The key issue is not deliberate or not deliberate.
Once you've decided to learn a language, you're gonna take some deliberate steps
to, you know, acquire that language.
Hi there.
Steve Kaufmann here uh, and today I want to talk about, you know, how deliberate
should we be in learning a language?
Should we deliberately study the language or do we just acquire it naturally?
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So this subject comes up.
You hear people say, well, you know, we just learned the way kids do.
Uh, obviously children, especially say young children that move to
a new country uh, they acquire the language quite naturally.
They don't study, they don't deliberately try to learn it, uh, and sort of, um,
compelling input, if we're driven by our interest in the subject matter,
we're not so conscious let's say of sort of a deliberate effort to learn.
Certainly in my experience now with Persian, where I had a lot of
interesting content I was mostly pursuing this sort of interesting
content about Iran and I wasn't sort of consciously learning, but, but is it
true that we don't deliberately learn?
I think we do as adults.
If we decide to learn a language, we make a decision.
We are deliberately deciding to learn.
So, uh, we're not like the child who's surrounded by friends and will gradually
and naturally pick up the language.
Also, if we don't do something quite deliberate just by being
in the environment, we aren't going to learn the language.
We have, uh, Spanish on, uh, in the background, Spanish
radio while we're working.
And we don't understand anything of what we're listening to.
We're unlikely to acquire very much of the language or it would take forever
to acquire the language that way.
Typically again, if a person moves to a country where that person would like
to learn the language, whether that be France or Japan or places where I
have lived, the, whether it be expat or if, you know, immigrant or whatever
has to make a deliberate effort to learn the language, the language
is not just gonna come naturally.
So then the question is, you know, how deliberate should
our learning activities be?
So at one extreme, you could say that if, if you have this deliberate
learning activity, which consists of reading the dictionary, that's
probably not gonna get you too far.
In other words, it's gonna take forever to be able to use those words and
to acquire vocabulary in that way.
If you have a deliberate learning activity, such as say, doing a
lot of grammatical exercises and studying grammar, uh, I think it
depends on the person, but in my own view, I think it would take a
long time to learn the language.
When we learn the language, we're actually trying to acquire new habits.
So there is this aspect of the sort of natural acquisition that in the case of
young children who are uninhibited, who are surrounded by their friends, speaking
the language, young, you know, children, they don't care about making mistakes.
They gradually correct their own mistakes.
The brain develops these new habits.
They don't really need any correction.
You know, I, I, I think it's kind of amusing when I hear people say that the
mother corrects the child in learning, uh, you know, their first language.
That's simply not true.
Uh, because again, Uh, the, uh, children of immigrants, even if the
parents can't speak the language, the children acquire it very quickly.
So it's not true that the parents, you know, correct their children
and therefore the children learn the ch children learn naturally.
But as adults, it's a little more difficult.
We're not as uninhibited as the children.
We don't get as much exposure as the children get.
So we have to have some degree of deliberate study, but
how deliberate should it be?
In other words, uh, doing grammar exercises personally,
I find uninteresting.
So, uh, I, I don't find any meaning there.
I don't find that to be a meaningful activity.
I don't find reading the dictionary to be a meaningful activity.
however, if I'm starting into a language, uh, using our mini stories
at LingQ, I find that to be meaningful.
It's a story, not a tremendously captivating story, but it's a story.
So there is some meaning there.
I can spend some months on the mini stories because it is meaningful to me in
the sense that I have deliberately decided that I want to acquire this language.
So through repetitive listening and reading I acquire enough vocabulary
that I can eventually start exploring more meaningful content.
And so, so to me, the key issue is not deliberate or not deliberate...
once you've decided to learn a language, you're gonna take some deliberate steps
to, you know, acquire that language.
And the key thing there is meaning, and, and this gets back to what Dr.
Krashen always saya: we learn the language from meaningful messages where we're
motivated to understand the message, but there again, if we go back to the
example of just listening to Spanish in the background, if you can't, if you
have no way of trying to understand what is being said, then it's gonna be very
difficult to learn from that experience.
That's why, when I listen, I like to have access to a transcript so that I have a
chance of understanding of, of finding meaning in what it is I'm listening to.
