Insights on Language Learning from Kaufman

Biggest constraint in learning a language is... But people are conditioned to think that that's how you do it, therefore they're conditioned to think that they're no good. The sign of a good language learner is... Steve Kaufman is a polyglot who speaks more than 15 languages and is the co-founder of Link, a platform to learn languages through reading and listening. He's got millions of views on YouTube, sharing his thoughts on language learning and the power of reading. I caught up with him, where we spoke about the habits required to learn a language. Why reading is so powerful and how you can use AI to help your learning. I started by asking him how many languages he knows. In a way, 20. Not bad. So it's not possible to be equally fluent, obviously, in 20 languages. So I certainly don't say that I'm fluent in 20 languages, but I have at different times been conversant in 20 languages. I have quite a large vocabulary in 20 languages. To me, it's, it's, uh, I've invested a lot of time in 20 languages. There's like a half a dozen languages that I'm very fluent in anytime I don't lose. Another four or five that I can quickly get up, but I speak with a lot of mistakes. And then there's a bunch of languages that if you suddenly threw me into a situation, I would struggle, but within, you know, a few hours or a few days or a few weeks, I would be up to speed on. So I feel I can say I speak 20 languages. Two... varying degrees of fluency. And what was it that started this journey to get to the point you are now where you've got these 20 languages? When I was a student, a high school student in Montreal, which is theoretically a bilingual city, but in the fifties, you very much had an English speaking 1 million people, French speaking 2 million people. Going to school in English speaking Montreal was going to like going to school in Toronto and back in those days. And so we had French at school and I couldn't speak French. I could throw some words together, but I couldn't speak it. Then I got totally motivated, uh, because I had a very good professor at the university, at McGill university. So once you're motivated, which is all languages, language learning is entirely based on motivation. Once you're motivated, you can read books, you can listen to the radio, you can read the news, especially in Montreal, you can do whatever you need to do. And then I ended up going to France. For the first time, I actually became fluent in another language, which most people have never had that opportunity or that feeling of, and probably don't think they can. But once I was confident I could do that for French, then when I was working for the Canadian government, they were looking for someone to learn Mandarin Chinese back in 1968, because Canada was about to recognize the People's Republic of China. I said, I'm your man. I know I can do it. I have no fear, no fear. And then we lived in Japan. And as you start to learn one language after another, you realize that you can do it. You know how to do it. You like doing it. like now with my Turkish you're learning about the history you're learning about the country so every language you explore is is just it's interesting it's my hobby I mean there are bird watchers there are coin collectors okay I like learning languages quite impressive given a lot of the people who watch my videos they've they've struggled with sort of traditional language learning methods in the in the past you know given the the stereotypical stereotypical idea that we have of sort of learning a language in in school why is it you think that that traditional method still pervades and why do people still struggle with that as a way to try and learn languages? Well, the reason the traditional method pervades is because it's easy to teach. So teachers like teaching it. Today I will teach you the subjunctive. If we're learning Spanish, I will teach you the difference between ser and estar. The difference between ser and estar is not difficult to explain. It's not even difficult to understand. It's very difficult to produce when you're speaking the language because it's not something that we have in English and we understand it theoretically. But until we have created a new habit so that we will, without thinking about it, use ser and estar appropriately, or at least some of the time, or we'll use it in conjunction, estoy feliz, you know, soy canadiense. that you will have certain connections that make it happen until you start to create a lot of these habits and connections the same with subjunctive you aren't going to produce it no matter how much you drilled on it no matter how many exams how many tests and so it takes time it takes a lot of exposure so for a teacher to say the way you're going to get good at serenity star is if you read a lot and listen a lot and it doesn't matter if i tested you on it today what matters is a year from now Are you going to be able to produce it comfortably when you're speaking? Because when you're reading, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So many aspects of grammar are in fact, not important to comprehension because the language is so redundant. There's so many words, you understand it all. But to get to where you can actually produce, it just takes a lot of time. So people are very demanding of themselves. How come I learned this thing and I got tested on it and I got half of them wrong. What's wrong? What's, what's the matter with me? So, but people are conditioned to think that that's how you do it. Therefore they're conditioned to think that they're no good. And actually it takes a long time and you've got to revisit the same stuff over and over again. And you notice certain things you didn't know the last time you looked at that, especially, you know, in the case of link, we have our mini stories. I'm going over the mini stories now in Turkish that I've listened to 30 times. And I noticed, uh, structures there that I hadn't noticed the previous 29 times. It takes a long time. And therefore, because it takes a long time, people shouldn't beat themselves up. Teachers shouldn't expect any level of performance. But unfortunately, our system is based on the teachers wanting to teach something and test you on it. which has the effect of making people feel that language learning is difficult. Given your wealth of experience with these 20 languages to varying degrees under your belt, how is it that someone who might watch this