How polyglots learn languages (with Steve Kaufmann)

recently I have been speaking to a lot of people about the theory of language and language learning but today I'm going to be speaking to somebody who is much more interested in the practice somebody who at the age of 73 has learned 20 different languages the Pali got Steve Kaufman in this interview we talk about language learning and making mistakes and why you should learn English this is an edited version of our interview if you would like to hear the full version you will find a link down in the description box where you will also find a link to Steve's website I hope you enjoy this interview Steve Kaufman thanks very much for talking to me now I look forward to it so so I met maybe four people who who don't know you could you maybe just introduce yourself a little bit and and talk about um you know like who you are and what you do so I mean I'm a 73 year old grandfather and for most of my life I was in the lumber business I was originally in the Canadian diplomatic service and I got into the lumber business but in over the last eight ten twelve years I've gotten I've become very interested in the whole subject of language learning and so I have a website together with my son where people learn I don't know 35 languages we have on the site is called Linc Li ng q comm I've also learned more languages after the age of 60 then I learned before the age of 60 so I'm now you know I was working on Arabic and Persian which would be number 19 and 9 number 20 it's not that I speak them all fluently but quite a few of the ones that I've learned since the age of 60 certainly my Russian I I understand you know very well and I communicate with mistakes but fairly comfortably so I'm a language keener let's say with learning languages part of your career in the Diplomatic Service I imagine it was I grew up in Montreal which is fear it was theoretically by but wasn't bilingual so English leading Montreal was English and french-speaking Montreal was French that has since changed but I became interested in French even though I didn't really learn it at school and then I went off to France for for three years I studied at University in France everything was in France right so that got me going and then with the Diplomatic Service I was sent to Hong Kong because in those days the Cultural Revolution was going on in China so I was sent to Hong Kong to learn Mandarin Chinese subsequently I served in Japan so I had quite a bit of exposure to language there and then I just continued from that point so to speak so so maybe you could say that your your interest in languages is I don't know something you've had for most of your life yeah absolutely and the thing about it is once you discover you know that you can do something then you're motivated to do more of it it doesn't matter whether it's sports or music or anything else so I think a lot of people who are struggling with their first second language they don't really have this sense that they can become fluent in another language and once you do one language then you're confident now that you can do it again and in fact I think we can all learn five or six languages more no limit really I wondered like what is your general opinion of the world of language teaching I think teaching has it backwards okay that language teaching is based on instructing people in the language mostly so here's the language and here are the sort of fundamental structures in the language you know grammatical issues in the language and the teacher will teach those and then there will be exercises on those and then the student is supposed to be able to reproduce those structures in the language correctly and that's a very difficult thing to do that's getting it backwards my view is that we should expose the learner to a lot of the language through listening and reading through you know content that he gets more difficult through a lot of repetetive listening and reading so that the language kind of washes over the learner the learner now has some experience with the language so that if then the learner looks at some grammatical explanation or some grammar tables or whatever it might be at least they have a chance of understanding what this refers to that doesn't mean they're going to be able to reproduce it because reproducing stuff correctly as a matter of habit for me you know when I look at the industry as well you know I see a lot of you know there's a lot of products out there from-from massive companies you know I'm not going to name names but but that are making what I consider to be just completely false promises you know like learn a language in five minutes a day fluent in in three months you know this kind of thing I mean what is your because I mean obviously you've learnt a lot of languages so so you know how do you feel about that aspect of of language learning well you know several thoughts first of all you're absolutely right I mean and I have lots of books I buy lots of books on language learning teach yourself colloquial you know I see meal which is very popular amongst certain language learners and they say things like this book will take you to b2 in the language or you will master such-and-such or they'll say in this lesson you will learn how to you know negotiate the train station but that's not true at all that's not true at all it takes a long time because language learning is a matter of getting used to a different way of expressing things you actually have to train the brain in these new habits and that doesn't happen quickly it happens over a fairly long period of time but there is one other consideration and that is I think one of the most important things in language instruction is to motivate the learner because if the learner is motivated they will go out and do all kinds of stuff themselves to learn obviously if you if you set people kind of false expectations then then when they're sort of three weeks in and they realize this is gonna take a long time maybe they you know they give up I agree with you I think it's in fact a lot of people are very frustrated language learners they're frustrated because they don't progress as quickly as they would like and in a way we're always somewhat frustrated we would like to do better and I always tell people you know give yourself credit for what you've done and so to the extent that they you know give people false expectations I think it's a negative thing so yeah it gets them in the door but when they discovered in fact that they actually have to do it every day at least an hour a day that it's gonna take a year and not three months and even then they're gonna be dissatisfied with all the things they don't understand and all the things they can't say and all the mistakes they make so I think in effect it's it's it's a bad strategy but if you're selling books it's probably a good strategy yeah of course it's a matter of what you're interested in but the thing is the more languages you learn the better you become at language learning the brain you're developing a capability in your