To speak well you have to speak a lot and you have to speak in intensive situations.
Hi, Steve Kaufmann here and today I want to talk about what is really, you
know, the fourth goal in my hierarchy of goals, uh, in language learning
and that speaking, uh, remember if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe,
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I do appreciate it.
So for many people, speaking is the first goal.
I want to speak.
If you have followed me here, you know that I have the view that is
not realistic to speak from day one.
Let's say if you're a, if you're in a situation, like my situation, when I was
in Japan, where I'm surrounded by the language, I can try to speak to people.
Uh, but it won't be my major activity initially, because I don't have the words.
If you go back to my hierarchy of goals, I don't have the words.
I haven't read these words.
I haven't listened to enough of the language so that I can understand.
I don't have the listening comprehension.
So my ability to talk to people is very limited.
So I am not that keen under normal circumstances to start
talking, I find it frustrating.
Almost intimidating.
If I don't understand what people are saying, I'm not so keen to
engage them in conversation.
So what are my goals?
My goal, I tend to say, you know, I used to wait until I had about 10,000
words in language before I would start speaking to, say, a tutor online.
Uh, now I've dropped that to about three to 5,000 words, uh, because
I, uh, maybe I've become better at learning these languages.
And so I don't mind the struggle.
Um, less, uh, self-conscious about not understanding.
And in any case, when I start with a tutor, I'll typically get
on there once or twice a week.
So that's not a major investment of time because where I want to continue
to invest my time is listening and reading, acquiring words.
However, I do recognize that to speak well, and we all want to speak well,
we all want to speak well, um, to speak while you have to speak a lot.
And you have to speak in intensive situations.
So to have a short conversation, because you're...
you go to someone in Chinatown and use a few words of Chinese, or you order your,
you know, whatever dish in a Chinese restaurant in Chinese, to me, that's not a
very intense engagement with the language.
On the other hand, if you are with people and you're speaking Chinese and you're
with them over dinner and everybody's speaking Chinese, and you're speaking
Chinese and you're participating in the conference, that's tremendously powerful.
That's first of all input, that is high resonance input because
you're in that conversation.
It's real and you're struggling to get your meaning out.
And there's a lot of pressure because everyone is speaking
very quickly in Chinese.
And when you go to speak you feel you don't have the time to say what you want
to say, those are all great situations.
But to be in that situation, you have to have a certain level of preparation.
So that's why I put so much emphasis on acquiring words, reading to
reinforce those words, listening to improve your listening comprehension.
And then when you get the opportunity, try to put yourself in intense situations.
And when you're in that intense situation, just go for it.
And, you know, if you struggle to say what you want to say, if you feel that
you you're slowing down the conversation for everyone else, because that...
you know, going to be impatient, but mostly they're not going to be impatient.
They're willing to wait for you to say what you want to say.
So I think it's very important if, if we have built up our confidence in
the language and our comprehension, if we have words, we may search for
the words, but somewhere we know we have some of the words we want to use.
If you have that level of preparation, you can get into higher intensity
conversation opportunities.
It's a bit like when I exercise now, I'm doing these kettle bell workouts,
high intensity interval training.
There's something to be said for high intensity, to be in a high intensive
high intensity, uh, language situation.
You have to be prepared for it.
Uh, just to sit like, uh, and talk about the weather, uh, with five or
six other students, it's not that it's not effective, but I think spending
that time with the language, doing a lot of listening and reading and, and,
and working on acquiring more words is a more useful way to spend your time.
And you can save that speaking opportunity, whether one-on-one
or in a group, till you have sufficient a sufficient
vocabulary, sufficient confidence, sufficient listening confidence.
So that you can actually have a very intense even an hour one-on-one.
Now, when I speak with my Persian tutor, Sahra, we cover a lot of ground and
there's a lot of words that I can't remember, and she has to remind me, but
then I get from her my conversation report on LingQ where she has 15 or so words and
phrases that I didn't use correctly or where I struggled or I'd forgotten them.
And, uh, and she records this and I listen to it and I may forget
it again for the next time.
And in fact, I can see in my record of my conversation, reports going back, say six
months that I make the same mistakes every week to a large extent, but gradually,
gradually, gradually I get better.
And so the, um, if I'm initially maybe only talking twice a week, I may
eventually step that up, particularly if I have an opportunity to go to
the country, because when you go to the country, your opportunity to
speak is going to be much greater.
And I like to prepare myself as much as possible before going to the country.
So when I went to Greece or to Romania, then I would beforehand step up the number
of conversations with my tutor to maybe four times a week, five times a week.
And then when I arrive in the country, when I was on Crete, I have a chance.
I have a chance of understanding what they're saying.
I have a chance that I can say what I want to say, and they won't
come back at me, come back at me in English, because if you don't have
that level, then you may miss...
you may not take full advantage of the opportunity of being in the
country because the locals who don't necessarily want to be your teacher,
they just want to communicate if they sense that you can't understand and you
can't communicate, they'll switch to a language where it's easier for them
to communicate, which may be English.
So I think it's very important to take full advantage of that intensive,
you know, speaking opportunity that visiting the country can represent,
to prepare for it ahead of time.
So to summarize the goal in speaking, in my view, is to get to a level
where you can defend yourself.
You don't have to be perfect.
You can have poor pronunciation, you can forget words, but you
understand what people are saying.
You can defend yourself so you can hang in there, hang in there in these
more intense, uh, engagements with people in the language, which are
going to be very powerful for you to develop your speaking skills, which...
while I put it as the fourth goal, because I know there are three
other goals that have to come first, but it is a very important goal.
We all want to end up speaking well.
So thank you for listening.
I hope that was useful.
Bye for now.