video and they might think, right, I only know English currently, but I like this idea of maybe being able to speak a couple of languages. That sounds great. How do they get from that point where they're a complete beginner to finally being fluent? in a language? Now, I know that's a big question, so be as granular or as vague as you want, but what's that path start to look like for someone? The first thing I think they need to say is, I want this to be an enjoyable experience. If it is an enjoyable experience, I will continue doing it. So therefore, don't have unrealistic expectations. Focus on getting the language in you. Focus on letting your brain create new... neural connections, new patterns, which is what the brain is very good at doing. Brain is not very good at understanding theoretical explanations. And initially when I started in a new language, whether it's Persian or Turkish, which I do on LingQ, of course, we have our mini stories. The mini stories were designed. There's 60 of them. Uh, and each story, the same vocabulary essentially repeats five times, but in a different tense or in a different person. So I listened to these many, many times, not at one sitting. You don't want to repeat, you don't want to study a table of, you know, German declensions and try and force it into your brain, that's not going to happen. But if you go over the same material and, and we see the structures alive in different contexts, uh, but initially you need a lot of repetition. Early on, we can deal with a lot of repetition and that's what I recommend. Spend two, three months with relatively simple content where there is a lot of repetition. Focus in on verbs. Verbs will be forever the most difficult thing in the language. In just about every language that I've learned, the verbs are key. Uh, and then at some point you have to bust out of that beginner content, the language learning content, and go to real content. And even if you struggle to understand it, it's content that you chose that's interesting to you. And it could be, um, you know, cricket or planting. flowers in your garden it doesn't matter anything that's of interest to you and and then and then get to where you are enjoying the process don't worry too much about what you can say initially how correctly you speak initially trust the fact that if you continue both in terms of trying to speak with mistakes and in terms of listening and reading over time you will gradually get better and so what's your view then um then on the role of of sort of explicitly trying to study grammar how much of it should we just try and pick up and and what i don't know we don't need a percentage but what is the role in your your opinion of um of that explicit study i think you know uh it's always good to do things we're interested in so if we're interested in grammar by um by all means and i always buy a thin grammar book and i leave through it makes i can't remember what's there but it helps especially once you have experienced the language, it helps to explain things. And all of a sudden you notice something that you hadn't noticed before. So to that extent, it's a good thing. The grammar is an explanation of how the language works. In other words, the key is usage. And so you have to expose yourself to so much of the language that certain forms become normal, habitual forms for you. And... It doesn't come from reading grammar rules, but that's not to say it's a bad thing. Grammar rules, explanations can help you. But, you know, you look at English and there's so many tenses. And do I use the continuous form or the simple form? And if you start thinking in those terms, when you're going to speak, when you're going to speak, when you speak, when you're going to speak, when you're speaking, if you start thinking about which form to use, you're stuck. The same is true in Spanish and whether you use the future or the voy. You know? This is, it comes out, you got to let it come out, which means you have to let it come out wrong. And it's one of those things that, you know, the rules follow the language, right? Rather than the language following the rules. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many exceptions to the rules in order to try and describe the phenomenon that is this language. So, I mean, we've touched on it already, but I wonder if there's anything else you want to mention around enjoyment and how crucial that is to the language learning process, because... If people imagine starting to learn a language, a lot of people think about boring textbooks or something where it's actually long-term that's not sustainable. See, boring textbooks, they're bad because the text is boring. The narrator is boring. So everything about them is boring. Nowadays, we have to realize that we have an opportunity to access language content in just about any language. There's so much in the way of podcasts, television programs, Netflix, YouTube. There's so much stuff out there which is accessible, but you do have to get started. You can't get started with this difficult content. Realistically, I think you should take, a person should take the position, I'm going to do Spanish for a year or for two years, and I'm not in a hurry because I enjoy it. So you have to find ways to enjoy it. And as long as you're enjoying the process, you will improve. You won't get worse. And especially if you don't... If you're not too demanding of yourself, if you don't beat yourself up because of what you forget, you know the word, you're speaking and you can't find the word. You can't retrieve it. That happens all the time. All the time. That doesn't mean you don't have the word somewhere in your memory and maybe you were able to retrieve it the last time you spoke, but this time you can't retrieve it. Normal. Just one last thing on sort of this kind of area is something that I talk a lot about is habits and that... That with enjoyment, that is language, certainly, if you can do those things, in my opinion. But what's your view on the importance of habits when it comes to learning a new language? Habits are extremely important on two levels. First of all, when you're learning a new language, you're creating new language habits in your brain. The other habit is, I get up in the morning, I put on whatever I'm listening to, Turkish, and so I have this habit. I go and start preparing breakfast, and I'm listening. That's a habit. Having listened to this podcast, whatever it might be, audiobook, lots that I