the sense of of starting with something that is just noise listening to it it's
just noise looking at a funny script if you're learning Persian or Arabic or
Russian or Chinese and then finding that a few months later you actually
understand it my name is Steve Cochran I don't call myself a polyglot but I guess
I am one I I have learned bits of 20 languages other than English so I've
developed some tips along the way so I tried to sort of organize these so I
came up with these seven tips which I think are you know certainly some of the
principles that I've learned from other people and I think they can be helpful
the brain learns the brain is a learning machine the brain can not do otherwise
than learn the brain always learns given stimulus given enough exposure but it
learns slowly and one of the biggest factors in language learning is time um
how many hours are how much time when you spend a day and how long are you
gonna stay with it so we have to spend the time the two fundamental factors in
language learning our motivation in time so if you are doing what you'd like to
do you're motivated so if you don't like as much as I like reading if someone
doesn't like reading maybe they have to find some other way to learn when you
choose content to listen to and read find content of interest listen to
people whose voice you enjoy if you don't enjoy the voice or the subject
matter leave it get on to something else if you
are doing things that you enjoy doing and if the process of language learning
is enjoyable then you have a positive attitude and you're going to continue
many things happen in a language and some of these things we notice and some
of the things we don't notice you know for example I could be listening to
Russian and not notice how the cases work I may not notice or maybe because
it's pointed out I start to notice typically I find in language learning
the more we listen the more things we notice and we want to notice now you
know I always use insofar as pronunciation for
example my father is was from Czechoslovakia so he would read words in
English based on how he thought they should be pronounced so in Canada
there's a province called Nova Scotia for example we even have a bank of nova
scotia and my father can make the sound or
could make the sound sure but he would always promote
pronounce at Nova Scotia him.t ia is Scott yet he didn't notice he didn't
make the effort to notice that in fact it's pronounced Scotia so we have to be
a little bit attentive to what's happening in the language so that
gradually we can develop better habits every time we notice something a word a
phrase the structure we're helping to to put that into our helping the brain you
know create these patterns so that eventually we get the proper language
habits to me language learning is a matter of acquiring words now words and
phrases but phrases consist of words you have to know what words mean the larger
your passive vocabulary the more you understand the more you understand the
more likely you are to be able to speak even if you only use a small subset of
your passive vocabulary the words that you understand but all of this is much
more important than grammar grammar if you have if you do a lot of listening
and reading which is how you acquire words so if you're motivated to learn
words you're gonna do a lot of listening and reading and that's of course what we
encourage people to do at Lincoln we track the numbers of words they know and
stuff because once you have a lot of words and you've listened to a lot of
content the brain starts to sort this stuff out there's research that shows
that a toddler one-year-old toddler knows which patterns belong to its
native language even though it's not saying anything but they do tests with
the brain or whatever and they show 90 percent of the basic structures of a
language the toddler has figured it out just through listening so the grammar
which attempts to explain you use it here except when it's something else and
all kinds of complicated explanations of when you use wood
should or could or might or ought to we have trouble you know absorbing these
whereas if we listen and read a lot a lot therefore require a lot of words a
lot of words enable us to read and listen widely we are going to get the
structures we can occasionally look up some of the rules but the first thing is
to have enough words so that we can get enough interesting kind of content into
our brains so vocabulary over grammar it takes time
to learn the language for a long long time everything remains fuzzy foggy you
forever don't understand that you know you're listening to something for the
tenth time and this still can understand the same part of it you're with some
people who are speaking the language you're learning say you're learning
Spanish and you're with a bunch of spanish-speaking people and they're all
talking a mile a minute and you can't understand and so every time we build up
frustrating thoughts feelings of frustration or impatience
we're damaging ourselves we're reducing our efficiency you have to be positive
you have to give yourself credit for what you have achieved because that's
good for the brain makes the brain happy and just be patient it takes time and I
have had this feeling like right now I'm trying to learn Arabic and it just seems
like sometimes it seems like I'm not getting anywhere but of course I am and
I know it from again from looking at my page on link because there are fewer and
fewer unknown words fewer and fewer blue words as we call them but you don't
necessarily sense that all the time so it's very important to be patient and it
gets back to trying to enjoy the process and being impatient is not gonna help
you enjoy the process nowadays we were it's it's such a
wonderful you know time to be learning languages you know obviously you need
some kind of an mp3 player I mean the smartphones today are unbelievable I
have on my little iPhone and I can read I can work on link I can listen I can go
through flashcards so the amount of stuff I can do in that little device and
occasionally I use it as a telephone you know is amazing but by the same token I
would include under tools all of the resources that are available on the
Internet so audiobooks II Netflix YouTube YouTube is phenomenal
because in many languages they have the subtitles and here again at link we have
an app we have like a browser extension so that either on my iPad or on the
computer I can bring in YouTube videos Netflix movies with the subtitles as
text that I can then study and work so there's another tool to includes
different apps that you can use invest in the tools so that your language
learning becomes more efficient even if you are out of school if you're not mmm
self-motivated if you don't leave the classroom wanting to do more wanting to
listen more and read more you're not gonna learn so you have to take
responsibility for your learning you should decide what you wanna listen to
don't let the teacher tell you what you're gonna listen to what you're gonna
read you have to search that out teacher can recommend or you know on the
internet you get on a different form and people say this is a good source of
content or something else is a good source of content but you have to be
independent sometimes if I'm searching for something say in on YouTube I'll
maybe I'll go to Google Translate make sure I get it correct in Arabic and then
I put it in there put it in the search field there at YouTube and I'll get
something so you have to take the initiative grammar the same way the idea
that the teacher comes in and said okay today we're gonna do the subjunctive
well maybe I'm not ready to learn this objective or I'm not interested it's
much better if you're going through this content and you keep on coming across
this verb form and you're kind of think it's the subjunctive but you're not sure
then you google and you search and so you're the one who is searching out the
grammar rules and explanations if you're taking the initiative you're gonna learn
if you're waiting for someone to push the language at you it's gonna take a
lot longer language learning is something we can all do the the sense of
achievement we have when we learn another language even if we learn it
imperfectly is tremendous we are able to learn about other cultures
we ran a we're able to connect with people all over the world or from all
over the world we're able to access you know
bits of their culture literature movies music all over the world so it's a
tremendously positive thing to do and I think people should do more of it and
they shouldn't allow themselves to be sort of trapped in the conventional
grammar remembering that declension tables the conjugation tables the rules
that's the the least effective way of learning and it's the highest
frustration way of learning for most people some people like grammar but for
most people that's in fact not how the brain works the brain has more trouble
with these theoretical explanations and in fact has an easier time gradually
getting used to something through massive exposure get smarter
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