Good morning, everybody! My name is Chris Gorges from ASL Basics and today we're
going to be doing a live class. This is definitely outside of my comfort zone,
but today we're going to be going over the three fundamental keys of learning
any language and so this is going to be focused primarily on sign language but
this is actually going to be applicable to learning any language so if you're
interested in learning the language more quickly forget less and also to
communicate more then this class is going to have a lot of value for you
before we get started just go ahead and let me know what languages are you
currently learning and what kind of struggles are you trying to overcome or
what kind of roadblocks are you facing with learning a new language with all
that said we're going to go ahead and jump right into it and we're going to go
into the very first key to learning a new language and that key is input and
so this has a more technical term it's called comprehensible input in academia
but in a nutshell it basically just means that you're trying to increase
your exposure so really quickly we're going to go over why that's important
and also how we can do it and so why is it important I'm going to just really
briefly talk about this study that was really interesting and it was called the
heart rise lis study was done back in 1999 and basically what they did is they
would study early childhood language acquisition and why some children's had
a larger vocabulary than others and the role of exposure in to that and so this
study was conducted over a decade and six of those years were just spent
typing and coding and analyzing 30,000 pages of transcripts but basically what
they did is they sat in about an hour every day with families and they
recorded how many words the children were exposed to and the really
interesting part about that is the correlation between the number of words
that were in the child's vocabulary compared to how many words those kids
were exposed to so I'm going to show you a quick graph right here and so what
this graph represents is the vocabularies of three-year-olds and so
you'll notice that there's a pretty big jump in vocabularies so on the low end
you'll see 525 words middle ang 740 and then 1116 and the big difference
between those vocabulary sizes was the number of words that they were exposed
to and this is really interesting because this is as early as three years
old and you can see the differences in the sizes of their vocabulary and this
was all because of the amount of words that they were exposed to and that gap
can be huge and so on the lower end children were exposed to like maybe 15
million words versus 45 million words so they're there the study was actually
coined like the 30 million word gap and basically in a nutshell what it shows is
that there's a direct correlation to how many words that we were exposed to and
how many words that we were able to produce and how quickly were able to
acquire that language so how do we increase that exposure for ourselves so
YouTube is actually a really powerful platform I was reading this book last
year called the innovators mindset and he's he was talking about these middle
schoolers that were able to learn how to build a hovercraft just from YouTube and
so it's really turned into this learning platform and if you're learning sign
language on my website I've listed some YouTube channels that are sign language
focused bill Vickers ASL that deaf professors that are teach the language
directly and have classes that are kind of surrounded with language learning and
also like vlogging is very popular so if that's something that you're into sign
Duo signed with heart these channels have a lot of great content for you to
go ahead and dive into and increase your exposure to the language because what's
important about comprehensible input is that it's more than just words it's more
than just vocabulary it needs to be conversations that needs to be the
language with how it's actually used and there's no better way to do that than to
expose yourself to actual conversations and just real real live world input so
those resources are great if you're wanting to learn sign language and if
you're learning another language besides ASL then you know there are also YouTube
channels that are in other languages of whatever target language that you are
learning then you need to be exposing yourself to that language as much as
possible there's more resources too so movies if you want to expose yourself to
more of the language to more of the culture again these are more sign
language focused your name is Jonas sound and fury wonderstruck a quiet
place these are all have deaf actors actresses they incorporate sign language
and touch on Deaf culture a little bit TV show switched at birth this is a
great TV series that came out about 10 years I think it was but this it also
includes deaf actors and actresses and they use sign language throughout every
episode and they really dive deep into the culture and so if that is a TV
series that you haven't watched yet and you're learning sign language that's a
great one to get started with and I also listed like signing time baby signing
time these are more directed for children so if you're trying to teach
your children they're great but they're also great if you're adults they teach
real common words everyday languages and documentaries see what I'm saying
through deaf eyes these are great documentaries to really learn more about
the culture and you're going to be able to just learn and expose yourself to
more the language so with that again these resources are all available on the
website if you go to the homepage of ASL basics com you'll see let's get started
free resources you just click that button and you'll have links to all of
those different resources that I've mentioned including also to some ASL
dictionaries and I see more people are learning let's see if I can highlight
some of these comments here we got somebody learning polish we have
somebody's learning ASL and we also have Lee AG learning ASL so I want to thank
