Hello everyone! Today I wanted to
share my method for
learning languages. Most other
polyglots usually have some kind of
their own special method, and I'd like to
share
mine today. My method of learning
languages is pretty non-linear
and doesn't have a very strong structure,
so I know that will not be very
compatible with a lot of people,
but it does work for me, so I still want
to share
my methods, which may not work for
everyone, but it,
again, works for me. When I'm learning a
language usually, there's
four main steps in my mind to
improve my skills. The first one is going
to be
learning the basics.
The second step is going to be finding
resources.
The third one is going to be
entertaining
yourself, and the fourth one is going to
be to socialize.
I'm gonna go in depth into all these
steps to explain exactly what I mean because
maybe what you're imagining is not
exactly
my method. I should also mention that
there's an
infinite loop between steps three and
four.
Once I become more advanced in a
language, and this isn't just
"once I get to step four i'm done." It's
more like
an ongoing process. So I go in
to this process assuming that I will
never be fluent, and I just want to enjoy
the process as it goes on.
It's more like a hobby for me. I'm not
studying for a test. I'm not studying
for anything in particular. It's just
something that I enjoy.
So, um, I think maybe that changes my
outlook
quite a bit and makes a big difference. I
don't know what's going to happen next
week,
so how can I know what my language
skills will be like in one year or five
years?
I go into the process
completely unaware of what will
happen. Just acknowledging that
I may not become fluent is really
helpful in my process because I'm not
stressed out if I
fall behind on any sort of goal. It's
just for fun.
I'm just enjoying the process. The first
step when i
get a desire and drive to learn a
language is learning
the basics. Now, the basics for me might
not be the same basics
for you. For me, it's very nose in book, studying super hard,
and I'm not just studying anything. It's
very
controlled. So, at the core of my
basic language study, that's going to be
everything that helps me with
sentence structure. That's the very key
right here,
so I'm going to be looking at
conjugation. I'll be looking at
declension.
I'll be looking at sentence
order, prepositions, postpositions, and
things like that.
Once I get those down, the
final boss, the completion of the basics
for me is when I get to conjunctions and
relative clauses. That is just
the key to basic language study for
me personally. Now you know what I do
study, so what do I not study when I'm
studying the basics?
Usually, it's not fixed expressions
So not usually time, not usually all of
the ways to say "how are you,"
Usually, it's not airport vocabulary.
For me, if at the beginning,
this lesson in my book is not
directly going to lead me into forming a
complex thought with relative clauses,
conjunctions,
all types of modifiers, adjectives,
adverbs,
If it's not helping me with that, I'll
save it for later. That's not to say
telling the time is not important. It's
just not what I consider for the basics.
For me, the basics is when I can say
a complex sentence.
Maybe normally when you start a language
your sentences are super basic, right?
Maybe you'll say, "I eat food. This is
tasty.
I am hungry. I want to buy
some food," something like this, but once I
can start saying something like,
"I went to the store near my house
because my fridge was empty, and I was
hungry."
So notice once I start using relative
clauses and conjunctions, I can start
doing complex thoughts. I can
talk about my feelings, my emotions. I can
essentially make an infinite amount of
sentences.
When you have this basic SOV structure,
you
can obviously make some complex thoughts,
but once I can start telling you because,
if, and, so, or I can
give many details about a certain thing,
for example, "the computer
that I've had for five years," or maybe
"the house that I'm living in,"
or "the water that's over there," or maybe "the
white board
that is hanging behind me," once I can
start doing relative causes,
conjunctions, then, I think my language
skills have become very
complex, and that's when I'm happy with
myself. Of course, the method that I'm
doing this completely depends on the
language.
Ideally, it's a textbook that is maybe
something about "the basics of."
I think Routledge's "Essential Grammar"
series
is very good for step one
learning. Also, I think Duolingo isn't
that bad for this step for me
because maybe I can ignore the
lesson on clothes. I'm not worrying about
clothes right now.
I'm just learning about objects, direct
objects, prepositions,
conjunctions, and things like that.
Duolingo can maybe help me with that,
maybe just
dip my foot into it. I'm not trying to be
a master; I'm just trying to
get the basics down, to make a
complicated
sentence. Step two is when I find
resources.