didn't understand, then I want to go and read it and look up words. So these are learning habits. These are habits, therefore activities in my daily routine. But also we are creating new language habits. We get used to a language. We don't learn it theoretically. So we create new language habits. So habits are extremely important. I find most self-help books are pretty empty. But one that I thought was quite good was atomic habits. And the key message there is that it's one small step at a time. So every time you're listening, every time you're reading, you're looking at words, you're talking to people, even with mistakes, that's all little by little making you better, even though you may not be aware that you're getting better. Yeah, definitely. And then step by step, you'll get there. Just a random, a random hack for anyone watching this is, uh, If you want to get into native type content and a fiction book is too difficult, I'd listen to Atomic Habits, the audiobook for it, and when my level wasn't quite enough to be able to get to fiction books, actually self-help books and that kind of thing, yes, depends on the topic, but actually the level of language isn't quite so extensive, so it's a bit more accessible, which I found quite helpful. I totally agree with you. Vocabulary and self help books. First of all, it repeats. It's very easy. And most of what they say, you already know, you know, get up early in the morning, brush your teeth, make your bed. Uh, so those are great places to start. One thing that I've done in Turkish, I asked chat GPT to summarize, let's say atomic habits in Turkish, in less than a thousand words, and you get this thing. Uh, and many of those self-help books can be summarized in less than a thousand words, so you need to read the whole book. Plus it's easy language. So you can say, like I went to chat GPT, I said, what are the 10 most popular self-help books in 2023, 2024? You gave me a list of 10. So one at a time, I went through, I said, chat GPT, create a less than thousand word summary of this book in Turkish. There it is. Now you've got tremendous language learning content. Fantastic. That's really good. And then obviously any words that you don't know, it's all digital. You can look up whatever you need in LingQ or elsewhere. Well. given that we're sort of around that subject anyway uh reading i am excuse the pun but i'm very much on the same page as you when it comes to to reading as um not not only important language learning but uh just an enjoyable thing to do and and if you're enjoying again enjoying that process it's so helpful um in your your view what's uh how powerful is reading when it comes to to language learning reading is super powerful uh i've said in the past that listening sort of helps you get to where you can start speaking because you hear the phrases, you hear the words, they kind of bounce around in your brain. Then when you need them, you can go in there and kind of retrieve something and push it out there. But vocabulary, you learn it more easily from reading, in my opinion. There's sort of different levels of reading. Uh, you know, I begin obviously with LingQ. I can, I might even do it sentence by sentence and then, you know, lesson by lesson. And because I can look up words, I can review the words. So I would call that sort of intensive reading. The most intensive is sentence by sentence, uh, because I might struggle to understand a sentence, even if I look up all the words, but gradually I get to where I can read that again, with the help of the online dictionary as in link and review of words and stuff. But eventually the ultimate milestone is when you can read a book on paper. Because I just find that it's just very satisfying. And, uh, it's just an, a comfortable environment. And I think we learn better from natural things. Like I think if you write by hand, it's better than typing. If you read a paper book, it's better than reading, uh, you know, in a digital format. There's no distractions. You can't look up your emails. So to me, and I think reading is, and every language that I've learned, I reached a point where I could read a book and, and, and you train yourself also. to not worry about the words you don't know. So if there's too many words you don't know, that's very, not very satisfying. And that's kind of at the origin of LingQ, look at words easily and stuff. But at some point somebody said the sign of a good language learner is the willingness to accept uncertainty, the willingness to accept not fully understanding, which is why, by the way, I'm so much opposed to comprehension questions. Because it's not for the teacher to question you on what you understood and who did what to whom. If you exposed yourself to that much language and you read and you enjoyed it, that's good enough. Also, I would say that there should be a real good link between reading and listening because when we read, we are actually using the same parts of our brain as when we listen. This is very interesting. If they measure through MRI or whatever, um, How, you know, the word, you know, the, the phoneme connect can, you know, combines to form a word to form meaning. All of that goes through different parts of the brain. It's the same. The only difference is when you read, there is a separate special entry port, which apparently is the part of your brain that processes images. And once you have been taught the code, which is a little more obtuse when it comes to English as compared to Spanish, but once you've got. the code, then it goes in your brain and it follows the same path. So reading and listening are very much connected. And I find that if I do a lot of listening, it's easy for me to read because I know how to, because we always sub vocalize when we read in a foreign language and now I hear the sounds better. I got some momentum. And, uh, so listening and reading to me, both are connected to me. Reading a book on paper was always the big milestone and that's what people should, should aim. for now nowadays people it's all tick tock on instagram and everything so i'm not into that like i do think though there is something quite powerful in given you know there's so many notifications and so much stuff going on uh digitally that actually the the goal of being able to just sit without distractions with a paper book that you can't tap to look up and nothing's going to ping or whatever it's actually it's quite a nice way to just just switch off and just absolutely