Hi. Language learning.
That's what I talk about once a week on this channel.
Language learning is a huge market.
Uh, depending on where you go on the internet, there's all kinds
of different numbers about the size of the language learning
industry or the size of that market.
60 billion in 2023, going to grow to 300 billion.
People spend a lot of money on language learning.
That means a lot of people want to learn.
Languages, a lot of people, depending on where they are and the number of other
circumstances aren't so very successful.
I was going to mention, by the way, speaking of language learning, my
buddy Luca Lamporiello, who wrote this great book that he sent me and I read
through it, he and I are going to have a discussion where we're going to talk about
language learning because it's something that we're both very interested in.
But in my last video, I talked about how people in Japan were suddenly saying,
Oh, you know, our results in our tests of English are poorer than they have been.
And TOEIC, for example, Japan is well down the list.
And I pointed out that it's not very different in Canada when it comes to
English speaking Canadians and their ability to speak French, even though
it's an official language in Canada.
And the reasons have to do with motivation and with, uh, the way the language
is taught and so forth and so on.
So I thought I would come up with.
What I would call my seven stops, how to go about changing the way we
approach language learning so that we can finally get some results.
Remember too, that the situation of someone in Japan or an English speaking
Canadian in Vancouver is very different from that of someone in Europe, say, or
in an area of the world where people are surrounded by many different languages.
And so it's easy to hear these languages.
It's easy to turn on the television set and hear them in the original language.
You can jump on a train or get in your car and drive across the border
to another place nearby where you can speak a different language.
That's a different situation.
But when you're in English speaking North America or you're
in Japan, it's much more difficult.
to have an opportunity to hear the language, to speak in
the language you're learning.
So what should the approach be?
So I want to talk about some things I thought of initially for the
situation in Japan, which I know well because I lived there for nine years.
But I then realized that these things apply generally because we all have
the same, Same brain, basically.
Now, obviously our native language conditions, our brain in a certain way.
If we read Chinese characters, or if we read a language like English, where the
relationship between the letters and the sounds is not so obvious, generally
kids take longer to learn to read.
Whereas in languages like Turkish, which I recently was.
You know, involved with, or, uh, you know, Spanish, it's a one to one relationship.
So there are differences in the way the brain deals with these languages,
but the basic principles are the same.
We listen, we hear, we, uh, convert sound to meaning.
If we read, we then have a code that converts those signs on a piece
of paper or on a screen into an equivalent phonic representation.
And we take it down through.
And we get meaning from that all the same, doesn't matter where you live.
However, in some parts of the world, you're in a better position to learn
or you're more motivated to learn.
So seven things that we should stop doing.
Number one, stop taking tests.
And I say this in particular with reference to Japan, where
the TOEIC or IELTS, these, these are enormous industries.
People take the tests far too often.
They have poor results.
I see no benefit in taking a test that proves that you're very weak.
In the language, and yet these tests become the overwhelming sort of objective
of language instruction to pass the test.
And even within many language textbooks, we're constantly being tested.
And this is essentially wrong.
And there's all kinds of evidence, both anecdotal and research that shows that
where people expose themselves to just a massive flow of the language, input,
listening, reading, building up those habits in the brain, in Japanese, we
would Getting used to the language.
That's far more effective than trying to focus in on, you know, testing you
for your results because ultimately the testing saps your confidence.
It makes you nervous about the language and it really doesn't tell you anything.
If you have a large vocabulary and you have lots of experience with
the language, you will eventually be able to produce the language.
The only test I ever took for a language was, other than my French at school,
the British foreign service exam for Mandarin Chinese, because my Employer,
the Canadian government required that of me, but all the other languages, I have
never taken a test and I have no interest in taking a test, not in Spanish, not in
Chinese or Korean or, or anything else.
Second stop, stop going to language class.
It's not necessary.
It's expensive.
It's not very effective in terms of.
Use of time.
You have to go there.
You have to sit in class.
It might be fun.
You have your friends there.
You have a teacher who inspires you.
Perhaps it's motivating.
I'm not saying that for an unmotivated learner, that it isn't a good thing to do.
But if you are motivated, we learn in our brains, we learn wherever we are.
We live in a world where we can take our language content with us wherever we are.
Listening, reading, finding people to talk to.
The major focus of our language learning should be outside the classroom.
Not inside the classroom.
Number three, and again, I thought of this with specific reference to
Japan, but it applies to all of us.
Stop connecting the way your writing system is pronounced to the pronunciation
of the language you're learning.
This is an extreme problem in Japanese to the extent that
Japanese people use Katana.
Which is one of the phonetic systems in Japanese.
To the extent that they use that phonetic system to learn other
languages, they get horrible results.
Because in, you know, if you take a word like clerk, for example, then
in Katakana there is no RK sound.
So it's krak, krak.
That's all they have.
That's the phonetic system.
And I, I've often mentioned this before.
My father, Who was originally from Czechoslovakia, he would say Shulda,
or he would say Nova Scotia rather than getting used to what the writing
system of the language you are learning, how it relates to pronunciation, and
that has to be learned initially by.
Perhaps some explanation, but more than that, massive listening and reading.
Whenever I start a new language, I don't spend a long time on the values
of the letters in the language.
I kind of gloss over it.
Maybe go back if I have some questions, but more than anything,
I listen and read and I accept how the writing system is connected
to pronunciation in that language.
So don't connect your own writing system and the values of letters
in your own writing system to the language, to the pronunciation
of the language you are learning.
So next stop obsessing over grammar.
