Learning a new language is an adventure. It is such an exciting and mind-opening experience.
But the way they are taught traditionally in most schools can be inefficient,
frustrating, and even intimidating. - I want people not wasting their time i think
a lot of people spend a long time spinning their wheels with language learning, and like language
learning is so important, especially when we're talking about learning English in today's economy.
And the idea of people spending, you know, hours or years trying to memorize translations or trying
to not use based repetition, or trying to not use pronunciation early on like, that that hurts me.
And so, I guess my main ask is don't do that, like, learn about what will save you time,
the hours you spend in the beginning or even now like even if you're halfway through, if you spend
two, three, four, hours trying to learn how to do this more efficiently it will save you hundreds of
hours in the long term. And so, take the time, take the time to figure things out. Figure out
how your brain works, what actually makes you feel like you're learning at a rapid rate. If
it doesn't feel like you're learning you're probably not. And then go run after that.
Today Gabriel, from Fluent Forever, will share what you really need to
know about fluency, language learning, and the importance of setting the right goals.
Gabe, welcome to the show - Thank you for having me.
So I'm so happy to have Gabriel on the show because here at RealLife English
we bring the world’s most influential online teachers and experts so you can rediscover
the adventure of English learning. Just like Lucy who says that our
lessons have shown her that learning a language can be fun and meaningful!
Subscribe now so every week you can join our lessons that will help you understand
fast-spoken English, be understood by anyone, and connect to the world.
To start off, let me ask you a question: What does FLUENCY mean to you? Pause the video for a second
and write in the comments down below: "I'll be fluent when I ..."
This is a tricky question because the definition of FLUENCY is so broad. Each
person may have a different idea of what that means. Let's take a look at what Gabriel,
who has learned eight languages and built a successful business out of it says about that.
We tend to use these these labels that don't mean a lot. The word fluency like it's, you know, part
of my company name, it's part of my book name, and yet I hate that word like, it doesn't mean
anything, it means I feel good, and you can have a person who feels good in a coffee shop who is
by the european scale B1, on the CEFR scale, and feels good and feels fluent and there's
nothing... You can't tell that person, "Well, I'm sorry you're feeling too good about this
you should feel worse about what you know." Like that person is fluent in coffee shop Spanish
and that's legitimate. Whereas you can have other people who will never feel comfortable, they will
keep learning words and they will eventually hit a level that is beyond the average native speaker,
and they will still say, "I am not fluent" because like this is I feel like, what is that is that the
Dunning-Kruger curve? The idea the more you know that the less confident you get? - Right, yeah. I
mean, that is a real thing and you have certainlyM the longer I spend in Japanese the more I
feel like, "Oh my God, this is endless, like, this is just, there's so much to learn." And so will I
ever feel fluent fluent in Japanese? Like probably will not feel fully comfortable in that thing, but
at a point that I can do like live translation for someone, which is a brutal thing to do, if I can
do that, if I can like really watch anime series comfortably and feel good about them, if I can
read manga like, at that point, I will say, "Okay, Gabe, like chill like, you're probably fluent."
- Time for the next language. - Yeah, I mean, I think the european scale is
a nice one, I think the CEFR scale that goes you know, A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 is a valuable scale.
And I think C1 is a reasonable place to put the line where if you if you have a C1 certification
I think you can pretty reasonably say to anyone, "Hey, like, I'm fluent in this thing" and
not be unreasonable, but that said like I showed up to Austria with aCc1 certification in German
and I went to like a normal like a farmer's market and I died, like,
it was just brutal like they were speaking to me in dialect and I had someone gave me a like
a two-minute speech on how to take care of a basil plant and the only word I picked up was "water."
And this is with the C1 certification, so like is that fluency? Well, like, I could handle a
whole graduate degree in German, so I think reasonably so but did it feel like fluency?
Like hell no, that was so, it was awful. - Popping you down in Scotland maybe in in
the Highlands or something and trying to have a similar conversation about
processing whiskey or something like that - maybe you could be equally lost.
