>> Right, well, there are quite a lot of wrong reasons.
The worst of all is to show off, if you think that I will learn this language so
people will think I'm smart, or people will like me more or I'll be able to pick
up girls or anything along those lines, then it's, it's not going to work because
I found that what you really do need, is a passion for that language.
For the culture, you want to really speak that language inherently for
the reasons, of how fascinating that language is.
And that's going to motivate you to, to speak it.
If you have other things like you just want, you just want to get an A in
an exam, or a B just so you can get into university, then that's not a very good
motivator, because you are not actually interested in using that language.
So, I highly recommend people try to embrace the culture,
try to spend time speaking with other human beings, and then you'll get the,
the motivation that's going to help you to skyrocket your progress.
>> I like that approach.
You've talked about how children have one big advantage,
can you tell us what that advantage is?
>> sure. So, I think that the fact that
children are not so
much perfectionist like adults tend to be, children are okay with making mistakes.
They kind of stumble and fall and we, we help them along and
they play games in the language and they live the language whereas,
in language learning adults tend to study dusty old grammar books, and
can be so afraid of making mistakes that they won't speak at all.
And this is a huge mistake because, in language learning it's not
like we visualize this in an academic setting, where every mistake you
make gives you a red X and if you make enough you make an F.
That's not the real world, in the real world you can make lots of mistakes but
people will still understand you.
If I have just started to learn language, you may think I should wait until I say,
excuse me kind sir, could you direct me to the nearest bathroom please?
Or, I could just say bathroom, where?
And people understand that, that's not a perfectly formed sentence, but
you have to be a good beginner learner.
And a good beginner learner, knows to make a few mistakes, or a lot of mistakes,
to get their point across.
And I find children, that's the,
their main advantage is that they're, they're okay with just saying something.
And they're not going to over analyze everything that comes out of their mouth.
The good news is, this is not an inherent advantage that is built into them,
and not built into us.
It's just kind of the way children act, and we can learn from that.
We can learn to, try to have some fun with our language.
Laugh at the fact that we're making mistakes, and realize people are a lot
nicer that you think and they're going to be very patient with you.
>> I, I think that's an important point, is well of course,
just being willing to make mistakes, making those mistakes, and
then realizing that most people are actually pretty friendly and
accommodating, as you're learning and adjusting and getting situated.
One, one thing that you've talked about that I, I think is
a really important point is the idea of self-fulfilling prophet, prophecies.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
>> Well for myself for instance, I got into language learning as an adult.
But, I failed at five years learning German in school.
I barely passed my exams after ten or eleven years learning Irish And
I lived in Spain for six months and I did not pick up, pick up any Spanish.
And I really truly, genuinely feel that the reason this happened was because of
a series of self fulfilling prophecies.
When I was in Spain and 21 years old,
I told myself, you know, I'm too old to learn a language now.
I passed this cut-off age 14, and
the thing is, it's a self fulfilling prophecy because I believed this was true,
so I thought, okay, well there's no point in doing any work now, so
I only put like minimal effort in and because of that I don't make any progress.
And then I look at that lack of progress and I'm like, you see, this just goes to
prove that adults are not good language learners and it makes no sense,
when you actually look at it that way, and it was the same in school.
In school I initially didn't do so well on my exams, and I was thinking,
oh I can't do so well on these exams so I guess there's no point in really studying.
And then of course I did worse in my exams, and
it was just a constant feedback loop.
And like there's a quote from Henry Ford that I like relevant to this,
he says, whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.
And I think that's the case with self fulfilling prophecies.
People need to put these excuses aside, that I don't have any time, you have,
you make the time.
I'm too old, you're not too old.
There are so many ways you can realize that none of these are real issues,
that the actual reason you haven't learned the language,
is your devotion to these reasons.
>> You say that successful language learners learn, despite the challenges.
What did you mean by that?
>> So people have this idealized vision.
You know, the grass is always greener on the other side.
They see someone who successfully learned the language, and
they think to themselves, this person has had it easy.
They must have had rich parents who, who paid for tuition their whole life.
They must have just been blessed to have had the right,
DNA to give them the language learning gene.
