The internet - and YouTube in particular - offers a vast ocean of content, and if
you don't want to get lost or waste time, you have to learn how to navigate it. Hi
My name is Luca from Luca from LucaLampariello.com, and today I'm going to show you how
I use the Internet, and in particular YouTube, to learn and improve my foreign
languages. Now, specifically for deliberate language learning, there are
three criteria that are very good when it comes to choosing your content. The
first criterion is that you should abide by content that is interesting to you. If
something is interesting, your main focus is not the language itself, but it's the
message and as a consequence you will learn the language that is used to
convey that message. The second crucial factor or point is that this content
should be comprehensible to you. So, you don't want to choose content that has
maybe just audio or in which the audio is too fast and is not good
quality, but instead you want to focus on content that is very clear, that is
possibly made for learners, but not necessarily, and that has subtitles in
your target language and in English. The third important point to keep in mind
for what I'm going to tell you later is that the video be a maximum of five-six
minutes. In fact, if the video is short, you can focus on it better, and you can
do a number of repetitions on it which are going to expand the amount of time
that you're going to spend on the video. And if the video is, say, ten minutes, then
it will take you 1 hour to do that so.. keep it short, keep it sweet
and keep it effective.
So, one of the resources that you can find on YouTube which satisfies the
aforementioned criteria is easy language. Easy Hungarian, easy French, easy Italian
you name it! There are multiple versions for multiple
languages, and for multiple learners. In particular, I have been learning
Hungarian for quite some time , and I still use easy Hungarian as a wonderful
learning resource. So now let me show you directly how I do it on my computer. So,
one recommendation as you can see here on the screen: you have the box of the
video itself, but you also have to consider that there's this column on the
right that shows you the other related videos. A very good recommendation for
avoiding distractions is to put it in full-screen because what happens with
YouTube is that you have a lot of other videos possibly that you can watch, but you
have to pay attention because those are distracting. The moment you start
watching the video, your eye falls on the other videos as well, and you want to
change the video even before you finish it, so make sure that you have it on full
screen. So as you can see, we are in full screen now and the presenter Justyna is
holding a microphone and she's going to go around interviewing people on the
street, which allows you to actually enjoy how people really talk. We're in
Budapest here and this video is easy Hungarian - let's get started.. oh one
second before we start - an important thing is that as you can see, I have my
piece of paper here to write the title of the video. So, you have here easy
Hungarian, and then the title of episode 1 and then to add the date this is
important for your episodic memory and for your motivation, and I'm going to
talk about this a little bit later. So, let's get started.
(Speaking Hungarian)
So the very first step that I do do is very simple: I watch the video, I enjoy the video, and I look at the subtitles.
As you can see, you have subtitles, both in Hungarian and in English, which makes
this video comprehensible and very nice to look at but the first thing that I do
a step number one is to watch this video in Hungarian and with subtitles in
Hungarian, and why do I do that? Well because I focus on the video itself, on
the content itself. It does not matter how much I understand, I'm focusing more
on the relationship between the spoken language and the written language.
So, here they're talking and you know about somewhere do you want to travel etc and
I finish watching the entire video once. Then, step number two is to rewind the
video as I'm "rewinding" it right now and to watch it by focusing this time on the
English subtitles so let me watch this again this time looking directly at the
English subtitles below.
Okay, after watching in a second time, but this
time with the English subtitles, I have started understanding more and more of
the content because this is content for I would say intermediate-advanced
learners, it really shows how people talk on the streets these people were getting
interviewed they don't know that they're doing this content creating content for
learners so they talk very fast and they use expressions that are commonly used
so it's normal that I will miss a lot of stuff. So, after step 2, I already got a
better idea of the content but I still miss a few things so you want to do
something else and it is to watch it again watching it with Hungarian
subtitles. So you're integrating the whole thing and you're getting the whole framework, or the whole picture
(Speaking Hungarian)
Ok, so, you have watched it three times. Now, one more thing that I do that does make a
difference is that I jot things down. I always say.. you know, the Romans used to
say "Verba volant sed scripta manent" and I can't stress this enough, if you
want things to stick, use a piece of paper or find somehow some way to save
the words or the expressions or the information somehow on a piece of paper.
So what I do is I watch the video for the fourth time but this time I'm going
to stop it here and there and I'm going to jot down and mark and then look up
the words that I find interesting related to this video. So, let me show how I do it
(Speaking Hungarian)
So I go back, I found a word that was interesting there, "fordítani",
which is "translating" - which is word I love - and I can see directly the
translation - no pun intended - below I've neat I'd need the internet to
translate this so forditani
So, another thing that I do and I want you to look at my position is that this
configuration allows me to easily use my left hand to stop the video, and my right
hand to write directly, so I just need to stop here and write it, and you want
to make things easier for yourself because if you're in an uncomfortable
position of your body, then you have to change the position of your body, you
have to stop, you have to go back..this way, I just use left hand right hand it's
really straightforward and it goes really fast
Okay so I've done step number one, step
number two, step number three, step number four, and we are at step number five.
If you want, and some things are still not clear, the last thing you can do is just
to relax now - now you got the content, because you've seen multiple times in
different versions - you're adding variety to your brain and each step serves a
specific purpose, now I just watch the video again you can choose which
subtitles or you can even watch it without looking at the subtitles to see
how much you understand but the idea is that now you can relax and look at the
full content and focus on the message and this is a very straightforward way
to look and extract information from a very simple video which you can see is
four minutes it took me 30 minutes to complete it, 25-30 minutes, and that's the
reason why I was stressing the fact that the length be 5 minutes or 3 minutes or
4 minutes because if you decide to tackle a 10 minute video, then this
exercise or training or whatever you want to call it, is going to become very
very long. You want to keep it smooth, you want to keep it efficient, and you want
to keep it smart.
So, I've gone through these five steps and that's great! I'm satisfied, I've put
in the work. But the truth is that my learning session is not finished yet
there is one last point that makes a difference. What I do is I make sure that
every time I finish a learning session, I first put an entry into my logbook which
is in a Google Docs or online and on top of that I also make sure that I save
these pieces of paper into a folder. I'm going to give it a label - Hungarian or
easy Hungarian - and then every single time that I finish, I put this piece of
paper into the folder. The reason why I do that is because a folder is a
physical entity that you can actually see and every time that you start
learning or finish learning a session of Hungarian or any other language for
that matter, I'm constantly reminded of the amazing amount of work that I've
been putting every single day. So, if you want to use YouTube as a fantastic
learning tool to learn a bunch of languages, you want to keep in mind the
following: first, you want to find content that is short, comprehensible and
interesting to you. Second, make sure that you break down your learning session
into multiple steps in which each step serves a specific purpose and make sure
that you jot things down and you have a good body configuration or body position
so that you can do multiple things smoothly at the same time. And third, make
sure that you store the information and every time you finish a learning session
you jot down the entry on your logbook and you keep a piece of paper and you
accumulate pieces of paper into a physical folder that reminds you of the
amount of work you put every single day. So there you have it. If you want to
learn how to use YouTube to learn or improve a bunch of languages, please
don't forget to come to my website where I have written an extensive article
about this very same matter, you can find a lot of resources, a lot of other links
and there's going to be a lot of new surprises in the next future, so stay
tuned, subscribe to my blog, subscribe to my channel if you haven't done so and
good language learning and see you very soon!
Oh and one last thing: if you have any comments or questions, please write them
below because I'm going to take the most interesting and curious and funny ones
I'm going to comment them myself and reply to them, so stay tuned, and please write
below.