It doesn't have to be a hundred percent meaning, but there has to be some meaning.
And, uh, so that, to that extent, it's deliberate.
Now, do we need correction for example?
So there's another deliberate strategy.
You get a teacher who corrects you.
Personally I find that that's not necessary.
It's certainly possible that when I'm fairly advanced in the language there
are errors that I will continue to make.
And if someone were to correct me, I might stop making those errors maybe,
but presumably I will develop certain habits that it will be difficult for me
to correct, but it won't dramatically inhibit my communication in the language.
So on the question of, do we need correction?
I would basically tend to come down on the side of, we don't need correction.
If you get corrected fine, but we don't need it.
Corrections can inhibit this other thing that's so important for language
acquisition that is confidence.
So if I'm, uh, say I'm, uh, visiting a country, I don't know a Czech Republic
and I go in a bookstore and, uh, in my best Czech I ask something
and the sales clerk there begins my by correcting my Czech.
Or, you know, Chinese or whatever it might be.
If that happens a couple of times, then I'm gonna be less
willing to speak in the language.
Whereas if the, if the sales clerk, you know, needn't be Czech, it can
be Portuguese, it could be anything.
And the sales clerk immediately understands what I'm saying and, uh,
answers my question then I'm encouraged.
And so that builds up my confidence, uh, and builds up my fluency.
So I, I would tend to say that if correction is, is a form of
deliberate instruction, then I think correction is not a good idea.
Uh, I think, uh, I've said this before, comprehension questions are
not a good idea because it spoils the fun, uh, of listening and reading.
I, I, I was, uh, thinking the other day, you know, when I read, uh, you
know, Treasure Island by, uh, Robert Lewis Stevenson, there were terms in
there I didn't understand Jacob...
Jacob..., I didn't know what that was.
I'm still not entirely clear on the history of that period in, in
Scotland, but it doesn't matter, you know, you can, you can understand
60%, 70% and still enjoy it.
So comprehen comprehension questions, no, I'm not in favor of.
Uh, A lot of the sort of deliberate learning strategy, teaching strategy
that is used in schools I'm not really in favor of, but it's not true to say
that we don't have a deliberate strategy.
And I think it's up to every person to find the strategy that suits them.
And it'll be sort of a mixture of, uh, what I would call the sort of big picture.
Which is listening and reading and, and engaging with the language
and eventually watching movies.
And, and you're getting that whole language into you and getting
used to it, to, to the language.
And that's the big picture learning.
But you probably need to spend a little bit of time on the nuts and bolts.
So I have, uh, you know, regularly refer to grammars uh, it's thin grammars that
I found on the internet that I download.
And I refer to them when I already have some understanding
of how the language works.
I might have a quick passover initialy.
But then I, I find myself going back and going back because there
are things that I notice in the language that I don't fully understand
how they work and I look them up.
So that, to some extent, some emphasis or some, you know, looking at deliberate
study of the nuts and bolts, you know, is a worthwhile thing to do.
So is that 80/20?
I don't know, 90/10?
It's sort of a part of it is that overall big picture, getting the language
in you getting the brand used to the language, but there is some deliberate,
I mean, not the least of which is looking up words when I'm on link.
I look up a word.
I don't know what it means.
I have to look it up.
So there are various deliberate learning activities that,
that we need to indulge in.
And of course, the overall decision to learn a language as an adult adult is a
deliberate decision, uh, which is, as I said, not the case with children who are
simply, you know, at the age of five, they're put into an environment and,
and hardly noticed that all of a sudden they're speaking the local language.
So deliberate.
We make a deliberate decision to learn a language.
We make a deliberate decision to stay with it, uh, and, uh, hopefully move
to where there's more and more meaning.
And it seems more and more natural.
It seems to acquire less effort and we gradually start to acquire the language.
So, uh, I have dealt with this subject of the details versus the,
you know, getting the language in you through input, uh, previously.
And I found two videos that are almost 10 years old.
So if you're interested, you can have a look to see whether I contradicted
today what I said 10 years ago.
Thanks for listening.
Bye for now.