Maybe this seems a little
counter-intuitive, to learn before I find
the resources,
but really it can be concurrent. It can
be happening at the same time.
Mainly, resources are referring to a
serious
textbook and a serious dictionary.
So for a serious textbook, it really
completely depends on the language
for me. Maybe some languages have better
resources just because they're popular,
and there's many different choices,
but usually something that's very in
depth
and not made for "lEaRn SpaNIsH iN
SixTY DaYs," something like that is not what
I'm attracted to. It's more something
that
advertises itself as very in-depth,
very complicated, very detailed. Those
are the kinds of books I
prefer, so for me I think the best
series that I prefer to go to is
"Barron's Master the Basics," or, as I
mentioned earlier,
Routledge, but instead the "Comprehensive
Grammar" series is
pretty good. And then, in terms of
dictionaries,
again, it completely depends on the
language, but personally I prefer the
dictionaries
that are specialized in one language,
meaning I
don't really like those dictionaries
that
maybe advertise "14 lAnGuAgEs IN onE"
because I just don't think the quality
is quite what I enjoy.
The best dictionaries for me are the
ones created for
native speakers of your target language
to learn English.
In my opinion, those usually help me
the best. The most textbook example of
one of my favorite dictionaries is the
"Naver" dictionary
for the Korean language. Usually, native
Korean speakers use it to learn English,
and I think it's very good for an
English learner
learning Korean: there's plenty of
examples,  (and) there's plenty of different
options.
Usually, those are the kinds of
dictionaries I prefer. Maybe they give
tons of context,
maybe tons of example sentences. If those
dictionaries that give examples
and maybe context are the ones that I
think are best
So after I gather some good long-term
resources, I'm going to start
getting some entertainment in that
target language. What this is is just
some piece of entertainment
that I will use as an academic source, so
it's not that I'm just sitting on the
couch watching some
movie in the target language. I'm
actually maybe pausing the movie every
time I don't understand,
looking up the words, writing in a
notebook, really using it as
another textbook, and the reason for this
is
this entertainment is probably the best
source for vocabulary
because these are the actual words that
native speakers actually use
in this context because maybe in your
textbook it can tell you
all of these different names for clothes
or names for things in the office,
but maybe you're missing some very key
vocabulary that they're going to use
just because it inherently is difficult
to list
all of the relevant words, but when you
are listening
to some piece of media, it will come up.
What kind of entertainment am I talking
about? I'm probably talking about movies,
TV shows, music, video games,
novels, or anything like that, anything
that a native speaker will use for fun.
And, obviously, I'm trying to go for
something similar to my level,
so maybe it'll be a little basic, but the
key thing is that I'm having
fun. And the reason it's so key that it's
entertainment
for me is (that) I want to be interested.
Steve
Kaufman talks a lot about
engaging language input, and I think that
is absolutely, absolutely true for my
method. I want to be excited to know what
happens in the story, or I want to be
singing the song
and just enjoying what i'm doing because
that way it'll maybe sink in
more easily than if I was just looking
at a textbook, a
list of words, or anything like that.
Also, usually at this step, I kind of
limit the amount of time that I'm using
this entertainment as an academic source.
Some people like studying for maybe two
hours a day, three hours a day,
but for me I know that if I ever go
overboard, I'm going to burn out really
quickly, so I usually try to limit myself
to 30 minutes or an hour
a day, just so that I don't get so sick
of it
that I put it down for a year. At the
same time as this entertainment step is
going on, I am looking through that more
complicated grammar and those grammar
lessons that I missed when I was doing
the basics, so this is when I learn about
how to tell time, how to talk about the
months, the date,
common greetings. It's kind of like this
entertainment is maybe
a sidekick, a side...
