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Language.
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It's a pretty cool thing, quite useful.
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I can still remember back when I was a toddler, about 2 years old learning my first language,
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English.
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My Mom taught me how the order in English is subject verb object, and helped me make
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flashcards so I could memorize vocabulary and helped me for hours and hours to get the
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different verb tenses right.
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Fast forward several years and In college I came over to Japan on a foreign exchange
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program where I would learn another language.
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About two years after arriving in the country, I took and passed the highest level of the
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Japanese Language Proficiency Test.
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To be fair, I did live in the country, but the concepts I'll discuss in this video
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will be effective even if you don't have access to native speakers.
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Lately there are all kinds of great resources and techniques on language learning.
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In particular, spaced-repetition system-based virtual flashcard programs like Anki are popular
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and very useful, but… is that really the most efficient way to sink language into our
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brains so it can be used on the fly?
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After all, how many parents have to give their child a deck of flashcards for review to help
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their kids reach fluency in their mother tongue?
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Of course I was kidding earlier and I learned English through magic like every other baby.
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In this video I'd like to discuss four not too often discussed points that I think are
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important when it comes to language learning.
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Acquiring language efficiently through context Two is Maximizing input
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Three is Practicing your listening and pronunciation at the same time
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And four is Making sure the experience of learning is positive
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First allow me to take a moment to demonstrate something, so just listen for now.
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If you already speak Japanese, it might be harder to get my point, but hopefully you'll
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still see what I mean.
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Timu o shoukai shiyou.
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Timu wa neko janakute kaeru janakute hito da.
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Hito no karada ha ironna bubun ga aru.
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Tatoeba atama, mune, ude, ashi ga aru.
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Ok, so Just listening to me, how much Japanese did you learn from this?
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Maybe 0%.
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What if I repeated it or spoke slower, would you learn more Japanese?
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Most likely not.
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Let's try it one more time, but pay attention to the screen.
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Timu o shoukai shiyou.
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Timu wa nekojanakute kaeru janakute hito da.
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Hito no karada ha ironna bubun ga aru.
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Tatoeba atama, mune, ude, ashi ga aru.
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Mushi ja nai kara me wa mutsu toka janakute futatsu ga aru.
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Ude mo futatsu, Ashi mo futatsu, Mimi mo futatsu ga aru.
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How about now, maybe 10%, 20% or even just one word?
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This is the simple difference between acquiring language and not.
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What I'm trying to demonstrate is the concept of comprehensible input, as did second language
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acquisition scholar Stephen Krashen did in this lecture of his.
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"das ist meine Hand. fristenzidast hand(??)"
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"In my opinion, we all acquire language the same way."
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We acquire language in one way and one way only, when we understand messages, or when
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we understand what we read.
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We call this comprehensible input.
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We've tried everything else, we've tried grammar teaching, drills and exercises, computers,
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but the only thing that seems to count is getting messages you understand, comprehensible
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input.
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So anything that helps make input comprehensible - pictures, knowledge of the world, realia,
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helps language acquisition."
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In the 1970s and 80s Krashen put forward a group of hypotheses about language learning.
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The first claim of his we'0ll look at is that there is acquisition and learning and
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Krashen says improvement in language ability is only dependent on acquisition and not learning.
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The difference between acquisition and learning is tricky but it's kind of like the difference
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between getting a joke and having someone explain the precise reasons why that joke should be funny.
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For example, a horse walks into a bar and the bartender says...
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"Hey, why the long face?"
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Or a whale walks into a bar and the whale says “Woo...oooo...woooo”.
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If you thought this was funny, you didn't have to consciously work out why it was funny.
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the processing was done on a subconscious level.
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In Krashen's book Principles and Practice in Second Language acquisition, he says “Acquisition
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of language is a natural, intuitive, and subconscious process of which individuals need not be aware.”
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Similarly, you can learn words by having someone tell you “The Japanese word for Persimmon
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is kaki.”
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On the other hand, what's necessary for acquisition is sufficient comprehensible input.
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Something like this: Ringo o taberu.
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So, even though you might not know any of the words I just said, you could comprehend
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the pictures I supplied, and based on that context, you could acquire the meaning of
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Ringo and Taberu.
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When I provide you with another example, Biiru o nomu, you may have deduced something about
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Japanese grammar as well.
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That's right, the verb comes at the end.
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The point is, you have this massive pattern recognition device jammed into your head and
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when you understand the meaning of the message, your brain will naturally pick out vocabulary
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and deconstruct grammar patterns based on the context - and this is not something you
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actively and consciously perform.
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Okaikei senroppyaku nanajyuu hachien ni narimasu.
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Kane aru Kara! Kane Nee yo...
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This leads me to one of the most helpful things - simply watching television series without
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English subtitles with focused attention even though I couldn't understand most of it.
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"And today, I wanna talk about dictionaries.
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You can look up the word 'get' in the dictionary and you get 8 or 9 different definitions...
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and you can read that, close the dictionary and you won't remember much of what was there.
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Before I went to Vietnam, I got this phrasebook and dictionary.
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I came away able to use one word.
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Kaman, which means thank you.
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Nothing else stuck, zero.
