How Latter-Day Saint Missionaries Learn Languages Fast

what if i told you that you had to learn to speak korean from scratch and you had nine weeks to do it what happens after nine weeks well you will be put on a plane to career and in korea you'll have to stand on a street corner talking to complete strangers in korean with no english allowed for two whole years that's not gonna happen is it wait what 36 000 people a year do this can we look into this [Music] that's right in this video we are going to be looking at what is surely one of the most wildly effective language training programs in the world in case you're not familiar with these young men and women they are mormon missionaries from the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints a mission is an expedition undertaken by 18 to 26 year olds to spread the mormon faith to new people with the aim of expanding the church now this is important background for the rest of the video but i do try to avoid talking politics and religion in polite company and so everything that follows here is a commentary on the language learning not the religion so any comments please leave them in that spirit now all of this linguistic wizardry takes place right here it is the mormon missionary training center or mtc in utah in the usa it's essentially a boot camp to train young womans in foreign languages before they set out on their missions but it is widely regarded as one of the best language instruction institutes in the world in fact the courses resemble the programs that the us military put their linguists through at the defence language institute with one small difference the military they let you kind of slack off comparatively with 64 weeks to learn your language rather than nine oh and those nine weeks that mormon missionaries get to learn korean well that's only because korean has its own script it's an alphabet if you were learning say portuguese well then you've got six weeks yep you heard me right six weeks to learn a language they're gonna put me out of a job over here one thing's for sure the program and method is designed to push you these young missionaries don't just get trained in foreign languages they get trained extremely fast and then they get put straight on a plane and thrown right in at the deep end so the question you've been dying to ask is well how on earth do they do it well i looked up some x missionaries to find the answers yeah so you get a letter in the mail and they tell you where you're going and yeah i got sent to korea so i was pretty uh unsure of what to expect you just apply to be a missionary and then they send you anywhere and they could send you somewhere in your own country or in another country somewhere where you have to learn a language somewhere you don't and you don't have any say in that so i i didn't really count on having a language learning experience as a missionary but it happened that way so this is the first thing that makes the mormon method unique you don't get to choose which language you will learn you're 18 years old you decide to be a missionary you fill out your application form you apply and then the letter comes in the post telling you where you've been assigned to of course you might get lucky you are hereby called to serve as a missionary of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints you are assigned to labor in the denmark copenhagen so you arrive at the mormon training centre and go straight into an intensive language learning program well your task is to learn the language well enough to be able to talk to strangers in another country and persuade them to believe in the mormon doctrine and there are a lot of languages taught there 56 languages all together 31 of these take nine weeks of training that's the the asian languages slavic languages and and then the six-week courses are germanic languages romance languages and so on these languages considered to be slightly easier for native speakers and interestingly there are also 14 international missionary training centers around the world and you can see some of them here so you go into the program knowing this will be really your only chance to learn the language you need for your mission because once you get on a plane well that's it there's no more instruction the alphabet they did i still remember that was we went in day one and um they just started speaking in korean to us right away there was no english at all and i didn't even know how to say hello or nice to meet you or anything so i was just so stressed out i remember and they taught us the alphabet the first day so korean is that's really handy with korean is the alphabet's pretty easy to wrap your head around so we did that in a day and then from then on we weren't allowed to use english letters anymore either in our studying so it was pretty quick that's pretty amazing and talk about being chucked in at the deep end there's no english allowed at all which i suppose is kind of standard for an immersion program but remember that the actual missionary training the religious aspect is also done almost entirely in the target language from day one so it's not just learning about the language and the grammar and stuff it's it's content as well by the way the guy you just heard from is derrick drake's who actually taught me a bit of korean when we did the recording for michelle thomas korean and he may or may not be the subject of a detailed method breakdown video in the near future so make sure to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications if you want to hear about that you know i'm i'm putting myself in that position you know knowing that i'm going to get only six weeks of training before being sent abroad i mean if with me i probably try to do my own crash course before going a bit like this guy who got the news three months early that he was being sent to estonia i tried as much to study the language before i went into the mtc there's not really i don't want to tell people not to do that but i found it almost not worth the effort that i put into it before i got to