The Basics of Language Learning 

Eddie Woo, a math's teacher well known for making maths lessons interesting, said: "The brain is nothing if not an extremely adept pattern recognition tool."

The english that was taught to me in school was very poor since i live in a third world country. Now i am very proud to say that, after a lot of effort and thanks to this wonderful tool we have called internet, i was able to understand this video without any subtitles 😊 But i know i should keep studying, practising... and LISTENING! thank you!!!!

It makes me think about how languages are taught in schools. Without knowing anything about it, they already hit you with grammar while you're sitting there looking at a word you've never seen before.

Wow, this man knows what he's talking about. Respect

finally someone who understand what i wants... amazing lesson ♥

So true, in particular the German situation. It took me a couple of months to actually use it automatically, without over thinking it. It's a very particular German grammar thing. Cheers! Great video!

This is the first time I have heard that noticing is a big part of language learning. I’m just a beginner (Korean) and find that the things I am starting to notice are what I find fun about language learning.

I find applying your method to youtube channels really helpful. Right now I'm using channels like Russian progress or Russian with Max to do lots of listening in Russian and it's easier to get to the stage where you understand 50%-80% compared to using content that's designed for native speakers, but it's also interesting content.

Stay healthy, Mr Kaufman, so important to understand the basics of languagues.

Language learning is like learning to swim. You must get down in the water first and try to get the feel. Theory, grammar and rules come later.

You have so excellent experience about learning language.You made me realize that learning a new language should be a wonderful and interesting thing.

I am just happy you're alive and well...sharing your wisdom for so many years

Dear Steve, Thank you heartily for your excellent points in this video. Kind regards from South Africa.

You sir have all my respect. Your knowledge has a lot of truth. Regards from Ecuador. (I'm English learner).

Thank you Steve, you're right. It's a lot easier to learn a language that way. God bless you.

Keep spreading the message Steve! Since putting grammar aside, my Japanese has improved so much!

Steve estoy aprendiendo ingles usando tus videos. Inicialmente trato de entenderlos, luego coloco los subtitulos en English. Every day I spend time with the English lenguage. Thank you.

I can corroborate Steve is telling the truth, and I totally believe the described method for learning new languages. What you actually need is constant exposure to the language by listening and reading tons of different content, especially if you are located in a country where the language you are trying to learn is not spoken, which can tend to limit your exposure. But by reading and listening constantly to casual, sophisticated content etc there is not actual need to travel to another country to learn a new language easily. The native language I speak is Spanish, and since the past year and tons of time available due to vacations, quarantine etc, I decided to improve my mid-level English, especially at speaking it. The results after doing this practice for over 7 months are outstanding!! By having open exposure, you'll get into this reveling moment where you feel incredibly confident with yourself at communicating and conveying anything you have in mind without hesitation. Now, I rarely get stuck finding the adequate words within my vocabulary during conversations and debating about specific contexts. The words, the phrases I said in English just shoot out as natural as if speaking my native language is about. I'll keep practicing and improving my English though, but I've opened up additional time in my daily basis in order to finally get into French as my next language!! (French does not seem that complicated knowing Spanish and English though; it looks like it has the same grammatical structure as Spanish).

You don't need to apolozige, 'cause your Portuguese is very good. You and Gabriel inspire us to keep on learning languages. I usually follow your tips. In time of quarentine, learn Russian is my goal. Greetings from Brazil.

Very nice tips! Thanks, Steve!

About you I learned relentlessness pursuit of words. Thanks Great Steve

Thanks for your tips, Steve!

Thank You Steve! You are so inspiring! Much Love and Light to You ✨💓

fantastic ! your speak is so clear ... i understand everything, and im not a advanced student ! thanks for the tips, luiz from Brazil

Thank you Steve you are always spitting truth and facts. Also please stay healthy as you have so much to offer still to the language community.

Merci beaucoup pour cette vidéo et merci pour ta chaîne youtube qui est une riche source de connaissance pour l’apprentissage des langues !

Eu fico feliz de saber que você aprendeu algo sobre o português! Parabéns, que você aprenda bastante.

