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John: This is episode five of the Foreign Language Mastery podcast. I’m your host John Fotheringham. In today’s show I interview Randy “The Yearlyglot” from yearlyglot.com. To read a transcript of this episode and to find tips, tools and tech for mastering any foreign language, go to languagemastery.com. Here is the phone interview, originally recorded June 6, 2010.
John: Maybe we can start out…just tell me a little bit more about how you got started in language learning and what languages you’ve learned so far. And then I’ll be asking you a bit more about your Yearlyglot project.
Randy: Maybe I should have prepared a little bit so that I would have some canned answers, but that’s all right.
John: I like the uncanned answers better. The real deal.
Randy: [01:03] Nice. I guess my whole life I’ve always been interested in language just in general. I don’t really have a good explanation for why. I started all the way back in kindergarten. My kindergarten teacher actually taught us Spanish words at the end of every day.One new Spanish word. So that might actually be the thing that got me going in this direction. By middle school I was taking Spanish classes. In high school I was taking German classes and French classes. One of my best friends in high school was a Filipino guy who have some trouble with the English language because he and his family had just moved here. He and I took up a pretty close friendship just on a principal that he asked for some help on the first day and I gave it to him. So in addition in everything else he taught me a lot of Filipino Tagalog…
[02:06] I just sort of picked up on everything every time it was put in front of me. I would have never taken the German and French classes except for the school didn’t offer anything past Spanish II. It was weird. I just wanted to keep doing language and I ran out of Spanish so I switched to German and then I met this Filipino guy and then learned some French and before you know it I’m like, wow, it’s not so hard. I want to learn every language.
John: Right. It is addictive that’s for sure. So the whole yearlyglot idea of learning any language in one year or less is that something you do help more recently or is that something can always gone towards…
Randy: That actually is a very recent development. It comes from the back of learning Russian pretty much fluently in one year. After everybody told me it would take six, seven, eight years of study. I still don’t claim to be an expert, but I put in some time and did the work and after one year I’m pretty fluent in Russian for a guy who only been learning for a year.
[03:09] Everybody says it is one of the hardest language which is if I con do it with that I should be able to do with anything. I don’t see why anybody else couldn’t do it especially with the easier language. Something like a Romance language that’s so close to English anyways. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to learn that in a year. But it proves that you can do that a lot of times in three months.
John: I often say, if you do things right there’s no reason you can’t…at least get to a modicum of fluency in six months. I think that is a good, realistic target. I think six years is ridiculous but that gets to the issue which is, if you do it the old academics in the classroom will take six years.
Randy: Right.
John: That’s maybe the next question I have for you is, how exactly do you go about learning the language that you could do it in under a year?
Randy: I never really formalized a learning method until the last third writing in the blog and now I’m starting to get it really in front of me and seen it all.
[04:05] If I move this over here it would work better and that sort of thing. Actually I’m starting to see a lot of logic behind some of the more commercial products like you think of the Rosetta Stone or something like that and all of us in the community kind of ridicule Rosetta Stone but there are some things they do right. I think particularly the order in which you go about things you start of with some really basic stuff and then you just build on that. I think if you see returns quickly you get encouraged. I guess that’s my biggest thing is if you can get encouraged you will keep doing it.So I try to do things at…if I can learn how to say, “Where is…” and then I can learn how to say, “Thank you”. And then I can learn how to say, “Excuse me”. I can immediately turn those three things into excuse me, where is whatever. Thank you. And now I actually had small connection at the cause of just learning three things.
John: [05:03] Right.
Randy: So I think that that’s really what I tried. I try to find a minimum amount of learning that you can get the maximum usage out of and I actually turn it into practical example sentence because I know those sort of things. Like I said, if you get really encouraged by what you’re learning you’ll feel more momentum and you’ll keep going.
John: How do you feel about the whole input versus output debate? I mean full disclosure. I’m definitely of the input camp. Though I’ve lived abroad for most of the last decade. It’s not practical for those that are going to be moving to Japan tomorrow. To spend six months on listening and reading input.
Randy: And by the same token, it’s also not practical for those who are not going to move to expect to do a lot of output either. I think that the input versus output debate is mostly…it feels to me mostly like a constructive disagreement sort of manufactured for the sake of ratings or clicks or whatever. Anyway, because really you need both.
[06:13] It might serve you better to have more output if you’re in person and it might serve you better to have more input. But at the end if you don’t do both you’re not going to learn. So I think that the debate itself is kind of silly. It’s entertaining but if it lost the entertainment value a long time ago for me.
John: I have my opinions but I really wanted just share the opinions of others that…what’s worth for them? Because obviously everyone’s different. and what it’s works for me won’t necessarily work for everybody. Although I do think 90% of the things probably work for everybody and it’s that extra 10% that is different. And that’s why you need to present a variety of method.
