Question:
Does anybody know of any research into whether it is possible to acquire
native-like (second language) proficiency in reading from purely written
input
Answer:
I don't know of any research on this topic but my personal experience
may be relevant--I've attained a moderate proficiency in reading
French most from written materials (learning the first 2000 words from
flashcards and then reading a few million words of authentic French
while occasionally glancing at a grammar out of curiosity).
There probably is some research, now that the reading method is coming
back into academic vogue, but I'm not in a position to give you any
actual citations.
Some caveats:
(1) You probably won't learn to write, hear, or speak without
practicing those modalities in addition, although you will probably
gain a sense of the language that will help you feel what's right or
wrong.
(2) Some people seem to be visually oriented, others to be oriented
toward auditory input; the former will probably find a written
approach congenial, the latter may find it impossible to learn purely
from written materials. Since you're asking this question, you're
probably in the former group; don't make the mistake of assuming that
your preferences and experiences will generalize to all language
learners.
(3) You might permanently cripple your ability to speak or hear the
language with the correct phonology, due to persistently practicing
the wrong (i.e. English) prononciation and thereby mistraining your
ears. For Latin, this may not matter much, but for any language that
you might want to speak correctly some day, I would add some practice
in hearing the language correctly spoken to get at least some sense of
how the language should sound. I don't know whether or not this is
a serious risk or not, but I intend to be conservative until we find
out for sure.
By the way, just what do you mean by native-like proficiency in Latin?
I'd have thought that native speakers of Latin are even rarer than
native speakers of Esperanto.
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