everybody that is here live with me right now
George Cindy Larry Amira George thank thank you all for coming this morning
and hopefully that you're finding value in this video so far and so the first
key is exposure the second key to learning the new language is output so
the first key is input right we want to expose ourselves to the language as much
as possible and preferably in ways that we actually enjoy right if we don't
enjoy the process we're probably going to just give up on it but basically
output is going to be the other side of that equation that's going to be using
what we know and this is where we can take a really
valuable lesson from children and how they learn languages and how they use
languages and so you take a one-year-old and they're not able to formulate
sentences they only have a very small number of words that they know maybe
it's mom maybe it's hungry maybe it's tired and
you know just with those one-word sentences they're able to convey what
they want and when we're just beginning to learn the language
our vocabulary is going to be that of a toddler and then as a two-year-old and
then as a three-year-old and it kind of progresses like that as well and the
secret to that is that we need to use what little we know especially in the
beginning because if we're not using what we know and we're not using it then
we're not going to be able to produce the language one big tip is to try to
get over the fear of being wrong and really kind of relish in those mistakes
and we see this in children alone time they are not afraid of making mistakes
there they're not subconscious of looking silly or being judged but we as
an adults that's a really big roadblock subconsciously we don't want to look
stupid we don't want to say the wrong thing we don't want to appear like we
can't communicate what we want to and so if we can overcome that fear and kind of
build up that confidence and just realize that yeah we we may have the
language in the vocabulary of a toddler but that's okay if we're gonna get to
the next step we're gonna go ahead and have to use what we know like one great
way of doing that is to join like practice sessions every Wednesday I've
been hosting ASL group practice sessions and connecting students with each other
so they're able to get together and use what they know with one another and so
if that's something that you're interested in feel free to let me know
and I can give you a meant to that and also just doesn't know all the
references and resources and and everything I'll have in the description
area below on YouTube and there will be links to all of that and the third key
is going to be actually a two-parter it's going to be review and feedback and
we'll be talking a little bit about what a language parent is and why that's so
important the first part of that is going to be review and understand
a language is a skill and with any skill it's going to take that you actually use
what it is that you're trying to learn and many cases you might may hear of the
10,000 hour rule like if you want to become proficient at it if you want to
become skilled at something it's going to just take 10,000 hours of just like
raw practice and doing it but we we have to also understand that repetition is so
important many times we just want to go ahead and learn a sign or learn a word
and it's one and done but really that's not how the brain works the brain works
through repetition and there's the same called the neurons that fire together
wire together and the reason for that is the more that we repeat something over
and over and over again whether it's a sport or whether it's a language or
whether it's a skill if we don't do that repetition we're not going to become
skilled at it and languages are no different so repetition is really really
important and speaking of repetition there's this really great book that is
all about how you can increase your memory so this is by Grandmaster Kevin
Horsley he's a master chess player and he has the world record for memorizing
the most digits of pi you know 3.14 two five nine and he just goes on and on but
he memorized 10,000 places of that of that number and he has a world record in
it in it and so he wrote this book that's all about how you can increase
your memory and forget less and that is one of the biggest challenges to
learning the language learning in a word or learning the sign and a week later
it's gone and so what he teaches is there's lots of different methods that
he uses but one of them is called spaced repetition and basically you can boil it
down to like a 3x3 method of if you learn something new before the day is
over try to review it three times and then in the first week try to review it
three times again and in the first month review it three times again and this is
a really really powerful way to stop forgetting things and that review is so
important so if you review it a lot when you first learn it and then you review
it less frequently then you're going to be able to retain that information and
think about like a phone number that you learned from you know 10 15 years ago
and for many of us that number is still in our in our memories or addresses or
just think of different little things like that that are just rooted in our
long-term memory and that space repetition is a great way to transfer
that new information from our short-term memory to our mid term memory to our
long-term memory so review is definitely really important and I really loved this
quote from the book too it's caught it says you can remember mountains of
information when you are interested in the subject it almost feels automatic
and your concentration is at a peak your deficits of attention are mostly
interest deficits so this is another aspect of language learning that many of
us maybe take the wrong approach we may want to focus on vocabulary and
we're focusing on books and things like that and approaching languages as an
academic exercise but if we don't find that exercise or that method very
