Today, I would like to share with you six key elements to
my language learning success.
I'm not suggesting that I'm the best language learner, far from it.
Some of the people who kindly commented on my last video, people
like Luca Lampariello, LanguageSimp, and there are many more are much
better at language learning than I am.
But still I have achieved some degree of success.
To me, there are sort of six key elements.
So let me go into each one of these elements
in a little more detail. The first one is don't focus on this illusion of trying
to nail down details in the language.
Focus rather on patterns, allowing your brain to get used to the patterns is
how you're going to learn the language.
I discovered early on that the attempt to master declension tables in German or
conjugation tables in French, that that was an illusion, an illusion of learning
that we are better off resisting.
When I left the classroom environment of French that I had at school and
immersed myself in things of interest to me, my accuracy gradually improved.
Very interesting studies, and I'm going to leave links here in the description
box show that with children, their ability to learn languages is not based
necessarily on intelligence or any specific linguistics ability, it's based
on their ability to recognize patterns.
This was the major factor determining who was going to be a good language learner.
Now.
The question then arises, how do people become good at recognizing patterns?
To some extent, I think it's a matter of curiosity.
It's a matter of exposure.
And in fact, again, they found that those children who were exposed to a
greater variety of situations, contexts.
So it's not sort of honing in on the details of the language, the
verb endings or the noun endings, but rather it's this ability of
the brain to start to see patterns.
And I have found this myself.
Uh, I find it very difficult to learn declension endings in
Russian or Slavic languages.
Uh, but sort of new patterns, even if they're very strange, like the patterns
of Japanese or Chinese or, Uh, or, or Korean are easier for me to integrate
and to eventually to understand naturally and to be able to use then specifics
of endings of words or nouns or verbs.
And this basically conforms to what I've mentioned before, Manfred
Spitzer pointed out our brains are designed to identify patterns.
They are not designed to learn details, specific items.
So I think that's a key element, work on patterns, avoid the fallacy or the
illusion of learning specific details.
You're going to find it very, very difficult to do.
Incidentally, uh, this is one of the reasons why I'm not a fan of Noam
Chomsky's theory of universal grammar.
He claims that there is a, what he calls a paucity, a lack of
sufficient input for children to.
Now the next aspect of my language learning approach is to develop a sense
of the language, but this tends to suggest that rather than some inherent
grammar that we have within ourselves, it's more this ability, which varies
from child to child, to recognize patterns and that's where my emphasis
has always been in language learning.
Now, the next aspect of my language learning approach.
Is a commitment to intensity, intensity of input, massive listening and reading.
If I can give myself enough input, enough exposure, enough different contexts.
I'm going to start picking up on the patterns of the language,
but it requires intensity.
I have often said, or I've said before that when I was a Mandarin language
student in, uh, Hong Kong, you know, I did the course and half the time
I learned it better than the other diplomatic language students in Hong
Kong who took two years because I was constantly listening and reading.
I think there is a certain white heat of intensity that you have to try to achieve.
And I see that the different languages that I've been learning on my own.
Um, where I've been able to spend more time every day, listening and reading
to comprehensible input, as was the case with Russian, for example, or even for a
short period of time, Romanian and Greek or Czech, I did better, whereas with
Arabic and Persian, where I have kind of, it's been a bit diffuse, a little bit of
Arabic, little bit of Persian, little bit of Egyptian and little bit of standard.
Without that intensity, I haven't learned as well.
So intensity of input and focus on input is very important
if we are to establish these.
Patterns in our brains.
So one of the reasons, for example, that I think Duolingo is not so effective is
not because there's no chance to speak as some people suggest, it's because
there is not a lot of meaningful content.
There is not that intensity of input, which I think is
a precondition for learning.
At least that has been my approach.
The third element of my language learning success is a strong sense
of belief in my ability to learn.
It's not something that I've started with.
The first language is the toughest.
I didn't know whether I could achieve real fluency in French, but I did.
And once I had that, I was confident that I could learn Mandarin Chinese or
Japanese or any other language that I had to learn if I put in enough time.
So until you have done it, it's difficult to have that.
It's a bit like this sort of prior knowledge thing, you know, if you're going
somewhere for the first time, or you're driving somewhere, we had the experience,
we drove, my wife and I, across the mountains from Palm Springs to Temecula,
and of course, going there, there's, it's a windy road, you know, and it seems
like a long way, but coming back, because you've been on that road before, it
seems like a much faster hour and a half.
So once you've done something, you have a greater degree of confidence
in yourself, That you can do it, that you're going to get there.
And I think that's an important attitude to have because there are times when you
don't feel you're making any progress.
There are times when you're frustrated, you forget things.
But if you have that confidence that you will achieve success, that you will
get there, that will get you there.
And again, you'll see when you go to some of the links that I
leave in the description box.
A lack of confidence is going to actually hamper your ability to learn.
To some extent, you have to give yourself credit for what you have achieved.
You have to believe that you're going to get there.
