Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been in that state of mind when you are
doing something, something creative that is so interesting, so captivating that
you lose all sense of time .You don't get hungry, you don't get tired, you're so
into the thing that you're doing that when you glance up at the clock it's
already four o'clock in the morning. Wow! where did all the time go I've been
doing this for 12 hours .I'm sure that you have felt that way and that my
friend is The Zone. The Zone is a mental state of focused concentration where
everything else in the environment becomes irrelevant. Psychologists have
another word for it they call it 'a state of flow' Flow, to be in the zone, it's the
same thing. Now what has this got to do with learning English, a language or
anything else for that matter? a lot to find out more stay tuned.
Hello and welcome to LetThemTalk and I'm sure you've experienced being in a state of
flow. Some people get there when they are learning a musical instrument or playing
a video game or programming or writing poetry or hopefully, in your case
learning a language which is what I'm going to talk about today. Let me give
you some background. Please stick with me because knowing the psychology
is important here it was the Hungarian psychologist Mihai
Csikszentmihalyi who studied this phenomenon extensively in his book Flow.
Here it is and I'll leave a link in the description to the book if you want to
read it in its entirety which I highly recommend that you do. In the book he
shows us the state of flow is very much linked to enjoyment with some other
important elements thrown in that ensure our progress and we'll look at that in a
moment. now Csikszentmihalyi looked at flow in a lot of different areas including
science that scientific breakthroughs and discoveries that would not have been
possible if scientists did not enjoy their work. In the book he says that the
amount of funding given to a laboratory was far less important in getting
results than enjoyment. Having the right conditions for a creative environment
was a more important factor than money. The best musicians are motivated by
enjoyment not money, great singer- songwriters are motivated by enjoyment
not by the prospect of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Now this is an important
lesson as it shows us clearly that we need enjoyment to succeed at our task. If
you want to learn anything, not just English but anything, if you can get
yourself into a state of flow while doing it
it just got much easier if what you're trying to learn is boring but you force
yourself to continue it's going to be a whole lot more difficult. The reason why
people fail at learning English or any language is because they don't
consistently and regularly reach this state of flow. The language industry is a
bit like the dieting industry in that it's based on failure it's like it's
like a triangle with a vast majority of people at the bottom and a
small number at the top who reached an advanced level. So a big chunk of people
who start to learn, learn very little or almost nothing and my job as an English
teacher is to get you to continue studying so that you rise above the big
block of beginners who've given up at the bottom of the triangle and reach that
advanced level now two incontrovertible truths about language learning first one
is it takes time. To have a reasonable conversational level it takes about a
thousand hours. To master a language - so that you can say that you're fluent and
you're comfortable in any situation and you can understand more or less
everything and express yourself without searching for the right word takes
approximately 10,000 hours. That's about 10 years of study. "How I learnt
Italian in one month and how you can do it too" "if you learn this English method you
can learn English perfectly three months."
Anyone who says these things is lying to you they are all trying to tell you the
same thing you've tried lots of methods and you've failed miserably but we have
a secret method that really works give us X amount of money and we'll tell you
the secret. Let me tell you the secret, there is no
secret method now the second incontrovertible
truth in succeeding in learning a language is coming back to the state of
flow. People succeed is because they get into the state of flow again and
again and again. In short if you don't get into the zone you won't succeed.
and I'm sure that anybody watching this video who has successfully learned a
foreign language as an adult will tell you that it was hard work but they
enjoyed it. There is no silver bullet. it's all about hard work and finding the
pleasure in learning. Now I know what you're you're thinking "teach er
how do I reach this state of flow." That's not such an easy question to answer
because everyone is different. what works for me might not work for you. But I'll
try as much possible to answer the question. So first of all you do need to
practice the four basic skills you need to read, write, listen and speak (rwls)
and you do that as much as
possible this is not, by the way, a revolutionary method every language
teacher will tell you the same thing but how you do it is important it's you need
to make sure that each of these four things is undertaken using the flow
method. one of the elements of flow is that the difficulty of the task should
provide the right degree of challenge to your ability. What this means is that
when you are reading, if the material is far too difficult for you you're going
to give up and do something else. If the material is far too easy you're going to
give up and do something else. So when choosing something to read pick
something that is just a little bit above your capability so you're learning
from material that you feel that, with a little extra effort, you can do it it's
difficult but you can do it. Also read things that you would also read in your
own language. Someone once advised me when I was
learning Spanish that I should read children's
books because they are much easier. Finally this was bad advice because I
don't normally read children's books and I soon got bored. What I preferred when I
still had a very low level of Spanish was to read or short articles from from
newspapers which I found interesting which what I would do in English too.
