As an adult, learning a language requires efficient techniques. I suggest starting with immersion: set your apps, computer and mobile to the target language, listen to music and follow the lyrics, read children's books, and use read-aloud features along with web and app resources. Always learn words in the context of a story, habit, or activity. Write by hand regularly in a notebook and keep practicing, using tools like ChatGPT to check if your writing or pronunciation is correct. Incorporate multiple sensory inputs when learning any word or phrase to enhance retention. Make studying a habit by using short, consistent intervals, gradually increasing study time as you improve. Identify patterns and use grammar to better understand sentence structure. This step is the most challenging and typically takes 3 to 6 months; discipline is essential for success. To retain what you've learned, write down each new piece of information in a notebook and review it later. The optimal sequence for retrieval and consolidation is after 1, 2, 7, 14, and 21 days. Start by recalling the information without looking at your notes, then review them and write down what you've learned again. Once you've gained enough vocabulary to express yourself, you can use resources like news channels, RU-vid, movies, and podcasts to further improve your language skills.
Oh no, months later and you're still thinking that language learning is supposed to be fun and enjoyable. Try sending up in jail in a foreign country, your very survival depending on your language skill. I bet that wouldn't be fun but you'd be proficient in no time.
But but dr McQuillan, I have a short visa, limited budget and if I want to immigrate to this country, I need to achieve X proficiency by such and such date. The only way to demonstrate my language ability in X amount of time is such and such test, so what do you say about assessment?
Hi, I have good news for you. Starting in December 2018, and ending about November 2019, I, by accident to a large extent, figured out how to go about learning languages. I was studying 12 languages at the time, if I had not been studying some of them, I would never have figured all this out. One language was responsible for me stumbling upon one thing, another language another, etc. I also had some insights here and there along the way; it was not completely accidental. After figuring out how to correctly learn languages, I first began switching all my students, for various languages, to the system I discovered. It universally worked, regardless of which language. Then I also began to study about language learning; I got to know a lot about natural language acquisition. I quickly realized two things. One, I had simply discovered natural language acquisition. Two, I found nobody else had figured out the correct way to do natural language acquisition. I'll make this statement: If I have not taught you how to learn a language, you are not doing it right. I teach anyone this system, for free. Over a thousand people have learned the system at this point. Here is the correct way to learn a language: Use natural language acquisition, but do it the correct way. 1) learn no words at all, at first. 2) all early work / time is on giving your speech center the correct inputs, such that you hear the language correctly. Fret not, for most languages you will hear them correctly in a week, or as little as two days. For this, I have what I call ear tuning exercises. The ear tuning exercises, while are designed for a seeing person, can be modified for blind people. (A seeing person uses visual cues for this, a blind person has a coach point out audible cues for the blind person to focus on.) -- to be clear, don't bother learning any words you can't hear correctly. 3) Aim to learn a story that is on a youtube video, one that has the text with it. Your goal is simple, understand that first audiobook. But, no, its not like you fully learn the first audiobook, before you start learning the next. Instead, you only start learning the first one, while moving on to the second, third, etc, while continually going back to the earlier ones. I say this, spend half your time on new material, half on older material. With this system, you understand the older audiobooks a bit better each time you return to it. -- to be clear, spend no time at all learning words that are not in the story from the audiobook. 4) If you follow my rules on how to learn a language, your learning will constantly accelerate. The first audiobook might take many times returning to it before you know it, but the 14th will only take listening / reading it a couple of times before you absorb it fully. If this is not happening, then you are not following the system. The system: Day one, learn how to do passive listening. This means for several hours per day, you have that first audiobook that you will learn, playing in the background, while totally and completely ignoring it. (To those who do not understand the power of this - hey, as I said above, nobody else has figured this out - the passive listening is an absolute necessity if you want to quickly absorb language.) This may sound simple, but try to explain it to people speaking a different language. Passive listening takes absolutely no time, since you are to totally ignore what you are hearing. Go about your day as usual. Some examples, watch TV, in English, or whatever your native language is. If you are learning Spanish, have the story in Spanish from that audiobook playing softly in the background. It does not need to be very loud. The above step, passive listening, is one of three habits you must get into. Habit number 2, begin doing ear tuning exercises. I generally give this assignment: Do 21 hours of passive listening, then I teach you how to do ear tuning exercises. Hey, if you are not going to get into a habit of passive listening, you are not going to learn very fast; I'll spend my time teaching people who follow my system. Ear tuning exercises go like this: You create a minutes worth of ear tuning syllables, from the speech from the audiobook. I am going to use English as an example for simplicity: The audioboook says "Yesterday everyone was tired so we got little done." Here are the ear tuning syllables for that: yes! ter day ev! ree wun waz ti! erd so wee got lit! l dun. I'll do the rest of this in replies to this comment.
