“For much of this book I have described my vision of the road to mastery―you start with the fundamentals, get a solid foundation fueled by understanding the principles of your discipline, then you expand and refine your repertoire, guided by your individual predispositions, while keeping in touch, however abstractly, with what you feel to be the essential core of the art.” ―Josh Waitzkin

There are many great books about learning out there, but one of my favorites to date is The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin. The book shares core learning principles that have allowed Josh to master multiple diverse disciplines, including:

• Chess. The movie Searching for Bobby Fisher is based on Josh’s childhood, during which time his impressive chess skills led to him being called a “prodigy” (a word he doesn’t particularly care for as it discounts the massive amount of practice, effort, and psychological tactics he relied on to win eight National Chess Championships).

• Taiji Push Hands (太極推手, tàijí tuīshǒu). Josh has won a number of medals in the sport, the World Champion Title in 2004, and went on to coach others to victory themselves.

• Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Josh holds a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu which he obtained training under Marcelo Garcia, considered to be one of the world’s best practitioners and teachers of the art.

So what do chess and martial arts have to do with language learning? Quite a bit, actually. Mastering any skill requires that you travel down the same basic road. Whether you are learning the Japanese language or a Japanese martial art, you will encounter many of the same challenges, pitfalls, and joys on your journey. And, many of the same metalearning techniques can be applied. Here are few key learning principles that Josh shares in the book that can be of big help in reaching fluency in a foreign language:

Growth Requires Discomfort

“The key to pursuing excellent is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of comfort or safety.”

One of the most common causes of slow progress in a foreign language is spending too much time on safe, comfortable tasks like reading, flashcards, memorizing rules, etc. and avoiding what many learners find most uncomfortable: communicating with native speakers. The former allows you time to think, look things up, and keep things under control. The latter affords you little time to think, no time to use a dictionary, and little control. But if you want to reach fluency in a Japanese (or any other language), you absolutely must speak. There is no alternative. Passive input activities like listening to podcasts and reading books (albeit it important components of a balanced language diet) will not give you the active communication skills you desire.

This is not to say that all learning will be uncomfortable all the time. You can and should have lots of fun along the way. Do things in the language you enjoy. Discuss topics that interest you. But don’t let fear of discomfort or ambiguity stop you from getting mission critical face-to-face (or at least Skype-to-Skype) communciation practice.

I suggest prescheduling a few weeks worth of tutoring sessions on iTalki so you’re more likely to stick with the habit. As Tim Ferriss puts it in Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers:

“Schedule (and if possible, pay for) things in advance to prevent yourself from backing out… Make commitments in a high-energy state so that you can’t back out when you’re in a low-energy state.”

Make Peace With Your Discomfort

“When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. When injured, which happens frequently in the life of a martial artist, I try to avoid painkillers and to change the sensation of pain into a feeling that is not necessarily negative. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.”

Learning a language will entail tolerating lots of ambiguity and uncertainty, making heaps of mistakes, using the wrong word or a given word incorrectly (often leading to much unintended comedy at your expense), accidentally committing social faux pas, etc. But such experiences are only as embarassing and uncomfortable as you let them be. You can instead choose to not take yourself so seriously, laugh at your blunders, and gain valuable (and highly memorable!) lessons about how the language works.

And just as Josh avoids painkillers to mask the discomoft of injuries, I don’t recommend that you use alcohol to drown out the potential awkwardness of communicating with native speakers. Yes, booze is a powerful social lubricant and can indeed help you communicate more smoothly by lowering inhibtion and second guessing. But this is not a crutch you want to rely on in the long run unless you want to be drunk 24-7… Moreover, since alcohol negatively impacts memory, the progress you make under the influence will likely fade away like your memories of the night itself.

Be Present & Don’t Dwell on Mistakes

“When we are present to what is, we are right up front with the expansion of time, but when we make a mistake and get frozen in what was, a layer of detachment builds. Time goes on and we stop. Suddenly we are living, playing chess, crossing the street with eyes closed in memory. And then comes the taxicab.”

