In this video, I interview polyglot Steve Kaufmann.
He has learned over 20 languages and he's still learning new languages today.
And in this interview, Steve Kaufmann shares his best language learning tips, language
learning advice, and mistakes to avoid.
So pay close attention, because these tips will help you improve your English faster
and have a lot more fun in the process.
Let's start the interview with Steve Kaufmann.
So Steve, you're a polyglot who speaks 20 languages.
What's your secret to learning languages?
First of all, I have to caution you when I say 20.
I have learned 20 at different times to varying degrees.
I can't say that I'm totally fluent in 20 languages.
I could easily switch into say a dozen of them and others I would have to refresh or
I'm in the process of learning.
And the secret is to enjoy the process, just to simply not worry about how well I'm doing,
where what mistakes I make.
Just expose myself to the language every so often when I'm curious, I might look up something
related to grammar, some explanation.
But I don't focus on explanations, I focus on getting the language into me through a
lot of listening and reading.
Well, 12 languages is still extremely impressive.
Now, do you think that anyone can become a polyglot, or are some people just more naturally
gifted when it comes to learning languages?
I think that potentially anyone can become a polyglot.
The more languages you learn, the easier it becomes to learn new languages.
So the most difficult language is your first foreign language because you've never done
it before.
You're you don't know how to go about it.
You're not confident.
And I think that as you learn more languages, those parts of your brain that deal with acquiring
new languages, they become more, you know, adept at doing it.
So I think anyone can do it.
They have to be motivated, they have to put in the time, and they get better and better
at it.
But for most people, I think learning one or two languages is enough.
It just so happens that I, for a variety of reasons, got interested in learning many languages,
and you mentioned motivation.
If you had to boil down the qualities or personality traits of successful language learners, what
would you say those are?
Well, obviously motivation is big.
The motivation, I would say attitude is big.
So motivation is one thing.
Confidence, you know, enjoying the language, enjoying the language, learning process, all
of those things are part of that.
Positive attitude.
And I also think it's very important not to be a perfectionist, very important to accept,
you know, fuzziness in certitude.
You know you don't quite understand.
You keep forgetting the same words.
And all of that is fine because you're enjoying the process of discovering another language.
And you mentioned confidence.
I'm going to ask you a follow up because many of my students tell me that they lack confidence
when using their English.
So can you speak a little bit more about the role that confidence has when learning and
using a foreign language?
Confidence is huge, and that's why I put a great amount of emphasis on listening and
reading.
And you sometimes hear people say, well, I can read, but I have trouble speaking.
But most of those people don't realize just how much you need to read and listen.
Like you have to read a book, 203 hundred pages, one book, several books, and the brain
starts to get used to the language.
And reading is so easy to do.
And when we read, it's almost as if we're speaking because we are sort of subconsciously
as vocalizing as we read and also listening.
And so, if you build up this degree of confidence with the language, the brain is used to the
language, the brain has formed a model of the language.
When you go to speak, of course you're going to struggle at first, but you will gradually
improve because you have all these words inside you.
So I think part of it is being better prepared.
Most people don't put the time and effort into reading and listening.
They desperately try to remember some grammar rules, and they try to think of grammar rules
while they're speaking, which is hopeless.
And then they have to accept that when they're speaking, they're actually practicing speaking
and they will gradually get better and while they're speaking, if they're speaking to.
People that matter to them, they're getting very valuable input, which is also all part
of training the brain to be comfortable in the language.
So it's all about input and understanding that all the different things that we're doing
when we're learning a language contribute to that input.
Well, exactly.
Obviously, if you have an opportunity for output, for speaking or for writing, you want
to take advantage of it, and you want to do it without worrying.
About mistakes, just trusting your impulses.
But we don't necessarily.
Unless we live where their language is spoken, we don't always have a lot of opportunity
to speak with people.
We should speak whenever we can, but we don't always have that opportunity.
But it's very easy to organize listening.
Very easy to organize reading.
And I know some people say, well, how can I read if there's so many words that I don't
know?
Well, that's part of, you know, we have LingQ as an example.
But if you are reading online, you have online dictionaries.
It's so easy nowadays to work on getting your vocabulary up to where eventually you can
read books on paper, which is the ultimate sort of milestone when you read your first
book from cover to cover.
And all of that is, is part of getting you in a place where you're comfortable speaking
and coming back to that place of getting comfortable speaking.
When I'm working with students and I'm sure all my students watching can relate to this
question, when I'm working with students, the number one concern that they have is that
they don't feel confident speaking.
They feel like they're being judged by native speakers.