Randy: Yeah, absolutely. It’s like the parade of principle of 80/20. Everybody can benefit from that 80.
John: I think we’ve read the same book. So back to then, what’s worth for you? So you’ve build on the basics which makes sense. What other do’s and don’ts can you share? I know there’s a lot.
Randy: [07:13] My biggest don’t. I love to ramble on and on about don’ts. Maybe it’s a little too negative but…
John: The first post I put on my language blog was the top 10 not to do list items in in the language.
Randy: I think that my biggest don’t is don’t put too much pressure on yourself. People worry about how far back they are in the book or how much chapters they’ve done or how many words they know. It becomes so stressful that you’re actually…you lower the quality of your learning for the sake of getting more quantity. For me that’s the biggest don’t. It’s easy to over stress yourself. It’s all about staying positive. Anybody who has a positive attitude can succeed.
[08:04] I look at people…here in Chicago, it’s very diverse. It’s a very…like a world community. And I’m everyday, surrounded by people speaking hundreds of different languages. And what’s interesting to me is that when they speak to me they don’t speak correctly or properly. But they’re not afraid to do it.
John: Right.
Randy: And I think about people I know who are like, “Oh, I’m trying to learn Spanish.” or “I’m trying to learn this.” And you’ll never hear them actually do it. They never tried. They just say they’re trying. I’m on the bus with somebody who is asking for directions and they’re butchering English but they’re not afraid to do it.
John: Right.
Randy: That’s so important.
John: The fear of the pain of doing something I think that turns so many people off of whether it’s a language, whether it’s getting in shape. It’s all the same. It’s using the fear of the task is worsening the actual task itself.
Randy: [09:02] Absolutely. The anticipation of, “Oh, it’s going to be so much work.” But…I was watching an interview with Will Smith recently and he was talking about his dad have a shop and broke down the brick wall and then asked his sons to rebuild the brick wall. And the kid suppose to say, “Oh, it’s impossible. That would take forever.”
[09:23] Then his dad said, “I don’t care how you do it. Don’t think about building the whole wall. Just lay one brick and just make sure every time that you lay that brick perfectly you don’t care about anything else. And day by day and brick by brick after several weeks or months or he didn’t really say how long but had rebuild the brick wall of the shop.
[09:44] That’s so motivational. When you think of building things…don’t think of how far you have to go or how long or how far the journey is. You just think about doing each step the best you can. Eventually you’ll look back and you’re surprised at how much you’ve done and how easy it’s become.
John: [10:04] Right. That’s really a good metaphor. I like that. Great.
Randy: Specially with languages because there is a lot of work. We’ll be fooling ourselves to say, “Oh yeah. Anybody can do it in a week or two.” There is a lot but you can do those things that keeps you motivated. And then you can look back and say, “Holy cow! That whole journey was fun and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.”
[10:26] I really like the metaphor you drew to working out. That particularly, for me, has always been one my favorite analogies from pretty much anything difficult in life. Because I go to the gym every morning. I weight train in the morning before I work.
[10:40] Everyday I go in there and I have to push up a weigh. And I have a goal in mind…every time I go I try to push five more pounds than the last time. I don’t always succeeded doing it. But week by week I am pushing more weight every time than I was a week before.
[11:02] You look at that long-term goal of, I want to bench-press 250 pounds or I want to squat for 100 pounds and you think, “Oh my god. That’s far off and impossible.” But each week you look back and say, “Wow, I remember when I could only do 160.” Overtime, you watch yourself change and you watch your strength grow and what it does more than anything else in my opinion is it makes your mind strong. And when your mind is strong you believe you can do anything. And once your mind is strong there’s nothing that can stop you. It might be days or weeks or months but there’s no task you won’t attack. That’s the attitude I like to have.
John: Time plus effort.
Randy: Absolutely.
John: It is in the language matter that my main interest is martial arts. And I just like to share with people that the word Kung Fu did actually means skill through effort or skill through…
Randy: Nice.
John: And it’s such a good analogy. The language. It’s just doing it day in day out and eventually you’ll get better.
[12:02] You can’t not get better. One of the reason so many people fail is because they’re just not doing it ultimately. Sitting in a classroom is not doing it. Even watching a movie. You put in a foreign language movie. That’s not actually doing it. You must reactively doing it.
Randy: Right. Classroom. That’s a really great topic for me to go on and on about. I think that, like I was saying, about the weight training and stuff and about your mind being strong.
[12:36] When you talk about signing in for a class that’s always the really the cop out I think. You want to do something or you say you want to do something so you sign up for the class and that becomes like the token effort of saying, “Hey, I tried.” But the lessons are always so far apart and so short and even worse they’re retarded by the fact that you have to teach a whole group. Not just one person.