As for theory, my method is simply how any child learns a language. From even in the womb, they pick up the basic beat of the language. In the first year, the child's speech center figures out how the syllables go. My students shortcut all that down to 2 days for the most part, and I'll note, it is just a total of 4 hours of actual time used in those 2 days. 4 hours of doing ear tuning exercises. Yes, the student also does many hours of passive listening - but that takes no time at all; passive listening is just a matter of what "noise" is in the background where you live. If you wanted to teach everyone at a highschool Spanish, an audiobook in Spanish would be continually playing thruout the school, all day, at a low level. Yes, a child learns from gestures and such at first, but really quick they are learning the meanings of words by how they are used with known words. An adult needs no gestures, as the adult already has a known language; just go straight to learning meanings of words by hearing them, reading them, in context. Speaking correctly is a function of the speech center. If you hear a language correctly, and understand that language, you can repeat it correctly. Anybody can look me up on youtube, where I have hundreds of videos on language, teaching them, as well as going over the system and the theory behind it. I also have blogged extensively about all this since 2019 at a site on facebook called polyglots the community. I currently am learning / teaching 20 languages. Other languages I have just helped out with by writing ear tuning syllables. This has always just been a hobby for me, since childhood. Learning and teaching languages is something I will always do, the only thing that changed, for me, is how I learn and teach languages, after stumbling upon / creating my new system. I've never charged anyone to teach them anything, nor has anyone ever charged me when they teach me a language. (unless you count college I guess.)
I'll do a "faq", on what I have written so far. One, the ear tuning syllables do not have to be very complicated at first. The initial goal is to program the brain to hear exactly where each syllable is, where it starts, and where it ends. At first, Spanish spoken at full speed will sound like nothing more than a buzz in the ear. But, as soon as your speech center identifies where the syllables are, the Spanish sounds like speech to you. Good enough to start learning what that speech means. But you are not done with ear tuning exercises just because you basically hear Spanish right. Your goal is a native ear for Spanish. The closer you get to a native ear, the faster you will absorb Spanish from just passively listening to it. (assuming of course, you are also doing regular readthrus - doing the association work between the known language and Spanish.) And very importantly, you maximize your acceleration rate of learning Spanish, by always doing an appropriate amount of ear tuning exercises. (along with hours of passive listening to Spanish daily) For many languages, going to more complicated ear tuning syllables is needed over time. A set of ear tuning syllables will always have a pronunciation guide with it. You can make that guide real simple, sometimes even choosing not to have one. Or, you can make it pretty complicated, separating out every sound a language has, including the length of the spaces between each syllable, extra breath, etc. For Hindi, for instance, there are multiple d's in the language. Maybe the first set, you use "d" for all of them. Later, you complicate things by using d, D, Dh, dh. Learning any new alphabet goes like this: First, ignore that alphabet. Have the student do extensive ear tuning with english letters or the letters of the native language of the student. Then, replace those english letters with the letters of the new language, for further ear tuning exercises. Finally, start having the student do some ear tuning exercises directly to the words written in the new language. (for Mandarin, you also have to have the student do ear tuning exercises to the symbols.) Also, for Mandarin, you have a first step, ear tuning to the tones of Mandarin, before ear tuning to the whole content of the language. Greek is the first language involved in my discovery of this system. I'd been using foreign language movies on Netflix to study 11 of the languages I was studying at the time. But I had no movies available in Greek. So, I went on youtube and found a video, Greek with Lina, 100 common phrases for tourists and beginners. All I did was work with that video, looking up all the words in the example sentences given. I wrote down the definitions in a note - book / dictionary. I spent no time studying any of these words, though here and there I picked up a word that was used often. This study of Greek started on September 15, 2018. About