de-stress um yeah but also you can happen to be picking up a language at the same time which is you know the the fantastic out of the whole thing um just you know whilst whilst we're mentioning uh technology and things like that um just podcasts and the fact that they've all got transcripts now it's just phenomenal isn't it not all the podcasts that i go to have transcripts Some do, uh, I'm in Turkish. Okay. Uh, I always look for the transcript so that I can download it and import it. Uh, I think one of the things that language teachers and, and, uh, coaches can do is to guide people towards that kind of content in the language that they're learning, but certainly, no, it used to be that the teacher controlled the content. You will read this book. I have decided that this book is good for you. Now the sky's the limit in so far as content. Given also, we've just spoken about chat GPT, but, um, and firstly, thank you for the mention on your, your video about it. So what, what are you using chat GPT for at the minute when it comes to language learning? Okay. So, uh, I was attracted to your video, uh, because I think this whole subject of how we use AI for language learning is, is important and it's going to, as it evolves, uh, new ways of using it will be, uh, you know, we'll, we'll come along, uh, In your video, you said I can take this story and simplify it down to the most common 200 words. I, I took the different approach. I said, let's take, say a self-help book and reduce it to less than a thousand words. That tends to simplify the vocabulary. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So that achieves that purpose, but then it's kind of better, like just the most frequent 200 words doesn't get you very far. Uh, and, and I've never felt that, uh, there is this idea that if I have Because 200 words accounts for 50% of any content. If I have those 200 words, then I can speak. And I don't find that to be the case because you're always very dependent on the other less frequent words. So I don't like to focus in on the highest frequency words because they will show up frequently. So I will learn them. For example, at LingQ where we find you look up a word in, we have a range of dictionaries for a given language and AI will make sure that the definition you choose Is context relevant? Because if you look a word up in a dictionary, there could be five different meanings. What's the meaning that's, you know, relevant to this context. So that's very useful. So you get a better, that's really helpful. Again, you talked to how you can speak to the, the chat box or bot or whatever. It depends on what people are like. Some people are afraid to speak because they're afraid they'll make mistakes. So they want to practice, you know, it's like having a punching bag, right? He's not going to punch back. If you talk to a native speaker, they might punch back. So to that extent, I think it could be very valuable. Yeah, I mean, AI is not going to be going anywhere anytime soon, is it? But it's definitely not a flash in the pan. But yeah, I'm totally with you. Personally, I just enjoy talking to a tutor. That's where you actually genuinely learn about what it is like in that culture, that country, potentially. But that said, I have had some... conversations with chat gpt where it might have mentioned something cultural that you can then ask it about but it's you know it's like it's like talking to wikipedia so it's kind of it's it's not the same not nearly the same as having a tutor we all have to try these things and and different people will react differently i think i think it just comes down to your to personality and your interests on that one but the the good thing is you can talk about any interest so we're often trying to find a tutor who has the same particular obscure interest that you might might have whatever that might be right absolutely there's someone there at the press of a button and you can talk about whatever your passion is and it will have the relevant vocabulary i'll have to try it again one of the considerations is the biggest sort of limit biggest constraint in learning a language is time so am i going to spend my time for example studying grammar poring over grammar rules you might pick something up but it's not an efficient use of time Is it an efficient use of time to chat with a chatbot? It may be. I haven't tried it. It may very well be. But always I'm thinking, what's the best use of my time? And what's the most enjoyable use of my time? So I'd be interested in perhaps a parting thought from you, Steve, unless there's anything else you think we've missed. But I was wondering, for anyone who hasn't, they want to learn a language they haven't yet made, much progress and they feel frustrated. Are there any words of encouragement or anything, given your years of experience of language learning, that you think would help someone on their path to finally get into that final destination? Well, I think the key, we've touched on the importance of enjoyment. Enjoyment is key to continuing. If you're not enjoying it, you're not likely to continue. Frustration point is that you were put into a situation where you had to speak and you couldn't say what you wanted to say. That's normal. That's absolutely normal. It doesn't matter what you can say after three months. What matters is what can you say after a year, because it is at least a year, even Going from English to Spanish for half the vocabulary is more or less recognizable. It's a year. Don't worry about what you don't understand. Don't worry about what you can't say. Just continue. Build up your passive vocabulary. Build up your comprehension, listening comprehension, reading comprehension. And then at some point say, now I got to speak more. And then when you start to speak, don't be frustrated at what you can't remember, what you get wrong. None of that matters. If you continue. Speaking and getting it wrong and forgetting the word and getting the wrong tense. If you keep doing that, you will only get better. You won't get worse. Find a way to enjoy it. Accept your mistakes. Find things of interest in the language and just keep going. And you and some people will learn better than others. I'm not a very good golfer. Other people are much better at golf. That doesn't mean I'm going to give up playing golf. Oh, fantastic. Well. I think we'll finish on that note well thank you Steve and I appreciate you giving me your time today. Not at all, I enjoyed it