[13:02] You’re not even putting up a fraction of the effort. You will do spending that same time on your own with a book once a week. The worst thing about the classroom is that if you don’t do it you can blame the teacher. “Oh, I tried but the teacher was no good.
[13:19] The class was no good. It was too far away or it was too expensive” or whatever. But you don’t take any responsibility when you sign up for a class the way that you would if you just grab a book and just start reading it. Or grab a CD and start listening to it.
John: OK. Any other tips that you would like to add or any don’ts?
Randy: Well, there was one thing that sparks something in my mind that you said a moment ago too about a lot of people aren’t trying, you know, it’s a lot of work. And it reminded me of something else that…recently I just really started thinking about this is that everything is work.
[14:01] Any skill…anything that you do well is the product of hours and hours and hours of practice and work. Some people may have a talent in whatever. You can’t teach talent. But nobody becomes successful on talent alone. You have to have the skill. When it comes to anything in life…but language is a great example of this. It really feels to me like people give up too early. And even at the easiest phase all you have to do is just correct that book or talk to that tutor or put on that CD or whatever it is that you do to study instead of turning on the TV And it’s so easy, effortless to keep doing. Once you do something, you know, it’s a have. It’s effortless to keep doing that. It’s actually more work for you to stop and go turn on that TV and ignore your language time. Sometimes I found it astounding that people actually give up. That means you;re making a choice to quit.
[15:08] Just like my gym metaphor. Again, if I get sick and I don’t want to go in the gym because I’m not feeling well or something. I automatically start to miss it and after a day or two I’m like, I want to go in earlier and try to make up for all that time. There is a point like if you miss a lot of time like a few weeks or something.
[15:29] There is a point where that habit starts to fall off and then you have to do the work of rebuilding it. And the same thing is with everything certainly with languages. I just think that over all unless there’s like a death in the family or something. There is no thing that can stop me from spending an hour or a day learning something about languages or whatever because that’s what I want. How could I stop? I would have to make a conscious decision to actually stop.
John: That leads to another…I think the important point is it does take time. It does take consistency. But I also think that people overestimate how many hours a day it will take. They’re so used to sitting in a classroom for two to three hours.
[16:10] And realistically I don’t usually study or more than 15 or 30 minutes of the time. I just try to do that three times a day everyday. That’s much, much more powerful than doing four hours a week but all at once.
Randy: Yeah. If you over burden your mind it starts to fight back against you. I do the same thing. I wake up in the morning and I browse a vocabulary list or I look at something or just read a blog entry or something for fifteen minutes.
[16:41] And then I head off to the gym. Go to work. On the ride home from work I spend 15, 30 minutes. However long it is depending on the traffic that day. look at some phrase list. So whatever I’m doing that particular day and again once a night. So yeah, probably about the same as you. Three times a day for maybe 15 to 30 minutes.
John: [17:01] As you said listening the way they work out on their way home. It’s just making that a habit. It’s, I’m going to do the dishes. Pop in the iPod. In line at the store, OK, put in the iPod. Every chance that you’re not doing something that requires your 100% attention. That can become another learning opportunity.It doesn’t have to be sitting down on a desk.
Randy: And I would even go so far as to say that like a lot of times when people like us use that analogy, you know, we say five minutes at the supermarket line or 15 minutes on the train. I think that listeners or readers sometimes get the impression that we’re saying, “You should do that every time.” And really, that’s not the case. All you need to do is just make use of one of those times over the course of your day.
[17:51] And you’re already doing something. I don’t spend every five minute line wait reading something about languages and I don’t spend every cab ride or every train ride to rhyme the study of vocabulary. I just do sometimes. But it’s enough times.
John: [18:08] That’s a good point and that goes back the fear of doing it often prevents people from starting.
Randy: It can sound really scary when you hear people talk about it or you read some of these language hacking tips. All of these stuff, we’re all trying to help people. That’s why we’re all here. All of us are trying to help people to see that it’s easy. And sometimes there’s so many tips that people get overwhelmed and they think it’s going to be too hard.
John: I think in it’s aggregate though it’s doing a service. I think so many people do things so far their own way. And gets so fed up and they look it up this whole foreign language phobia and this belief that, “I’m just not going to learn any language which is like you’ll never learn.” I mean, almost everybody I know is that way.
[19:00] It’s that sort of the norm is, “I’m not good at languages.” And so I think it’s a lot of us. A lot of voices. A lot of echoes to…hopefully, eventually get to…not everybody but at least those that want to learn. Which I just hope that enough of our voices reach them. That they can shake themselves out of these belief that they can’t do it.
Randy: [19:22] Absolutely. And I think most of us probably all have similar stories about struggling with their first one or in my own personal struggle. This is going to sound funny from a guy who tells people it’s easy to learn languages. But I actually have such a hard time hearing that sometimes I don’t even understand English. I’m constantly asking people to repeat themselves and, you know, not understanding things that are said. And then you try to translate that into learning a foreign language. And it becomes a real challenge.