A surefire way to slow your Japanese conversations to a crawl, bore your interlocutor to tears, and ultimately hinder your progress in the language is to get caught up in the moment on speaking perfectly and avoiding (or trying to fix) mistakes. Yes, it’s important to constantly refine your language skills and fill in gaps, but the focus in the moment should be on communication and flowing practice, not grammar and vocabulary. If speaking with a tutor, I find it most helpful if they keep track of my mistakes as we talk but then only review them afterwards . This approach helps prevent the “affective filter” from going up (i.e. affects on langauge acquisition caused by negative emotions like fear, embarrassment, etc.) and keeps the conversation flowing more naturally (something that is far more enjoyable for both parties).

Numbers to Leave Numbers & Form to Leave Form

“By numbers to leave numbers or form to leave form, I am describing a process in which technical information is integrated into what feels like natural intelligence. Sometimes there will literally be numbers. Other times there will be principles, patterns, variations, techniques, ideas. A good literal example of this process, one that does in fact involve numbers, is a beginner’s very first chess lesson. All chess players learn that the pieces have numerical equivalents―bishops and knights are worth three pawns, a rook is five pawns, a queen is nine. Novices are counting in their heads or on their fingers before they make exchanges. In time, they will stop counting. The pieces will achieve a more flowing and integrated value system. They will move across the board like fields of force. What was once seen mathematically is now felt intuitively.”

This is precisely like internalizing the syntax, grammar, patterns, and collocations in a foreign language. At first, you will have to consciously decode and produce phrases. It will be a slow, tiresome process. But with enough exposure and practice, you will eventually develop an intuitive, subconscious ability to quickly construct grammatical utterances. This is the stuff fluency is made of.

Play Like a Child While Harnessing Your Adult Advantages

“I think a life of ambition is like existing on a balance beam. As a child, there is no fear, no sense for the danger of falling. The beam feels wide and stable, and natural playfulness allows for creative leaps and fast learning. You can run around doing somersaults and flips, always testing yourself with a love for disocvery and new challenges. If you happen to fall off―no problem, you can just get back on. But then, as you get older, you become more aware of the risk of injury. You might crack your head or twist your knee. The beam is narrow and you have to stay up there. Plunging off would be humiliating. While a child can make the beam a playground, high-stress performers often transform the beam into a tightrope. Any slip becomes a crisis. Suddenly you have everything to lose, the rope is swaying above a crater of fire, increasingly dramatic acrobatics are expected of you but the air feels thick with projectiles aimed to dislodge your balance. What was once light and inspiring can easily mutate into a nightmare. A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness. My chess career ended with me teetering on a string above leaping flames, and in time, through a different medium, I rediscovered a relationship to ambition and art that has allowed me the freedom to create like a child under world championship pressure. This journey, from child back to child again, is at the very core of my understanding of success.”

While the stakes in language learning are rarely as high as they were for Josh in international chess tournaments or martial arts competitions, they can definitely feel that way. I remember feeling an immense amount of pressure (most of which I put on myself looking back) when I was tasked with interpreting for visiting delegations during my work for the Japanese government. I thought that any mistakes or translation blunders would send me straight down into the flames of shame and embarassment. In reality, most of my mistakes were not even noticed. And those that were picked up were easily brushed off with a self-effacing joke. It took me far too long, but I finally learned to have fun while interpreting and translating, even when there were words I didn’t know and concepts I didn’t understand. I learned to play with the language like a child tinkers with Legos. The less I cared about perfection, the better my Japanese became and the more fun I had along the way. I hope you can discover the same realization.

The following is an excerpt from Master Japanese: The Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide to Learning Nihongo the Fun Way.

Most learners mistake “studying” a language for actually “acquiring” a language. The two are very different beasts, which is one of the major reasons why most adult language learners fail despite years of effort: they spend all their time reading about Japanese instead of spending the requisite time in Japanese. This is like trying to learn how to drive by reading the car’s owner’s manual. Obviously not a good recipe for success.