the mtc not worth it why not i mean i had three months i'm like oh i'm gonna be good and i literally outlearned what i'd learned in three months and two days in the mtc i think that regular viewers of this channel will most likely hear that and think well hang on a minute there's a hell of a lot you could do to prepare in those three months even for an under resourced language like estonian and i agree with you especially if you use a method like story learning where you're immersing and priming your brain to understand the language and so what i think this goes to show is just how fresh these guys are these are not people with a few languages under their belt familiar with language learning methods these are people who are totally new to language learning so can you imagine the impact on someone like this going into a full immersion program with no preparation or experience is quite something so what is a typical study day like at the mtc well they wake up at 6 30 in the morning and get some exercise time and some bible study time and then the day really gets going with a mormon hymn sung of course entirely in the target language [Music] by 10 am they are in classes where they're placed in small groups between 8 to 12 students the day is basically broken down into three hour learning slots making up two or three classes a day different instructors come in throughout the day teaching various language points and like i said almost everything is taught in the target language i mean can you imagine being taught how to do a new job in a language that you've just started learning it's pretty full-on now something that i really like about this method is that the instructors are all former missionaries themselves who went through the exact same learning process and you know i'm quite critical sometimes of language teachers who have never learned another language themselves i do consider that to be kind of essential so i really like the fact that they bring existing teachers back to teaching that training center because these guys must have have a lot of empathy for their students and what they're about to go through and i'm not just talking about the languages here more on that later so stick around speaking begins immediately even though no one really knows what they're doing so the teacher gets going right away with simple repeated phrases that are also written on the board there are clear spoken models and the teacher will speed their voice up slow it down exaggerate the tones and there's absolutely no english spoken and as soon as a student has learned something new they're expected to only say it in the target language from that moment on sometimes english is essential for explaining stuff but then it's only written on the board with translation the english is never spoken aloud and then they are told that in two days time they themselves will be teaching a full lesson in the new language i mean at least they'll be practicing on other missionaries or volunteers but again more on that later but wait a minute if everything is said only in the target language how on earth do they understand anything well a major focus of each three-hour class is introducing a new grammar principle and there's a lot of repetition of the grammar forms that are learned in class so for example if it's a subject verb object language then the class will recite phrases using that subject verb object form over and over so the first thing they learn quickly is what a proper sentence in the language sounds like the idea here is that they train themselves to recognize a subject to a verb or an object before even understanding what was said which then makes it easier to spot something like a conjugation or some other part of speech later on then in the speaking practice sessions they'll use shorter sentences in very carefully controlled practice so the focus is on developing accuracy on specific things learning to say specific things very well rather than say general general fluency on a wide range of topics it is an interesting ethos given that they're going to be parachuted into a new country very shortly and have to survive there presumably in a range of very different situations but when you consider how specific the goals are for these missionaries and the very specific things that they will need to talk about with the people that they meet you can see exactly why these very specific direct drills are so important my interpretation here and i hope i've got this right and please feel free to correct me in the comments if i get this wrong for some for some reason it's basically this the missionaries have one job which is to talk to people about their religion they don't need to do anything else they just need to be able to talk about that one thing very very well so you better train that one thing as hard as you can if you think about it linguistically this is quite an unusual requirement i mean where else would you be so focused on one topic area it's worth thinking about this as you ponder the method that we are discussing here it's a method for a very specific purpose which is quite likely not your reason for learning a language the missionaries may not be fluent by the time they leave but in just a few weeks many will establish a solid base to build from what's the secret they are constantly speaking to gog at all times and on top of that is they have grammar practice with with me and but they're encouraged to be speaking to golov as much as possible as much as they would in the philippines now as for vocabulary there's a gradual build from simple words to more difficult words once everyone has the pronunciation down then individual students are quizzed and drilled so it's it's quite intense and really quite traditional as well so how do they memorize all of these words can they practice when they're by themselves the other thing that they try to do at the mtc is teach you how to make a language learning plan but i wasn't very good at doing that part because i felt so stressed out about like i have to know everything from this last class before this