Don't Compare Yourself to Others When Learning a Language

We have to recognize that the classroom is not the only place to learn.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann and today I wanna talk about, you know, why you are the most

important person in language learning: don't compare yourself to others.

Don't worry about others.

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So, uh, you may have seen the video that I put up where I tried to speak

20 languages, uh, sort of in one shot.

Um, obviously I messed up, uh, but part of the purpose in doing that

was to show that we are going to mess up when we speak languages.

It was pointed out for example, and I immediately noticed that in Italian,

I said ... instead of ... okay.

Easy enough to confuse two romance languages.

Once more, I noticed that in my Korean, I think I used ... which is very in Persian

and I started to use ... which is much or many in Persian, again, in my Korean.

I can't remember all the other places where I messed up.

if I thought about it, I would, but of course, when I see that I would

like to redo it, but if I redo it, I'll probably make a mistake somewhere

and this is a bit like when we use the language that we're learning.

Sometimes we, we get it right one time and then we don't get it right the next time.

And there are always people who speak better than we do.

None of that matters.

You know, the brain is gonna go where it goes.

Sometimes it'll go to the right spot and it'll find the

word that you're looking for.

Sometimes it won't.

Sometimes it'll go to another language.

Uh, I've spent so much of the last three months with Persian, my brain is kind

of, you know, a little bit twitchy, uh, when it comes to looking for words,

it tends to go for a Persian word, not a problem, you correct yourself.

Or the other person kind of says, Hmm, what was that?

And then you continue communicating.

So it's very important that we put ourselves at the, you know, at the sort

of focal point of our learning activity.

And as long as we feel that we're, you know, enjoying the language

we think we're slowly improving.

Maybe some days we think we're no longer improving, but we have to

remind ourselves that if we continue to put in the time, we will improve,

as long as we engage with the language.

And in that regard, I thought it was quite interesting the comment that I

received on my, uh, YouTube channel here, where someone said that, uh, you know,

I used to be a fan of yours Steve, but now as I learn more about linguistics,

educational psychology, and language pedagogy, I realized the videos you

make and the methodology you promote are inefficient at best and harmful at worst.

Poor ideas, just devaluing the classroom, promoting your program, uh, misleading for

an audience that doesn't know any better.

And this person's a teacher.

Fine.

Uh, teachers are gonna defend the classroom and there are undoubtedly

people who are good teachers and people who learn in the classroom.

However, a lot of people find the classroom frustrating.

A lot of people were turned off language learning by the classroom.

Uh, at least in Canada, in the English language school system, people

by and large don't learn French.

So we have to recognize that the classroom is not the only place to learn.

In fact, I have found that in trying to measure, you know, who

succeeds in language learning, it's those people who do things

outside the classroom that succeed.

And what I promote here at my channel is lots of input listening

and reading, that can't be bad.

Now, of course, I put in a plug for LingQ here and there, but LingQ is not the

only place where you can listen and read.

But the basic principle that you have to bring the language into you and that

until your brain has been exposed to enough of, to enough of the language, the

grammar instruction is not going to work.

You know, if you're given, uh, you know, so often when you're given, say road

instructions and you say yes, yes, yes.

And then it's completely gone because you haven't been down that route

before you haven't been past the post office to the intersection.

So until you've had some of that experience if it's in your neighborhood

and they say, the store you're looking for is located besides something

else and you know, the neighborhood, then those instructions work.

But in languages, if you haven't had enough of the language in you,

so that you're familiar with some of the ways that the languages,

you know, the words come together.

The grammar instructions are not that helpful.

And so linguistics, pedagogy, I have ne...

I have books, I bought books in behind me on linguistics and teaching pedagogy.

I've never found them all that useful because it's basically a personal journey.

If you're interested in the language, you seek out content of interest,

a teacher can help you find the content content of interest.

A teacher can stimulate that interest, but you've gotta be interested.

And then you have to put in the time, it's that simple.

It's not a matter of complicated pedagogy and furthermore for this teacher to

suggest that the people who listen to me simply don't know any better.

You know, I've had so many people tell me, Steve, I never was able to learn a

language in the classroom, since listening to you I have improved tremendously

since I started reading more, rather than trying to speak more at an early stage.

Since I started listening more I have better comprehension.

And lo and behold, now I'm able to speak better.

So many people have said that to me.

I don't think those people are simply people who don't know any better.

However, I understand that teachers wanna protect what they're doing and

they want to feel, you know, that what they're doing is valuable and it

can be valuable, particularly if the teacher can motivate the learner to do

things, you know, on his or her own.

You know, and, and unfortunately, like I mentioned before this language app that

the Canadian government put out called Mauril or Mauril, uh, where basically

it's people creating comprehension questions for, you know, Canadian like

CBC or Radio Canada television programs.

We don't need comprehension questions.

We don't need teachers doing that sort of thing.

What we need is an ability to access that content, put up all the transcripts

to the programs that, uh, CBC and Radio Canada and people will be able to learn

from those because it's a personal.

So, and, and we need to compare ourselves inevitably, some people

are going do better than others.

Some people will spend more time.

Some people will have better pronunciation.

It doesn't matter.

It's always a personal journey.

It's up to you.

You're in charge.

You're steering the boat.

You go where you want to go and don't worry about who's

behind you and who's ahead of.

Or who's trying to wave at you and tell you, don't go there, go here.

It's a personal journey.

So there you have it.

That's my take on this idea of, of, you know, always comparing yourself to others

or, or looking for approval from others.

Don't, it's your own personal journey.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.