Hi, my name is Steve Kaufmann. I am a keen language learner. I speak 11 languages. I am the Founder of LingQ.com which is an online language learning system and a language learning community with thousands of members in many different countries of the world.
I want to talk here about what I think are the three most important ingredients for success in language learning. I know many people struggle to learn languages. Probably most people are learning English. They struggle with pronunciation. They struggle with understanding. They struggle with grammar issues. Many of them have been studying English for years and are quite frustrated.
I want to mention here these three principles that I first heard expressed at a convention of the American Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages. These three principles were expressed by Maryann Lyman-Hager, who is the director of the Language Acquisition Resource Center at San Diego State University.
Here are the three keys: The attitude of the learner. That's the absolutely most important ingredient to language learning success. The time that you spend with the language that you're trying to learn, and How attentive you are. How alert you are. How well you notice what's happening in the language. I'm going to talk about these three ingredients separately. Let's start with attitude. I cannot stress enough that if you expect that a teacher is going to teach you the language, you are mistaken. If you think that by studying grammar rules you will learn to speak fluently, you are mistaken. If you think that you need to live in the country where the language is spoken in order to speak the language, you are mistaken.
You do not need to go to school. You do not need to take a course. All you need to do is to decide that you are going to take charge and become responsible for your own language learning.
So, in this attitude, the first thing that comes up is that you have to want to learn the language. Now this sounds silly. People might say well, everybody who is studying, I guess, wants to learn the language. That is not true. I think most people who attend language classes in school, university or in community centers don't really want to learn the language. It's not important enough. They are not prepared to put the effort in required to improve. So you have to definitely want very badly, you have to be very determined to learn the language.
The second thing is you have to believe that you can learn the language and, again, a high percentage of people who study languages don't think that they can improve. They don't think that they can change themselves into someone who speaks another language and speaks it well. You have to like the language and you have to like speaking the language. Many people throw up obstacles. They resist the language. They're questioning -- why does the language say it this way or that way? They're fighting the language. That's not going to lead to success. You have to have an attitude that says I like the language. I don't question the language. I just want to learn the language.
Another thing is we have to be willing to accept mistakes. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to make lots of mistakes and making mistakes is good because through making mistakes we start to notice where the problems are. I will deal later on with this issue of being attentive and noticing the language.
Another part of the attitude of a successful language learner is the willingness to pretend to be a member of another language group. In other words, we imitate the other language. We imitate the behavior of people of another language group.
We don't stay back and, unfortunately, most language learners are reluctant to do this. They feel more comfortable staying in the established patterns of their native language -- staying within the pronunciation of that language, relying on the spelling of their native language rather than how the language that they're learning is pronounced. So I think that deals with the whole issue of attitude.
Just to summarize: You have to want very much to learn. You have to believe you can do it. You have to like the language. You have to accept mistakes. You have to try to pretend that you are a speaker of another language.
All of these things can be done. All of these things are more important than talent or a so-called gift for languages. All of these things relating to your attitude are much more important than finding a teacher, a school, a course that suddenly will solve your problems, more important than moving to the country. The number one issue is your attitude.
The next most important issue when it comes to language learning is the time that you make available to interact with the language. Now a lot of people say I don't have time, but I don't believe them because there are so many ways to engage with the language and you can find time to do things that you enjoy doing. How you engage with the language is largely up to you. Personally, I like doing a lot of listening and reading and I try only to engage with native speakers, so I listen to a lot of native speakers on my iPod. I read content in the language that I'm learning and I read things that are interesting to me. I don't read childish stories written for children or for people who can't speak the language. How I manage to do that I can explain later. It's part of what we do at LingQ where we make it possible for people who aren't very proficient, aren't very good in the language, to start listening and reading. But other people like songs. Some people like movies. Some people like to speak right away. I don't. I prefer to spend a period of time -- six months, a year, longer -- just listening and reading and building up my vocabulary, but my wife doesn't. She likes to start speaking and while she's speaking she's listening to what the native speaker says, but most of all she's engaging with the language. The more time you spend with the language the better you will learn.
I would say sitting in a classroom, unless you are spending most of that time listening to native speakers and engaging with native speakers -- especially if there are 15 or 20 other students who are non-native speaker -- is not a very intense interaction with the language, especially if all of those native speakers are from the same language group as you, because then there is a strong likelihood that you will all reinforce each other's errors. To summarize: You have to find the time. I think one hour a day is necessary. Much of this can be accomplished by listening on your iPod while doing other chores. Most of my language learning time consists of listening while I do the dishes, exercise, drive my car and so forth. Find the time. Find an hour a day, engage with the language in whatever way you find enjoyable, preferably with native speakers.
Your success will depend on how much time you spend with the language. People who go to school an hour a day, for example, immigrants to Canada who go to a language class even three hours a day and spend the rest of the time speaking in their native language, will not progress as quickly as someone who not only goes to school, which, as you remember, I consider to be a low-intensity learning environment, but then makes an effort to interact with the language on their own listening, watching movies, meeting people, native speakers to talk to and so forth.
