Have you ever started learning a language and then a few weeks or months
down the line you just tell yourself, that nagging voice of yours keeps
telling you that there are simply too many beautiful languages to be learned
in this world? And then you end up learning many and achieving nothing. Hi
my name is Luca from Luca from LucaLampariello.com and today I'm going to talk about
the diabolical tendency that we all have to spread ourselves thin and how to deal with it.
The Internet has changed everything; now whenever we want to, we
can just go on the internet surf the internet and find all the resources we
want, if we want to read, write, speak listen, whatever you want, but the problem
is that that this wealth of information has actually further exacerbated the
tendency that we all have to spread ourselves thin - "jack of all trades master
of none", as they say in English. So, one thing that has really made a difference
in my journey of learning 14 languages has been that I stick to one
language whenever I start learning it. So, whenever I just set a date, I tell myself
that for at least eight, nine months or twelve months I will stick to that
language, and my piece of advice is to create a very strong reminder that you
want to stick to that language no matter what happens, no matter which "language
sirens" are going to call you, and I have found out that having post-its on your
desktop or the place where you learn every day is great, or also on places
that are visible, such as your refrigerator - you can stick a post-its
post-its are saying "learn just this language" or maybe just a flag
representing the language that you are sticking to, this is really important
because the temptations are going to be many, numerous and you don't want to fall
into the trap of starting to learn another language.
The reason why sticking to just one language for a period of time has made a
huge difference is that it allows me to develop a "language core". A language core
is a an entanglement of many things - experiences, sounds, words, people - and
obviously it requires time. Imagine for example dating five girls or five guys
at a time. Sure, you have a lot of fun but the reality is that since we have only
so much time you're literally spreading yourself thin
you're giving yourself to five people a little bit and then at the end you
achieve nothing, you're just dating people but you're not building a
relationship and building a relationship with the language is very similar to
building a relationship with a person: at the beginning you're a little bit
uncomfortable because you don't know that person but then it grows on you
with time you get to know that person you get to know yourself through that
person the same thing with language and languages so keep that in mind and think
that you need then you need at least nine months to twelve months to develop
a relationship before moving on possibly to other relationships.
Another key reason why sticking to just one language for a certain period of
time is so effective is that it takes time to build habits, so not only
building habits in terms of learning but also in terms of when to learn, how to
learn, your overall approach so it's important that if you just apply this to
one language it allows you to build habits for that specific language that
on top of that you can also reuse and apply to other languages. It's a matter
of time, energy, habits. You have to remember that the most important secret
- if there is one secret in language learning - is learn every day. If you're
trying to learn multiple languages at the same time and you are just dabbling in
many languages, you run the risk of literally spreading yourself thin,
dispersing your energy and at the end of the day you won't develop the habits
that you need to literally "make it happen", you always have to remind
yourself the language learning is a marathon, it takes time, you can't run 40
be 40, be 3, be 2 marathons at the time, and this is a very important point to keep in mind.
So, here you have it. I hope you like this video I found it useful
and remember if you want to be serious, if you are serious about learning
languages and you want to reach fluency in one language and move on and learn
another one, it is really important to stick to one language at a time and form
a core especially because the benefits of speaking a language fluency are immense,
and once you speak a language fluently, not only you're going to enjoy the
process much more, but this allows you to create the mental and the physical and
the cognitive space to learn other languages.
If you want to know about NOT dabbling with languages please click on the link in the description box and
you will be able to read and listen to a very cool article that my friend and
colleague Kevin Morehouse has put together on this fascinating topic.
Thank you for listening and see you very very soon here on YouTube