Language Learning Content or Grammar Focus? With @Olly Richards​ (1)

But when I get asked that question again, what's the best way to go

about learning a new language?

You know, what do you do in your first month?

Right.

I often tell people that you can do a lot worse than just grab a

textbook and just flick through it.

You know, just read...

just quickly look at the grammar points.

Don't do any of it.

Don't start studying, but just look through, see what the grammar points are.

Put it on the map because once you've got that, um, general awareness of the

kind of key rocks grammaticaly, the rocks of meaning if you like, the way

meaning is expressed in the language.

Once you have an awareness of that territory, then that,

that really does I think...

it is very helpful.

And then you just put flesh on the bone after that, as you, as

you carry on and, and, um, and, and actually consume content.

And that tends to sort of repeat that pattern.

In other words, there's this Sufi saying, you can only learn what you already know.

And we all had the experience that we don't notice anything until all

of a sudden something is pointed out to us and we notice it everywhere.

And so to that extent, I think some initial overview of the

grammar helps us notice things that we might otherwise not notice.

Uh, It's not enough.

So I do think as I...

getting back to my earlier point, that I would like to see, uh, audio books

of say Portuguese grammar or Japanese grammar or whatever it might be with lots

of examples, no quizzes, no exercises.

I am totally against any form of quiz or exercise.

It's all about exposure, but when a certain concept is introduced,

then there should be 10 examples.

So we get a concentrated dose of whatever, you know, two

forms of past tense or whatever.

It might be an explanation, 10 examples, all in the target

language, all with audio.

And you can listen to that and it's divided up into, uh, you know,

chapters, verbs, nouns, whatever it might be, adjectives, conjunctions,

and you can be listening to this sort of explanation of the language in the

target language with lots of examples.

So it's meaningful by that time you're curious.

Now you want to get better at this.

But you want it in the target language.

It's meaningful input.

It's meaningful to me.

I listen to it.

It's just a thought.

I think that the grammar right now is sort of focused on trying to

teach the grammar to people who don't yet have much experience with the

language and expecting them then to write this test and get it right.

My view is until they've had enough experience with the language,

they're not going to get it right.

Or they might get it right and then get it wrong and then get it right.

Uh, it's not by doing exercises that they're going to be better.

On the other hand, someone who is already at this B1 B2 level, give

them something that they can treat as meaningful input, comprehensible

input, and sort of start to refine their, their accuracy in the language.

And that's why we always get these examples of students who will say,

you know, why is it that's I, uh, I always, whenever I'm talking with my

tutor in a, in a lesson or I'd never have any problem and I can always get

the answers right in my textbook, but then when I'm out on my own, it's like

I freeze up and I, and I can't get anything meaningful out of my mouth.

It's it's it's for that, it's for that exact reason.

Um, so you were talking about, I guess having a huge arsenal of examples.

So you're, you're talking about having the explanation and then just pages

of examples in the target language?

No, 10 is enough because let's say there's 50 points or a hundred

points that you want to cover.

You're not going to cover every possible situation in the language, but 50, or...

I bought a book once on Russian called 52 Patterns in the

Russian Language, it was great.

That's how it was structured.

And what would have been good there would have been an audio book to acompany it.

So there's X number of patterns in the language that if you have these

patterns, you can speak the language...

Do you find that meaningful input for you?

Because you described that as input that's meaningful for you.

And I'm curious about that because I I've used programs like this in the past where

it's just a huge numbers of examples and sentences one after the other.

And I just get, I find myself getting bored very quickly, precisely

because I don't find it meaningful.

And it's one of those things where, you know, this is the danger

between pedagogy and just content.

Isn't it?

Because, because with content, you, you know, you're going to win in the end,

you know, you'll get there in the end.

And then with the pedagogy you've got a leg up.

You can explain it more, but then how do you stay motivated?

It's got to find that balance in between.

And I always...

Well, you know...

yeah.

So, I mean, it's going to be a part of your strategy.

It's not the main thing.

The main thing is listening to content that is inherently more compelling,

but I can listen to my Persian podcasts and there, there are patterns there

that, you know, I know what they mean but I'm not sufficiently aware of them

so that when I speak with my person tutor, I can use them correctly.

And I have the feeling of...

certainly I try to focus in I'll...

I, I have a book in I'll go through and see some of these grammar points.