I caught up with him, where we spoke about the habits required to learn a language. Why reading is so powerful and how you can use AI to help your learning. I started by asking him how many languages he knows.

In a way, 20. Not bad. So it's not possible to be equally fluent, obviously, in 20 languages. So I certainly don't say that I'm fluent in 20 languages, but I have at different times been conversant in 20 languages. I have quite a large vocabulary in 20 languages. To me, it's, it's, uh, I've invested a lot of time in 20 languages.

There's like a half a dozen languages that I'm very fluent in anytime I don't lose. Another four or five that I can quickly get up, but I speak with a lot of mistakes. And then there's a bunch of languages that if you suddenly threw me into a situation, I would struggle, but within, you know, a few hours or a few days or a few weeks, I would be up to speed on. So I feel I can say I speak 20 languages. Two...

varying degrees of fluency. And what was it that started this journey to get to the point you are now where you've got these 20 languages? When I was a student, a high school student in Montreal, which is theoretically a bilingual city, but in the fifties, you very much had an English speaking 1 million people, French speaking 2 million people.

Going to school in English speaking Montreal was going to like going to school in Toronto and back in those days. And so we had French at school and I couldn't speak French. I could throw some words together, but I couldn't speak it.

Then I got totally motivated, uh, because I had a very good professor at the university, at McGill university. So once you're motivated, which is all languages, language learning is entirely based on motivation. Once you're motivated, you can read books, you can listen to the radio, you can read the news, especially in Montreal, you can do whatever you need to do. And then I ended up going to France.

For the first time, I actually became fluent in another language, which most people have never had that opportunity or that feeling of, and probably don't think they can. But once I was confident I could do that for French, then when I was working for the Canadian government, they were looking for someone to learn Mandarin Chinese back in 1968, because Canada was about to recognize the People's Republic of China. I said, I'm your man. I know I can do it.

I have no fear, no fear. And then we lived in Japan. And as you start to learn one language after another, you realize that you can do it.

You know how to do it. You like doing it. like now with my Turkish you're learning about the history you're learning about the country so every language you explore is is just it's interesting it's my hobby I mean there are bird watchers there are coin collectors okay I like learning languages quite impressive given a lot of the people who watch my videos they've they've struggled with sort of traditional language learning methods in the in the past you know given the the stereotypical stereotypical idea that we have of sort of learning a language in in school why is it you think that that traditional method still pervades and why do people still struggle with that as a way to try and learn languages?

Well, the reason the traditional method pervades is because it's easy to teach. So teachers like teaching it. Today I will teach you the subjunctive. If we're learning Spanish, I will teach you the difference between ser and estar.

The difference between ser and estar is not difficult to explain. It's not even difficult to understand. It's very difficult to produce when you're speaking the language because it's not something that we have in English and we understand it theoretically.

But until we have created a new habit so that we will, without thinking about it, use ser and estar appropriately, or at least some of the time, or we'll use it in conjunction, estoy feliz, you know, soy canadiense. that you will have certain connections that make it happen until you start to create a lot of these habits and connections the same with subjunctive you aren't going to produce it no matter how much you drilled on it no matter how many exams how many tests and so it takes time it takes a lot of exposure so for a teacher to say the way you're going to get good at serenity star is if you read a lot and listen a lot and it doesn't matter if i tested you on it today what matters is a year from now Are you going to be able to produce it comfortably when you're speaking? Because when you're reading, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So many aspects of grammar are in fact, not important to comprehension because the language is so redundant.

There's so many words, you understand it all. But to get to where you can actually produce, it just takes a lot of time. So people are very demanding of themselves. How come I learned this thing and I got tested on it and I got half of them wrong. What's wrong?

What's, what's the matter with me? So, but people are conditioned to think that that's how you do it. Therefore they're conditioned to think that they're no good.

And actually it takes a long time and you've got to revisit the same stuff over and over again. And you notice certain things you didn't know the last time you looked at that, especially, you know, in the case of link, we have our mini stories. I'm going over the mini stories now in Turkish that I've listened to 30 times. And I noticed, uh, structures there that I hadn't noticed the previous 29 times.

It takes a long time. And therefore, because it takes a long time, people shouldn't beat themselves up. Teachers shouldn't expect any level of performance.

But unfortunately, our system is based on the teachers wanting to teach something and test you on it. which has the effect of making people feel that language learning is difficult. Given your wealth of experience with these 20 languages to varying degrees under your belt, how is it that someone who might watch this video and they might think, right, I only know English currently, but I like this idea of maybe being able to speak a couple of languages.

That sounds great. How do they get from that point where they're a complete beginner to finally being fluent? in a language?

Now, I know that's a big question, so be as granular or as vague as you want, but what's that path start to look like for someone? The first thing I think they need to say is, I want this to be an enjoyable experience. If it is an enjoyable experience, I will continue doing it.