They're worried about their grammar mistakes.
They're worried that their accents are too thick, and all of this prevents them from
speaking confidently.
So what advice would you give to these students?
Okay.
Well, there's you mentioned several things there.
First of all, thick accent.
As long as you are comprehensible, your accent is fine and we have to accept that.
Obviously if we can get closer to sort of native pronunciation, we have to want to in
a way, we want to imitate the way the native speak.
But we have to realize, and I realize that I will never be mistaken for a native speaker
in the languages that I have learned.
So accept the fact that you have an accent.
Also accept the fact that you're going to forget.
I mean, we know if if we're, if I'm in some place and somebody shows up whom I know.
And but what's his name or her name?
The more pressure I put on myself to try to remember that person's name, the more liked
I am not to remember.
And later on when there's no pressure on me, Oh yeah, that was George or Sally.
So obviously there is a certain amount of pressure tension when we speak because it's
it's always more comfortable to speak in your own language.
So you're speaking in another language.
There's a little more tension.
And so it's a little more difficult to remember things.
We just have to accept that all of that is normal.
It's normal not to understand.
It's normal to forget.
And if we simply keep going, we will gradually improve the more pressure we put on ourselves.
Or if we try to avoid speaking because we're afraid, then we aren't going to improve.
So I mean, it's easy to say, but I have experienced it in many languages where I struggle.
And sometimes we think we did more poorly than we in fact did, and we just have to give
ourselves credit.
Trust the brain.
The brain will gradually learn given enough experience, and you just have to keep going.
And of course you're very active in the polyglot community.
Now I'm curious, what would a polyglot think about making a mistake when a polyglot is
learning or using one of their languages?
What do they think when they make a mistake?
I I think the the one common trait to the polyglots that I've made met is that they
aren't concerned.
They are not.
They accept uncertainty.
That's it.
It if you want to be totally safe and comfortable.
You don't learn another foreign language.
Once you are learning another foreign language, you are now into this territory where there
are going to be mistakes and there's going to be things you don't understand and things
that you don't pronounce properly.
And people say, I beg your pardon, what did you say?
And that's all part of the territory.
And polyglots accept this.
Yeah.
I've been to a number of polyglot conferences.
And by the way, the overwhelming majority of polyglots grew up in unilingual families.
So the idea that somehow polyglots are people who grew up with a Spanish speaking mother
and a French speaking father, whatever, that's not true.
The polyglots are people who got interested, who are confident that they can learn, and
who accept the fact that fuzziness and not understanding and forgetting is all part of
learning another language.
And we've already talked about the mistakes that students make when they're learning a
language.
But what would you say are the biggest mistakes that language learners make?
Well, the biggest.
So not specifically with reference to English, but I I think this, this desire to be perfect.
You know, I got to sound like a native.
I've got to, you know, get, you know, just the right tense.
It doesn't matter.
Like tenses is a big item for people learning English.
And honestly, whether you say in many situations it's optional, you can go I go or I am going,
I went, you know, I was going very often, it doesn't matter.
It may matter on a grammar test, but in reality there are a lot of tenses in English, probably
more tenses than we need.
And so if you just go with a simple of whatever the simple present, the simple past, in many
cases that's going to work.
Don't try to be perfect.
Don't, when speaking, try to think through your grammar rules.
That's not going to work.
You have to sort of have an attitude that you're going to develop certain habits in
the language and you're going to trust those habits.
And when you speak, it's going to come out.
And you will pick up on what other people are saying.
And if there are sort of rough edges, if you have an open mind, gradually those rough edges
will become, you know, less frequent.
So I think a big mistake is to expect that right now I'm as good as I'm ever going to
be.
No, right now you're in the process of improving.
So keep going and you'll get better.
Sounds like exactly what you said about attitude being one of the most important personality
traits.
Absolutely, your attitude.
There are two things in language learning, attitude and time.
So the attitude portion of it is you know you like the language, you want to learn,
you enjoy the learning process.
That's difficult to do.
You can't force yourself to like something.
However, you can force yourself to get active.
So if your attitude is I don't not that keen on say English if it's English.
And I've looked around for, you know, TV programs or things that I might get interested in or
cooking shows or.
The thing is, try to find something that interests you and vary it.
So you're on to something that relates to business, something that relates to history,
that relates to cooking shows, gardening, whatever, a variety of content.
Try to get interested.
And and then put in the time.
It takes time.
So I see immigrants to Canada, for example, who go home at night and they only watch television
programs in their own language.
Okay.
That's relaxing, maybe, but that's not going to help you.
