Power Language Learning: Week 1

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. I'm back in the desert. I'm back in Palm Springs where my wife and I like to come down to avoid the rain in Vancouver. It's nice down here. It's sunny. My eyes are a little bit irritated. I have to take drops. They get itchy, but I'll get over that, presumably, pretty quickly.

Today, I want to talk about Power Language Learning. I want to talk about my latest challenge where I'm trying to sort of focus on three languages every day and, specifically, on LingQ I'm going to create 100 links in each language. On LingQ what we call creating a link means clicking on an unknown word, a blue word and converting it to a yellow word. Now, if I find a blue word that is a name, I then ignore it or give it an X. That doesn't count as a created link. It doesn't add to my saved links total, only new words that I save that become yellow that I can review later on count. So 100 links a day, that's going to be my driver. A couple of comments on that. I'm responding to some questions that I got when I announced this the first time.

First of all, at least once a week I'm going to put out this Power Language Learning. This is week 1. I may do another week 1a, week 2 and in all, whatever it is, nine months, 36-37 weeks that I'm going to pursue this strategy. So, to answer some questions…

First of all, why? Well, I had been studying the three languages, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and I found that if I did three months on one, three months on another and so forth it was six months before I came back to the first one and I would slip. That's point number one. However, I do think that starting out in a language, very different languages, Turkish, Arabic and Persian, it's probably worth it to focus for the first three months on just one language. In the case of Arabic, it was even longer because I have to learn the script. There are a number of things there that require sort of this undivided attention, but now I want to grow in those languages. I want to grow in all three of them, so I've decided to do all three of them every day.

So why 100 links a day in each language? Because that's the only way I can make sure that I'm spending enough time on each language or that I don't get carried away and spend too much time on one language. Every day my task is I've got to create 100 links. So what does that mean?

First of all, I have to find material that has enough blue words, unknown words in it. I either find them in our library or I go find them on the internet. That can be a bit time consuming. I have to find podcasts in Arabic or whatever. I have to get them transcribed on the automatic transcription service. I have learned that I have to choose podcasts where people speak clearly in order to get a proper transcript. Typically, the content that I'm bringing in in Arabic, Turkish and Persian is going to have 30 to 40% unknown words, including place names which I don't count.

One of the reasons I do it is because I want to make sure I spend enough time on each language. The second reason is because I've found that in each of the three languages I had put so much effort into my mini stories that I had listened to 30 or 40 times, that I had reread three, four, five, six times or even on some of the podcasts that I had converted to yellow words and I was reading them for the second or the third time. I was starting to find this boring and I said I've got to push myself out of my comfort zone.

If I set myself a goal every day in each language that I have to create 100 new links, I have to get to new material. It's, in fact, more interesting. Even if the comprehension is not really there, to plow forward in new material because I can look up every word, because in the case and Arabic and Turkish I can hear it pronounced in text to speech. Not available in Persian, unfortunately. I can get a good sense of what these items are and it's interesting to plow forward.

For example, I tweeted out yesterday that yesterday I read and listened, although I didn't understand fully, a TED Talk by a young Turkish woman who had cancer and had her leg amputated, a description of the Sasanian Dynasty in Ancient Persia from Persian Online and a discussion on France about the hijab and secularism and Islam in French society. All three subjects, very interesting.

Maybe because I'm interested in the subject matter, I'm plowing forward saving new words. Not learning them, but just saving them for later. I am kind of reading and getting some overview of the language. So I'm doing things that are more interesting. I'm forcing myself to move forward and get out of my comfort zone. I'm making sure that I put enough time into each language.

Another question was, how long does it take? I timed myself this morning. Obviously, Turkish is the fastest because it's written in the Latin alphabet, so I can read faster. Also, I typically have a higher percentage of new words in Turkish for whatever reason than in the other two languages. So to get to 100 links in Turkish took me about 15 minutes. In Persian and Arabic it takes 30 minutes. That means that an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and a half a day has to be spent on creating these links in the three different languages.

If you are only doing one language, you can still force yourself to do 300 links a day like I'm doing and it should take you an hour and a half. You're not trying to remember anything, not the new words you looked up nor the other yellow words that you're reading through at the same time which you still can't remember, but you look them up again. None of that matters.

What I'm finding is another advantage of power language learning like I'm doing is that it increases your ability to accept ambiguity, uncertainty, you don't understand. It doesn't matter. There was a question, I can't remember who it was, I think it was our friend from Ukraine that said, even after linking all these words and my screen is covered in yellow, which our words that I now have, at least in my database, and I still can't make sense of it.

That's true. It's certainty true in Turkish where the structure is very different from European languages, Ukrainian, Russian or English. However, you have to trust that eventually it will become clearer. So you have to accept ambiguity for quite a while, always forgetting, always not understanding and accept that eventually it will become clearer, if you keep going. You're going to gradually get a sense for the language.

Another thing that I'm hoping with doing three languages at the same time is that, first of all, it's going to help me get a sense for these languages. I'm kind of going over them not worrying about what I understand, although, in fact, understanding more and more, but I think it's also going to help me notice and you have to notice in language learning.

I often mention the case of my father. You have to both notice and accept. My father was born in Czechoslovakia (it was actually the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and lived in Canada for 30 years or longer. He spoke excellent English, had a wonderful vocabulary, was totally at ease in English, but would always say things like Nova Scokia (that's a province in Canada, Nova Scotia) or. He is able to pronounce those words. He's able to pronounce sco, Nova Scotia. He could say that if he wanted to or if he noticed it. He can say bird, heard, but he says 09:06.7 because it's written w-o-r-d. He hasn't made the transition from how something is written to how it's actually pronounced. Either he hasn't noticed or he hasn't accepted or he is unwilling to accept that that's how it's pronounced in English.

To be good at a new language, we have to notice what's going on and we have to accept it without resisting and without questioning it and I think that going after three languages at the same time is going to help me be better at doing those things.

So I'm going to stop it here. This is my first quickie summary on Power Learning Week 1 and you can expect to hear more of this, including tomorrow I'll cover the same ground in Japanese, more or less.

Bye for now.