project (supplement) while I am still working on
grammar,
finishing a textbook, working on
completing the knowledge
that I may not have been
using earlier. So the final step and this
is pretty key is to socialize
with this language. I think this is
obvious, but after I feel confident
about what I know, so maybe I've watched
a movie or two,
maybe I've completed quite a few
chapters in my textbook,
then I can socialize. What this usually
means is probably a language exchange
partner or some
tutor because what i'm trying to do
basically
is encounter the parts of the language
that I just never noticed in movies or
in textbooks
or that are just inherently difficult to
get
in a textbook or movie.That's
not saying that
the textbook isn't the real language, the
movie isn't the real language, but
in and of itself the textbook is not a
place where you will see
some words being used because they don't
fit with any other
topic. One really good memory I have when
I was learning French, and it is actually
pretty similar to when I was learning
German, maybe I was studying a lot,
I was looking through all the textbooks,
I was practicing through movies, but
within 10 minutes
of *AC SCREAMS* but within 10
minutes of a language exchange I
encountered a word I've never seen
before but is so crucial
to those languages, and that's the word
tutoyer 🇫🇷
in French and duzen 🇩🇪 in German. Just
inherently, those are something that are
difficult
to encounter in a movie or in a textbook,
but they're so important to those
cultures and those languages.
Basically, those words mean to stop
using the
formal pronouns and start using the
regular pronoun for you. So the person
was basically asking me "oh don't call me
vous 🇫🇷. Call me tu 🇫🇷,"
and in German they were saying "oh don't
call me Sie 🇩🇪. Call me du 🇩🇪."
And you would never have encountered
this in a textbook or a movie
so that's exactly why you're talking
with people. It's to encounter things
that
are maybe impossible or difficult to
encounter in other means. It's just in
general a great way to know where you
have a gap
in your knowledge because maybe you'll
be talking about your daily routine
and you realize "oh I don't remember how
to talk about laundry. How do I talk
about laundry?" and then you look up the
word for laundry,
and then you know. In my mind, learning
grammar
is kind of like the lesson in a class.
Then, when you watch a movie, it's kind of
like doing a practice test,
just to test what you know see what you
don't know,
and then when you speak with someone,
that's like the real exam.
It's when you see how much you know, what
you need to work on,
what you need to change for the future.
Another
key element about socializing, which I
think is so important and not a lot of
people talk about, is word
choice. Something that textbooks and
dictionaries cannot account for at all
is the word of choice of native speakers.
So maybe in English we
talk about movies in a certain way. We
use certain adjectives like interesting,
boring, long, ugly, things like this,
but maybe in another language they don't
use those words at all. They do have
those words. In the dictionary they do
work,
but just culturally maybe in the other
language they'll say that the movie is
corny.
You also kind of learn the culture, which
obviously
everybody knows goes hand in hand with
learning the language. It's very
closely connected to word choice
because maybe in english we like using
some words and those words exist in the
other language,
but the native speakers don't use it
very often. So once I have all those
steps done,
it's pretty much just a feedback loop
until I'm really happy with my
language skills. So maybe I'll do a
little grammar every day,
watch a show, maybe parse the lyrics of
the song, and just
keep learning words I haven't seen
before,
keep seeing grammars that I
need to review again, and just
solidifying the language I
already know. So, of course, there's
upsides and downsides to my method.
Maybe if you're someone who needs a
strong structure, this is not very good
for you,
but if you're someone that really values
freedom and the choice of what
you want to learn,
I think maybe you can get some good tips
from this.
A really key moment when I was
learning French was maybe in the third
year of high school,
and we were learning how to tell someone
to cut your hair: "I want it cut
short. I want it to be curly here," and I
thought,
"This is so useless to me. I want to learn
how to talk about my opinions. I want to
learn to talk about a book.
Why are we talking about cutting hair?
I'm never going to ask someone to cut my
hair in French. This is so useless to me."
and that's kind of when it clicked for
me that when I self-study languages
I need to choose what is exciting
for me, and I need to choose also what is
interesting to me, what is useful
for me, what kind of vocab I want to
learn. I don't want to learn curly,
and straightened, and hair dye, and things
like that. I want to learn about
"oh I wonder this," or "oh I can't believe
this," or "I'm looking forward to this."
Those are the things I kind of want to
learn.
I really just value controlling my own
curriculum,
so that's kind of why I learn
languages in this way. I would love to
hear what other people think,
so I think that's all for today, and I'll
see you in a new video
soon. Thank you so much!