December 1, 2018, I finished looking up all the words in the video. I checked Netflix, still nothing in Greek. So, as I had a habit of passively listening to languages to try to improve my ear for them, I chose to just listen to that audiobook, over and over, to get some exposure to Greek. I did not know yet how to turn "loop" on. I just started it from the beginning, over and over, all week long. I completely ignored the Greek. I spent the entire week studying the Hindi alphabet. Now, my "Greek lessons" were few, and far apart, over the 3 months prior to hearing that audiobook in Greek all week. I learned, forgot, and relearned the Greek alphabet 3 times during that. But, something strange happened. After one week of listening to the audiobook, over and over, and ignoring it, all the sudden I realized I understood 80% of what I was hearing. This was the first bit of learning my system. Light study, followed up by repeated passive listening, can teach you language. The next thing I did, was to stop studying Hindi and use all the next week on looking up all the words from a second common phrase video in Greek - Greek with Lina, 50 common verbs with example sentences. After that, I spent a week playing a lot of both of these two common phrase videos in Greek, while again, totally ignoring them. I studied Russian all week. After that week, I knew the first common phrase video even better, and the second one more than 80% At this point, I switched all language study to youtube, all with common phrase videos. I involved all 12 languages I was studying in this.
More "faq" I set up my learning from common phrases like this: I concentrated primarily on Hindi common phrases, and Mandarin common phrases, using English in both cases as the language introducing each common phrase. For the next in priority set of languages, Arabic, Korean, and Russian, I used Brazilian Portuguese to introduce each common phrase. For the rest of the languages, for which I was putting less emphasis on, I used Greek to introduce each common phrase, for German, Spanish, Italian, French, and Dutch. So, the star language this time was Portuguese, for teaching me the next part of my system. You see, I was horrible at pronouncing anything in Brazilian Portuguese, even at a common phrase level, prior to switching to learning from common phrase videos. The guy teaching me Portuguese was traveling and out of contact with me for January and February of 2019. On March 1st, he was back, and I repeated the common phrases to him that I had been learning. He said my pronunciation was perfect, save for the slightest american accent. Wow, pretty good, for not having spoken a single word of Portuguese in two months; and considering how horrible my pronunciation was before. I also found that I could understand him much better. So, I examined what happened, over the two months: I had started learning languages from common phrase videos. I started experimenting on how to speed up the learning. Eventually, I settled into this pattern - Look over my notes, ensure I understand the first phrase. Next, listen to the phrase 3 times while reading it. Next, close my eyes, and listen 3 more times. Do all that 3 times for each phrase. Go on to the next phrase, but plan to circle back, always using half my time on new phrases, half the time going over previous phrases again. In reviewing everything, I realized that my ear must have tuned into the Portuguese common phrases. Or else, how, all the sudden, could I be saying the phrases correctly? Time to experiment. (My job, working in engineering, experimenting, so to experiment is my nature). There were 3 languages that still sounded much like a buzz to me, even at a common phrase level. Korean, Russian, and Arabic. Now, why had the Brazilian Portuguese tuned in, but not the others? Simple, because I was listening to Brazilian Portuguese all day, doing readthrus for it, all day. I was using Brazilian Portuguese to introduce the common phrases for all of Arabic, Russian, and Korean, my 3 secondary concentrations. I switched things up, started listening to the Arabic common phrases all day, and doing read thrus for it for a couple of hours per day. Sure enough, by the end of the second day doing his, Arabic sounded quite clear to me - and I understood it too. I repeated this for Russian, then Korean. I think the Russian took 3 days, the Korean 2 days, before hearing it clearly. At this point, I thought I was all set. I knew how to tune my ear to a language, at a common phrase level, and knew how to quickly absorb common phrases. This was on March 12, 2019. I had absorbed 400 common phrases in Hindi, 130 in Mandarin, about 50 each in the other 10 languages. My next move I planned, was to absorb 750 common phrases in Mandarin. But everything changed that day. Spanish is the star of the next chapter.
