You have to find something to like in the language you're learning.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here once again talking about language learning,
and I want to talk about what I would call indirect motivation.
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So we know that we need to be motivated.
I say this all the time.
I hope my videos are motivating.
And everyone understands that if you have a motivated student, when it comes to
language learning and probably anything else, that person will learn on their own.
So motivation is the key, but how do we get motivated?
So, you know, I was thinking that, uh, you know, I mentioned...
I did a video about my interest in history.
So I ended up motivated, motivating myself to learn a language because
I'm motivated to learn history.
So in a sense, the learning of the language is almost an indirect motivation.
It's not because I want to learn the language it's I'm interested
in history and therefore I end up learning the language and, you know,
that's true with so much in life.
Um, if you say, I want to make a lot of money, uh, maybe you first have to provide
a service, uh, which other people are willing to pay for, uh, or maybe you have
to be so skilled at what you do, that you can generate a revenue stream or you
have to be so knowledgeable, in other words, you have to be good at what you
do so that the direct motivation, even though what you want to do out there is
make money you have to first build up your knowledge base, your skill base.
Uh, and you have to have an attitude that says I'm gonna deliver, you know, value.
Okay.
I'm gonna, if you want to be a good, uh, Shoemaker to take a
simple example, you, you, you can't just be motivated for money.
You actually have to enjoy making shoes.
You have to...
the same if you're in the job and your goal is to do well in the job and to be
promoted, uh, or you're providing some service and you want to do well with
your, you have a company of your own or you're working for someone else, you have
to do that job well, that's the direct objective that you have to achieve.
You have to do that well in order to achieve the sort of indirect, uh, you
know, goal, that will be the consequence of your commitment to doing the job
well, or to making sure you have the skills and the knowledge that you need in
order to achieve that longer term goal.
Even in personal relationships uh, you can't just go up to someone
and say, I want to be your friend, or I want to be your lover.
Uh, you first have to invest some time and effort into getting to
know that person, uh, giving that person a chance to get to know you.
Uh, they have to like you, you have to like them, you know, at that
level, you build up a connection and emotional connection or a connection
of respect, uh, which then will lead to the result, the long-term but
in a way indirect result, that that person and you will become friends or
lovers or whatever the case may be.
So there's no sort of short circuit there's no, you know, jumping ahead
of yourself, you have to first find that short term direct goal that
you can focus on that's going to lead you to your longer term goal.
Maybe I'm not making any sense here.
When I bring it back to language learning, what does it mean?
You have to find something to like in the language you're learning.
Uh, if you cannot find anything to like, anything of interest, you're
going to have a very tough time.
You can't just say, I would like to be fluent in English
because I need it for my job.
I would like to be fluent in German or Chinese, because it's
going to be good for my career.
You actually have to find something in Chinese culture, in German culture
and eh, whatever Japanese, French, Russia, something that you like.
You don't have to like everything.
Uh, similarly it helps if you find a friend, but you don't have
to like all Chinese, Russians, Japanese, French, you name it.
But you have to find some people that you like, you have to find some
aspects of the language that you like.
I often quote this expression in French...
in other words, we, our appetite develops as we are eating, but that's assume...
that assumes that you're eating something that you like.
So, uh, you know, you have to find that something, and that
takes a bit of looking around.
It takes a bit of patience and unfortunately it's often difficult.
I have found it difficult at times to find content that I'm interested in
at my level in the language, because I know that if I can engage myself with
content of interest, the learning of the language will look after itself.
If I do enough listening and reading on things of interest, but I have
to find those things of interest and in some languages that's difficult
to do because you either have a lot of very uninteresting beginner
material, or you have material that is, you know, intended for the
native speaker and is too difficult.
And it's sort of hard to find content that's going to lead you
towards the ultimate, you know, most satisfying type of material.
I think that's something that we want to do better at LingQ.
Uh, we're trying to bring in, uh, a greater variety of material from different
sources, including YouTube, where people just have to click to get it.
They don't have to search for it so that they can kind of just fall into
things of interest to them and make that commitment to learning about those things
of interest, that commitment to enjoying whatever it is that they're interested in.
And then recognizing that by doing that, the longer-term goal of becoming fluent
in the language will take care of itself.
So, you know, it's perhaps a bit of a confusing rant here, but it's
something that I have felt all along in my life, whether in my professional
life, when I've often felt, if you do your job well, you can't just say, I
want to succeed, I want to make money.
No, you actually have to invest in providing uh, service, uh, even working
for a large corporation, you have to give before you can get, you have to
give more, you can't sort of "when his coffee break?", uh, "what's in it for
me?", you actually have to make that investment in providing, you know, service
or working hard or developing your skills in order to achieve that longer-term
goal of success or money or whatever.
And the same with language learning.
You have to commit yourself to something of interest and your devouring those
things of interest and your language skills will develop as a result.
So it's something that I've experienced.
I don't know if this makes sense.
I hope it is encouraging.
And for people who maybe are at a sort of a doldrums stage where they feel
they're not progressing and, uh, you know, they're not, uh, enjoying the
process, try a little harder to find something that's going to turn your crank.
That's going to be, you know, interesting.
So that it'll take you to the final goal, which is the fluency and the comfort
level in the language you're learning.
So there you have it.
Thank you for listening and I'll leave a couple of videos that
might be of interest to you.
Thank you, bye for now.