Hi friends, welcome back! Today we're talking about reaching
the intermediate plateau
and what to do when you feel stuck when you are learning a language.
So, intermediate is where you are at a level
comfortable enough to communicate in a foreign language
but sometimes still struggle with a bit of vocabulary or grammar.
And the thing with the intermediate plateau is people are like
"okay, I've reached a comfortable level where I can speak, I can communicate"
and then you kind of stop studying very actively
and you just kind of "plateau".
In your first like three to six months of learning a language,
it's completely new, so you're literally going from knowing nothing
to being able to at least introduce yourself,
order things, talk about yourself.
That is super, super fast progress.
Once you have all that base,
learning to speak about a bit more complex topics
takes a lot of time and you feel like your progress is very slow.
Now that we know what the intermediate plateau is,
let's look at a few ways to combat it and move from
intermediate to advanced.
Number one: stop focusing on what is in textbooks,
stop rereading your old notes,
and focus more on speaking to native speakers in context
so that you can pick up stuff like
phrasal verbs, idioms, collocations,
those kinds of things that will make you sound a lot more native.
And try to think of how you can say
a word in a more advanced, different way.
Collocations, for example, are words that go together.
So in English we say you "take medicine"
whereas in Korean you "eat medicine".
There's a Korean...
Oh, a bird! Oh, my Gosh! :0
There's a Korean language learning blog
called Hangukdrama. It's actually run by a girl in Singapore called Shanna.
And she wrote something about collocations in Korean
and I agree with her in that
how we learn it is we don't try and equate it to our native language
but we just learn it in the context of Korean.
So what I mean, for example, is
the collocation "stop time".
In Korean there are many words to say "stop".
It could be 멈추다, 그만하다, 그만두다, 끝나다,
그만 뒀습니다... [sorry everyone, I don't know a single word in Korean]
So, for example, to say the collocation "to stop time" in Korean is 시간을 멈추다.
멈추다 is only used in this context with time.
You can't say [???]
And how both Shanna and I are learning Korean is that we don't equate it to English.
So I don't look up the word "stop"
and then I don't look up "time" and I put it together.
I learn it as a set phrase. So now I know to say "to stop time" is 시간을 멈추다.
On the topic of learning phrases in their entirety,
is the concept of learning by chunking.
There's a Japanese instagrammer and I think he has a YouTube channel called "Japanese by chunking"
and I think this approach is absolutely wonderful
because you are learning a set phrase
and you will not need to worry about the word order or the grammar
because you just learn the phrase as a whole concept.
So what is a good thing for intermediate learners trying to move to advanced is to
not try and break down every single word but to learn set phrases so you can advance faster.
This part of the video is also sponsored by Lingoda, which is
an online language learning school
and I am actually learning Spanish through them.
Why I'm mentioning them here is because they also teach by chunking
and it is a really immersive experience where you can learn a language much faster.
So it helps you get from intermediate to advanced.
The group lessons are really, really small
and the teacher really takes good control of the lesson
and allows everybody enough interaction to speak.
Something I particularly enjoyed about Lingoda is the opportunity to
explore all the materials of a certain level.
So if you are registered for maybe A1 or A2,
you can check out and download all the PDFs from the lessons there.
You can also browse which topics of the lessons you want to take
and then book it with a teacher according to your availability.
So, for me, I usually take lessons before or after work
and doesn't work out too badly with the time zones,
there's always a lesson that I'm able to take with a teacher.
Lingoda is currently running a sprint
which can help you improve your language learning
in just three months! :D
The sprints runs from the 7th January 2020 until the 5th April.
So if your language learning goals for 2020 are to pick up a new language
like English, Spanish, German, French or business English
then Lingoda is the place for you!
Okay, how does the sprint work?
Well, you can only take one class a day every day.
So for the super sprint you attend thirty classes a month for three months
and if you complete them all
you get a 100% refund of your money.
Then there's also the sprint, which is half of that
so you attend fifteen classes a month for three months
and you will get a 50% refund.
Remember registrations for the Lingoda sprint close on the 19th December.
To register, you need to pay a 49 euro deposit but I have a surprise for you!
And it is a 10 euro discount (that would be equivalent to 11 US dollars)
if you use my code SPRINT40.
The link to register for the sprint is in the description.