Spanish. I'd been learning Spanish off and on for 40 years at this point. I took a college class at one point, learned nothing at all, after testing out of the whole program before taking that class. I once went 10 years, listening passively to Spanish any time I was in my car. This did improve my ear for Spanish over time. But, now I know, two days of ear tuning exercises for Spanish beats 10 years of passively listening to it, ten fold over. Why do I know this? On March 12, 2019, a friend / language partner sent me a full speed speech youtube audiobook in Spanish. It was the AA twelve step program. I had no interest in it, as I had sworn off learning from full speed speech. Now, I was only learning from common phrase videos. However, this was a long time friend. We had common interest in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. So I opened the audiobook and started listening to it. I could make out very little of it. But I had an idea - why not work with it, use the method that works for common phrases. Maybe I could learn to hear it a little better, and it worked. After two days of extensive read thrus of a half hour of material, along with seven hours per day passively listening to that audiobook, all the sudden, at the end of the second day, the Spanish sounded crisp and clear, and I understood it fully. Wow, why use common phrases any more? I can get so much more input into my speech center listening to full speed speech. Still, lots to learn though. Hindi is the star of the next chapter.
More "faq" Last reply for now. Feel free to ask questions. I started studying Hindi on November 1, 2018, on the same day I began studying Russian and Mandarin. I could understand Hindi at a common phrase level in March of 2019, but full speech just sounded like a buzz to me. After my ear, surprisingly, tuned into Spanish, I successfully repeated my ear tuning technique for French and German, two other languages I am a strong reader in. (Note, all three of these languages are fairly phonetic, so their alphabets work somewhat as "ear tuning syllables.) My next plan was to bring up my reading level for Hindi, then attempt to ear tune to it. But, I had an insight. What if being able to read a language was not needed? My language partner for Hindi wrote down 30 seconds of speech for me, from a full speed audiobook in Hindi. He wrote it in english letters. I originally was studying Hindi, from him, in english letters, so I could sound out anything he wrote down like this, even if I did not know what the words meant. I began listening to the audiobook in Hindi several hours each day, and for 2 hours each day I did the ear tuning exercises - using that 30 seconds of speech written out for me. The audiobook sounded like a buzz to me for the first 8 days, but then sounded quite clear on the ninth day. Now, I had learned just about everything, about natural language acquisition - not from a book, but from having lived it. Still work to do though. Could the system be improved? Like, could you lessen how much ear tuning exercises you do? No, you can't. Trying to depend on the readthrus for further improvement for the ear is like walking to China instead of taking a jet. Take the jet - never stop doing regular ear tuning exercises. And never stop the passive listening. In sum, I call my system accelerated natural language acquisition, because the learning rate constantly accelerates. The system consists of three habits, that you get into, and stay in: Passive listening, ear tuning exercises, readthrus. Skimping on any of the three habits very much slows the learning.
I agree language learning methods need to give more space to absorbing comprehensible input and giving the brain time to do its thing but, saying everything else is useless as they seem to be implying is like throwing the baby with the bathwater, and sounds a bit too much like "learn this one simple trick to learn languages without effort!" snake oil We are not children so we don't have the advantage of endless time and attention plus having everyone around us invested in getting us to learn - but we have the advantage of analytical thinking and many time tested learning techniques so why not leverage that? We sure don't need to internalise the whole grammar of a language before taking a step, but if i see a verb construction or whatever more than once and I don't get how it works, looking it up quickly definitely enhances my learning, and so do flashcards and spaced repetition
I have one near-adult teenager and a near-teen child. Many of my neighbours seem to have twin or triplet new born babies 😅 they are not handling them well. I think they are going to give them away soon
Hi, what about the flash card app project? Did you make it in the meantime? I wanted to start using memrise but come to find out that recent updates have killed the well established flashcard idea behind it, so maybe if you haven't started the flash card app project there might be a void to be filled. Or else if it already exists where can I find your flashcard app?