So therefore, don't have unrealistic expectations. Focus on getting the language in you. Focus on letting your brain create new... neural connections, new patterns, which is what the brain is very good at doing.

Brain is not very good at understanding theoretical explanations. And initially when I started in a new language, whether it's Persian or Turkish, which I do on LingQ, of course, we have our mini stories. The mini stories were designed. There's 60 of them.

Uh, and each story, the same vocabulary essentially repeats five times, but in a different tense or in a different person. So I listened to these many, many times, not at one sitting. You don't want to repeat, you don't want to study a table of, you know, German declensions and try and force it into your brain, that's not going to happen. But if you go over the same material and, and we see the structures alive in different contexts, uh, but initially you need a lot of repetition.

Early on, we can deal with a lot of repetition and that's what I recommend. Spend two, three months with relatively simple content where there is a lot of repetition. Focus in on verbs.

Verbs will be forever the most difficult thing in the language. In just about every language that I've learned, the verbs are key. Uh, and then at some point you have to bust out of that beginner content, the language learning content, and go to real content. And even if you struggle to understand it, it's content that you chose that's interesting to you.

And it could be, um, you know, cricket or planting. flowers in your garden it doesn't matter anything that's of interest to you and and then and then get to where you are enjoying the process don't worry too much about what you can say initially how correctly you speak initially trust the fact that if you continue both in terms of trying to speak with mistakes and in terms of listening and reading over time you will gradually get better and so what's your view then um then on the role of of sort of explicitly trying to study grammar how much of it should we just try and pick up and and what i don't know we don't need a percentage but what is the role in your your opinion of um of that explicit study i think you know uh it's always good to do things we're interested in so if we're interested in grammar by um by all means and i always buy a thin grammar book and i leave through it makes i can't remember what's there but it helps especially once you have experienced the language, it helps to explain things. And all of a sudden you notice something that you hadn't noticed before. So to that extent, it's a good thing. The grammar is an explanation of how the language works.

In other words, the key is usage. And so you have to expose yourself to so much of the language that certain forms become normal, habitual forms for you. And... It doesn't come from reading grammar rules, but that's not to say it's a bad thing. Grammar rules, explanations can help you.

But, you know, you look at English and there's so many tenses. And do I use the continuous form or the simple form? And if you start thinking in those terms, when you're going to speak, when you're going to speak, when you speak, when you're going to speak, when you're speaking, if you start thinking about which form to use, you're stuck.

The same is true in Spanish and whether you use the future or the voy. You know? This is, it comes out, you got to let it come out, which means you have to let it come out wrong.

And it's one of those things that, you know, the rules follow the language, right? Rather than the language following the rules. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many exceptions to the rules in order to try and describe the phenomenon that is this language. So, I mean, we've touched on it already, but I wonder if there's anything else you want to mention around enjoyment and how crucial that is to the language learning process, because...

If people imagine starting to learn a language, a lot of people think about boring textbooks or something where it's actually long-term that's not sustainable. See, boring textbooks, they're bad because the text is boring. The narrator is boring. So everything about them is boring.

Nowadays, we have to realize that we have an opportunity to access language content in just about any language. There's so much in the way of podcasts, television programs, Netflix, YouTube. There's so much stuff out there which is accessible, but you do have to get started. You can't get started with this difficult content. Realistically, I think you should take, a person should take the position, I'm going to do Spanish for a year or for two years, and I'm not in a hurry because I enjoy it.

So you have to find ways to enjoy it. And as long as you're enjoying the process, you will improve. You won't get worse.

And especially if you don't... If you're not too demanding of yourself, if you don't beat yourself up because of what you forget, you know the word, you're speaking and you can't find the word. You can't retrieve it. That happens all the time. All the time.

That doesn't mean you don't have the word somewhere in your memory and maybe you were able to retrieve it the last time you spoke, but this time you can't retrieve it. Normal. Just one last thing on sort of this kind of area is something that I talk a lot about is habits and that...

That with enjoyment, that is language, certainly, if you can do those things, in my opinion. But what's your view on the importance of habits when it comes to learning a new language? Habits are extremely important on two levels. First of all, when you're learning a new language, you're creating new language habits in your brain. The other habit is, I get up in the morning, I put on whatever I'm listening to, Turkish, and so I have this habit.

I go and start preparing breakfast, and I'm listening. That's a habit. Having listened to this podcast, whatever it might be, audiobook, lots that I didn't understand, then I want to go and read it and look up words.

So these are learning habits. These are habits, therefore activities in my daily routine. But also we are creating new language habits.

We get used to a language. We don't learn it theoretically. So we create new language habits.

So habits are extremely important. I find most self-help books are pretty empty. But one that I thought was quite good was atomic habits. And the key message there is that it's one small step at a time. So every time you're listening, every time you're reading, you're looking at words, you're talking to people, even with mistakes, that's all little by little making you better, even though you may not be aware that you're getting better.