Or here is a metaphor using soccer if that hits closer to home:

“Imagine me teaching you soccer through books. I insist you memorize the physics of each possible shot, over 1–2 years, before we get on the field. How will you do? Well, first, you’ll likely quit before you ever touch a ball. Second, when you get on the field, you’ll have to start from scratch, turning that paper knowledge into practical knowledge.” ―Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Chef

I am not saying that language study is inherently bad or that book learning should be completely avoided, but it is important to understand its limitations and ensure that you get the real-world, human to human interaction your brain needs to internalize a language and reach conversational fluency.

One of the key differences between language “study” and language “acquisition” is the type of memory developed in each:

• Language study (especially formal, classroom-based learning) tends to create and reinforce “declarative memory”.
• Language acquisition (which only happens when you get sufficient input and active practice) forms and strengthens “procedural memory”.

Dr. Victor Ferreira, a psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, has done some fascinating studies on procedural memory’s role in language, concluding that:

“…the core knowledge underlying human syntactic ability—one of the most creative capacities known in nature, and one that is commonly thought to depend on advanced and flexible intelligent functioning—is shaped by a specialized system of basic memory mechanisms that are themselves found in even the simplest of organisms.”

Declarative memories have the following attributes:

• They are conscious.
• You can put them into words.
• They store explicit information (i.e. knowing that something is the case).

For example:

• Knowing that your bike is 6061-T6 aluminum.
• Knowing that Japanese is a Subject-Object-Verb language.

Procedural memories, on the other hand:

• Are unconscious.
• Cannot be put into words as easily, if at all.
• Store implicit information (i.e. knowing how to do something).

For example:

• Knowing how to ride your bike.
• Properly speaking in SOV order without thinking.

It’s important to note that both kinds of memory are involved in language acquisition, but most academic approaches focus almost entirely on declarative memory tasks, all but ignoring the activities required to build procedural memories. This is why you can emerge from ten years of formal language study unable to have even the most basic conversation with native speakers. Sure, you can rattle off a list of vocabulary words, but you can’t use the same words in context or understand them when spoken back to you because you have only worked out your declarative memory muscles. Your weak, flabby procedural muscles simply can’t keep up with the rapid-fire pace of natural speech.

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.”

This is definitely true of language acquisition. The safe, predictable, highly structured nature of classroom-based academic language study does not prepare one for the messy interactions that one will encounter in the real world. To reach fluency in a foreign language, one needs randomness, not a lesson plan. Or as Taleb puts it:

“I don’t know anyone who ever learned to speak his mother tongue in a textbook, starting with grammar and, checked by biquarterly exams, systematically fitting words to the acquired rules. You pick up a language best thanks to situational difficulty, from error to error, when you need to communicate under more or less straining circumstances, particularly to express urgent needs (say, physical ones, such those arising in the aftermath of dinner in a tropical location).”

Like me, Taleb places great importance on mistakes, ambiguity, and discomfort in language learning, all essential ingredients of effective second language acquisition that textbooks and interpreters destroy:

“One learns new words without making a nerd-effort, but rather another type of effort: to communicate, mostly by being forced to read the mind of the other person— suspending one’s fear of making mistakes. Success, wealth, and technology, alas, make this mode of acquisition much more difficult. A few years ago, when I was of no interest to anyone, foreign conference organizers did not assign to me the fawning ‘travel assistant’ fluent in Facebook English, so I used to be forced to fend for myself, hence picking up vocabulary by finger pointing and trial and error (just as children do) —no handheld devices, no dictionary, nothing. Now I am punished by privilege and comfort—and I can’t resist comfort. The punishment is in the form of a person, fluent in English, greeting me by displaying my misspelled name at the airport, no stress, no ambiguity, and no exposure to Russian, Turkish, Croatian, or Polish outside of ugly (and organized) textbooks. What is worse, the person is unctuous; obsequious verbosity is something rather painful under the condition of jet lag.”