Output can make you more confident as a speaker and can solicit more input (which are both good things), but it doesn't directly affect your acquisition of the language.
Subscribed because I like the interviews and they’re interesting Could you interview someone about using blooms taxonomy and whole part whole for language and general learning?
For instance, I've been learning second Russian since I was a child, and I've watched a lot of Russian TV since then. I also studied it for about 10 years in school. I don't like using my second Russian writing comments in Russian blogs because it's not as strong as my native language. I haven't been able to bridge the gap between my languages with comprehensible input. If you don't have a high-level second language, you don't have an inferiority complex. The most similar scientists, like this "professor," talk about the dream world. Listening to a language is the easiest part of any language in the world until I have to use that language to communicate in it.
Do you know how to say Raccoon in Russian? Yeah ? Not ? (... Енот.) Horror show. Хорошо. Coke dealer. Как дела. Cast ruler. a cooking pot. Stall. A table. Hollow dill nick. A refrigerator. 😅 Such an easy language.
@@Alec72HD If I hadn't learned English in an English-speaking country, I wouldn't know much about that country. My second language, Russian, is more advanced than similar English. However, my second language is less sensitive to word order than my native language, which can lead to confusion when writing in Russian. These words aren't significant as word order in a sentence.
@@Alec72HD As you yourself say about learning a second language, you can't get the real meaning of the word through translation. The only question is whether it is your second language or a foreign language. Stallis ( Latvian), Pferdestall ( German), конюшня( Russian) A barn where a horse is kept
@@vogditis Stall in English is also a part of a Stable. So a Stable (for horses) is made up of many Stalls. The examples I gave above were only a joke. I don't believe mnemonics is useful.
@@Alec72HDYes, a stall is a place in a stable, but in my native language, Latvian, "stallis" means a stable. For me, your joke allows me to pick up some words in English. I started learning it as an adult, which has led to some interesting effects on my English language after many years.
Hi! I’m really enjoying this conversation, and I’d like to share that I’m a blind language learner. Unfortunately, you haven’t provided me with a solution for using comprehensible input as a beginner. I was monolingual until I was 33 1/2 years old, when I started learning English. At first, I had no choice but to study vocabulary because of my blindness. Later, I was able to begin using comprehensible input. This year, I’ve started learning German, and I’m approaching it the same way: studying vocabulary with Duolingo. When I reach the intermediate level, I plan to start using comprehensible input too-unless you have any advice, keeping in mind that I’m blind. Either way, I’m very grateful and happy because this video has helped me a lot. Greetings from Argentina.
In terms of getting comprehensible input, I would definitely take a look at the Innovative Language websites (GermanPod101, in your case). I'm not sure how user-friendly they are if you are blind. However, you could get a GermanPod101 subscription, and listen to all the podcasts that they have.
@@loistalagrand "If they provide a transcript of the audios, that would be helpful for me because I use a screen reader. Actually, that’s how I’ve been acquiring English up until now. But I need to check whether they have audios for beginners or not - you know, audios with basic vocabulary and verb repetition. Many thanks anyway! I'll definitely check it out. Warmest regards and thanks for answering me.
I think the two fundamental ideas at play here are free recall vs interleaving (not mutually exclusive but in practice people do one or the other). Free recall can seem very effective in assessment testing and in fact it's not bad for your memory (but not that amazing either). Interleaving often fails in assessment testing but is very good for long term memory and overtime with a delay in assessment becomes more effective by far. Reading is interleaving, and some people find it uncomfortable because what if I forget a word or what if I look up a word I know I've looked up before (in effect this is the point, you can't cheat interleaving very easily, so you are always pulling information from your long term memory). Flashcards or tutoring are a bit more like free recall or at least queued recall. You might be getting it from long term memory, or you might be adding a strong bias to "what did I learn recently" "what have I been repeating to myself" "what was my mneumonic". It is very easy to cheat tests (in the sense that you will easily forget information when you don't practice often, but will score well on the test). People still wrestle with Krashen's ideas because they are both profoundly unintuitive (like interleaving generally) and he gives the same 40 minute speech for the last 20 years that makes people suspicious he's just a good salesman/speaker. People still have trouble understanding a short term feeling of fluency doesn't predict long term memory, which you need for those once a year words.
