IELTS, TOEIC, Compelling Input & Acquiring Good Language Habits (2)

Um...

starting in Mandarin the same as everything else, except you

have to learn the characters.

What do you think about negative motivation?

Like if people aren't nice to you, I, you know, he goes on, uh, make

fun of immigrant students and stuff.

I mean, you have to turn that off.

Like there are going to be nasty people in this world.

There are people who will make fun of you in any situation, not

just having to do with language.

And you can't take these things too seriously.

The majority of people are nice.

The majority of people are encouraging.

Some people are not.

And I just turn off the people who are...

I try to have a very selective memory.

When I was in Japan everyone was nice to me.

That doesn't mean everyone was nice to me.

That means I only remember the people who were nice to me.

And I think you have to focus on the positive.

Um, you talked about reading, reading, reading, but do you

do this silently or out loud?

Okay.

Reading I read, I think I'm reading silently and I'll often depending

on where I am in the language, I will listen while I'm reading.

I think when we learn another language, when we're reading, we're also sub

vocalizing, because when we read our own language, it's instant, meaning

we don't need to sub vocalize.

We Don't need to say it to ourselves, but when we're reading in a foreign language,

I find that I'm saying it to myself, but I very rarely read out loud, out loud.

It's tiring.

But I tend to sub vocalize.

And that's why combining listening with reading is so important

because it gives you that momentum, it gives you that sense.

It gives you greater confidence that you are self vocalizing with the right

pronunciation and the right intonation.

Person says I never thought of listening while exercising.

I mean, come on, you can listen while you're doing anything.

Washing the dishes, driving a car, exercising, working

in the garden, you name it.

Someone here says that the voice is too low.

I've had this comment before.

I, I don't know.

Uh, I think when I listened to my videos, the audio sounds fine.

Please let me know if the audio is a problem.

Here's what we call a soft question.

What is the best app or program to learn a new language.

Well, of course, I'm going to say LingQ L I N G Q.

And finally here's one from Nikita who says, uh, how do you go into

self limited vocabulary in German?

When I read interesting stuff, I don't understand it.

So this is a constant issue of, you know, the beginner stuff is easy because the

word frequency, declines very quickly.

So in an initial period, you have contact with a lot of high frequency words,

like our mini stories, and then as you move into natural content, of course,

now all of a sudden you're dealing with far more low frequency words.

So what do you do?

Well, it's a bit of a...

I believe that that the lack of intermediate content is

a problem in many languages.

I experienced it in Arabic and in Persian.

That's where I'm grateful to Sahra who has created a lot of

excellent content in Persian.

I've mentioned, you know, if Français Authentique or Inner

French, which are great sources of intermediate content in French.

But it is a problem.

And, uh, I think at LingQ, for example, if I can find content that has 10, 15%

new words, that's a comfort zone there.

I'm learning a lot of new words because some of those 10, 15% are in fact names.

So it's actually less than that.

And so that to me is good content.

I'm coming across new words, and yet I have enough known

words that it's not painful.

But I have gone through Russian for example, in the early days

when I was with Russian and LingQ was much slower than it is now.

And I had material with 40% new words, and I just fought on because I wanted to

learn this language and I was interested in whatever it was that I was reading.

It could have been, you know, tolstoy or something, and I just

struggled on, so it's a function of our, you know, Pain threshold.

So, and, and I tend to find myself bouncing back and forth.

I fight my way through a difficult content, lots of new words.

And ah, I'm tired of doing that.

I get back to my mini stories and this kind of gives me a little more confidence.

And then I go back and fight with the more difficult content.

And you just have to find a proper mix of easy content and difficult content

so that you maintain your motivation.

You get enough fluency becasue you're dealing with easier content and yet

you're acquiring new words and you're fighting way fighting your way through

to, uh, eventually getting enough vocabulary so that you can deal with

more authentic content more easily.

Okay.

I'm just going to deal with those questions today.

I hope that was of interest.

I see I've gone on a bit longer.

Um, leave you a few videos kind of relevant related to this.

And let me know if this is of interest to you.

Thank you.

Bye for now.