Be a Lazy Language Learner

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

I'll start off my audio recording. Yeah, I was very encouraged to get some comments on my blog, The Linguist on Language, saying please do some more videos.

I thought nobody cared. So, I'm going to do one. What I thought I would talk about and I asked on my blog, I said, what sort of videos do people want?

Do they want the general rants? Do they want the rant on language learning? Or, do they want me to talk in different languages. The response was kind of like all three. So, I don't need much encouragement to continue. I recently put a comment on my blog, which I called Five Recommendations for Lazy Language Learners.

I said for lazy language learners, which I think refers to most people, so let's begin right there. Most people are lazy when it comes to language learning and I say that because most people can't be bothered learning a language, unless they need it for their job or they need it for some other professional reason.

Even those people who are motivated to go to the store and buy a language learning book or cassette very often never look at it. Once they bring it home it sits on their shelf. I know from research that I attended a conference in Germany called ‘Sprachen und Berufe' (Languages and Professions).

Research there showed that the professional, like the corporate language learner who might have an hour a week of class with a teacher, on average will spend an hour and a half on his/her own. That's two and a half hours a week.

That is not enough to make any significant improvement in your language. So, I know that the majority of people are not strongly motivated to improve their language and so I say they're lazy. I think most people are lazy.

Given the choice between doing something that's difficult and hard work or doing something that's easy and fun, most people will opt for the latter. And people very quickly say I don't have enough time and, yet, I find that if you have the motivation, if you really want to do it, you find the time. I had a question at a forum at LingQ on suggestions from someone who called themselves a “lazy bones”, so from this I came up with five suggestions for a lazy language learner, which I think, as I said, refers to most people.

The first point is to spend most of your time listening, because it's easy to do.

You can be listening while you're driving, while you're doing other chores. You can always find time. You know, while you're standing in line at the supermarket. I do. I always have my iPod with me. It's not hard work and so it's something that a lazy person can do. The second thing is that once you listen, of course, it's frustrating if you can't understand.

So, as I always say, read it and then go in there and find some words and phrases, but don't try to learn things. Don't try to remember things. Don't get hung up. Don't be too “Type A”, as they say, about this. Just forget it. If you forget it, you forget it. If you misunderstand certain things, if you fade out it doesn't matter. So that was my second thing. The third thing was with regard to grammar.

Get the smallest possible book. Skim it every now and again. Don't worry about what you can't remember. Don't really study it. So, I think a lazy person can cope with that. The fourth thing was don't force yourself to speak.

Don't feel compelled to speak, but when you do just relax and listen. The fifth thing was don't worry about what you don't understand, about what you forget, about what you're unable to do in the language, just enjoy it.

So those are my suggestions. In contrast to the four tasks that I assign to the hard-working learner and those were, of course, to be much more goal-oriented, more deliberate.

You know, set weekly goals and stick to them. Don't miss a day in your language learning; whereas, the lazy guy can go for a couple of days and not do it.

Write – I'm too lazy to write.

I'm working on my Italian, my Portuguese and my Russian, having fun with it, listening, enjoying, I don't write. If I wrote I would do a lot better. I'm too lazy to write, but for the hard-working person – write. Then I say connect with a tutor, because a tutor will get you working harder.

Even once a week, twice a week, via Skype, nowadays you can do it. You don't have to get in a car and go anywhere or take a bus. So for the hard-working person, get yourself a tutor. And for the hard-working person, review your words and phrases, whether it be in flashcards or off lists.

I don't do it that often, because I'm a lazy learner. I prefer to listen. So that was my advice. Well, I get an email or not an email, but I get a comment from one of the people following my blog and this person says that I have castigated people who don't have time to spend on language learning and that he showed it to his friends and they found it demotivating.

Here, please define lazy.

You seem to be stigmatizing learners who can't devote much time to studying learning a language. Stigmatizing…? A couple of people read this on my laptop and found it quite demotivational, he says. I'm not sure that that's a word, but. First of all, why would a person find it demotivating?

They either consider themselves lazy or they don't and I don't think there's any great sense of stigma attached to being lazy. It's a fact. The majority of people are not that motivated to learn languages. Even people who think they are if they think it's going to be hard work they soon lose interest. It's the way the languages are taught with the emphasis on grammar and so forth that makes it seems like hard work so people quit.

So, I always try to encourage people. Even if you're lazy, even if you don't want to confront hard work, you can still learn. Here's how you do it. I don't think there's any stigma there and I don't see how that can be demotivating. I think there's a tendency now that we have to spend so much time fluffing people up and being nice to them.

I thought I was being nice, you know? You can consider yourself lazy or not lazy and I made the point that most people are naturally, I think, a little bit inclined to find the easy way of doing things. Now, there is an easy way of learning languages.

It needn't be hard work. So even if you're lazy you can do it, put in the time. And, as I often say, it's like so many other things, you find the time. People say I don't have time to exercise.

I don't have time to be fit. I don't have the time to, whatever it might be, take out the garbage. Once it becomes a habit then you continue doing it. So, in summary then, I don't see…Well, like the previous commenter, Chris, here.

He said I consider myself to be an active learner who tries to learn in the laziest way possible, which for most people would be the most enjoyable. And so, yeah, I mean I don't see where I stigmatized anybody.

I was hoping to actually encourage people to believe that it's really not such a difficult task. It doesn't necessarily require tremendous discipline and hard work, but it does require the time. This is the point. You can't do well in languages if you don't put in the time. So, again, I definitely agree with Chris' comment here.

Yes, put in the time. Yes, be motivated and be active, but find ways to do it that suit a lazy personality, which is more enjoyable and that's how you're going to succeed. You can achieve success and still study in what's essentially a lazy way. So, Charles, I didn't mean to stigmatize anyone.

I didn't mean to demotivate anyone. I mean everything I do here is to try to motivate people to learn languages. I'm curious if anyone else reacted the same way. Certainly that wasn't the intention. All right, this will be my first video rant here after a bit of a hiatus, as I was away enjoying the sunshine of the California desert.

Thank you and bye for now.