- 100%. And so I think fluency is so context dependent and so goal dependent that I think
it ends up being a really wobbly word. The direction that I've been trying to head
is actually away from fluency in terms of like how we frame the company and frame goals for people
who are using our app, and is more leading towards personalized fluency, which is to say what do you
wish to be fluent in? Do you wish to be fluent in going to the coffee shop? We can do that for you.
Do you wish to be fluent in like, I don't want to learn cantonese I want to be fluent in dim sum
that's what I actually want from cantonese, I have no interest in
that language except that I do want to be able to walk into a dim sum restaurant
and have an actual conversation with the waiter about like what's good food here,
and that's like very achievable cantonese, is going to be a brutally difficult language for
me to learn, that's another Japanese basically in terms of difficulty, but just dim sum like
that should be a three month project. And so, and that counts like that should count as fluency for
me if I can have a comfortable conversation. And so, I feel like comfortable conversation
is something I want to learn about that seems like a more meaningful label for me than am I
fluent? - Because it's so much more specific. - It's, yeah, you were talking about goals
and that's much that's much better that you're reflecting a lot about what do I
need the language for? And aligning your goals like that because so many, I mean,
most of our audience they're English learners so like so many English learners they just say,
"I want to be fluent in English", but they never actually reflect like what does that mean? And I
think for most people that probably means like speaking it in some sense like they speak their
native language, speaking it effortlessly, but you don't need to know what you don't maybe need to
know about how to talk about gardening in English if you're not actually interested in gardening.
You need to like be focused on you know what are the things you really want to know.
So many great insights from Gabriel's answer! I know it can be challenging to digest
everything so feel free to go back and listen to it again. However,
I have also prepared a few quiz questions to help you with the comprehension of the ideas he shared.
That's right! It's what’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. As we can see, when
we first start learning, often we’re overconfident in our abilities. But the more we learn, the more
we realize there is to know in order to achieve mastery. This is why people who we see as experts
are often still quite humble. It is because they realize they can always learn more!
If you are enjoying Gabe's insights on language learning,
he also explained why you shouldn't learn two languages at the same time,
where his motivation to learn another language comes from, and so much more.
You can listen to the full interview for FREE and follow along with an interactive transcript,
by downloading the RealLife App! But, wait, that's not all of it.
With the RealLife English App, you can also speak in English anytime, anywhere with someone
in another part of the world! It's like traveling without leaving your home and Gabe himself gives
a good reason on why you should do this. - There's enough fascination with how
people think that maybe that's something that I want and so, like, I'm starting to also realize
even if these with these Japanese lessons like interacting with my tutor is something I enjoy, I
like that person not just the things that I can get out of them in terms of language content.
And if that's interesting with that person well what about other people? So I think my
motivations are changing over time, I think it absolutely is the case that the perspectives
coming out of Japan are wildly different from the perspectives I see coming out of
you know, random people I meet in Chicago. I think watching my own perspectives land on my tutor in
this particular case, and seeing points where his world view gets expanded that feels good,
and then also similarly watching like my worldview get expanded that also feels good.
As we've seen, this is true! And it's called situational fluency. Check it out.
There's certain situation fluency. So like I said, with Japanese, I could talk to you
all day about video games and instruments in Japanese. But if you were to suddenly want to
talk to me about politics, or something that's outside of what I've worked on, I couldn't be
able to do that. So in one situation, I might seem totally fluent. And in another,
I probably won't. And that's okay with me, because I'm doing what I need to do
in that language. And that's enough for me. Like I don't need to know the entire Japanese language.
Like even Japanese speakers don't know the entire Japanese language.
So I don't worry about that too much. For me, what fluent is, is situational fluency,
I suppose. So if I'm able to do what I need to do in the language, or get through situations that I
don't understand in the language, like, I'm able to say, Oh, I don't understand this, I'm not able
to talk about it, or I'm not interested in talking about that, or, I don't know how to talk about
this. So let's work on it. Like, if I can navigate that in the language, then that's enough for me.