[20:01] So it’s one of those things where even though I’m telling you…I’m telling telling anybody who will listen. I can learn a new language every year. I’m totally not talking about the challenging part that anybody else who does this is going to have an easier time than I am.
John: Very good. What is your current language project and what is the next one you think?
Randy: The current language project is Italian. Although it’s never just one thing. I’m planning a trip to Lithuania in a few months. I allow myself the weekends to stray from Italian.
[20:42] So every weekend I’m learning a little bit of Lithuanian in anticipation of this trip but during the week I stay focused on Italian. But I haven’t selected my language for next year and even if I have I wouldn’t admit it to anyone but I do know that I’m starting to narrow in on one of maybe three. I’m very, very interested in Turkish. I’m living pretty close to Canada and I think that if I didn’t take advantage of French that would be foolish. The third one possibly Arabic.
[21:21] So, I’m not really sure. I haven’t chosen yet but I think that right now I’m teetering between those three. I could come out as a surprise and just pick something totally unexpected too.
John: All right. We’ll just make a wrap up. If there’s only one thing you want listeners to hear about language learning what would it be?
Randy: [21:38] When you showed somebody you’ve spent even the smallest amount of time to learn about them specially if you’re American. Because we have a stigma to overcoming the world. If you show people that you have spent even smallest amount of time taking an interest in their language and in their culture it’s so well-received that…it makes such a big difference on the way that you’re perceived and the way that your whole dealings with that person go. I was just recently at the bar watching a hockey game. Go Blackhawks. I hope they win the Stanley Cup.
John: [22:12] Now you’re speaking foreign language to me. I don’t speak hockey. I’m sorry.
Randy: That’s all right. A patron who had no place to sit was standing near my table and I started a talking to her. And I picked up on her a Russian accent. On a whim I’m assuming that I’m right because there are a lot of Polish people in this town too.
[22:35] I said something to her in Russian and she immediately became my best friend for the rest of the night. I saw half a dozen…maybe a dozen guys come in and try to hit on her over the night and she blew them all off. It’s so interesting the way those little language niceties can change the way you’re perceived.
John: And there’s a motivation for you right there. I mean if you’re struggling just stay motivated in the language. look no further than that. It just opens up so many doors that really cannot be opened in another way. It’s a pleasure talking to you, Randy.
Randy: [23:08] Absolutely. Yeah. Have a great day, John.
John: You too. Thanks so much, Randy.
Randy: Take care.
John: Bye bye.
Randy: Bye.
John: For Show notes and the transcript of this episode go to languagemastery.com. and if you’ve enjoyed the show please take a minute to rate us in iTunes.
To learn more about Randy, visit his website:
Fluent Every Year]]>
OK. Everyone knows that quote by Woody Allen or whoever about showing up. You know, 70% of winning is showing up. Well, Woody Allen, that daughter-dating scoundrel, lied to you. The truth is 70% of winning is showing up is a bunch of bull!
Because, in fact, 100% OF WINNING IS SHOWING UP. I mean it. Thats all you have to do. Show up. Be there. And it will take care of itself. Have you ever noticed that people at the top of their respective fields are often the most prolific? Do you think this is an accident? Chief, this is not a coincidence. Sure, there are exceptions. But take TEDZUKA Osamu/????, one of the most prolific manga creators in history. Ask yourself, was he prolific because he was good or good because he was prolific? I say the latter. Shakespeare wrote quite a bit of noss, too. Michael Jordan and Larry Bird practiced like absolute fiends; we shouldn’t insult them by attributing their skill to race, height (MJ was below NBA average, by the way) or even talent until we’ve spent at least as much productive court time as them. Let me put it this way: assuming you are able-bodied, if you worked as hard as an NBA player for as long as an NBA player on basketball, you would be an NBA player, but only if you worked as hard. That Pavlina chap has like a kajillion articles on his blog: he didn’t make it off one post. More on topic, the best group of Japanese speakers on the planet, a group many call the Japanese, just happen to spend more time hearing and reading Japanese than any other group. They’ve “shown up” to Japanese as if it were their job or national pastime or something. But there’s nothing special about this group of people; when a Japanese person speaks Japanese to you, what she is demonstrating is nothing more than the result of dedication, albeit often unwitting dedication. Whether you are Japanese by default (born and raised in Japan) or by choice, it doesn’t matter, your path and your task are essentially the same: show up.
