pronunciation, a character, etc.

Every one of those lines emanating from the piece of information connects with one kind of exposure. The more exposures you get, the more connections your brain draws to that piece of information. The more repetitions of a given kind of exposure, the stronger that exposure becomes (imagine the lines getting thicker with each exposure). The stronger and more plentiful your exposures are, the more likely you are to remember the piece of information.

Exposure to a language can be largely divided into reading, listening, writing, and speaking. It doesn't matter if an exposure is via reading/listening (i.e., input from an external source) or writing/speaking (i.e, output to an external target). These traditional ideas of "output" and "input" are both input as far as your brain is concerned.

Output is input.

Google's getting into the language-learning game

Google Ventures, Google's venture capital arm, has invested an "undisclosed amount" of its $100 million in EnglishCentral, Inc., an English-language learning website where learners can watch popular videos (such as a clip from Forest Gump or a Red Bull ad) and then get graded on how well they pronounce the words spoken in the videos via EnglishCentral's "unique speech recognition platform".

This investment represents nothing more than Google dipping its toe in the water of the language-learning world. Let them get in up to their ankle or knees, and we'll all think back to the quaint days when we thought Rosetta Stone was a big player in the language-learning world.

Links:
EnglishCentral
Google Ventures, Atlas back language startup EnglishCentral [Mass High Tech]
Google Ventures Invests In English Language Learning Startup EnglishCentral [paidContent.org]