next class so i would literally just i still remember having this notebook full of words and i'd be on my morning run just like looking at the word and repeating it over and over to myself in my head they even had their own custom-made mission vocabulary flashcards which they can keep on them and some of the women even say that they pin these flashcards to their skirts i mean at least you won't lose them that way so this way of learning is intense there's no two ways about it but you also learn very rapidly and one student who did mandarin said i was like a deer in the headlights on the first day but after five weeks i could understand 98 of what the teachers were saying to me i mean it depends what the teachers were saying to you i suppose but it sounds great and i personally would love to do an immersion course like this one day so uh mtc if you're watching text me but it's not all rote memorization not by a long shot in fact starting on day three the fun really begins with some role play they would put you from i think it was day three um they told us okay you you've you're gonna role play you've met someone that wants to learn more about jesus and uh you're gonna go meet them and talk to them in korean so prepare a 10-minute discussion what i like about this is it's very kind of circular training on very specific topics which is a very effective way to recycle and memorize vocabulary but but also to get very confident talking about a specific topic and this is why sometimes when people ask me about story learning you know how do you recommend actually getting learning to speak once you've been learning with stories my recommendation is always well take your stories into your lessons with you and talk about those stories you've been reading with your teacher because it gives you a chance to recycle and use the vocabulary that you've been learning and this seems to be what's going on here one thing that i really liked about the mtc was that we got to teach these fake investigators which was just our teachers and every day we would have a little lesson with them pretending they were pretending to be one of the investigators they had actually taught on their missions and that was a really remarkable experience because we got to really see what it's like to pray and study for an investigator and really focus everything that we did on their needs and if you're wondering what the investigator is well this is what they call people who they approach meaning someone who is investigating the mormon faith and this sort of ties in with another major focus here which is praying if your language is korean for example then you will learn how to pray in korean on day one and then you will pray only in korean for the rest of the time i think one of the first skills that we learned actually was prayer and praying in any language is actually pretty it involves pretty complex language and there's a lot of sort of honorific information that you have to be familiar with and things in an asian language and so it was pretty advanced stuff that we were learning that in any other context would be really useless i mean it wasn't going to help us go to korea and survive at all and that's kind of okay because the system is when you get sent to the country or two wherever your area is you always work in pairs and one person in the in the pair will usually be someone that has been out for longer or as a native speaker of the language and so they can handle all of this sort of they've had enough time to figure out how to get by and so it's okay if you don't have sort of the functional skills as much so this is where the mormon method really diverges from mainstream learning having a very specific context a very specific outcome where you don't have to learn vocabulary for lots of other different kinds of topics it's very focused learning of the language needed for the mission specifically which can include things like welfare and community service too but i do really appreciate this as a learning method because within within the confines of what is a quite narrow topic area you get to have higher level conversations very very quickly and this can help you learn the lessons of high-level conversations faster it's like if you get a glimpse of what it's like to speak at a high level but there are lessons that can be learned that you can't learn if you're kind of always fumbling around with different topics it's a concept that i like to call glimpses of mastery and i i see this as a big benefit of the mormon program so it's very very structured indeed check this out my trainer was just a language study fanatic he would not let me like get off it and it kind of ticked me off because like this is what we did so first we started off with like lesson one and he's like hey teach the first principle of lesson one in a minute and 30 seconds to me into gog this is like day one of me being in the field and i was like i can't do that so i tried and then by like the next day he was like okay now you have a minute to do it i was like what it was like 30 seconds and he's like okay tell it to me in 10 seconds like how would you basically describe it now let's move on to where you finally arrive in your host country suddenly you are completely surrounded by a culture that you've only seen in movies so far things get real and you're going to wind up in a deeply immersive situation more safety wheels they're more pretend and role play it's time to blend in right well kinda but not exactly listen on because this gets more interesting you know when i first started i was pretty scared i felt really awkward going to stop someone on the street we'll get people yelling at us or they'll walk past us and just oh look the mormons all of us we go two by two sometimes three by three the only times we're separated is when one was in the bathroom we don't watch tv we don't watch movies we give up our phone we give up social media see the rules are strict there's a 9 pm curfew no tea coffee or alcohol are permitted no use of slang they can't use each other's first names or nicknames