I’m from Kenya. Sure, we have a snow-capped mountain, but we don’t have real snow or ice or anything. Yet I learned to ice-skate last year. Do I have some talent for ice-skating? No. But I read up on Wayne Gretzky and how he had ice-skated every day (4-5 hours a day), how his dad had made him a home rink and everything. Apparently, he even had his skates on while eating dinner (he’d wolf down that Canadian food they fed him, and then he’d go back outside; he skated for hours every day, and went pro at about 17). I’m not an ice-hockey expert, but it seems quite clear to me that Gretzky made himself a great hockey player purely through ice time; that man showed up on ice for more hours than any of his peers. So I tried to model the man in my own small way, and ice-skated almost every day (4 days/week minimum, 2 hours per day sometimes 3 hours, sometimes 90 minutes) for two straight months (November and December). Now I can ice-skate. It wasn’t magic. The combination of being on the ice all the time and the people who saw me on the ice all the time and decided to give me some pointers, and this burning desire to not be out-skated by 6-year-olds (freaking toddlers giving me lip and having the skill to get away with it over my dead body, man, over-my-dead-body), all that combined to make me a competent skater. No one who sees me knows it’s been less than a year since I actually learned to skate. I can barely even remember what it was like when I used to walk around that rink holding onto the wall for dear life. (For the record, the first time I touched the ice was in August 2002 at a mall in Houston, Texas. The second time was in December 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In both cases, I didn’t actually know how to skate, and nothing carried over to my ice-skating project that started in November 2006). Anyway, the point is, after being on the rink all that time on a daily basis, Greztky or no Gretzky, it would be hard not to learn how to skate. When you show up, it’s hard not to succeed. With all the time I spent hardcoring on Japanese, it would be a struggle not to be fluent.
Today, all over Japan, Greater China and the world, kids are being born. OK, admittedly not that many kids (haha, gotta love that population shrinkage humor! *wink* *nudge*), but they are being born. Those kids are going to know Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese. But not because of parenting or genetics as such, but because they’re going to show up. They’re going to be surrounded by Japanese/Chinese 24/7/365.24219878. Are you going to let them beat you? Babies? Freaking BABIES? Beat YOU? Are you going to take that? You, a human being with a marvellous working brain capable of learning whatever is given it? And you’re going to let babbling, drooling half-wits (sorry, babies, don’t take it personally) beat you? If not, then get up off your rear and start doing all [language] all the time!
I’m going to take a leap here and tell you what I really think: I don’t believe in prodigies. I do not believe that any person holds a significant advantage over you; I do not deny the possibility that some people may have an advantage over you, but I absolutely reject the idea that that advantage is significant. I explained this in “You can have, do, or be ANYthing, but you can’t have, do, or be EVERYthing.” I think people invented the idea of prodigies in order to excuse themselves and their own children while seeming to congratulate the receiver of the title “prodigy”. It’s much easier on everyone’s egos to say “I or my child cannot do thing T like person P because person P has some semi-magical genetic superpower” than to say “I or my child cannot yet do T like P because I have not yet worked as hard W as P”. This is why Buddhism, which started off as a personal development movement, metamorphosed into a religion. Why be like Mike or Siddharta, when you can just sit back and worship them? Why work on your jumps, when you can watch the fruits of Michael’s work on his? Why free your own mind, when you can look up to someone who’s already freed his? It’s a very aristocratic idea that has no place in a true meritocracy, but the very people who are screwed over by it (regular folk like us) are at the same time very much in love with it: If there are prodigies, no one will call us out for not trying because they’re not trying either, and because we have created a condition that can only be fulfilled by accident of birth, our excuse is airtight: we can go about being mediocre for the rest of our lives, blameless.
Gretzky, Jordan, these people worked harder at their sports than you and I. So they started working earlier than you, this doesn’t make them prodigies, child or otherwise, this just makes them people who started earlier (and not even that early, Jordan famously got cut from his HS basketball team). To admit that they were not prodigies, to admit that they busted their little behinds to get where they were (no matter their age), does not make them less. To me, it only makes them more; it makes them greater. These were not superhumans. These were normal humans who made themselves super; they were not given a legacy like a Betty Crocker cookie mix that just needed eggs and milk, they made one from scratch. And that, to me, is something (someone) infinitely greater.
Bruce Lee is reported to have 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.”
A lot of times, we judge people (including ourselves), we call them (ourselves) “normal”, “prodigy” or “challenged” based on their first try. On their FREAKING first try. Don’t EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER judge yourself on your first try. At least wait until your 10,000th.
Don’t buy into all this kafuffin about how you have to start golf or violin or a language in the womb if you ever hope to be good. The only real reasons that there aren’t many late bloomers are money and flexibility. Money to buy equipment and time to practice, and flexibility of the mind a willingness to learn and grow, to accept change and, yes, even to accept sucking for a while.