So if you're going to do it, please leave me a comment on which language you want to learn
and what your goals are for 2020
and how can Lingoda help you reach those goals. Check it out, try the sprint! :D
Okay, let's move on to the next tip and that is
to start acting like you are a native speaker.
So now you're comfortable enough to communicate in a language, but what is the next step?
It would be to consume media and content in your foreign language.
So if you have to maybe google something,
or look up a tutorial, or a recipe,
and you're learning Japanese, for example,
maybe do it through a Japanese search engine instead, like Yahoo.jp.
You could read books, articles, listen to the radio, the news, watch a movie,
whatever, do it in your target language.
But remember you will only increase your fluency if you're using it as both
an active and a passive studying tool.
So, passive studying is just kind of maintaining your language
maybe listening to a podcast on the bus or reading a book without really taking anything in.
The problem we, intermediate learners, have in our plateau is
we will read a book for example and be like
"okay, great! I understand it, let's move on"
But what I'm trying to suggest is if you are reading a book in a foreign language, for example,
try to look up those words because it's very easy
to just say like "okay, I get the gist of it", you understand in context.
But you're never going to improve if you don't actually
learn those specific advanced words that will really help you get to the next level.
My next tip is to get your current level checked properly.
I don't necessarily mean by taking a test
but what you can do is record a video of yourself speaking
or maybe write a blog post, or a diary entry in a language
just at your current level, don't be looking up any new words,
and maybe upload it for a native speaker to check.
So, if you're talking to a friend, generally that will be okay if you make a mistake
and you will have a lot of mistakes that are ingrained in your speech already.
So, intermediate speakers will make mistakes but it won't hinder the progress of a conversation,
people will still be able to understand you, but if you really want to advance to the next level,
you need to find someone who's willing to point out all the mistakes you make
so that you can improve it and sound a lot more fluent.
With this, also comes the idea of learning synonyms,
so you can get them with a source or just look up words online
and replace the basic words that you use a lot, so
maybe if you... Let's say you have a, like a blog or a digital journal
where you can look up words, right? So, type a diary entry there every day for maybe a week
and search, do a word search and see how many times you use a specific word, like a basic word.
So, maybe you can try doing a word search and be like "Oh,
oh my Goodness, I use this word so many times, let's look at a more advanced, specific way
to say the word in a different way!"
Now, the last tip sounds pretty simple, but you really need to apply it to get to an advanced level
and that is to put an effort every single day.
I am busy too, and a lot of you ask me "how do you get time for learning languages when you have a full time job?"
It is hard, but I try to use my dead time as much as I can.
What I mean by that is when I am like riding on the bus, I will listen to a podcast.
Now, not just any podcast where I'll just listen passively, but it will be a teaching podcast
where vocabulary is actively being taught to me.
I make sure to text my friends in foreign languages
and I try to incorporate the language into my work day.
So I am a UI UX designer or a product designer
and if I do a research on how to do a specific thing or
if I want to understand more about UI UX principals,
sometimes, if I have the time, I will look it up in another language.
There are so many resources for UI UX designers in Spanish
and what I've really been enjoying is to look up UI UX articles in Spanish instead.
And it's absolutely imperative that you put an effort every single day.
The problem I find even with myself is that I get so comfortable in a language that I think
"oh, okay! If I just kind of leave it, I will stay at that level forever"
Well, my French and my Hungarian have really deteriorated
because I got to a decent level and I thought I would stay there
and by not practising it and not using it,
what happens is you can understand it fluently, and that tricks you.
You think "okay, I'm still fluent in the language"
But when you need to try and speak and reproduce... very, very difficult.
If you think of it in a context of doing, maybe let's say,
an hour of language learning every day for a year,
you get 365 hours of learning a language.
If you just do one hour a week, like a lesson a week,
that is just 52 hours a year
and that will not help you improve.
So, just make sure to, whenever you have time to, put an effort for language learning.
So, what can help is to try and change up your language learning method.
Maybe get a new app, get a different tutor, try to explore some language meetups in your area...
Just try and change up how you generally learn languages
and that should make it more fun and hopefully get you faster from intermediate to advanced.
That's all I have for you today! If you have some tips that you want to share,
please leave them in the comments and remember to use my code
if you're going to register for the Lingoda sprint.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video! Bye bye! :D