IELTS, TOEIC, Compelling Input & Acquiring Good Language Habits (1)

So now your focus shifts from sort of deliberately learning the language to,

you know, consuming a lot of interesting, compelling content in that language.

Hi there Steve Kaufmann here.

Um, today again, I'm going to do this question and answer

thing that I did last week.

Uh, people seem to enjoy it.

Uh, I am able to deal with a number of different subjects.

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Without further ado, and here my people seem to like these

glasses, they're clickable glasses.

I Googled, I bought two pairs.

I have one pair down in Palm Springs, one pair up here.

They're quite inexpensive and they're, you know, different strengths, 1.5,

2, or whatever you need for reading.

So now here are the questions that I got, uh...

says Gujarati has been awesome to study, blah, blah, blah.

When the joy dwindles I switch to French.

So, uh, The point here is that we have Gujarati at LingQ.

I don't know how many people are studying it.

Uh, I'm not, I may, one day it's not the major Indian language,

but someone volunteered to do the mini stories and that's our

condition for adding a new language.

It's also interesting that, uh, having a major and a minor language sometimes

can be good for maintaining interest.

I'm struggling a bit right now because I have my Persian and my Arabic, and I've

even started into a Egyptian Arabic.

So I've got three sort of languages bouncing around and there was some

suggestion that I might do a video, uh, with a Russian person who lives in Turkey.

And so I went back and tried to refresh my Turkish.

So all these languages bouncing around in your brain is an obstacle.

It is confusing, but it also is this element of things new and interesting.

And, uh, you know, I'm a debutante.

So I enjoy doing that.

I think, uh...

is doing it for fun.

Obviously, if you're going to go for IELTS or something, uh, TOEIC, then you

really want to focus on one language.

All right.

Next person, Capacitor says the problem is that when you reach an advanced

level, it becomes more difficult to learn more because you already know so much.

And thus it becomes more difficult to stay motivated with the learning process.

I mean, I've said it many times, the word frequency declines very, very steeply.

So the more words you learn, the more difficult it is to learn new words,

because these new words will appear less and less frequently in whatever

you're listening to or reading.

So, you know, I've sometimes said that when we start in a language,

we have that initial, I talk about the upside down hockey stick.

We have that initial period: wow, we're learning a lot of words because the most

frequent words show up so often and all of a sudden we understand some things.

And, uh, you know, we can even say a few things, but then we discovered that

there's actually a long road before you reach sort of a decent level of

fluency, because unfortunately we need a lot of words to understand books, to

understand movies, to even understand conversations that native speakers are

having because native speakers actually have a lot of words because they've been

with that language since they were kids.

And that they say as a rule of thumb, that you add a thousand

words for every year of your life.

So someone who's 40 years old has 40,000 words.

As a learner to acquire all these words, it takes a long time.

The secret therefore is to not be so conscious of the words you're

acquiring and forgetting and reacquiring and re-forgetting.

But if you can find content of interest that you are motivated by learning

about the country or learning about some aspect of the country, Some subject

that may not even be related to the country, but it's a subject of interest

to you and you're learning it in the language that you're trying to learn.

So now your focus shifts from sort of deliberately learning the language to,

you know, consuming a lot of interesting, compelling content in that language.

And I did say earlier that it's difficult to start with compelling content, but when

you reach the level of where you already know a lot of words, the content has to

be compelling or it's hard to continue, even though, as I also said, I sometimes

go back to my mini stories, especially if I'm preparing to speak and to use the

language, because that helps me to train.

It's kind of like my gym, it's my core exercises, but yeah, you need that

compelling input in order to keep going.

For sure.

Uh, ... says I have a question for people who are learning the language

and living in the country where the target language is spoken.

So I've been learning English, I don't have a chance to use

spoken English currently.

I'm going to go to Germany.

My level is A1, I'm wondering whether their learning will be

easier and faster because of the environment of German native speakers.

All right.

A warning.

I have always found that when you go to that country where the language is

spoken, you have to have a level of B1, B almost B2 in order to take advantage.

Uh, because not everyone you deal with in a shop or on the street, and of

course this depends on the level of your language or a language that you

know, what that level is in the country.