Taleb goes on to share what he believes to be the most effective language learning strategy of all―being jailed in a foreign country:

“My friend Chad Garcia improved his Russian thanks to an involuntary stay in the quarantine section of a hospital in Moscow for an imagined disease. It was a cunning brand of medical kidnapping, as during the mess after the end of the Soviet rule, hospitals were able to extort travelers with forced hospital stays unless they paid large sums of money to have their papers cleared. Chad, then barely fluent in the language, was forced to read Tolstoy in the original, and picked up quite a bit of vocabulary.”

I wouldn’t wish a jail sentence upon any of you no matter how effective it might be for language learning, but hey, when in Rome…or rather, “when in Russia”.

I read on a blog a few years back that:

“Anything students need to know has to be taught, not caught.”

This soundbite seems logical, but it underpins the major misconception widely on display in traditional language classrooms and programs: the notion that languages can be taught. The truth is that languages can only be “acquired”, not taught. Human language is a physical skill akin to walking. Parents and schools did not “teach” you how to walk; you figured it out through trial and error. Language ability is the same; you did not learn how to speak English because your parents or teachers taught you about “subjects” and “predicates”, the meaning of Latin or Greek word roots, or English case inflections. Many schools, educators, and parents have believe in the faulty notion that we have to teach children their language, when in reality, they will acquire the language around them automatically given sufficient input and chances to practice output.

The exception to this stance is writing, a human technology that does indeed need to be taught. Writing is a skill that requires massive amounts of reading input, and an equally massive amount of writing output.  Having a teacher to give feedback on readability, mechanics, style, and writing conventions does help significantly.

One last thing: Perhaps the biggest reason grammar-based language teaching remains so common (despite disastrous results), is good old fashioned business. There is a lot of money to be made selling books, training teachers, running conferences, preparing students for tests, and selling cram school tuitions.

First of all, “mastery” does not mean “perfection”. Such a thing doesn’t exist in languages.  And even if it did, it would not be a “S.M.A.R.T. goal” (covered in detail in my Master Japanese and Master Mandarin guides) and is therefore irrelevant to our purposes as language learners.

So if “mastery” does not equal “perfection”, what does it mean?

I define “mastery” as follows:

The ability to use a language well for your communicative purposes.

That’s it. Mastery is completely relative to your personal and professional needs:

• If you are learning Chinese to work in China or Taiwan, then “mastery” would mean being able to easily communicate with your boss, colleagues, and customers.
• If you want a meaningful social life, then “mastery” might mean being able to understand and contribute to casual conversations at a quiet tea shop on Maokong, māokōng (貓空) or at a loud Taipei dance club.
• If you are a kung fu film fanatic, then “mastery” for you might mean being able to understand your favorite flick without relying on English (or even Chinese) subtitles.
• If you are a hitherto monolingual Chinese-American, perhaps “mastery” entails finally being able to talk with relatives in their native language.

In all of these scenarios, “mastery” does not entail learning every last word you may hear or read. Even native speakers come across vocabulary they don’t know, or encounter Chinese characters that they have forgotten how to write or pronounce. The key is to know enough of a language that you can ask about the meaning of an unfamiliar word or character and then actually understand the answer.

Am I saying that you shouldn’t worry about how well you speak or write? Absolutely not. You should constantly strive to expand your vocabulary and improve your grammar, but the focus should always be on quality over quantity. Just as in martial arts, having lots of moves is not as important as mastering a small set of techniques. As Bruce Lee famously said:

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Learning languages is a multi-faceted process. Nowadays they would probably call it holistic. Or 360. Or something.

But what I mean is that there are many different channels you can use to absorb the language which then enable you to reproduce it when the situation requires.

