Someone asked me on Tumblr today: Is there a wrong or a right way to learn a language?
And essentially my answer is yes, there are definitely ways that are not going to be effective in your language learning journey
I mean if you're just starting out and you do a google search on how to learn a language
Probably one of the first things you're gonna see is Duolingo and Rosetta Stone
While these software can be beneficial and helpful to your language learning journey
you should not use these things thinking that you're gonna get fluent just by interacting with this.
Language learning comes from hearing the language, by interacting with native speakers, by reading content, by writing journals, by practicing your speaking...
Just by using one app you're not going to get to a level where you want to be at which is essentially fluent
What I mean by there is a wrong way to learn a language is there's a wrong way to approach
The method that you already have if you are dead said focused on just learning vocabulary for instance, and you're ignoring grammar
You're not practicing your speaking. You're not getting a holistic approach to language learning
Then you are not going to improve as fast as you could be language learning is all about the input
You need to get comprehensible input. There's a really awesome YouTube video about this
I kind of sparked this whole debate about receiving comprehensible input in a language and that is basically
Getting information that you can understand and apply to your language learning
So something I do when I'm learning language is I try and apply it to my job, which is a UI UX designer
So I'm always looking up articles in Spanish or Korean or listening to design podcasts that can help me improve my vocabulary in
Spheres that are relevant to my life and of course bound to be words that I'm going to use a lot
So I just googled it and comprehensible input is a hypothesis that says
Comprehensible input is language input that can be understood by listeners. Despite them
Not understanding all the words and structures in it. So this goes back to the question
I received on tumblr which is I've been watching children's cartoons lately because I find them entertaining and easy to understand and learn
Given, I'm a complete beginner but a friend always says that that's a dumb idea
First of all, that's not a nice thing of your friend to say clearly this person is finding that by watching cartoons
They are able to learn because they are getting comprehensible input my friend Brixton who watches every single one of my videos
I was actually just discussing this with him today and he said that he used to watch a lot of
Norwegian cartoons growing up as a kid, so I asked him and I said, okay
Well, how much of this did you actually understand? Did you watch it with English subtitles?
He said no there weren't English subtitles available. So I was like, okay, how did you understand it?
He says well, they're actually pretty easy cuz they're made for kids
And remember there is a visual aid with it so you can actually see what is going on
And again, we can talk about this and people can debate about this on both sides like how kids learn languages
They're always just hearing hearing hearing and seeing what their parents are doing
and then they can make the connections between what they're hearing the word and what they're seeing what the parent is doing a lot of
People do say okay, but we're adults. We're not kids
We shouldn't be learning like kids are laying that's a discussion for a whole other video
But the point is that to some extent this is effective
if you're making visual connections with what you are being able to see
My mom took a course on how to teach English and one of the lessons she had
Was I think somebody was from Poland if I remember correctly and this lady came in and taught them a Polish lesson
completely in
Polish without English and none of them could speak a word but by the end of the lesson they could like
Introduce themselves and point and say what things are for example
If I you know take this and I say Penn and you don't know what Penn means and I say pens
Not pen you are able to figure out that these things are called pens when they're together. One of it is a pen and
Maybe I didn't do this correctly because you would think a paintbrush is called a not pen, but you get where I'm getting at
right by giving you visual aids and
Comprehensible input you can figure out that these are called pens
So what I want to say to the person who wrote me this question, is it is okay continue doing what you're doing
However, don't let cartoons be the only way you're learning this language
Remember to take from a whole bunch of different sources have a vocabulary book or some
You know app to learn vocab and have some way that you can learn grammar but keep getting this
comprehensible input where you can hear the words that popped up something I do is I don't
Review my notes a lot
I don't go over old vocab words and try and memorize I kind of just hope
That by all the input at getting from the language that those words will pop up somewhere
So the more exposure you get to the language the more you can
Solidify these words and grammar structures that you have at least learned once or twice
Something else I want to touch on is your mindset about language learning
I've made a video about this which I think will be very helpful for you because a lot of how we learn in language is
How we think about learning if you're constantly focusing about I'm so scared to make mistakes
I'm so scared to be speaking to native speakers
You are adopting this mindset of fear
And you're gonna associate language learning with something that is very scary and intimidating. It's okay
It takes a while for us to get over that hurdle a fear of speaking to people and of making mistakes
but once we change our mindset the way we learn languages is going to improve so I'm gonna refer to my
Trusty friend Alex Rowley this book over here
Which is called how to speak any language fluently and on page 24
He says believe that what you do is possible if you're harboring doubts
These will limit your ability to achieve what you want
Imagine where you want to be and focus exactly on how much you want
it
Set yourself language learning quotas to fulfill each day in each week then focus on achieving needs so number one dream big
Convince yourself that it really is possible to speak language fluently
I don't remember why it appeared in my youtube recommendations, but I was watching this video about a guy's weight loss journey
and at the end of the video it said something like
Since success is definite, what would you do or now that you know success is a definite thing
What will you do to get there?
So also change your mindset about how you think about language learning you will succeed if you put this input
Research some language learning techniques which are applicable to your situation and your learning style
But the most important thing is just being consistent having a positive mindset and getting comprehensible input
So if that means washing cartoons, that's okay. At least you are hearing the language that other person who said that's a dumb idea
They're spending their time telling other people
It's a dumb idea and they're not even listening to the language when you are at least having this input
I think that's totally okay and you do you thank you guys so much for watching. Let me hear your ideas in the comments
What do you think are they earn their right or wrong ways to learn language? Let's talk about it
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more language learning videos and as always don't forget to check out my website where I have tons of resources as well as a
FAQ if you have any questions, I will see you guys in the next video. Have a great week. Bye. Bye