So if you go to Germany where the level of English is quite good, uh, the average

person you encounter will have a level of English that is higher than A1.

So you either, either you have to find people who have practically no, uh,

English, and they will then humor you in German, or you have to get a teacher.

So my advice always is to do as much as you can before you go.

And even when you are in the country, you have to work

hard on your input activities.

So when I lived in Japan, I did a lot of listening and reading, this is course

45 years ago, on my own because the amount that I was able to use, you know,

in the early stages was very limited.

So you can't rely on being surrounded by the, by the language.

Of course you turn on the TV, you can listen to the radio, you

can read newspapers, all of that, which you can do in your home

country, too, in whatever language.

But the more you can build it up before you get there.

And the more you continue your input activities so that you can get yourself

up to almost a, I would say B1 and a half in terms of your comprehension,

the better you're going to do.

And the more likely people will speak to you in the language you are

learning, in the target language.

So Mac says, uh, what do I have to do in order to take IELTS

or TOEFL, if I'm learning on my own, what kind of techniques?

So many people need these, uh, tests of English.

Like IELTS, TOEFL, they need them to get into a good school

or they need them for work.

My feeling is that you can get copies of those tests so that you have some

sense of what the tests are all about.

You can even do, you know, example tests.

All of this material is available on the internet, but fundamentally you have to

raise up your overall language skills.

You have to become a better reader.

You have to read fast, or you're going to run out of time in the test.

So again, it comes back to listening and reading.

Personally, I think LingQ is a great way to work on TOEIC or IELTS because

it's, it's all about comprehension, vocabulary, and you listen to so much

and you read so much that you have...

you get a better sense of what's correct grammar and not correct grammar.

You don't have to scratch your brain as much.

And many of those questions on those tests, comprehension

questions, or questions about what is correct and not correct usage.

If you, if you can read quickly and if you can understand well for the parts

where you have to listen to content, the better you comprehend, the better you

understand, the better you're going to do.

The better your'll feel for the language, the better you're going to do.

I don't think it's that useful, uh, to study, you know, the 5,000

words that will show up in TOEIC.

You can do that, and there's nothing wrong with doing that, but it should

be done against the backdrop, backdrop of having elevated your overall

level in the language, listening, comprehension, reading skills, vocabulary.

Uh, okay.

What about reading the dictionary from page, from the front to the back?

It's not something that I would do, uh, you know, it's one of these activities,

it's like studying a list of words.

Um, you know, you think you're doing something, you think you're learning.

I don't think you're learning very much, so it can be interesting.

And if you see a lot of words that you already kind of have no idea, Sort of

reinforce what you are still trying to learn, but I don't think it's a tremendous

strategy and it's hard to keep doing, but any exposure to the language is good.

Now, here's a question...

Says, is finding out...

he learns the conjugations in Spanish, but how are they used, you know?...

in other words, the different pass forms.

Well, this is true in any language.

In English when do we say I, I have done it.

I did it.

Simple past versus a, the sort of whatever it's called in English...

Uh, these are things that have to do with usage, and it's not just when you

use these different conjugation forms, it's even a matter of which words are

used together with which other words.

Word usage, word usage.

These are, this is a matter of developing habits in the language.

And I believe that a lot of listening and reading, hearing the language

starts to create patterns in your brain.

So certain forms, certain conjugation forms are going to seem more natural.

There are always sort of trigger words that trigger the tense because

we're here talking about tenses in the case of this conjugation forum.

And so, you know, Just now I did...

okay.

"Just now" suggests simple past, uh, while, uh, "while I

was watching TV, I was also..."

so the "while" tends to suggest a more, a continuous form, sort of the imperfect.

So you should look at words that surround these different tenses, whether

it's in Spanish or English or any other languages, and you will see that

certain tenses are suggested by certain trigger words, and you should notice

those and maybe save them at LingQ.

And all of this helps you notice.

And once you notice things, you can develop the proper language habits so

that the usage will seem more natural.

That doesn't mean you'll always get it right.

And in many cases, it may not even matter what you use.

Uh, in English sometimes it's just best to use the simple past.

Can't go wrong kind of thing.

Uh, but you want to develop a feel and that's only achieved through

lots of listening and reading and eventually using the language.