appealing or interesting then we're not going to remember what we learn and
we're probably going to give up rather quickly and I think it's between like 90
to 95 percent of people that attempt to learn a new language aren't successful
and they give up and I think most of that is attributed to not enjoying the
process and so so much of learning the language is finding ways to make the
process enjoyable another quick book that is really really great for this
learning anything really is understanding how the brain works so
this is a book called the motivated brain it's by Gale Gregory and one of
the quotes that she had is if learning is interesting challenging and
meaningful doing the work is its own reward
again it kind of comes back to making the process fun and if you ever do
research into polyglot so people that learn lots of languages 4 5 6 7 8
languages one thing that they all have in common is make the language learning
process enjoyable and that's different for everybody so one of the things that
I encourage all of you that are trying to learn a new language is to try to
find a way to make the language learning process enjoyable so we've gone over the
review part of it so we want to make sure that we review what we are learning
on a consistent basis and we can use that spaced repetition to help us not
forget those things that we're learning and the second part of that
feedback this a good language parent is actually taken from a TED talk by Chris
Lonsdale he's a linguist from New Zealand and his TED talk is about how
you can learn any language in six months and one of those factors is having a
good language parent and he goes over four aspects what a good language parent
is and what they do and so the first thing is that that good language parent
is going to work to understand what you are saying and again think back to when
you're a child or maybe you're a parent in you and you have a small one at home
think of how you interact with them and you really want to try to understand
what they're saying you know if they say hungry you're gonna want to know what
they're hungry for if they're tired you're gonna want to put them down for a
nap and you know it's trying to figure out what it is that they're saying and
when you're learning a new language having a good language parent somebody
that is going to really put in the effort to try to understand what you're
saying can go a long ways the second part of that is they're not going to
correct every single mistake and this can be really difficult when somebody is
fluent and then somebody is learning and if you are being corrected no don't
don't get me wrong like feedback and positive criticism is really important
to that entire process but if somebody's being corrected on every single mistake
on every single sentence that there that's coming out of their mouth or out
of their hands then that person is going to get really discouraged really quickly
so if you're going to be a good language parent or you want to seek a good
language payer finding somebody that won't you know criticize every mistake
that you do is going to be really important the third one is they confirm
understanding by using correct language so we do this with kids all the time and
maybe they're saying I want to brush my teeth and you say oh you want to brush
your teeth and you model what the language is actually supposed to be like
so you want to make sure that you can find somebody that will give you that
positive feedback and kind of give you those Corrections along the way and then
the fourth one is using words that the learner knows and so if you're talking
to a child you're not going to be using words like hey you need to increase your
comprehensible input you know that's just going to go right over the kids
head and we as language learners we have a very limited vocabulary so
it's really important that we we try to use the words that we're familiar with
and that is true on both sides of the equations you're looking for a good
language parent make sure that you can find somebody that is going to use words
and signs that are maybe you're not familiar with yet but is willing to kind
of put in the work and effort to help you build up your vocabulary and really
reinforce the language that you already know which kind of goes back to that
output using what you know and again like the the TED talk that this is from
okay I'll have a link to that TED talk in the description area down below if
you're watching this on YouTube and let me know if you're live here today and
let me know if this is providing value are you finding this interesting the
three keys to learning a new language and basically we're just going to go
ahead and bring it all back home again and go over the three keys or these
three fundamental keys to learning a new language and remember the first one is
going to be input that's going to be exposing yourself to the language as
much as possible the second one is output trying to use the language as
much as you can no matter the size of your vocabulary whether you've been
learning for a week or whether you've been learning for 10 years just
constantly using the language that you are willing to be fluent in and then the
last one is going to be the review and feedback make sure that you're reviewing
what you learned on a consistent basis and getting feedback from somebody that
can be a good language parent for you thank you so much for everybody coming
up and remember input output and feedback if you can get those three
fundamental keys you're going to make your life a lot easier with learning of
the language if you want to learn more sign language both my wife and I tutor
on one-on-one so you can check out that website or you can check out
patreon.com/crashcourse and if you want more classes like this you can subscribe
and if you click that Bell notification down there it'll send you a notification
before any of these events go live again so that way you can jump in and be part
of the class and you have been thanked for watching and until next time I'll
see you later bye