Adults have this competence fetish; they cling desperately to their dignity like a little boy to his security blanket; they want to be good at everything they do, and (they think) everyone expects them to be good at anything they do if they are to do it at all adults are meant to be dignified and able; adults aren’t allowed to show ignorance or confusion. Well, forget that crap. Let go of your pride: you will suck at anything you are new at and little kids will be better than you. It’s okay, that’s how it’s supposed to be those kids used to suck, too. Sucking is always the first step on the path to greatness; it’s not a question of how many times the earth has made a full rotation around the sun since you were born; it’s a question of what you’ve done during those rotations. As my gamer friends might say “all who pwn must first be pwned”. And the time to be pwned is at the beginning. You are a noob, accept it; it’s not a death sentence, it’s just a rank you can win yourself a promotion.
The fact is, you are a human. Compared to other animals, you can’t run very fast, you can’t jump very high, you aren’t very big or strong. But you have this thing called a brain. And it’s purpose is to learn to do things new things, things that it didn’t know before. This brain is, of course, connected to the rest of your body so your whole body can join in the fun of learning new things; your body itself is constantly growing and changing. You’re not like a statue, motionless and set in stone, unless you choose to be. You’re not “too old”, it’s not “too late”, who even gave you the right to decide what time was right? I never got that memo! Who died and made you the god of When It Is No Longer The Right Time To Do Something?! Are you going to let your life be ruled by stupid old wives tales and stale folk wisdom? Are you going to fit yourself to bad research results? Are you going to be guided by how things are usually done? Are you going to be a little worker ant and live inside that cruddy little box of mediocrity that the world would draw for you if you would let it? Are you going to just read history or are you going to make it? Are you going to spend your whole life Monday-morning-quarterbacking yourself, talking about what you would do if you were younger? Are you going to live out your own little Greek tragedy, fulfilling everyone else’s lowest expectations of you? I think you know the answers to those questions. So, stop whining, and start doing. Whatever it is. Do it. And keep doing it. As long as you keep moving, you’re always getting closer to your destination.
Nap Hill said it best:
“Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
This article is copyright (©) 2007 Khatzumoto/AJATT.com and reprinted with permission | May 18, 2010
]]>In our interview, Dr. Kelm shares what he believes to be the 6 most important factors in effective language learning.
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Orlando: Well let me start by saying that I like your Foreign Language Mastery blog site; it’s been fun to read.
John: Thank you. I’ve ended up interviewing a number of my mentors and heroes, and I stumbled across your blog and really liked what you had to say, so I thought it would be good to share your views with my listeners and readers. So I think best would be maybe to go through those 5 fundamentals that you have on your blog. [Note: In my preparation for the interview, I accidentally missed reading No. 6.]
Orlando: Ah, sure.
John: I think that really sums up your basic stance. I’m sure there’s a lot more you could say, and we’ll fill in as we go. I think the first one was the 500 hours of study that’s required to reach a modicum of fluency.
Orlando: Right. The issue is time on task; that people underestimate how long it takes to learn a foreign language. And sometimes, even if they’re doing everything right, there’s a sense that ‘Oh, I still don’t speak Spanish!” because you don’t speak it as well as you speak English. And it’s always good to go back and tell people, “Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s not going to be a 20-hour project.” You know, I always get phone calls from people saying, “Uh, we want to negotiate with people in Mexico. Can you teach us some Spanish?” And it’s like, “Sure, but it’s not going to be a during your lunch hour for 3 weeks type of project.” So that first category is that realize that it does take time on task, and to be proficient in a foreign language, is going to take you a hunk of time.
That 500 hours is a nice number, too, because what it says is that even if you’re in a normal classroom situation and you meet 5 times a week for a whole semester, you’re still going to be way short of 500 hours. So a lot of it is you just got to spend more time on task. That’s number 1.
John: Ok, and then number 2 was about context.
Orlando: Number 2 is context, which is, words stick when you’re in the situation of the moment. Word’s don’t stick if you can’t connect them to some sort of experience or some kind of context. I often give the example to my students of a time I was sitting on a bus in Brazil, and there was this kid that was driving me crazy, jumping up and down and screaming and yelling. And the mother yelled out, “Não faça isso, filho.” (Don’t do that, son.) And I remember thinking afterwards, “Wow, command form!” And never again did I have to think about how to conjugate a command form in Portuguese. I saw the lady; I saw the kid; he was driving me crazy; and forever more, I could just say “Não faça isso, filho.” So that context of the moment really helped me have that word stick. So I think it’s a big deal to put all of your language learning into some sort of real context of a real opportunity.
John: Ok, on that note, what advice do you have for somebody who, for example, lives in the United States, and doesn’t have the opportunity to go live abroad? What can they do to create a context for themselves, so that that sticks?
Orlando: Well, you know what, the nice thing of being an adult learner is you can pretend. You can create those scenarios for yourself. You can put yourself in the situations. You can visualize yourself actually buying something, saying something. I actually think that’s one of the great opportunities of an adult learner; is we can role-play stuff. Where children when they learn a foreign language, they can never really put themselves in a role-play situation. But you see the sad thing is that a lot of people don’t know that. And so they will just take a big gigantic list of words, and kind of keep reading the list of words, and never ever try to visualize, “How are you ever going to really say this?” or “What would you really say in this real situation?”