Stop obsessing over the details of the language, especially at
an early stage of your learning.
You know, adventure and learning a new language.
A lot of these grammar explanations, you won't be able to remember them.
You won't be able to apply them.
You don't even understand them until you've had enough
experience with the language.
Treat grammar as additional, you know, side commentary on the language, but
that's not where you're going to learn the language and particularly don't worry
about being tested on it and get it wrong.
It doesn't matter.
You need so much exposure to the language before it's.
Starts to become a part of you.
Number five, stop with the role playing or in the case of Japan, Eikaiwa, where
learners sit around and talk to each other with a limited range of vocabulary.
In particular, this role playing, you're going to pretend you're in some scenario
situation where you have to come up with words and express yourself in what
is actually an artificial situation.
You're far better off to spend your time allowing your brain to assimilate
the language, get used to the language.
Rather than putting yourself in this situation where you're basically rehashing
the limited vocabulary that you have.
Next thing again, particularly in Japan, but even here in North America, stop
feeling badly about what you can't do.
Great panic in Japan.
Oh, our performance, uh, you know, 63 percent of kids, middle
school kids can't speak English.
Of course they can't speak English.
They have no opportunity to speak English.
Of course they're not going to speak English.
They have to get used to English.
English, which has.
Compared to Japanese, different word order, very little in
the way of common vocabulary.
They have to get a lot of that language in them.
And so obsessing over your inability to retrieve words, to understand
words, all of that is self defeating.
You need confidence.
You need to enjoy the language.
So stop beating yourself up over things that you can't do in the language.
Focus instead on things that you can do in the language.
And particularly if you find ways to enjoy the language.
That's where your focus should be.
The next stop is stop memorizing.
How much can you memorize?
You can't memorize, for example, on my statistics at LingQ, I have whatever it
might be, 30, words in different languages that I've learned at LingQ that I have
acquired naturally, that I have acquired through massive listening and reading.
And gradually these words have become a part of my initially passive vocabulary.
A smaller subset become part of my active vocabulary, but I haven't
deliberately memorized them because you can only memorize so much.
And every time you're memorizing, you're memorizing off a list, whether
it be a list for TOEIC or whether it be an Anki deck, you're learning words
or trying to learn words in isolation.
Whereas we know from research that we are better able to retain words
when we encounter these words.
in different contexts so that we start to acquire the ability to anticipate
what's going to happen in the language.
That's how we acquire words.
That's how we acquire the language, which reminds me, by the way, that
when I talked about the obsessive focus on grammar, all of my experience
when I was teaching English at LingQ is the issue is not grammar.
The issue is word usage, developing that natural ability to know which
word is used in which situation.
Situation together with which other word that encompasses the sense of
correct usage, call it grammar, but it comes through massive exposure
to the language, not by studying lists of words in isolation or
obsessing over rules of grammar.
Trying to remember the rule is not going to enable you to
understand or to speak well.
Having a large vocabulary naturally acquired is going to
help you eventually speak better.
So with all of these stops, what should we start doing here?
You know, I was very gratified to see there are a number of articles
on the internet about the power of extensive reading Extensive reading
as opposed to intensive reading.
There's far too much emphasis on intensive reading in other words
Analyzing what you read trying to infer what you read Analyzing it for grammar
teachers who are trying to teach you critical thinking all of this focusing
in dwelling on With great intensity on small bits of reading to my mind.
In fact, the experience has demonstrated.
This is not as effective as allowing readers and learners to
choose what to read and listen to.
I definitely would combine both the reading and the listening because they
are very much connected in our brains and combining the two helps us connect the
sound with the way the word is written.
And if we focus on imbibing as much of the language as possible.
Allowing learners, great discovery, extensive reading.
Let the learner choose what to read.
That's like, wow, of course the learner should choose what to read.
It shouldn't be up to the teacher to dictate.
Far too often, teachers who assign reading, especially in ESL, but not
only, they tend to bring in subjects of interest to them, social justice
issues or environmental issues or Things like this, which are maybe wonderful
in and of themselves, but may not be what the learner is interested in.
Let the learner choose what to read and listen to.
And therefore, for example, if learners are learning English,
they needn't only learn from, say, American culture or UK culture.
They can learn about German culture or Chinese culture in English.
In other words, English has, is such an international language, people should be
using material that's of interest to them.
It doesn't have to connect to the country of origin.
That's in the case of English, although that might still be
preferred by most learners.
Fine.
But if the learner prefers other kinds of material, they should
be encouraged to use that kind of material, material of interest to them.
And, and by extension, and I'm looking at the example of Canada, rather than forcing
everyone to learn French because it's an official language, or in the case of
Japan, forcing everyone to learn English because it's the language of international
communication, maybe we just let people.
Choose the language they want to learn.
And that's much more possible today.
We have 50 languages at LingQ.
They are all learned the same way at LingQ.
Choose the language you're interested in.
If you are motivated to learn that language, you want to go to that
country, or you want to connect with that language, then do that.
Because anyone who learns one second language, third language, will have
an easier time eventually of learning.
So if the goal, for example, in Canada is for English speakers to learn French, if
that English speaker starts by learning Chinese or Spanish, eventually they'll
have an easier time learning French.
Similarly, say in Japan, if a Japanese learner is more interested in Korean
or Chinese or Indonesian, and they learn that language, when they go back
to their English learning, because for whatever reason, they're more motivated
to do that, they will also have.
A better time and an easier time learning that language.
So there you have it.
My shock treatment, seven stops and one start when it comes to language learning.