Yeah, definitely. And then step by step, you'll get there. Just a random, a random hack for anyone watching this is, uh, If you want to get into native type content and a fiction book is too difficult, I'd listen to Atomic Habits, the audiobook for it, and when my level wasn't quite enough to be able to get to fiction books, actually self-help books and that kind of thing, yes, depends on the topic, but actually the level of language isn't quite so extensive, so it's a bit more accessible, which I found quite helpful. I totally agree with you.

Vocabulary and self help books. First of all, it repeats. It's very easy. And most of what they say, you already know, you know, get up early in the morning, brush your teeth, make your bed. Uh, so those are great places to start.

One thing that I've done in Turkish, I asked chat GPT to summarize, let's say atomic habits in Turkish, in less than a thousand words, and you get this thing. Uh, and many of those self-help books can be summarized in less than a thousand words, so you need to read the whole book. Plus it's easy language. So you can say, like I went to chat GPT, I said, what are the 10 most popular self-help books in 2023, 2024?

You gave me a list of 10. So one at a time, I went through, I said, chat GPT, create a less than thousand word summary of this book in Turkish. There it is. Now you've got tremendous language learning content. Fantastic.

That's really good. And then obviously any words that you don't know, it's all digital. You can look up whatever you need in LingQ or elsewhere. Well.

given that we're sort of around that subject anyway uh reading i am excuse the pun but i'm very much on the same page as you when it comes to to reading as um not not only important language learning but uh just an enjoyable thing to do and and if you're enjoying again enjoying that process it's so helpful um in your your view what's uh how powerful is reading when it comes to to language learning reading is super powerful uh i've said in the past that listening sort of helps you get to where you can start speaking because you hear the phrases, you hear the words, they kind of bounce around in your brain. Then when you need them, you can go in there and kind of retrieve something and push it out there. But vocabulary, you learn it more easily from reading, in my opinion. There's sort of different levels of reading. Uh, you know, I begin obviously with LingQ.

I can, I might even do it sentence by sentence and then, you know, lesson by lesson. And because I can look up words, I can review the words. So I would call that sort of intensive reading. The most intensive is sentence by sentence, uh, because I might struggle to understand a sentence, even if I look up all the words, but gradually I get to where I can read that again, with the help of the online dictionary as in link and review of words and stuff.

But eventually the ultimate milestone is when you can read a book on paper. Because I just find that it's just very satisfying. And, uh, it's just an, a comfortable environment.

And I think we learn better from natural things. Like I think if you write by hand, it's better than typing. If you read a paper book, it's better than reading, uh, you know, in a digital format.

There's no distractions. You can't look up your emails. So to me, and I think reading is, and every language that I've learned, I reached a point where I could read a book and, and, and you train yourself also. to not worry about the words you don't know. So if there's too many words you don't know, that's very, not very satisfying.

And that's kind of at the origin of LingQ, look at words easily and stuff. But at some point somebody said the sign of a good language learner is the willingness to accept uncertainty, the willingness to accept not fully understanding, which is why, by the way, I'm so much opposed to comprehension questions. Because it's not for the teacher to question you on what you understood and who did what to whom. If you exposed yourself to that much language and you read and you enjoyed it, that's good enough.

Also, I would say that there should be a real good link between reading and listening because when we read, we are actually using the same parts of our brain as when we listen. This is very interesting. If they measure through MRI or whatever, um, How, you know, the word, you know, the, the phoneme connect can, you know, combines to form a word to form meaning. All of that goes through different parts of the brain.

It's the same. The only difference is when you read, there is a separate special entry port, which apparently is the part of your brain that processes images. And once you have been taught the code, which is a little more obtuse when it comes to English as compared to Spanish, but once you've got. the code, then it goes in your brain and it follows the same path.

So reading and listening are very much connected. And I find that if I do a lot of listening, it's easy for me to read because I know how to, because we always sub vocalize when we read in a foreign language and now I hear the sounds better. I got some momentum.

And, uh, so listening and reading to me, both are connected to me. Reading a book on paper was always the big milestone and that's what people should, should aim. for now nowadays people it's all tick tock on instagram and everything so i'm not into that like i do think though there is something quite powerful in given you know there's so many notifications and so much stuff going on uh digitally that actually the the goal of being able to just sit without distractions with a paper book that you can't tap to look up and nothing's going to ping or whatever it's actually it's quite a nice way to just just switch off and just absolutely de-stress um yeah but also you can happen to be picking up a language at the same time which is you know the the fantastic out of the whole thing um just you know whilst whilst we're mentioning uh technology and things like that um just podcasts and the fact that they've all got transcripts now it's just phenomenal isn't it not all the podcasts that i go to have transcripts Some do, uh, I'm in Turkish.