I am always amazed by your knowledge

As a Mandarin teacher, I am agree with you.

Interesting! I’m a little different in two areas. First of all, I like to combine old school grammar (i.e. explicit descriptions of and explanations concerning the patterns of my target language) with reading and listening for exposure to actual language. I notice far more if I’ve been told about something and conversely I’m not that good at picking up patterns in the complete absence of explicit explanations. So I aim for about 50-50 on the two types of activity. Secondly I do things in a somewhat different order in lingq, especially if iI’m working with a text somewhat above my level. I will tend to read first in sentence mode and give myself a moment to see what I can understand with no assistance. Then I’ll look up unknown words (linking them if using lingq), then I look at the full mechanical translation and also look up expressions in whatever outside sources I have at hand if the meaning still isn’t entirely clear. And only after this prep sentence by sentence do I listen to the full paragraph. What good does it do to listen and not understand a high percentage? It seems neither pleasant nor useful to me! Of course afterwards I’ll go through the text all together at least a couple of additional times.

I usually repeat any video four times, and never back again to watch it. maybe that's why my progression Is slowly in the language!

youre the best Steve, stay safe out there!

Thank you so much! it helps me a lot 😊.

Thank you for this video. :) it is very interesting and I will use your tips in the future to improve my language skills.

Ég er að læra íslensku! Mér finnst þetta mál mjög áhugavert. Takk fyrir og bless, frá Québec! :)

Thank you Steve is am learning English as part of my better career

I agree ☝️ Great Break Down and Video Steve!✨

Aprecio muito seus conselhos Steve! E só pra você saber, português é minha língua nativa, e eu gosto mais de inglês do que de espanhol, porque eu vivo misturando espanhol e português hehehe. Keep it up and don’t ask too much of yourself!

This is great advice for intermediate students.

very true indeed it is all about get use to the language instead of how much gramma you know.

The base of languages, is being able to turn a Statenent into a Question and back.

amigo eres un genio, es bueno encontrar personas como tu

Spot on!

Would be great if you talked more about that dopamine effect. I’ve noticed Lingq gives me a major high and that’s why I keep going back and doing more reading and listening every day.

I love your videos

Very good ideas so l agree with you

Steve. You're amazing

Steven you have a huge experience to acquire languages cause I saw video to Steven krashen about acquisition that was amazing thing I've ever heard than I decided searching more to acquire English during my searching I came across to you and you also deal with Steven krashen cause that happened to me without I aware it, Now acquisition explaine what am I passed through, So now I wanna join to you website that I thought I have to pay for it but it's free I'm gonna try it, Keep up the good work, if you answer me that will be my pleasure how can I use LingQ for comprehensible input and acquire English, Finally thank you so much.

Thank you sir Steve! Blesings

Hello, Steve the Brian is incredibly amazing I started listening off a lecture of 10 mins long on my target language, which is Turkish. Within a span of of 4 weeks I was finally able to understand what the teacher was explaining just by listening carefully, paying attention or internalizing the body language and looking at the illustrations but I keep on feeding my brain with something in the language such as news or interviews in order to acquire it and getting used to it so further down the line I going to be able to comprehend and talk. When it comes to reading I look for something interesting and choose a paragraph and read it loud several times for the tongue to familiarize with the pronunciation and collocation and of course the listening part I would appreciate if you could provide me with some other advice to work on my learning process ....I love languages and really Looking forward to managing in Turkish as I want to travel , in a year time and visit my friends from University in the UK many years ago. It’s a totally different language but I’m up for the challenge Best regards from panama

잘 봤습니다. 건강하세요~

This is sooo goood because i get bored hella easy! Also can you make videos specifically for the language youve learned? Example things that helped you while l learning Japanese, chinese or whatever language. There are a lot of us watching with a target language in mind ( me specifically japanese ) and if you have tips for the language youve learned specifically maybe you can get more viewers? Targetting the korean/japanese/chinese etc learners 🤷🏻‍♀️ just a thought

Hey Steve, I have a problem. I've been learning Portuguese for 4 years now. I am a native Spanish and English speaker and I thought my Portuguese was good enough, I even purchased LingQ to start learning Russian, however i took a trip to Brazil last November and found i had tremendous difficulty understanding. This really encouraged me to better my Portuguese, but really discouraged me from learning Russian because if its taken me this long to learn Portuguese such a close language to Spanish i cant see myself being conversational in Russian.

