Where I have done really well in language learning is when I have
had that sort of dedicated time.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here and today, I want to talk about productivity
hacks and language learning.
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So I was thinking about productivity because something that I saw on the web
somewhere talked about productivity hacks.
And so I thought to myself, well, maybe there are some, some
hints there, some hacks about...
with regard to general productivity, that can be useful for language learning.
So I Googled and if you Google, you'll find lots of them and they're very
similar, basically, you know, make a to-do list, limit distractions,
uh, get enough sleep, eat well.
I mean, they're all quite similar and largely things that
we could think up ourselves.
One of the interesting things I found there though, was a thing
called the pomodoro technique.
Pomodoro Is Italian for tomato and the jist of that is that you should work in 25
minute batches and you get a little timer so that at the end of 25 minutes, you stop
whatever you're doing, get up, stretch, take a rest and go back to it again.
So as I looked at these, I realized that actually, uh, none of this
really applies to my form of language learning because my form of language
learning is actually recreational.
So I do it for fun whenever I have the time, uh, I'm not actually
working at a job where I have to keep other distractions away.
The language learning is my distraction.
I enjoy doing it.
I can try doing it in 25 minutes, uh, batches, but if I'm enjoying, uh, reading
something on the iPad, I may go on for 40 minutes or I might stop after 15.
My major learning activity is just plain listening.
So in a way I...
so, I, I, I don't, I'm not sort of totally committed because I'll listen
while exercising, listen, while doing the dishes, listen while in the car.
And that's giving me my language learning time, however, to be fair, um, where I
have done really well in language learning is when I have had sort of dedicated time.
So for example, when I learned Chinese, uh, in a year, I became
fluent enough to do interpreting, translating, uh, translating
newspaper articles from Chinese in English, from English into Chinese.
I've spent more than two years on Arabic and Farsi, a little bit of
Turkish, a little bit of this and that.
Uh, and I'm nowhere near as far ahead.
So I thought about that, where I really developed quickly was in my
Ukrainian because I went to Lviv and for a week I had six hours a
day of instruction with my tutor.
So, and, uh, we would meet for a coffee and we would spend three
months, uh, three hours chatting or visiting a cathedral or a church or
a, you know, a cemetery or castle or whatever it was in Lviv, or a museum.
And then I'd get notes from her and I would review them in LingQ
and we meet again in the afternoon.
So I had six hours and in the case of my Chinese, I had three hours a day.
One-on-one, every day and we have to talk and I had to try to produce the
language and really what I am now doing in my Arabic and Farsi in a
way is, is the things that I did away from my class, listening and reading.
Um, and not in a very, you know, I'm not, I don't have any assignments.
I sort of do what I want to do.
So I thought about that and I said, you know, if I were to design, so ideal
scenario is I go off to Iran or I go off to Egypt and I have a teacher for
three hours a day, and then I spent the rest of the time listening and
reading and going to bookstores and immersing myself in the environment.
Then after three months or six months, uh, I will probably
progress quite quickly and I'll make friends and I'll have opportunities
to use the language and stuff.
However, I'm not in a position to do that.
So what's the next best thing?
So I thought to myself, if I had, if I could set up three hours a day
with a tutor in Arabic or Persian, and so that is a commitment.
So we've got like a five minute break in between, and maybe I would have
three different tutors, uh, which I could arrange, uh, then, and we would
have the sessions sort of, they would be kind of like when I toured Lviv.
So we would either go to different cities in Iran or different areas of Egypt or
visit, you know, the pyramids or visit Luxor, Iran or whatever it might be, or
we might say we're going to talk about history for a certain period of time.
So there would be the sense that I am touring the culture or the country
and of the three hours, maybe one hour would be spent on just plain
the structures of the language.
Uh, one of the things I did for Romanian was I had a bunch of these
patterns in English using, you know, if, therefore, because, uh, on the other
hand, like a whole bunch of different conjunctions, different verb tenses,
different prepositions, and then a series of phrases, patterns that kind
of get triggered by those conjunctions or those words or that, uh, typify
how the different tenses are used.
And so.
Uh, I hope I'm not losing you here, but if I spend one hour of the three hours,
one-on-one with my tutor going through these patterns, different pattern each
time, which I could then review later on again, and then two hours touring the
country geographically, or touring the country from a cultural or historical
point of view or food or carpets or whatever it might be, so that there would
be a sort of a focus, there would be a focus of our conversation, uh, it would
bring some discipline into what I'm doing.
I would then have the rest of the day, um, to listen and read and do other things.
This was what I did with Chinese.
It was like six, seven hours a day.
The problem with that is I'm not prepared to do it because
my wife and I enjoy golfing.
We enjoy other activities.
We enjoy our leasurly breakfast.
We enjoy so many other things that we're doing that I kind of have to try hard
to sneak my language learning in there.
When I was working for the Canadian government learning
Mandarin, that was my job.
They were paying my salary.
So I didn't think of doing anything else.
I just showed up at nine o'clock at my school.
And in the afternoon I went home and I studied, and that was my job.
So, uh, obviously the degree of motivation, you know, uh, that
I had at that time was, was much stronger than what I have now.
Uh, many of you who are learning languages, you may be either in the
dilettante mode, which is what I'm in, in my Persian and Arabic, or have been in my
other languages that I've been learning.
Or if you are in a position where you can dedicate yourself, then my suggested
productivity hack is that you set aside three hours a day one-on-one with a tutor.
One of the three hours is on structure patterns, that kind of thing.
And two of them on discovering the culture and the history and the country.
And then in the afternoon, if you have that much time to spend on the language,
spend that time listening and preparing for that next focused, uh, lesson that
you're going to have with your tutor, which focusing therefore either on
patterns or some aspect of the culture.
So that then brings some structure into your life.
Uh, I think all of that would be very useful in terms of increasing
your productivity, assuming you have the time, but in the meantime, you
can also Google productivity hacks find the Pomodoro technique, and
you may find some things there that, uh, helps you increase your level of
productivity in your learning activities.
So there you have it.
I hope that was useful.
Bye for now.