Hello everyone.
Welcome to my channel and welcome back to my second video.
I have been traveling for conferences and I had a lot of work at University
Finally, I have managed some time to make this video
In this video I would like to share have with you
three tips on how to learn a language effectively by yourself.
For those who don't know me, my name is Zoe.
I'm Chinese and I'm doing my PhD in Sociology in France.
To be honest, I'm not a linguist, but I'm just passionate about languages
In my first video, I speak in seven languages to talk about my language journey
If you haven't watched it and you are interested in my story,
you can check out the link here so I don't know where I am gonna put
Okay, so Chinese is my mother tongue.
English is my second foreign language.
I have learned other languages over the past six years.
French, German, Standard Arabic, Egyptian dialect
Syrian dialect, Turkish and Persian.
Learning a language is not just about taking lessons.
It's more about knowing how to make a good plan, how to stay motivated
and how to practice effectively and intelligently
and make sure you invest in those hours in the most effective way possible.
So whether you are in a language school or learning on your own
I have to say that learning a language depends mainly on your own efforts,
even if you live in the country and
take intensive lessons.
If you don't study on your own, digest what you have learned
or look for opportunities to talk to people
you will not make any progress.
During my language journey.
I have tried many methods, some worked for me, some didn't.
It depends on your learning style, your personality, and
your mother tongue, but I still try to give you three tips
that I find very important and useful for
all situations and levels.
Of course they are all based on my experience.
I hope they will be inspiring for you.
So the first tip: make a reasonable plan for yourself.
Everyone has a dream a goal or an idea to learn something.
I want to learn a new language.
I want to improve my English, but what's the plan?
How to make a plan or just how do I get started?
If you are a beginner and you know nothing about this language,
I suggest you get an overview of the basic grammar and vocabulary
with the structured book, an audio or video course
or an application like Duolingo.
I would advise you not to use too many different materials
at the same time as you will get confused and
You won't have the energy to review and digest them.
Or but you can always watch movies or listen to songs to
keep your interest.
Next step, If you want to make more progress,
it's important to deconstruct skills such as listening, speaking, writing,
and reading.
Ask yourself what are the part of the skill that
would actually help you to get the result you want.
You can practice those first to improve your performance
in the least amount of time for different languages.
For example, me, I'm learning.
I have different goals and strategies.
For example, my goal of learning Turkish.
I can speak fluently with people during my trip,
so speaking and listening is more important for me.
So after some basic lessons, I started to focus more on pronunciation,
talking about everyday life, conversation in a cafe or restaurant situation.
So I studied first vocabulary that I think is
the most useful for this kind of situation.
Another good method is writing diary to talk about my routine
in different tenses to practice verbal conjugation.
When I woke up, what I ate for breakfast, what I'm doing now,
what I'm going to do later.
for Arabic, doing interviews in Arabic and understanding the news
because it is related to my thesis research.
So listening is the priority.
I do a lot of exercise like watching series, celebrity interviews on YouTube,
listening to podcast.
When I was in an Arab country, I listened to everything,
people in the streets, in the shops, conversations between friends.
This doesn't mean I don't study other things.
I just want to tell you how to prioritize your time and energy
to get the best result.
So make a reasonable plan with different steps depending
on your situation and set a goal for each step.
You don't need to copy other people's plan.
If you can only devote 2 hours a week to learning a language,
you don't need to compare yourself to someone who studies
3 or 4 hours a day and getting stressed and frustrated,
but rather trying to figure out how to maximize the effect
you get from those 2 hours.
The second tip.
Do it less, but do it regularly.
Yes, I'm talking about discipline, make it your routine
even if it's only 15 or 30 minutes a day.
Study regularly can help your brain get used to a language.
If you are a beginner, it doesn't matter if you learn with
a book or an application like Dulingo or anything.
You can have thousands of ways to learn a language.
The most important thing is consistency.
Every day or every two days a lesson, a little bit of grammar,
pronunciation and vocabulary, and later you can expand it
and increase the study time.
A year ago I was wondering whether I should start learning Persian in Turkish.
I was learning Arabic and German at the time.
I have just started my PhD thesis.
I had to do a lot of reading and field work.
Sometimes I had to attend conferences and
I have to lecture at University.
I have to go to a gym.