John: You mentioned about differences between children and adults. Maybe we can go off on that tangent shortly. I think there are many, but I also think that there is a lot in common that people also underestimate. What’s your view on the similarities and differences?
Orlando: You know, I’m not a gigantic fan of the whole critical period, you’re kind of doomed after you’re an adult kind of thing. I also don’t believe, that, you know, sometimes people talk about how easy it is for children to learn a foreign language. But if you look at the amount of energy and effort they really put into it, we’re talking about 5, 6, 7 years where their whole concentration is language, language, language, playing with languages, playing with sounds, trying phrases out, communicating back and forth. There is nothing easy about the way children learn foreign languages. They’re just putting tons and tons and tons of effort and time into it. And so I think that sometimes we sell ourselves short when we say, “Oh, there’s automatic language learning that goes on when you’re a child.” Well, it’s automatic in the sense that you’re doing it every day, every day, every day, every day. But it certainly isn’t without tons of effort. And if we put as much effort into our adult language learning, as what children do into their first language acquisition, we would probably do a lot better as well.
Years and years ago, Lily Wong Fillmore did a great study, it was her dissertation, on little kids that were learning foreign languages in elementary schools. And she had a great example that kids first socialize, then they communicate, then they worry about form. And when we teach foreign languages, we do the exact opposite. We worry about form first; we worry about communication second; and we get to socialization third. And I thought it was kind of a neat observation, that that’s how kids worry about it. If they want to go play in the park, they play in the park. And that’s kind of their number 1 thing to do. And communication becomes second; form is down the road.
John: Interesting. Well, back to number 3, about schema theory and social scripts.
Orlando: Right. You know, I’m a gigantic believer in the idea of chunks, that we learn foreign languages in little chunks, little phrases, little situations. And we know how the script goes. Recently, I was the example I often give is that when I go to a bakery in a foreign country, that in the Unites States, I know the rhythm of going to a bakery. They ask what you want; they cut it open; they slice it. There’s kind of a way that you follow the pattern of buying meat, and cheese, and bread at a bakery. When you’re in a foreign language, that pattern changes. And it’s not a language issue necessarily; it’s that I don’t know the rhythm of how to keep the flow of everybody’s activities going in the bakery. So in foreign language, if you know the flow of the dialogue you’re supposed to follow, it helps you understand things.
I was recently in Rio, and when I was in the check-out line, somebody asked in essence if I had a “blah blah blah card”. Well of course I didn’t because I was a tourist. And that was not part of my dialogue. I was not ready for the lady at the checkout to ask me about if I had that card. And I went from understanding 100% of what she was saying to a bunch of garbled noise. Because I didn’t know the dialogue. And I had to have her repeat that a couple of times until I finally [realized], “Oh now I know what she’s asking for” and I could say, “No, I don’t have that.” [For] a foreigner that comes to the US, it may be that when you buy a certain thing, sometimes they say, “What’s your zip code?” Well, you’re not ready for them to ask what your zip code is. You’re just trying to buy some bread. And so you would probably not understand that question because you’re not used to that dialogue. So that’s schema theory. Schema theory is: What are the dialogues? What are the chunks? How do we put strings of words together? How do you take turns and change back and forth, and reinforce things? There’s a pattern that we do that in, in language, and the more we understand those patterns, the more we understand the foreign language.
John: That’s also why I think movies are an excellent way, but once you get…
Orlando: Well, we’ll get to that when we get to number 5 on narrow listening.
John: Good point. Ok, so number 4: input and intake.
Orlando: Yah, you see, when the second language theories first were coming out, they talked about the importance of input. And then years later, they said, “You know what? It really… It’s nice to have a lot of input, but sometimes it never sinks in. And so what really is a big deal, is what they call ‘intake’, which is input that you’re actually conscious of, that you’re aware of, that you’re concentrating on.” And you know, the words get changed. Sometimes they call it “consciousness raising”; I’ve even heard it called “input enhancement”. But basically it’s the idea that you have to be exposed to a lot of the foreign language, but it’s not enough to be exposed to it. You have to be actually listening to it; have it sink in. So your input becomes intake. And so I’m a big proponent of that, that you need to hear a lot of language, but you need to recognize it; you need to consciously be thinking of it. And see if it can soak in a little bit while you’re listening.
John: Ok, so number 5 was narrow listening and narrow reading.