There is the bread and butter of vocabulary learning which you simply have to integrate into your daily routine. There is grammar and syntax to think of – this is best taught and then practised until trial and error gets you to a place where you can slip clause A into hole B with confidence. Then there is form and function to mull over – when is it appropriate to use what tone and what style of formality. Then of course there is pronunciation to consider – making sure you are understood.

Naturally these different facets are variously served by blends of active and passive learning.

Through the passive consumption of audio content (as it is now so-called), language students can absorb all these different facets through listening and comprehension exercises. These exercises, if structured correctly to include active task-based learning, are a great way to consolidate and strengthen the base layer of knowledge of the target language.

However, I actually want to propose a method which turns this on its head a little bit and make a case for an active learning task which I have found particularly useful in the past. This is the production of a short radio drama through a short workshop (a little like this one). This was an especially stimulating exercise for me because it combined so many of cultural passions – sound, music, drama and speech. When you can harness a student’s interests to language learning, you often find it to be the most dynamic and productive of learning periods.

Let me set the scene a little bit.

In our particular case we were given the outline of a situation ripe with conflict – an awkward dinner party conversation between a father and his teenage daughter where the overly defensive mother is also present and trying to mediate between the two firebrands of her family.

We had to put together a 5-10 minute sketch in the target language which would work as a piece of radio drama. The facilitator gave us a box of goodies with which to create whichever sound effects we would need to create to accompany the awkward conversation. We were to create the piece together, rehearse, and then record it for reference.

Firstly, between the 3 of us, we thought how the conversation might pan out between the father and daughter. We decided that the daughter was going to tell her father over dinner that she was pregnant by her boyfriend (of whom her father was not keen at all). There was to be some skirting around the subject by the daughter, some awkward silences, some tension-raising screeches of glasses and scuffs of chairs on the floor and then finally an explosion of rage from the father which we wanted to cut off just as the detonator went off (for effect).

We then noted this down in rough form in the form of a rough script, allocating one character’s voice to each of us and we imagined what we might say in that character’s position.

Where we could we tried to write the script in the target language but mostly we wrote in our native tongue and then translated afterwards. This seemed to work well.

Interspersed between the lines of dialogue we were instructed to use sounds to replace the ‘unsaid’ where the answer to a question might not be a directly verbalised response but instead the shifting of a glass, a nervous cough, or the scrape of a chair.

We then rehearsed and, from the practice session, we were able to edit the sections which didn’t work. On top of this we improved and honed the translations to make them more realistic.

We then completed another practice run-through and, when everyone was happy with their sections, we recorded it.

The great advantage of this particular task was that it made us think about all of the different facets – accurate (and realistic vocabulary), correct grammatical construction, hitting the right tone and pronouncing effectively so that, when the recording was played back we didn’t all cringe in embarrassment. (OK, well we did a bit because it is always like that when you hear your own voice!). With the fun that comes with the introduction of sound effects to enrich the piece, the task becomes refreshing as well as constructive.

Things to remember for the set-up of the task:

1. Bilingualism improves executive function, especially in children.

“Executive function” is an important function in the brain that governs such activities as planning, controlling impulsivity, and staying focused for a task until completion, while discarding irrelevant information. Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame published an article in the journal Science which focused on the way that bilingualism greatly enhances executive function. This is especially true of children, and the improved executive control is greater the more truly fluent an individual is in both languages.

2. Bilingualism may reduce the chances of dementia later in life.

Of course, although our focus here is children, knowing two or more languages can have lifelong benefits. A recent University of California-San Diego study, cited in this New York Times article, found that those with “higher degrees” of bilingualism experienced the onset of dementia and other Alzheimer’s symptoms much later in life. Bilingualism is basically thought to engage the brain in such a way that it keeps it “in shape,” as it were.

3. Bilingualism has a much greater influence in the workforce than you would think.

When I first graduated from college, the job market was particularly rough. My peers and I all struggled to find work that fit our skills and interests. But you know what? I’m not exaggerating those who found work more quickly all had one thing in common. We were all multilingual from an early age. Don’t just take my word for it, however. Check out this Brain Track article, which explains the growing demand of bilingual workers.

