Which activities are the most effective at different levels
of competence in a language?
So the relationship between learning activities
and where we are in the language. I'm often asked, "What
do you do to learn a language?"
"What do I do when I'm starting out?"
"What do I do if I want to break through the plateau?"
We are all at different levels in the language.
And therefore, to some extent, our learning activities will vary.
What is my situation?
Because I can only talk about what I do.
So first of all, when it comes to the sort of levels in a language, there are some
recognized reference points, like the Common European Framework of
Reference, which has six levels of skill, you know, A1, A2, which is a
beginner, B1, B2, which is intermediate, and C1, C2, which is advanced.
And these can be for writing, for speaking, for reading, for listening.
To some extent, it gives you an idea of what that level corresponds to.
But I have a lot of trouble with that.
I prefer to see our levels in a language are sort of on a continuum.
When we start, we're very much influenced by our own language.
We're sort of translating from our own language structures that we think in,
in terms of our own language, and gradually over time, we sort of
get more comfortable in this other language.
Some people talk about "interlanguages," sort of a language that we use when
we're sort of in between the new language and languages that we already know.
I don't think that's particularly helpful.
I think we just gradually get better and there's sort of infinite steps on this
gradient. And also we might be better in listening or in reading or in speaking.
And so to arbitrarily say, you know, "I'm a B2" or "I'm a B1," I'm reluctant to do that.
And while I say that, it is a handy reference.
So I always think in terms of getting to sort of a B2 level, which to me is sort
of fluent to the extent that I can use the language comfortably. Knowing that
I'm going to make mistakes. Knowing that there are going to be some things that I
don't understand. But I'm communicating.
To me, that's sort of you're launched now. Whereas beginner to me, either
you are a total beginner, like zero, and I'll tell you what I do when I'm
at zero, or you're still very much struggling to get a toehold in the
language, that's the sort of beginner.
Then you've got B2, which to me is sort of the launching point.
And then somewhere in between those two is the sort of B1, genuine intermediate
level. In Canada, for whatever reason, they came up with 12 levels.
They call it the "Canadian Language Benchmarks," on the theory that you can
tie a particular job to level five.
And they try to describe in great detail what you are able
to do in a particular level.
And I think this is also quite unrealistic.
You know, sometimes we do better than at other times.
Depending on what we've been exposed to, we might do better in certain
types of contexts than in others.
It's more or less the same idea.
We go from nothing, from zero, to being launched.
And if we are a non-native speaker, there will still be some jagged edges in our
language skill, even after we're launched.
And we just continue to progress as long as we keep studying.
So when I'm a complete beginner, and I might just demonstrate this sometime
at LingQ, because that's what I use now, but before LingQ, what I would do
is, I would go out and buy two or three different starter books, Teach Yourself,
Living Language, Colloquial, Assimil, they're all the same in my opinion.
They have
a little lesson, they have a vocabulary list for the lesson, and they
have some grammatical explanations that you kind of look at. And you
work your way through the lesson.
And if you listen to that, and then the next one and the next one, and then you
go back to the first one and you keep doing that, eventually you start to
get a bit of a sense of the language.
Of course, by doing three different books, I'm getting the same material
from three different sources.
It's what I often refer to as "grazing."
You're kind of covering the same material in different ways.
That's a very effective way to learn.
Because if we are constantly using the same book and trying to force
the same material into our brains, the brain starts to lose interest.
As Spitzer always says, the brain likes repetition, but the brain likes novelty.
So you keep it fresh by changing the source.
You don't want to cover too broad a range of vocabulary at the beginning.
You want it to be more or less...
It's high frequency vocabulary so that there will be enough repetition
that you can kind of get somewhere.
I think any learning content we have, you want to have enough of a mix of the
familiar with the new so that we're not like everything is brand new. And
we have the feeling that we're trying to learn things and no sooner have we
grabbed it, then it's gone, you know?
And that's how we designed the Mini Stories. That there's in
each lesson, the same verbs, the same words repeat five times.
We need this level of repetition at the beginning. And the traditional starter
books that I used to use don't have enough repetition. Because they take you
from the train station to the doctor's office, to the hotel lobby or customs or
whatever they usually do in those books.
So as a beginner, I like to be in content with high-frequency words, ideally with a
lot of repetition. And I end up listening
over and over and over again until I start to get a toehold in the language.
That is the pattern.
And even after having completed one of these beginner books, where they
promise you that you'll be at B1 or B2, that's not the case. Because we
require so much input in the language.
And to the extent that we have high-frequency vocabulary, that
means we're left with a lot of
lower-frequency vocabulary that we still don't know.
And therefore we're very limited in what we can listen to and read.
So it doesn't take you to B2 or B1, but it takes you maybe to an A2
level in the language, if we stay with the common European framework.
Now, if I'm going to study a language that I'm at an intermediate level in,
there are two possible situations.
Either I'm in the midst of learning that language, or it's a language
that I learned before and I left it for a while and I'm going back to it.
The approach is essentially the same.
I want to go to content that is a little bit challenging, but interesting to me.
Some of that, which I then vary with something like the Mini
Stories with a lot of repetition.
I am particularly fond of Sentence Review now at LingQ because now that I know more
about how the brain learns languages. When we study sentence by sentence, we are
focusing more on that particular sentence.
And we can hear the sentence again, and we're looking at words within
that sentence. And then we review
the words immediately after that sentence.
So there's a certain level of frequency, a certain level of familiar
things, and all of that helps to get those neurons firing together.
And then in the Sentence Review, we were forced to reassemble the
sentence, which means drawing on our... it's not exactly our memory because
we're looking at the words there.
But we're having to form a sentence.
The words have been scrambled.
We have to put them back together again in their proper order.
It's a very good discipline for becoming familiar with the structure
of the language and also sort of renewing our acquaintance with
vocabulary that we have just met.
So I find that a tremendous exercise, even in the initial stages, but
particularly as we progress to kind of get that feel that you're getting a
good sense of how the language works.
I don't spend all my time doing that because I spend a lot of time
just plain listening and reading, you know. More of a top-down thing.
But I find that that "nuts and bolts, bits and pieces" exercise is very effective.
That's kind of at the intermediate level.
But once you get past that, now you're into audio book territory.
You're into reading books.
You're into extensive exposure to the language.
And that's the only way you're going to take yourself from that
"I have studied this language and I can do a limited number of things in the
language" to being really comfortable.
And being a smooth speaker, writer, and to be able to understand movies and so
forth. You have to consume a lot of it.
And that's the extensive stage.
That's the reward.
Every stage in the process is a reward.
I love doing my Sentence Review, even as a beginner or as an intermediate learner.
But then eventually when I'm able to enjoy books and movies and so forth,
that's where the big payback comes.