they have to wear professional clothes no matter what the weather yep even in the the mean summer heat and humidity of the tropics and uh did i mention the special underwear and forget about time alone that's forbidden on a mission you have to stick together with your partner 24 7. now your partner is someone who is more experienced and who already knows the language in fact usually they speak no english at all forcing you to only use the new language i remember for me my first uh partner that i worked with um was a korean guy he was he didn't speak much english and i mean he spoke way more english than i spoke korean at the time so um but he was sort of like well i i'm just going to speak korean to you so i hope you can figure it out and i remember we'd be at the grocery store and i'm just listening to him trying to figure out how he how he talks to people and we'd be on the street catching the bus and i'm trying to figure out what the bus driver's saying so i sort of followed him around and mimicked him for the daily life things and then when we would get into a missionary like proselytizing or teaching setting he would kind of let me take the lead using what i learned in the um training center he'd say okay um derek you're gonna take the next uh 10 minutes of this discussion with this person and teach them about this bible passage or something like that and so that was really intimidating but i i i think again those constraints kind of allowed me to learn a little bit um in a more manageable way and right here what you see here is really kind of every benefit in the book as far as language learning because you've got a sympathetic listener what someone what people sometimes call a language parent someone who looks after you you can learn from you've got immersion you've got a role model there you've got like 24 7 language but not every missionary was okay with the rules yeah really can't be stressed enough how much you do not have personal autonomy you have to be with a mission companion literally 24 7. you're not even allowed to like walk too far away from your companion are you like walking down the street and you need some space you have to be insight and sound insight and sound of a companion at all times um basically the only privacy you get is like the bathroom and we have to add to this no tv no cell phones no calling home you can't listen to music read books or even watch movies that are not church approved and you definitely cannot come within arm's length of the opposite sex as a missionary we don't have any smartphones no internet usage we don't watch movies like we don't even watch the news read the newspaper so most forms of entertainment are removed from our life these guys didn't mind the rules though and you'll figure out why in a minute you know if this all sounds very harsh and i agree with you that it is remember though that in the stories of other highly successful language learners we've looked at it is very much not without pain and sacrifice and a good dose of suffering too but this level of focus with with all distractions being removed well it just leaves you with nothing to do but get on with studying and practicing the language it sounds a bit like rule number eight in my 10 rules of story name which is door closed phone off but of course i do allow you to get out for air from time to time and what part of this method is most interesting to you so far let me know in the comments and keep it respectful please so how do these young people stay the path what drives them it must get pretty exhausting and overwhelming and i'm sure you must be wondering whether this kind of method is sustainable for the average language learner so why do they stick with it and what advantage do they have over people learning language languages in a more traditional way well these are excellent questions so let's first take a look at the ideal conditions they've created for rapid learning there is 100 immersion they only speak the language they're learning and pretty much banish english next they have 24 7 contact with native speakers from day one throughout their training and then throughout the two years in the field and if you add to this the fact that they are using language for real purpose there's a point to it there's an end goal they want to achieve that desperately think of this as kind of like a bucket list goal like it's that big of a deal to them but this is where their number one secret really lies i think which is that missionaries are hugely motivated and it's personal the rules the challenges it all aligns with their beliefs and their faith so they just get on with it and they just do it so if you're learning a language right now what should you take what is there for you to take from this it's hard to say really because there's no one single element of all this which is particularly you know revolutionary or special or even necessarily advisable for people to follow but taken together in the round you've got this reason why you've got the dedication you've got consistency you've got practice a fantastic environment i think if you if you get these things all together then this really does make for a kind of perfect perfect storm of language learning conditions and if you have all of those things together i kind of think that really any method is going to work for you but i'm guessing that it's not going to be easy for you to attend a six-week immersion program and then go after live in the country for two years with a partner helping you 24 7. am i right so instead you should check out this video it's an unusual method to learn a new language through stories and the reason it's so effective is because anyone can do it at home by themselves without needing to talk to anyone at least at first if you're curious click over here right now and check it out

Channel: Olly Richards

Views: 786,543

Keywords: language learning, how to learn a language, foreign languages, learn a language, learn languages, polyglot, learn a new language

Id: Ox6MdRTc0yE

Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021