Anyway that's just me find the things that you enjoy and stick with that. With
listening it's the same idea listen to things that are challenging but
interesting where you'll learn a lot of new words but it's not so complicated
that you have to stop every two seconds and consults the dictionary. YouTube is a
great resource. Start off by watching a video in the language that you are
learning with subtitles. Make a note of the words you don't know watch it again
without subtitles. With speaking, seek out good conversations with smart people if
you're speaking to native speakers or advanced speakers ask them to correct
you this is an important part of the flow system. You should be getting
regular feedback which enables you to correct mistakes and improve. If you
don't have the opportunity to speak with anybody then speak to yourself or read
aloud this will at least get the mechanics in your brain processing and
familiarizing yourself to the new language and it'll help later when you
get to have quality conversations. Now writing is often neglected but, believe
me, it does help writing slows you down you need to consider every word and
check the grammar that's very important for learning a language so do do it. If
you have friends who know English or the language you are learning well then
write them emails and, once again, ask them to correct them. If you're working
alone then what you could do is write a sentence in your language translate it
into the target language yourself then use Google
Translate to translate it and then compare the two. OK google translate of
course is not perfect but it's a good starting point.
What about grammar? Yes you do need to learn grammar but this is a difficult
one personally I love grammar. I love spending my free time reading grammar
books and I like to see how the pieces of the language fit together and how the
logic of one language is different to another but that's just me I'm a bit
weird but many people hate grammar but I think often the way grammer is taught he
is boring not the grammar itself. Like everything else if it can be explained
in an interesting way then it's a different story. Another rule about
reaching the state of flow is that you must have clear and realistic goals.
Clear and realistic goals. If you are learning English don't think I want to
be able to understand all the Netflix shows in English within six months and
you're a beginner. No these abstract, long term objectives are
pointless it's like saying I'm going to become a millionaire buy a yacht it's
your dream but don't think it and promise it.
instead make small everyday steps to reach your target. When you're learning a
language you could say to yourself by the end of the day I will have learnt
10 new words, a new grammar point and I'll learn one idiom. I'll also have at least
one conversation. So that's realistic, that's doable so aim for small
incremental steps rather than meaningless long-term ones that you'll
never achieve. Returning to what I said earlier, I don't know how you will get
into this state of flow that's up to you, everyone is different. The important
thing is that you must make language learning enjoyable if it's
enjoyable you will continue. One of the elements of flow is the feeling that
you are in control if you are blindly following a text book or an online
platform or whatever this probably won't be enjoyable so you need to take control
of the learning process and do the things that work for you and your rhythm
with a sense of purpose. don't let any teacher or any language school or any
platform or app tell you that they have the best method they don't you have the
best method it's you who engineer that success. You know they talk about two
types of happiness the first is hedonistic happiness, that
rush you get when you buy something new you buy a Ferrari or your football
team wins or you eat a piece of chocolate cake and that gives you a
little bit of pleasure in that moment the problem is with this type of
happiness is it is short-lived so what you've got a new Ferrari ok for a few
moments you're elated but then reality sets in
you still got to deal with your relationships, you still have to wash
your socks and mow the lawn the other say of happiness is called eudaimonic
which comes from the Greek and it means something like 'human flourishing' and
this is more of long-term happiness where we focus on getting attached to
the things that motivate behavior the state of flow is intrinsically linked to
eudainomic happiness doing the things that are creative and stimulate your
mind and now get as much of that in to your life. So creativity is happiness. The
goal of flow is not to reach a peak and come down, the goal is to reach flow and
continue and continue and continue and you will have to restructure the tasks
that you do to make this happen. So don't listen to those who say that they have a
magic formula, bullshit frankly, everyone is unique you are unique but if you
want to get beyond the big base at the bottom of the triangle that I talked
about then find the things that you love find the things that resonate with your
personality, find things that make you want to come back for more and integrate
it into your language learning and do that today and the next day and the next
day and yeah, you'll you'll make it, you'll get there. So question for
you. Are you learning English or another language? and how do you get into the
zone? okay we'd love to hear your stories please share them in the comments thank
you for watching stay healthy and see you next time