This is exactly how I learned English all those years back.

If there's ever going to be the doubt about Steve Kaufmann having been kidnapped and his kidnappers using a doppelganger for his videos in order to make things look normal, it will be very easy to find out: if a new video won't start with "Steve (Kaufmann) here" and won't finish with "Bye for now", we will know with certainty that bad things are happening.

Hellooooo everyone watca doin' there... Im Adam from indonesia and im happy learning english cuz english has lots of accent that able to entertain me with. And i hope i can be fluent in spoken english Amen

読むと聞き置くは新しい言葉が学ぶです。

Steve, I have a question! How detailed is your inner monologue with your self on a daily basis. Do you have even have one? Do you have this inner thought/dialogue going when you are listening and reading in the languages you're learning?

I wish there was Thai in LingQ :( I would love to use it

I wish there was Icelandic on LingQ. It's really hard to find any resources for reading and listening.

I've been studying English for years, and now I'm in B1+. And I realised that I understand more than I speak. Is that normal?

Came for the hilarious thumbnail, left when i realised you've already said this on 1200 other videos.

What do you think about using the apps/websites Babbel, Busuu, and Drops for learning phrases & words and being exposed to how to the language and how something is pronounced? I'm using Babbel, Busuu and Drops as some of my resources to learn my target language which is Polish.

Steve, I wonder if you have tried using LingQ on an iPad Pro, with a Stylus. If you did, could you please share with us how you found that to be?

dam he totally had it on point!

Thanks for all your videos Steve. Do you have any comments about a Lang learning method called Crosstalk? My tutor wants to introduce and I would appreciate your opinion on this method. Thank you

cool nice tips

I wish RU-vid would allow you to set up a poll alongside a video. You put listening before reading. I'd say both are important, but I'd put reading before listening for a number of reasons. I wonder what others think.

Steve what do you think of writing poetry in language learning?

It's really strange how some language learners/poliglots view themselves or are view as experts who know what they're doing and guide those who don't know what they're doing, and are so dependent they seek advise because they can't depend on themselves and don't know how to learn - following in someone else's footsteps instead of finding their own way and failing to figure things out for themselves.

Dear Steve, could you please add Thai to LinQ? That would be awesome! I want to learn the language but at the moment I have a really hard time.

Been using lingq for Japanese for a while and loving it. The mini stories are awesome for beginner content. I was wondering however what most people use for content after the mini stories. Would I be able to power my way through Harry Potter for example using the advantages of the dictionary functions? Any help would be appreciated.

У Вас видео хорошее. Мне нравится ваше видео.

✝️スティーブ・カッフマンさん、楽しんでのポリグロット、ありがとうございます😉2020年5月26日

Do you watch videos of your target language with English subtitles?

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Do you think it is better to listen with or without subtitles? Do the subtitles hinder the listening? Good luck with portuguese. That's my second language and I'm actually looking to learn spanish and it's so easy to get them mixed up. Do you have any tips about separating the two from learning portuguese? Also if anyone as any suggestions of good Brazilian shows/movies to watch, you should let me know and I'd love to check them out. I've seen a few on netflix, including Alce e Alice e ninguém tá olhando, and am always looking for more.