Okay. Uh, I always look for the transcript so that I can download it and import it. Uh, I think one of the things that language teachers and, and, uh, coaches can do is to guide people towards that kind of content in the language that they're learning, but certainly, no, it used to be that the teacher controlled the content.

You will read this book. I have decided that this book is good for you. Now the sky's the limit in so far as content.

Given also, we've just spoken about chat GPT, but, um, and firstly, thank you for the mention on your, your video about it. So what, what are you using chat GPT for at the minute when it comes to language learning? Okay.

So, uh, I was attracted to your video, uh, because I think this whole subject of how we use AI for language learning is, is important and it's going to, as it evolves, uh, new ways of using it will be, uh, you know, we'll, we'll come along, uh, In your video, you said I can take this story and simplify it down to the most common 200 words. I, I took the different approach. I said, let's take, say a self-help book and reduce it to less than a thousand words.

That tends to simplify the vocabulary. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah. So that achieves that purpose, but then it's kind of better, like just the most frequent 200 words doesn't get you very far. Uh, and, and I've never felt that, uh, there is this idea that if I have Because 200 words accounts for 50% of any content. If I have those 200 words, then I can speak.

And I don't find that to be the case because you're always very dependent on the other less frequent words. So I don't like to focus in on the highest frequency words because they will show up frequently. So I will learn them.

For example, at LingQ where we find you look up a word in, we have a range of dictionaries for a given language and AI will make sure that the definition you choose Is context relevant? Because if you look a word up in a dictionary, there could be five different meanings. What's the meaning that's, you know, relevant to this context. So that's very useful. So you get a better, that's really helpful.

Again, you talked to how you can speak to the, the chat box or bot or whatever. It depends on what people are like. Some people are afraid to speak because they're afraid they'll make mistakes.

So they want to practice, you know, it's like having a punching bag, right? He's not going to punch back. If you talk to a native speaker, they might punch back. So to that extent, I think it could be very valuable. Yeah, I mean, AI is not going to be going anywhere anytime soon, is it?

But it's definitely not a flash in the pan. But yeah, I'm totally with you. Personally, I just enjoy talking to a tutor. That's where you actually genuinely learn about what it is like in that culture, that country, potentially.

But that said, I have had some... conversations with chat gpt where it might have mentioned something cultural that you can then ask it about but it's you know it's like it's like talking to wikipedia so it's kind of it's it's not the same not nearly the same as having a tutor we all have to try these things and and different people will react differently i think i think it just comes down to your to personality and your interests on that one but the the good thing is you can talk about any interest so we're often trying to find a tutor who has the same particular obscure interest that you might might have whatever that might be right absolutely there's someone there at the press of a button and you can talk about whatever your passion is and it will have the relevant vocabulary i'll have to try it again one of the considerations is the biggest sort of limit biggest constraint in learning a language is time so am i going to spend my time for example studying grammar poring over grammar rules you might pick something up but it's not an efficient use of time Is it an efficient use of time to chat with a chatbot? It may be.

I haven't tried it. It may very well be. But always I'm thinking, what's the best use of my time? And what's the most enjoyable use of my time? So I'd be interested in perhaps a parting thought from you, Steve, unless there's anything else you think we've missed.

But I was wondering, for anyone who hasn't, they want to learn a language they haven't yet made, much progress and they feel frustrated. Are there any words of encouragement or anything, given your years of experience of language learning, that you think would help someone on their path to finally get into that final destination? Well, I think the key, we've touched on the importance of enjoyment. Enjoyment is key to continuing.

If you're not enjoying it, you're not likely to continue. Frustration point is that you were put into a situation where you had to speak and you couldn't say what you wanted to say. That's normal.

That's absolutely normal. It doesn't matter what you can say after three months. What matters is what can you say after a year, because it is at least a year, even Going from English to Spanish for half the vocabulary is more or less recognizable.

It's a year. Don't worry about what you don't understand. Don't worry about what you can't say.

Just continue. Build up your passive vocabulary. Build up your comprehension, listening comprehension, reading comprehension.

And then at some point say, now I got to speak more. And then when you start to speak, don't be frustrated at what you can't remember, what you get wrong. None of that matters. If you continue. Speaking and getting it wrong and forgetting the word and getting the wrong tense.

If you keep doing that, you will only get better. You won't get worse. Find a way to enjoy it. Accept your mistakes.

Find things of interest in the language and just keep going. And you and some people will learn better than others. I'm not a very good golfer.

Other people are much better at golf. That doesn't mean I'm going to give up playing golf. Oh, fantastic. Well. I think we'll finish on that note well thank you Steve and I appreciate you giving me your time today.

Not at all, I enjoyed it

Transcript for:Insights on Language Learning from Kaufman

Transcript for:
Insights on Language Learning from Kaufman