Hello everyone! I’m Grace.
Have you ever wondered
why some people learn languages faster than others?
What is their secret weapon?
Or do they just have more talent than us?
Speaking from my own experience
I don’t think it’s about talent at all
I believe it is related to the way we learn languages,
the mindset we have,
and the strategies we use
Today we’re fortunate to have a special guest
Chris Lonsdale
He is a psychologist and a linguist
who has successfully learned Mandarin fluently in 6 months
He then in 4 months learned Cantonese fluently
You may have watched his TED talk
“How to learn any language in six months”
Today he is going to share with us
what strategies he uses
and the mindset he has when he learns new languages
By the way, the following content is mainly in Mandarin
but I’ve prepared English and Chinese subtitles
So remember to turn on closed captioning
Let’s go!
1. Language learning is a type of physiological training
After learning Chinese martial arts and looking into
some linguistic studies, I came to a realization
That is, language learning is basically
a process of physiological training
For instance, to improve listening skills
you need to deal with the filters in your brain
Because, for example,
your ears and your brain are familiar with the sounds in your first language
so you can distinguish and understand these familiar sounds
But with a new language,
your brain will filter out the sounds that are different from your first language
This is physiological
it’s not something you can solve by memorizing new words
You need to listen to these sounds a lot
Let your brain start to distinguish these sounds
And after this, you can hear them clearly
This is a physiological process
Listen to a lot of your target language
This will train your brain to get used to new sounds in your target language
The second one is pronunciation
You just said that
you also improved your own Mandarin pronunciation (Yes)
I believe that sometimes your mouth
can get a bit sore from practice
Yes, just like doing exercise
Your muscles get tired after you practice and become sore.
Right, right!
So by practicing new pronunciations,
your mouth, your throat
your…(muscles) face, muscles won’t feel that comfortable
Sometimes it’s like you finished a marathon (Yes)
So this is also physiological
Practicing speaking a new language is like doing exercise
It takes muscles — If your face hurts, you’re doing it right
The third one is about the brain
It takes some chemical reactions
in your brain to memorize something
and to store the signals in your neural circuits
If, for example, you’re too tired
This process won’t complete
Many people stay up late and feel pressured
so it’s hard for them to memorize new things
But if you’re relaxed
And when you feel tired, you just sleep for a while
Then it’s going to be easier for you
Understanding this is a physiological process
It’s going to help you a lot with arranging your time
and understanding the signals your body gives you.
Your psycho-physiological state matters
2. Learn through comprehensible input
And this is really, really well documented now
it’s something called comprehensible input
There’s 20 or 30 years of research on this
Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field,
has published all sorts of these different studies
and this is just from one of them
The purple bars show the scores on different tests for language
The purple people were people who
had learned by grammar and formal study
the green ones are the ones who learned by comprehensible input.
What is comprehensible input?
Comprehensible input
is a concept that you need to grasp and understand
You can study effectively by utilizing this concept
It can be used when you have a foundation in this language
For example, when you were young,
did you like reading novels? (Yes, I did)
ok, did you understand every single word you read? (No)
ok, did you stop reading just because of the words you didn’t know?
No, I’d read the words I knew and try to understand the overall meaning
You read and paid attention to the part you understood
Did you realize it？
Without knowing it, you just naturally acquired those unknown words
to the point that you can even use them yourself
You don’t have to put much effort into it
and think that you have to memorize everything
The only thing you need to do is pay attention to the context
and what people are trying to communicate
And then you’ll acquire the language subconsciously
This is comprehensible input.
Focus on getting the overall meaning first
When you first understand the message, you’ll subconsciously acquire the language
3. The best mindset for learning a language effectively
I think the most crucial point is that
you need to consider yourself a language genius first
We must be able to learn it!
We’ve already learned it
On the day you were born
Did you know Chinese?
I was listening to it. I couldn't speak it yet
But I was listening to it
Since the day you were born
you might have already listened to quite a lot. (Yes)
OK, after you were born you kept listening
You couldn’t speak yet and no one was teaching you
But you started paying attention to your surroundings, imitating sounds
and started using those sounds as a tool to meet your needs
Meal, meal!
Dad, dad! (And then someone comes)
Yes, someone comes
So you discovered and realized that this is a handy tool
just like a remote control
I can produce a sound and get the result I want
We all have this ability
because we’ve learned our first language this way
So knowing this
learning a second language is not a problem
Have confidence in your ability to learn a new language
Use your new language as a tool to communicate
I consider knowing this to be crucial
When people are learning foreign languages
many of them are afraid they’re not capable
or they want to speak like an adult
to communicate after learning for a short time
They aren’t willing to go through the process of speaking like a baby
Many people don’t go on the right path
for fear of losing face,
Or by rushing to get results, or learning just for exams.
And it turns out that they don’t get the results they want
So we need to accept that
during language learning there’ll be a period
where we’ll speak like a baby
We would only say some individual words
but don’t ask too much of ourselves
Right, so we need to accept that during this period
we’re still learning and trying to get better
Also, people don’t speak their native tongue perfectly
Often people don’t pronounce words in their first language that accurately
Yes
Sometimes the other person can understand by context
Sometimes the other person might not get it
and you’ll just have to say it again
and say it right this time
Just like I wanted to say “寫” but I said “說”
This kind of mistake is very common
Because under the context I can still understand you
I wouldn’t think
“You’re wrong. Why did you say it this way?”
Right, right!
And I found out the mistake by myself when I was speaking
I corrected it
so your brain didn’t even notice it
Yes! I don’t remember it at all.
So if you start paying attention to how native speakers speak
you’ll realize that they make this kind of mistake
all the time
So by understanding how languages are normally spoken
you won’t be so strict with yourself
We don’t have to give ourselves so much pressure
We don’t need to give ourselves so much pressure, that’s right!
Accept that you’ll have a period of talking like a baby (in new languages)
Don’t give yourself pressure to be perfect
Even native speakers make mistakes
“Taxi” (Right) is not “腳踏車”
“腳踏車” is “bike”
No no no, “自行車”
Is “自行車” “腳踏車”？
“自行車” is “腳踏車”. Right!
Do you know how we call “出租車“ (in Taiwan)?
I forget!
It’s called “計程車”, and some people call it “小黃”