I have to cook, do grocery, and I also needed time to talk
to my family and hang out with my friends.
I thought that it was impossible to find time to learn
two more languages.
I should do it after my thesis.
Sounds reasonable, but I was so interested in these two languages
and I felt that I couldn't wait.
So I was telling myself, let's give yourself a challenge,
make a reasonable plan at the beginning
do it slowly just for discovering.
So I only study Turkish and Persian for 15 or 30 minutes
a day with these two books.
One day, a lesson and I was using the Anki fleshcards
to reveiw the vocabulary and phrases from the book.
I wasn't very ambitious.
I told myself I will just digest the book, nothing more.
I don't want to burn out.
That's why I said before.
Don't use too much materials at the same time at the beginning.
Guess what?
After three months, I realized that I have already finished the book.
I have a basic concept of grammar, a good amount of vocabulary,
like 1000 vocabulary.
In theory, I can talk about anything.
Next step, I want to talk and practice with native speakers,
but it was winter lockdown everywhere in France.
Travel ban in Europe.
What should I do?
So I use Tandem, a language exchange application to find
language learning partner
on this application you can text and chat with people and you can correct each other.
But to be honest, I don't have enough time to text different people
just for some random chat.
And I prefer sometimes more efficient and productive way.
So I always text someone who looks serious
and ask if they want to study to get the regularly by video call.
So we practice like two or three times a week each time,
for example, 30 minutes.
We only speak in Turkish and 30 minutes only in French.
Do it less, but do it with more focus.
Do you have this experience like you are reading a book?
After 30 minutes you are still on the same page
and you have no idea what you have read because you are distracted.
So those 30 minutes are ineffective.
You have learned basically nothing.
It's the same if you are watching something
or listening to something running in the background.
Some people say, okay, you have to expose yourself to a language
like putting on a video or television
and listening to a language as much as possible to I mean, create the environment.
I do agree, but if you listen to it passively without any attention,
it's still not effective
especially if you are a beginner.
You have no idea what they are talking about.
Even you listen to it ten times you won't understand.
It doesn't mean that you have to sit at the table
and take notes of every sentence and repeat it away and away again.
Because sometimes we just want to learn something
without too much effort by doing other things
like taking public transport, cooking, doing the gym, cleaning.
So what I want to say here is
you can still do active listening to make this exercise more effective.
I mean, at least you have something to take away after this kind of exercise.
It's just about getting your brain to focus.
For example, for the beginner, maybe you can focus on pronunciation
or tone.
You have learned some words, try to catch them and
listen to how the native speaker pronounces them and repeat.
For the intermediate and advanced learner
you have the chance to understand better the content.
Trying to catch some expressions you have never encountered
and repeat them.
If you have time and can sit and listen to something
it's more productive to take something short like a video or song
or podcast, anything but note and check the new vocabulary
and repeat it.
For example, for the listening exercise in Arabic.
Normally I choose a very short video and
I will listen to it several times.
Normally the first time I will turn off the subtitle and
the second time I will turn on the subtitle and
check all the new vocabulary.
And the third time I will try to repeat with the video
So I can practice my accent and pronunciation.
Today I'm going to listen to this video.
It's only like five minutes, around five minutes.
Normally I will choose the video with a CC subtitle.
First, I have to turn off the subtitle.
Try to understand what she says
second time, turn on the subtitle here
I want to show you a very useful add on this.
Add on of the reversal and just click on the word you don't understand
and translate into the language you want.
For example, Arabic and English.
Don't forget to activate translation in subtitles.
For example, what does that mean?
Just select here, it means to climb, so I will click here, a star
to save it to my favorite.
Normally I will continue the video
after the video, I will go back to the site of Reverso.
I will click here,my favorite.
So here you can see all the words I have saved from the video.
You can even see the context of the sentence and the link
it is very useful.
For the third time or the fourth time,
I'm going to repeat the sentences with the video.
That's why I think that I prefer to choose a short video
so I can repeat it again and again at the end of the video.
If you have any questions or you want to know more details
about the method, application or book that I mentioned in this video,
please leave me a comment below or
you can tell me about your manager learning experience,
difficulties you encounter and what kind of videos you want to watch in the future.
If you like this video, please give me a like a thumbs up
and don't forget to subscribe to my channel.
Bye.