Grande Steve, cheguei aqui através do canal do Gabriel poliglota. Comecei faz 50 dias estudando inglês. exposição total no idioma, estou amando seu aplicativo. Todo dia eu ouço. é normal eu ter uma imersão total e conseguir nesses 50 dias entender os podcasts do LINGQ sem tradução?? Há alhumas palavras que não entendo.Eu assistindo agora seu video com a legenda entendi a mensagem toda do video em apenas 50 dias de estudo de inglês, muito listening e reading diariamente em média 04 horas diárias de domingo a domingo. O que acha??? agradeço se puder responder

I have been living in England for two years as a student. However, I still find difficulties to express my idea via oral communication. On the other hand, I feel easier to express my thought in writing communication. How can I improve my speaking skills to make it fluent? I do a lot listening to RU-vid videos in English, in British and American accent. Hope you can help me to solve my problem. Thank you 🙏🏽

First comment yesssss!

Steve am I write in thinking to usually will listen first before reading? You never first read to check the words and then listen?

Steve which is more important in LingQ - known words or the number of words you have read in total? I roughly know 12,000 words of Turkish and have read about 150,000 words in total - I'd say I'm at an intermediate level, but read on the forums that I may need to read 500k,1 million/2 million words before really feeling comfortable in the language.

Sir I have a burning question.How often would you say is the appropriate frequency of looking up new words?Would it work if I just don’t look up at all and expose myself to different contexts again and again?

خیلی دلم می خواهد با شما فارسی صحبت کنم یا اینکه یه ویدیو جدید ببینم از فارسی صحبت کردنتون. خیلی برای من قشنگه وقتی مردم که فارسی زبان نیستن، فارسی یاد می گیرن و فارسی صحبت می کنن.

Hello Steve, I have a question: I started learning Korean three months ago. At the beginning i didn't have any problem in learning grammar, at some point I even enjoyed it, but as I found things were getting difficult I got sick of it, to the point I don't want to study anymore. I don't wanna quit, but it feels boring and overwhelming. What should I do?

Приезжайте в Кыргызстан 🇰🇬🇰🇬🇰🇬. Вам понравится в Кыргызстане.

First view!

Lots of listening and reading, for a beginner with Japanese, there will be NO reading, even if he/she has hiragana and katakana down. It is because of the Kanji. So not only does a beginner need to memorize words and grammar, they also need to memorize a lot of kanji.....if they want to read.

🙏🙏🙏💜❤

One question, can import a movie of RU-vid to Lingq in the smartphone?

Of all the languages to learn for business, or living or studying abroad, why so many people choose Japanese is baffling, since Japan is not the only country to do business in. And what's so great about the culture anywany? Yes, it's kind of unique, but even if you're not moving there, what's to intriguing about the culture that you're so driven to learn the language and/or move to Japan? You want to work abroad? Go somewhere else that can actually benefit from your skills as Japan probably has people who offer what you do. Learn Korean, German, Thai, Finnish, or even Lithuanian...so many options. Develop a skillset that's in demand and look for who needs those skills. Japan's economy if overflowing because too many people are competing for the same things, while othe economies may need what you offer. You're just too stubborn and not open-minded enough to consider other countries, which have a way more interesting culture than Japan

Steve: "Good reading skills come from good listening skills. People who have trouble reading, even in their own language, are people who didn't hear a lot of the language when they were young or who have trouble hearing." There's one case where none of this applies and is not true, and that with deaf people. That's right...sign language, which is one of the languages I'm learning right now, which is not nearly as difficult as you may expect. Pity you'll never see for yourself as Lingq is unlikely to expect ASL available anytime soon, if at all. I'm learning ASL through video lessons and the person making them is deaf himself, yet can write/type English just fine, and therefore also read well. What say you to that, Steve? The signs are shown alongside the meaning and I can remember them after seeing them only once. As a language learner, you try to be prepared for speaking situations. If you ever meet a deaf person, you don't know they're deaf until you find out the hard way as they're usually accompanied by a translator since most people don't know sign language. And since you don't know ASL yourself, it's kind of an ego bruiser when you must rely on a translator or write your messages down just because you don't know ASL. And because it's never coming to Lingq, the source you always use, you're kind of powerless in this respect.

If I'm not watching the video I swear it sounds like Rick Steves talking.

IT IZ WHAT IT IZ LOL

I don't understand how you can get anything out of listening when you understand so little. :(

hahah the basics of language learning are not learning the basics of languages XD