Is it easier to learn a language if you have studied linguistics. Hello,
I'm Dr Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com, and what a
spectacular question and who better positioned to answer this one than I, Julian Northbrook.
Back in the day, when I was learning my second language, I was struggling immensely. As a
beginner learning Japanese, things seemed pretty easy and I progressed fast but as soon as I hit
that dreaded intermediate barrier, everything ground to a halt. Suddenly, it didn't matter
what I did, and I did a lot. I put enormous amounts of time and energy into trying to
improve my Japanese. I mean, I had passed the highest level of the Japanese proficiency test.
Yet, still I didn't feel like I could use the language well in my work and in my day to day
life. I did everything trying to improve, but I was constantly spinning my wheels going round
and round and round in circles, and just not going anywhere. No matter what I did,
nothing seemed to have any kind of impact on my actual proficiency in the language.
Eventually, I gave up and I decided to focus my time and attention on something else instead. If I
did a Master's, I may be able to teach at a higher level, get paid more for it, I thought. I enrolled
on a Master's in Applied Linguistics with a focus on English language teaching. The funny thing was,
is I took this course in order to become a better English teacher, but the biggest benefit was
actually for me. Because, suddenly, the reason why I'd been spinning my wheels all that time
and never improving became crystal clear, and the path forward also became crystal clear, armed with
the knowledge that I gained from that Master's. And then, of course, later in my PhD research,
I went at Japanese like a maniac, and fixed all my problems and improved pretty fast.
Now, one thing I am going to say here related to the original question is I think it does depend
on what kind of linguistics you study, because there are different kinds. If you are more into
the traditional linguistics where you are studying the syntax and the phonology of English and all
of that good stuff, I think it's arguable how useful that would be for a language learner.
I personally studied applied linguistics and the applied part means it is a practical form of. I
spent most of my time during my Master's studying the behavioral psychology of language learning, as
well as psycholinguistics, which is the cognitive psychology of language processing, i.e. What is
happening up here in the brain when you speak and comprehend and learn languages and all of that
good stuff. As well, of course, when I went onto PhD level and I focused on formulaic language,
or what I like to call quite simply chunks and how they can be used in order to help people
just like you to build fluency and naturalness in English as quickly and easily as possible.
The point I'm trying to make there is my studies in linguistics had a very, very practical focus.
If you're into more theoretical stuff, not too sure how useful that would be. One point I want
to make here, and it's a slight digression but it's an important one, during my time
as a Master's student and as a PhD student, one thing that struck me again and again and again,
was that we have this enormous wealth of knowledge in the academic research, decades and decades of
knowledge that has been compiled by the world's greatest minds as far as the topic of second
language acquisition is concerned. None of that ever seems to actually be used in the classroom.
It's like there is a huge disconnect between the academic knowledge and what teachers and
language learners actually do. It's like the two scientists speaking a totally different language
and they're unable to communicate to each other, which is, of course, why I have made this my
mission here on this YouTube channel, as well as, of course, in everything that I do, my coaching
courses, my work with my clients, absolutely everything to take that wealth of knowledge
and to translate it in a way that people just like you can actually benefit from it.
One final point, if you do want To improve in English as a second language,
should you then run off and do a Master's in linguistics? Well, if you really,
really want to do a Master's in linguistics or you can benefit from that Master's in some way,
have at it. If you just want to improve your English,
that's probably a little bit extreme and certainly not necessary, because that's why people like me
exist. I've done all that hard work, so you don't have to. And, of course, the best place to start
for that is doingenglish.com/freetraining. Study the free one-hour training that I put together.
It's going to teach you the five top things that you need to know about improving as a higher level
speaker of English as a second language. Somebody who speaks okay english, but wants to go beyond
slow and awkward sounding and speak at incredible levels of fluency, naturalness, and confidence.
Once again, that's doingenglish.com/freetraining. Check it out. I'll see you on the other
side and I'll see you in the next video. See you soon guys. Bye bye.