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This was essentially useless."
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A bit later on, I tried my hand at plenty of books but refrained from looking up every word.
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This is a really simple but important concept, how many new words, phrases and grammar structures
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can you feed your brain when you're looking up every word as you read a book?
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You'd take about half an hour to get through one page.
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For the same amount of time, a television show can blast you with far more words, phrases
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and grammar.
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A book can too if you're not so trigger happy with the dictionary.
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And, it might not feel like it, but these bits of cloudy information can stick in your
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head at the subconscious level just waiting for the right context to reveal their meaning.
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Engineering Professor Barbara Oakley explains here that we have two modes of thinking - the
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focused mode and the diffuse mode.
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The focused mode is where you're racking your brain trying to use your focused awareness
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to figure something out, whether it be a math problem or what's going on in a TV show in a foreign language.
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The diffuse mode works in the background where you're relaxed and not straining on one
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thing, it can see the big picture and make connections.
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This is thought to be why people so often get ideas in the shower - you're relaxed,
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probably not focused on anything in particular, so your subconscious starts turning its pattern
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recognition gears to give you insights your conscious mind couldn't see.
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You might not have any luck picking up many words or phrases while watching or reading
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something, but when you go off and do something else, your brain relaxes into the much more
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flexible diffuse mode and uses its powers of pattern recognition to piece out some meaning
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from the heaps of language information you were just exposed to.
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Now I'm not saying that the fastest way to become fluent in a language is to never
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open a dictionary, but you'll want to invest a majority of your time on inputting a bunch
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of content into your head from media, books or just paying attention to people around you.
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Earlier we saw that according to Krashen, acquisition, but not learning can trigger
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improvement in a language.
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But, it seems deliberate “learning” can trigger language “acquisition” - for example
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let's say you had watched this before: "omae, ore no keeki kuttaro."
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"iya" and you knew that "ore no keeki" just means
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“my cake,” but for the life of you couldn't figure out what kuttaro means.
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You were guessing it means steal.
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Then you learn from a textbook or dictionary that kuu is a very casual way to say eat!
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Then it all clicks, you realize kutta would be the past tense of this verb and you figure
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kuttaro must be the same as kutta darou.
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Now you've acquired a new word and a new colloquialism and put all the pieces together
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to fully understand what this guy was saying.
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"Omae, ore no keeki kuttaro."
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"iya."
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This is the “Aha!” moment indicative of new language acquisition - similar to a joke,
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it just happens at the subconscious level.
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Another key to this is watching television without English subtitles.
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A study from Barcelona looking at Spanish speakers trying to learn English found that
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the worst way to learn was by putting Spanish subtitles on an English movie.
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This resulted in 0% improvement in their English ability.
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Watching with no subtitles provided a 7% improvement, but watching the show in English, with English
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subtitles provided a 17% improvement.
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Now You might be thinking how are you ever going to learn anything if you do all this
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input without any any speaking practice?
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This is where another part of Krashen's theory comes in.
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"And this may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you.
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Certainly came as a surprise to me.
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Talking is not practicing.
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It means if you want to improve your spanish, it will not help you to speak Spanish outloud
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in the car as you drive to work in the morning.
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I used to think those things help, now I think they don't."
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You don't technically have to open your mouth to acquire the language.
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This was demonstrated in 1962 when E. Lenneberg described the case of a boy who could not
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speak due to congenital dysarthria.
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When Lenneberg tested the boy, he found that the child was able to understand spoken English
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perfectly.
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With that said, ...you should open your mouth at some point.
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Pronunciation is of course very important.
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But pronunciation is… hard.
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Some noises in the language you'll notice you just can't make because you never have before
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"That's not tool bro.
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That's n...
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That's not tool bro."
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This brings me to a technique called Shadowing: What you do is basically listen to some audio
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of a native speaker talking and you just mimic their pronunciation and intonation.
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Not every word though - depending on your level it could be two syllables at a time,
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three at a time or two words at a time and so on.
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Shadowing is generally thought of as an advanced technique you should use to master intonation
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and polish up your accent.
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But, even from Day 1 it can be a super efficient way for improving your pronunciation and at
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the same time your ability to recognize phonemes in natural language.
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That is to hear natural language.
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And being able to hear natural language is important.
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Because when people speak naturally, there are certain phrases where their speech gets
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run together.
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Like “What are you doing” becomes “W't'ya'doin'”
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Watch how in this scene, Abe Hiroshi turns tokoro ga kou yatte into "tocolocuerte" "tocolocuerte..."
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A 2015 study from Japan looking at two groups of English learners found that indeed, shadowing
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made a statistically significant improvement in phoneme perception for both groups.
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Look in the description for some tips on shadowing so you can get more out of it without frustrating
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yourself into hating the language.
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So That's it - Three things.
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Focus on learning from context, Load up on the input and get plenty of content in the
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target language and you can use the same audio source to practice listening to natural speech
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and pronunciation.
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I realize this leaves many questions regarding language learning and that this there's
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tons of useful techniques and approaches for learning a language that I haven't addressed
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here.
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So please leave a comment if you have any questions and and check the description for
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more information .