They must have had it so easy and just stumbled across native speakers and,
had a perfect situation, this is simply not the case.
This is what we like to tell ourselves once again,
in our self-fulfilling prophecies.
I don't have the ideal situation, I don't have good luck in all of this and
the other person does.
And in talking to a lot of language learners,
I have found each one of them have their own challenges to to go through.
There are some really, well known language learners on YouTube who are,
very impressive in their language skills but they, they're family people,
they have a family to raise, they may be working one or two jobs.
You know, it's not like they laze around with millions of dollars and
just spend all day long learning languages, they have their own challenges.
And I even came across a very inspirational story of a lady
who's partially deaf and clinically blind at the same time, and
she still managed to learn five languages.
So this shows me,
that no mater what the set backs people have, they find a way around them.
And you know, and you can say oh, that guy has it easy, because he can travel, and
I can't, but then find a way to learn a language despite not traveling.
There are actually great ways to get immersion virtually,
you can get Skype based conversation practice,
you can listen to streamed radio 24 hours a day if you wanted to.
You could create a virtual immersion environment.
But any one of the things are issues that other people may have.
You may have advantages that other successful language learners,
may not have had.
You may be able to afford a private teacher, you may be,
you may have spare time on your weekends, when someone has worked two jobs, or
has a family to support, and has less time flexibility.
So, every single person in the world, has had challenges to go through.
And it's just unrealistic to think woe is me,
I have this unfortunate situation no one else understand.
I guarantee you no matter what your problem is a successful language
learner has had that if not more problems and still manage to overcome.
>> people sometimes have a history of failure when they've tried to learn a new
languages, what do you say to someone whose is failing when they're learning
a new language, and have you ever felt like giving up in your language studies.
>> I felt like giving up millions of times.
And even in my more experienced stages of learning a language, and the thing is,
it's like I said before nobody has it, has it super duper easy.
Including successful and experienced language learners.
So at the very start, for instance, when I tried to learn Spanish,
I tested out a lot of things that, that were huge failures.
I spent six months trying to learn Spanish, and I got nowhere in that time,
one of the things I did was I, I bought El SeĂąor de los Anillos, which is The Lord of the Rings.
And I thought if I just went through this book page by page,
with the dictionary, then after I reach page 700 I'd be fluent in Spanish.
I had this like, ridiculous idea and it took me a whole week to get to page two.
So, when I was on page two, I was thinking to myself,
it's going to take me a decade to read this book at this rate.
And I was thinking, I'm just, I'm just an idiot,
I'm not destined to learn Spanish or any other language.
And even, like more recently a couple of years ago I was learning Mandarin, and
I didn't find the Mandarin language itself to be so complicated.
It's actually a lot, straight forward than you may think.
But I was, learning it in the country, which I actually do not recommend to
people, I recommend you learn the language in advance via the internet.
So, that when you're in the country you can experience the culture.
I think it's kind of a bit of a waste to, be in the country to be in study mode when
you should out enjoying it, but I at the time I was not, doing that and
I found it very difficult to adjust to the cultural side of things.
And that slowed me down dramatically on the language side of things.
So, no matter how experienced some one is, they're going to run into problems,
they're going to get slowed down and it's it's like anything.
If you've, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.
And like a lot of people in language learning would reach a plateau, as well,
they may make a bit of progress and get stuck.
And then they think I'm broken, I'm not a good language learner.
And I found that,
that it's the exact opposite, people need to try different techniques.
So my suggestion is people get into speaking the language immediately.
I give tips for people to speak from the very first day,
and then that may work for you it may not work for you.
But you try something else and if you still say after trying this out for
a few weeks, I'm still not making any progress at all.
Then that doesn't mean you're not a good language learner,
it means you're using a system that is not good for you.
If you're studying a lot, and you're not making progress, you may need to
abandon a study based approach, and try to interact with the language a lot more.
So that's, that's what I'd suggest.
>> I love these ideas and these approaches.
I know they were very helpful for me with Russian.
In, in this course, one of the things we talk about is the importance of
pushing your attention very hard.
For example when you're using something like the Pomodoro Technique, and
then relaxing.
You talk about something like that, with your mini-mission brain melting technique,