And, remember, one more thing, as I said in the first principle where I talked about attitude, when you interact with native speakers make mistakes. Please make mistakes. Making mistakes is good. Don't be afraid of making mistakes or you will never learn another language. Making mistakes is part of learning another language.
So the first element of successful language learning is the attitude of the learner. The second element is the amount of time that you can make available to interact with the language you're learning and the third element, which is perhaps a little more difficult, is this issue of noticing what's happening in the language. So let's spend a little time on the question of being attentive to the language, noticing the language. When you first start in a language the language is just a blur. You don't notice anything. The words just run together and sound like noise. You find that the structures of the new language are strange. You wonder how you can ever learn this language, but as you continue listening and reading the brain starts to form some patterns. Some things are quite easy and as certain parts of the language become clearer you start to notice the things that are difficult. You start to know what you don't know. When I ask people what are the things that you find difficult in English, people have no trouble telling me. People know where their problems are. They say I don't know the difference between ‘respected' and ‘respective', for example. Or I don't know when to say ‘many', ‘much' and ‘a lot'. Or people have problems with prepositions, with articles, with pronunciation or with the pronunciation of certain sounds or with understanding, but people know where their problems are. That's a good thing. That means that when you are aware of where your problems are you can start to notice them and look for them. Look for these problem areas.
When I read a book in a foreign language and there is a grammar pattern that I know I have trouble with I underline it. I highlight it. I do a lot of this in our LingQ system where I can highlight words and phrases and save them for review later on. If I have trouble with certain tenses, if I have trouble with certain word endings, those are the things that I will highlight, save and study and I'll watch for them. I'll notice them when I'm reading and when I'm listening and I'll notice when I go to speak that I'm getting them wrong, so I know I'm getting them wrong. Now it's not enough to have a teacher explain the rule because you still will get it wrong. It's very easy today to look up, to Google, verbs in English or Portuguese or word endings in Russian and you will find lots of explanation on the Internet, just as good as any explanation that a teacher will give you. The explanation will not enable you to speak correctly. The way you start to speak correctly is when you deliberately notice what's happening in the language and you notice it again and again and again. This will enable you to gradually form the pattern in your brain that will enable you not only to recognize the pattern, but eventually to speak correctly.
So when you have problems speaking, when you make mistakes, don't worry about it. That's the best thing. That means you're starting to notice. You're starting to notice where your problems are and when you have problems don't get frustrated. Don't get frustrated, realize that if we review the three principles of language learning, first of all, You have an attitude that says I want to learn, I can learn, I will learn. You are putting in enough time with the language so that you're exposed to the language over and over and over again. That in doing so, with your determination and your willingness to learn and with the amount of interaction with the language that's growing all the time and as you continue to interact with the language, you are getting more and more familiar with it. Just be confident that even when you are writing and writing and making mistakes or speaking and speaking and making mistakes or listening and not understanding, all of this activity is gradually contributing to making you more competent in the language. So when you make a mistake, when you notice a mistake, that's a good thing. Don't get frustrated; realize that the fact that you're noticing the mistake is part of the process that's going to make you successful in your language learning. To summarize, what I have tried to point out here is, unlike many other activities, in language learning it's entirely up to you. You may need a teacher for Math who has to explain a complicated formula in Math or who may have to explain complicated theories in Physics or Chemistry, you may need a coach who's going to help you with your golf swing or with your tennis swing, but when it comes to language we're dealing with something that is perfectly natural that the brain can learn on its own. You have to, as I say, have the confidence that you can achieve a significant level of fluency in the language, whether you're learning English or Chinese or any language and, second of all, you have to put in the time. These things are connected. If you're confident that you will succeed and if you want to succeed and if you learn to like the language and if you enjoy pretending that you are a speaker of that language, if all of these positive things are happening, you then will put in the time. It almost doesn't matter how you put in the time, as long as you are doing things that are enjoyable and if you are interacting with a native speaker your brain will gradually get clearer and clearer as to how this language works. With all of this interaction and with a positive attitude you will notice. You will notice how the language works and the more you notice it the better the brain becomes at creating labels and patterns that will enable you to speak the language.
You don't need a teacher with credentials. You don't need a particular curriculum. You don't have to pass tests. Now you may have a requirement to pass a test for work or for university, but studying for that test and focusing on the test will not necessarily insure that you end up speaking the language fluently. On the other hand, if you focus on learning the language, using the principles that I have explained here, you will have very little difficulty doing very well on the tests. First learn to speak the language then worry about the tests, is my advice.
So if you have specific problems in English, for example, you can let me know what they are, but I think the emphasis should be on you looking for your own problems, identifying your own problems and then looking for examples of these problems as you engage with the language with a positive attitude.
I hope this is helpful. Thank you for listening. Bye.
