#7 – Become an Independent Language Learner
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here again with the seventh in my series of Secrets to Successful Language Learning.
I won't review secrets one to six because I can't remember them here right off the bat and I'll jump right in to the seventh. It's, maybe, the most difficult thing for people to achieve and that is, take charge of your own language learning; become an independent language learner.
I believe that only independent language learners are successful and convert themselves into fluent speakers of another language.
There are millions of people who go to class and most of them don't achieve success, unless they take their learning out of the classroom and pursue the language following some of the secrets, some of the methods that I've suggested in this series, like spending enough time on their own outside the classroom, pursuing things of interest to them, listening and reading, interacting with the language in ways that they like, developing the ability to notice, making sure they have the right tools, being patient with their learning. All these things that I've described in this series of videos are the attributes of an independent learner. You have to become independent.
I hear people all the time saying why does this language go this way, is this right or is that right, what does this mean.
I consider myself an independent language learning having learned 11 and now working on my 12th language, I never ask myself those questions. Either I have a translation handy or I can figure it out by looking words up in an online dictionary or I let it go and I know that eventually this pattern or these words will start to make sense to me.
If I want to look up something to do with grammar it's easy enough to do today.
Just by Googling I can see verb tables or noun declension tables in any language with two clicks. I have a little grammar book that I occasionally leaf through in the different languages, but I don't expect that any teacher has to teach it to me. I can access the language, learn from it and explore it on my own, I don't need structure.
That's essentially how we structured LingQ.
We do divide our content, our lessons into levels of difficulty, but within each level of difficulty you're free to explore whichever content strikes your fancy. Some people have trouble with this unstructured way of learning, but that's how people learn in real life. So if you haven't already done so, I would invite you to come to LingQ (LingQ.com) and explore what we have done, what we have created for the independent language learner and I look forward to meeting you there.
Thank you for listening to this series and goodbye for now.