4. Bilingualism improves memory.

You probably don’t have to be told that having a good memory is advantageous. After all, so much of what we do, whether at work or school, is dependent on having a sharp memory in order to succeed. Several studies, like this one, have demonstrated that bilingualism has a profoundly positive effect on episodic, semantic, and working memory.

5. Bilingualism fosters a greater and more sensitive understanding of the world.

We can talk all day about the positive effects bilingualism can have on an individual. But ultimately, what bilingualism comes down to is something more than just the sum of its attendant benefits. It’s all about understanding the full spectrum of diversity in this world, and knowing on a deep and visceral level that everyone is different. Grasping that the world both within us and around us can be interpreted and described in different ways helps children grow into mature and caring adults.

Raising bilingual children, especially if you aren’t necessarily bilingual yourself, of course, can be difficult. If either you or your partner knows a different language well, try speaking the other language on a daily basis. Consider enrolling your child in a bilingual school, or one that strongly supports bilingual education. Hiring a nanny or babysitter who only knows another language is another great way of introducing your children to the wonderful world of bilingualism. Whatever you do, make learning a second language a priority. It might just make or break your child’s future.

Can you suggest other ways bilingual skills can benefit children? Leave a comment below.

Source: http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/bingualism-across-us

The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci stated that language is always closely related to culture and ideology. For that reason, the primary reason for which many are opposed to the linguistic hegemony of English is not because they are fundamentally opposed to the language itself, but because they see it as a means by which the English-speaking world is engaging in neo-colonialism. Where the English language goes, cultural perceptions and ideologies from English-speaking countries follow, reshaping the cultural landscapes of various countries in ways that some see as an affront and a marginalization of their own cultures. One of the main areas in which this is an issue is in the world of education and academia.

In many disciplines, the best and brightest students throughout the world feel that it is necessary to learn English if they want to excel professionally. For this reason, many top-level schools hold all of their classes in English regardless of where they are located. For example, the China Europe International Business School one of the top business schools in China holds its classes exclusively in English. If ambitious students do not learn in English speaking schools, a growing number of the best online colleges are offering supplemental English courses.

According to Professor Yukio Tsuda, an unavoidable effect of the expectation that all learned people must be able to speak English well is the assumption that anyone who does not speak English well is uneducated and unintelligent. This can result in an unfair marginalization of various professionals, experts, educators, and researchers who have stellar credentials in their particular fields but simply lack linguistic skills in English.

Those speaking other languages may have trouble getting their scholarly works published and distributed through the most esteemed venues of the world, and any achievements they make may not receive the renown or attention they would receive if their findings were simply published in English. One might argue that the obvious recourse for such people is to pay someone to translate their works into English. However, that only fixes one aspect of the problem. With English standing as the world language for both business and academia, such people are also hampered in their ability to network and establish the personal relationships of trust and respect that are often so vital to success.

In late 2011, President Hu Jin-tao of China published a controversial essay in which he highlighted what he saw as a culture war between China and the West primarily with the English-speaking world. Hu identifies the United States like the United Kingdom before it as a force that “exploits its strength to export cultural products throughout the world.” He likened these cultural products to opium. While his pronunciations were geared toward a general audience, the implications on the world of education were particularly clear.

As long as countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and India which has now all but made English its primary language continue to be regional and world economic powerhouses, English will continue to be the international language of choice for business. As long as the United States and other English-speaking countries continue to flood the world market with movies, music, books, and other media products that people all over the world enjoy, professors in humanities and social science programs will continue to feel required to address them as parts of their own cultural canon. And as long as the scientific community continues to use English as a lingua franca to communicate among multinational peers, scientists of all fields will feel obligated to become proficient in English.

Hu Jin-tao, Yukio Tsuda, and others may be incensed at the prospect of another century of English hegemony in education, but so long as the economics are there, these trends will continue.