I have the feeling that it helps me notice these things so that eventually

when I speak, I got them right more often than I'm getting them right now.

So, yeah, there's always the danger, whatever you're doing you

don't know if it's doing any good.

You're flipping through flashcards.

Am I learning something?

I don't know.

I'm reading the dictionary.

Am I Learning something?

I don't know.

We don't know, but I have the feeling that I would listen to it.

I would listen to it.

And certainly the Russian book helped me with my Russian patterns.

Um, so it's just, it's a minor point.

It's not the main, the main thing, I agree with you, is still stories.

But um...

Let me ask you this Steve, what have you, what have you, you know, it's

been a couple of years since the, since the pandemic now and I can,

I assume if it, can, I assume that you've your language learning is

accelerated during the pandemic, or do you, did you find yourself doing more?

Not Really?

Um, no.

I mean, uh, uh, I would say about the same I put in my hour, hour and a half.

Um, you know, in the evenings or whatever, I listen while I'm washing the dishes.

I wouldn't say it's accelerated.

What have you, what have you learned in the last two years

about, about language learning?

What, is there anything that surprised you or that has, that you've come to

believe in the last couple of years?

Yeah, I think that, uh, I spend an awful lot of time generating meaningful content.

And so the, if to the extent that we can make that easier for people uh,

we save ourselves a lot of time, the amount of time that I go to YouTube and

I put, you know, podcast on history and Arabic, uh, put it in Arabic and look for

something and don't find anything useful.

Uh, so I th...no, that might be because I'm into Arabic and Persian, but, uh,

and then I look at, uh, you know, uh, again, Sahra who lives in Iran, she's

put together this sort of 26 part stories on the history of Iran, each story then

followed by these certain questions.

Uh, phenomenal stuff.

If I had something like that on the history of Egypt, on the history of, um,

the Levant, you know, to me, content is the big thing, making content better.

Granted I've been in sort of languages where there is less content available

than say English, Spanish, whatever.

So content, because fundamentally it's still 80% compelling input,

a certain amount of time spent with the nuts and bolts of the

language to help you notice that.

And then when you have the opportunity to use it.

So I'm not a believer in talking your way to fluency.

I think you build up your potential in the language, and then when you get

the opportunity, you go for it without worrying about the mistakes you can have.

So none of that has changed.

It's just that there's this explosion of available content

and how do we best access it?

How do we make it easier for people to find it?

That was a big part of what we did at LingQ with our new 5.0 is to try, you

know, you've got now the format that Netflix uses or Spotify uses to make

our library look a bit more like that.

So people can find what they're looking for.

Content is key.

That's, that's my big sort of take away from the past two years.

Yeah, I, I, I, I do.

It's interesting.

You say that the amount of time that you spend looking for content, because

it's often the same, the same...

I find a similar thing happening, and I think this is, this is an area

where for any, you know, budding entrepreneurs listening, uh, I think

this is an area where there's still a great deal of work to be done.

Is it aggregating, aggregating, compelling content, which is organized by level

in some meaningful way in different languages into, into, into one place.

Because I think there's lots of, it's easy to find stuff that's, that's,

that's, that's graded by level.

Um, and it's easy to find stuff that's compelling.

It's extremely difficult to find, to find stuff that is both of those things.

And I guess, I guess that's because we are all such individuals and we're all,

you know, we all have, uh, the, the, the kinds of information that we'd like

to surround ourselves with the kind of types of concept that we like to, that

we like to, um, to, to, to consume.

But I think something, something along those lines that matches the breadth

of the whole internet, you know, where we could do where content could somehow

be, be bought in from any source and filtered by interests, filtered by,

but by level, I, I think that would be.

Uh, yeah, perhaps it's not possible, perhaps is asking too much, you

know, I still find that 99% of things I ever try and watch on Netflix,

I turn off within 20 seconds.

So maybe it's, it's, it's, it's wishful thinking, but, but that is that single

source of, um, of, of compelling, high quality, properly graded language

content would be certainly for me would be, uh, a real, um, a real holy grail.

Yeah, I think that a number of things I agree with you, and of course, um,

lots of different people are going to put out all kinds of different content.

People's tastes are different.

And some way of being able to find what suits your level, tastes, whatever.

There are ways of making stuff more accessible, like, uh, you know, at

LingQ we have the sort of translation interspersed with the text, so you

can turn that off or turn that on.

So even though it might be difficult for you, even though you might find