🎯 Key points for quick navigation: 00:02 *🕒 Learn any language in 6-12 months using scientific advice and personal experience.* 00:44 *📚 Focus on three language pillars: pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.* 01:13 *🎯 Fluency is the ability to perform key activities like watching movies and conversing in the target language.* 02:21 *🎧 Listening comprehension is foundational for overall fluency.* 03:32 *📈 Learn key sounds, grammar, and 6,000 common words for language mastery.* 07:23 *🎙️ Use audio learning to enhance pronunciation and study on-the-go.* 12:08 *🧠 Master vocabulary by learning 20 new words daily with spaced repetition.* 14:14 *🔄 Use SRS tools like Anki to maintain vocabulary consistency.* 17:15 *🏃♂️ Establish a routine that does not rely on motivation.* 19:07 *🌐 Fluent Falcon integrates all language learning aspects efficiently.* Made with HARPA AI
I don't agree. Output is a different skill apart from the language per se. It is perfectly possible to know a language and yet be a poor speaker or writer. I consider myself a poor speaker and writer even in my own native language. To be a good writer or speaker you need skills that go beyond the language per se. The fact that you are a poor speaker or writer doesn't mean that you don't know the language.
That the typical researcher does not speak understand or wear write it and know nothing And get grants and exclude native speakers and they do it with English the number one killer of language and culture world wide if you go to any YT Chanel on any language that is not spoken by majority world languages and all the fake bot comments are In English they spout like they want learn and why is it dying they are the ones killing it in favor of English Ainu kan-ka-p-ka-p-e-ka hypocrisy They the English world are fascist they want to destroy all cultures with their poison ideology and terrorism and Genocide of cultures world wide and they are boring they wear plain clothes boring clothes and they can not speak any languages and expect everyone to speak English a fake language
Fascinating discussion. I have been learning English (I´m B1 level) and this is the first time I have searched and questioned about "how to learn English".I perceived a cross between an "input acquire" methodology and an "old grammar stuff/output" methodology. I don´t know where I need to stand, but I think it´s possible to stand in the middle, at least for me it´s important to be open to a diversity of types of learning/acquiring, to achieve my goal of being fluent in the language, Thnks for this contempt.
Doesn't really matter, he is primarily an English teacher. But he had experience learning a second language, so he understands the process of SLA firsthand. Do you know how to say Raccoon in Russian? Yeah ? Not ? Ochen horror-show.
Really, anyone off the street can become a Spanish teacher, or you still need to know Spanish, which most people learn from an early age. He started by introducing himself, stating his titles at the beginning of the interview, and the interview can end there. Such videos do not show an adult without the language becoming a language teacher after a few years of training. They talk and talk about some abstract things without any evidence. Language is learned in childhood and an adult cannot go back to childhood, further is already a useless waste of time.
Unfortunately we're all in the system where teachers and students are forced to follow a certain curriculum to pass the exam. A lot of exams are grammar/vocab based. It's not just kids at school. Very often adults have to "certify" their level to be able to get a job or whatever their purpose is. So we're forced to prepare them for exams. That's why my ideal students are those who learn for themselves and don't need to pass any exam. Then the teaching/learning process is so much more fun
Right. I have a language school for children in Taiwan. Most parents use the public school results of their children as a way to measure progress. Most public schools test grammar and vocabulary because that's relatively easy to measure. It's the metric most parents know and understand. If their children aren't getting good results at school, it's difficult for them to be accepted into good schools or universities.