Orlando: Yah, this comes from Krashen’s ideas that narrow listening and narrow reading basically means, I believe, that you get more success out of looking at a small chunk in detail than a very large, gigantic hunk, superficially. And so when you look at my materials, the clips will be 2 minutes long. And then I want the students to really study in detail what happens in those two minutes. I seem to get more out of that than I do watching a 2-hour movie. That kind of runs past me. I understand the movie but I can’t say I really learn a lot of foreign language watching that movie. But if I take that same effort and time and put it into a very small chunk of language, and study that in detail, I get a lot more out of it. So I believe that narrow listening and narrow reading does more for language acquisition than a broad, one time through sort of experience.
John: One thing though I have noticed when I look at a short chunk of material, I do agree that I get more out of it in terms of acquisition, but on the other hand, if I do watch a movie or I read a longer passage, I also can get lost in the story, instead of just focusing on, “Oh, I am learning the language”, which I think has its own benefits as well.
Orlando: When I was in China, it was my first time in China and I had a free afternoon, so I went to the movies. And I watched my first movie totally in Mandarin. And it was kind of fun to go through the experience of, “Ok, how much of this am I going to grab?” Because my Chinese is kind of survival level; it’s not fantastic Chinese by any means. But it was pretty fun to go through the whole movie and just see, “Ok, how much am I going to catch onto? No responsibility here; let me just soak in what I can soak in.” I think it’s good to be exposed to that now and again, too.
John: Number 6, then? Which I missed I guess…
Orlando: And the final one is, it’s a fairly old model, it’s called Schumann’s acculturation model. And that’s the one where you kind of lump together all the cultural and social factors that affect language learning. You know, as we’re about things like anxiety, motivation, how extroverted you are, how much you identify with the culture yourself. Do you have a girlfriend from that country? Do you love the movies from that country? Do you love the music from that country? That’s a big, big deal. You know, how much you just are the sort of personality that can just jump out and do that kind of stuff versus how much you just hang back.
I remember I had a friend in Brazil who was one of these perfectionists: “Unless I say it correctly, I’m going to say it at all.” And in the end, he never really did learn the language well because he held himself back. He was so guarded about, “Oh, I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to do it wrong.” That sort of personality that can say, “You know what? I want to enjoy this food, and if I don’t say something, I won’t be able to eat it, so let me say something. I think that girl’s pretty. Let me talk to her, because I want to get to know her. I don’t care what it comes out like.”
Well I had a student a few years ago, when I took them to Venezuela, he was a music freak. And he would go out in the street, and as soon as he heard music in somebody’s apartment, he would literally stop, knock on their door, and start talking to total strangers about, “What kind of music are you playing on your radio right now?” His grammar was kind of backwards, but his ability to get to meet people and to talk to people was just phenomenal, just phenomenal. He was amazing.
John: Do you think there’s any harm in speaking too soon?
Orlando: You know, there’s no doubt that people fossilize. You kind of get to a certain level, and then if you can survive for whatever you need your language for, you kind of stop there. And you’ll see that for people who live abroad for 2 years. And after 3 or 4 months, they kind of stop their progress, and kind of never improve after that. But they kind of are able to use the language for whatever they need the language for. Part of the answer to your question is, “What do they really need language for?” And if you’re going just to socialize, just to hang out, you know, just for informal sort of things, maybe your informal Spanish or Portuguese is just fine. It may be that in other situations you need to have more precise, or let’s say “correct”, sort of language forms. I think a lot of it is not just the language learning process; it’s what are you going to end up using the language for.
In terms of speaking too soon, you know, we have the whole silent period concept where it’s good to let it sort of soak in for a while, and then you can start talking. And I think there’s some validity to the idea that you should learn how to be a listener. Too often when we’re abroad, we forget to actually listen to people, and try and soak in.” I know that sometimes when I’m abroad, I’ll say to myself, “Ok, for the next hour, I’m just going to sit and listen to people, and make little notes about things I hear. And even in languages I’ve been speaking for 30 years, I’ll still have a notebook full at the end of that hour, just because I want to hear what people are saying. So it’s a give and take. You know, there’s a point where you can fossilize, and if you don’t really, really concentrate, and force yourself to get a little better, you’re just going to get stuck there. And I think it takes a hunk of effort, to, when you feel yourself getting to that point, to actually improve and get a little bit better.
So anyway, those are the six items:
1) I think that you have to have a good time on task;
2) You need to learn language within the context of the situation;
3) I love Schumann’s…I love the schema theory of Vygostky on their scripts and chunks you need to follow;
4) I think that input should be more than input; it should be intake, so that it starts to sink in and you concentrate on it;
5) I like the narrow listening concept that Krashen has; and
6) I think we can’t ignore the big cultural factors that go into language learning.
And that’s all six.
John: Excellent. Very, very good.
Orlando: Well, it was fun talking to you today.
John: It was fun talking to you. I really appreciate your time. Talk to you again.
Orlando: Appreciate it.
To learn more about Dr. Kelm and his projects, check out his blog and grab a copy of his new book:
Orlando’s Blog When We Are the Foreigners]]>