You have to be willing to put in a lot of time, not only, let's say, classroom time,
but also if you're, you know, in the evening, especially if you live in Canada or the United
States.
Watch local television, Put the time in with the engage with the language.
So attitude and time and speaking about putting in the time when you're learning a language,
is there ever an end point when you say, Yep, learn that language and you move on?
Or do you feel like learning is more of a process and you'll always be learning a new
language?
Yeah, I mean, we're always more comfortable in our own language.
Although there are people who, let's say, say again, immigrants who spends, who genuinely
learn the language, who work in English.
You have friends with whom they speak English.
Who always have a bit of an accent and they've kind of reached the point where it's it's
more than good enough and in many cases even say immigrants who speak with an accent may
in fact use the language better than many native speakers so they're at a stage where
they're as good as it's going to get.
But but by and large it's it's always an unfinished process.
If I say that I speak 20 languages, even the languages that I speak very well, like French
or Japanese or.
I can always get better, you know, I can always get better.
So we're never, you know, it's never completed.
It's an ongoing process.
Now, previously you said that it's normal to forget your words.
For example, in our native language, we might be having a conversation and we forget the
name of a restaurant, even though we went to that restaurant last week, and that's just
normal.
But this is a concern that my students have because they tell me that every time they
go to speak, they forget all their words, even simple words that they know really well.
When they're speaking, their mind goes blank and they forget their words.
Do you have a strategy for overcoming this when you're learning languages?
You have to remember first of all, very often you hear people talk about, you know, I'm
going to master the basics.
We forget even the most basic words, we forget the most basic structures, We forget things
that we used to be able to do and now we can't do all of a sudden.
We may be able to do it the next time.
So the first thing is to accept that that is absolutely normal and it's part of the
process of communicating.
But gradually, even the process of forgetting and relearning is solidifying the that capability
in your brain.
That the, you know, research into the brain.
We need to see something, notice something, forget it for a while, go back to it, forget
it again, go back to it.
And slowly.
That is how we accumulate words that we can comfortably use.
So forgetting is part of the process and shouldn't make us feel uncomfortable.
Good.
I forgot good and I relearn it.
And maybe I forget it again.
Good.
And then I relearn it and gradually we improve.
That's an amazing attitude to have.
By forgetting you are in fact learning.
Not only is it normal to forget things, but it's beneficial.
So changing your attitude around it.
I hope all my students remember that lesson.
What a powerful lesson.
Now, Steve, you've shared so many lessons so far, but if my students were to only do
do one thing this week to help them improve their fluency in English, what should they
do?
Well, you know, it's not one thing I would say put in the time, which in most cases is
going to mean input activities, because that's easy to organize.
You know, I carry my iPhone with me.
I I use LingQ, I've got my lessons there.
I can listen to them.
I have a playlist.
If I'm sitting in the doctor's office, I can look up words and read something.
So I'm I'm engaging with the language in that way.
So wherever you have an opportunity, input.
However, when you have an opportunity the output to speak, absolutely take advantage
of it and don't worry about how you do and trust your instincts.
Come out with whatever you got.
That's what you have.
Let it come out, interact with people.
You'll get some feedback.
And you just keep going.
So input activities wherever you have the opportunity and output activities wherever
you have the opportunity.
Amazing advice.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Steve.
I'm sure all my students have learned a lot already and you share a lot of resources on
your YouTube channel.
You have an amazing app that you've developed called LingQ.
So can you quickly tell my students how they can find you?
How they can learn more about LingQ as well?
OK, so.
So my YouTube channel is called Lingo Steve All One Word and I put a video out once a
week on different aspects of language learning.
I even speak in different languages, Japanese, French, Chinese, you name it and LingQ.
lingq.com is a website that my son and I developed which is where I learn languages and it basically
enables people to use the resources of the Internet.
You can import YouTube videos.
You can import the ebooks.
There's stuff in our library with a lot of repetition for people getting started, and
there's a bunch of functionality there to help you learn words and phrases.
So certainly that's what I like to use, but it doesn't matter, you know, people can do
whatever they want to do as long as they put in the time and they have a positive attitude.
Well, you heard it.
Everyone put in the time, have a positive attitude.
Thank you so much, Steve.
It's truly been a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
I enjoyed it.
What was your favorite part of this interview?
Put that in the comments and let's also say thanks, Steve.
Thanks Steve in the comments to show our support and appreciation.
Thanks Steve in the comments.
And I actually did another lesson where I reviewed a news article about Steve Kaufmann.
And in this lesson you learn a lot of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation.
So you can click here to watch that lesson now.