And even when you don't feel you're doing as well as you would like, you
have to continue to feel confident.
It's easier said than done perhaps, but I have always had
that confidence that I can learn.
And I'm not particularly upset when I'm not learning quickly.
I don't set myself a speed goal that I have to achieve it by whenever.
As long as I'm doing it, I'm confident that I'm learning and I
will learn it as quickly as I can.
Fourth, an element in my language learning, which I think
is important is flexibility.
When children are very young during what's known as the critical period.
The brains are very flexible.
The children, you know, we are creating new neural connections.
There's a very high degree of plasticity in our brains.
And apparently that plasticity declines.
And apparently there's a bit of a struggle between the plasticity
neurons and the stability neurons.
And so the stability neurons start to take over.
And so we're reluctant to accept new things.
We feel challenged by change.
And I think it's very important not to be that way.
So again, easier said than done, but I am open to change.
I'm open to get things wrong.
Uh, I'm open to try to imitate new sounds, new patterns, new ways of saying things.
And I think this flexibility is important.
I've quoted before, I've made reference to a fellow language student back in the
late sixties, Canadian diplomat, who, when he heard that in Chinese The way
they say, are you going is nǐ qǔ bù qǔ, you go, not go, he said, that's stupid.
If you consider that any of the patterns or the sounds of the new
language are strange or even worse, stupid, that you can't make them
part of you, then that's a problem.
You have to be open to it.
You have to throw yourself into the language, pretend you are one of them.
That kind of openness and flexibility is I think common to
all successful language learners.
Even when it comes to pronunciation, I've mentioned before that my
father would continue to pronounce Nova Scotia as Nova Scotia, he's
originally from Czechoslovakia.
I think we have to be willing to notice things that are different in the language.
We have to try to associate words with sounds, notice how those
words are pronounced and not insist on staying within the bounds of.
How these words are pronounced based on our own alphabet.
So flexibility, uh, willingness to change are key elements
of language learning success.
And the fifth element is don't be too anxious to speak.
Don't be too worried about your output performance.
There's far more to language learning than speaking or using the language.
You know, there's far too much emphasis on speaking, especially at an early stage.
Suggestions, uh, suggesting that if you don't speak, you don't know the language.
That the only goal of learning a language is to be able to communicate with people.
That has not been my case.
I have learned to varying degrees, 20 languages.
I can't possibly find people wherever I am here in Palm Springs or in
Vancouver with whom I can communicate in all the languages that I can speak.
You don't have to speak in order to learn.
You don't have to be an extrovert in order to be a successful language learner.
If you have a strong interest in the language and how it works in content in
the language, culture surrounding the language, you develop these patterns
about how the language functions.
You will eventually speak when you have the opportunity and when it
becomes important to you to speak.
So there need not be any hurry in terms of speaking or showing off what you can do.
I'm not interested in proving that after two weeks, I can say a few things
in language X, it's not difficult to do that, but really that doesn't mean
you can have, as I've said before, a conversation, I'm going to be.
I'm going to be undertaking Hindi in another few weeks or a month or so.
And my goal is to find out what's there in that language, in that culture.
And of course I will hopefully have enough skills so that if I run across,
in the case of Vancouver, more than likely a Punjabi checkout clerk in
a supermarket, I'll be able to say some things in Hindi or Punjabi.
That's fun, but it's not the main goal.
The main goal is to learn and discover that culture.
Everywhere you constantly have this, you've got to speak,
you've got to communicate.
Listening and reading is a form of communication and depends
on the opportunity you have.
Obviously, if you're learning English for work, you have
to be able to speak it well.
And that's a whole other discussion.
But if you're learning more than one language, you can't possibly be
in a situation where you can speak them all equally well, nor always
have an opportunity to use them.
So I think that as sort of a condition of language learning that you must be
able to speak and speak accurately and speak well to my mind is misplaced.
And that's what has enabled me to enjoy my language learning journey and, you
know, acquire passive vocabulary in these languages without necessarily
being able to speak them all that well.
Although I have made videos in a number of languages where you can judge my
skill level, and I don't mind showing those languages, you know, where I
don't really speak them that well.
So the final element, and this kind of ties into the other five elements, ties
into this idea of, uh, having confidence and not being easily discouraged,
getting a sense of the patterns through lots of exposure, intensive, you know,
commitment to input, and Curiosity, we have to be curious, curiosity
about the language, the culture.
And I think this curiosity about the language and the culture and the people
as human beings living on this planet, we want to, at least I do, I want
to learn about other places and how different people think and maybe make
those people seem less foreign to me.
And all of these things that relate to curiosity are much more important
than performing in the language and making sure I get it all right.
So, uh, I think curiosity then would be the sixth and final element and
maybe the sort of underlying most important attitude to have in order
to be successful in language learning.
In any case, those have been my guiding principles in language learning.
I'm sure there are many others out there that you can find on the
internet with different approaches.
And I'll leave you with a couple of videos that I've done on some
of these themes in the past.
Thank you for listening.
Bye.