brain just like if you have never played any sport and you pick up a new sport you won't be very good at it but if you play tennis and then you want to take up I don't know a soccer and then you want to take up something else the more sports you play the better your capability of learning a new sport and I think it's not a matter of a special talent this often comes up and I point out that in certain countries many people speak several languages say in Scandinavia or in Holland or in Germany or in Singapore alright I gather in South Africa or many places people naturally speak three or four languages I don't believe those people have some kind of a language learning gene in their ethnic makeup I don't believe that so anyone can with use develop in their brain the capability of learning one two three four five six languages but they have to be interested and they have to put in the work and the time I agree with you I think that motivation is is motivation could be the everything right could be the most important thing absolutely and I'm curious like what what from your sort of maybe natural interest in language what what do you think would be a good way for people to get motivated to learn a language you know what what would be some advice that you might have you know first of all we take the case of English which is different than all the other languages because English is the most useful language in the world you know if you sit on an airplane beside someone from Brazil Japan Kazakhstan whatever the greatest likelihood is if the common language will be English so therefore a lot of people want to learn English not because they're in love with English or American or Australian culture or anything it's because they see something they have to do their employer told them to do it they feel they get better academic opportunities better professional opportunities and so forth that's English so however a lot of people who study English because they aren't that intrinsically motivated they don't do very well they just kind of go through the motions with the other languages you know it's interesting people interested in Japanese because of anime people are interested in Korean because of Korean drama some people are interested in German rock music I have no idea what that is but so so those are the people who learn it's because they have a motivation my interest typically is history so I want a little read about or even I like 19th century literature so Russia I wanted to read you know Tolstoy that's the s key that makes me a bit of an outlier today but those are my interests so yeah there has to be that or you have a girlfriend boyfriend you know a family member whatever grandma who still speaks the language of the old country you've got to learn it so there could be any any possible motivation but the motivation is what drives it and I would add what people should look at is you know there's an expression in French called levity via mahjong so that you acquire the appetite while eating so at first you may not think you're very motivated but once you get in and start doing it and especially if people can have some success because success fees motivation that's another reason why traditional language instruction is so bad because you're asking people to do something that's intrinsically very difficult to try to understand theoretically how a language works when you have no experience with the language our emphasis should be on comprehension gain the experience with the language hearing a lot of the language and then slowly introducing some concepts about the language and people as oh yeah right I saw I was wondering about that myself and then if the student is curious about some aspect of the language they're far more likely to to to learn some of those details of grammar but we don't do that in typical language instruction it's made very difficult so we basically demotivate people and so there's never an opportunity for that appetite to to arise you know so because something you talked about before you talked about you know some of your languages you can communicate but you make mistakes and and I know that you know a majority of people who are learning any language a huge barrier for them is they don't want to use it because they're afraid of making those mistakes and what would you say what would you say to those people well you know the the paradox is that if they aren't willing to make mistakes they will continue to make mistakes in other words in order to stop making mistakes first of all they have to say I will always make some mistakes like I have the I did business in Europe with Swedes okay Swedes Germans they speak English very well most of many of them they all have their little Swedish English phrases German English phrases and they have the little accent it doesn't matter at all it doesn't matter in no way did it prevent us from having you know good conversations on everything from business to social whatever we were talking about so that the fact that you make some mistakes is not a problem perfection is not the goal that's point number one point number two is you have to make mistakes and most of your mistakes you're going to correct yourself because there's no way that you know it's a bit like the mother and the child team's there well the mother corrects the child that's absolutely nonsense that if the mother corrected the child I mean how much correction because the mother do if that were the case children of Emmer to say in Australia would always speak like their parents which they don't they speak like their peers and so people make correct themselves but they can only do that if they're engaged with the language if they're speaking so if you're hanging back because you're afraid of making a mistake you're gonna continue making mistakes let's imagine that tomorrow you are going to start learning a new language what's your what's your language learning process well I did it now for Arabic and Persian okay first thing I had to do is learn the writing system because I very much believe in reading reading is if I just hear something I have a lot of trouble trying to remember it like if I have an online tutor and and I say how do you say this and they can give it to me in Persian or Arabic I can't remember it but all of my online tutors they give me a list of say 15 or 20 words and phrases which they also record by the way and I import this into link as a lesson and I study it and slowly you know I have a chance of remembering those words but so I learned the writing system because it's different if I were learning you know Finnish I wouldn't have to learn the writing system because I have the writing system but then typically what I do is I buy a starter book teach yourself a colloquial whatever it might be and then I start into our mini stories I think the key is listening because you can do it everywhere you can do it while working out you can do it while you know I can get in an hour a day 45 minutes to an hour are they everyday it listening and listening triggers the rest because now I listen to stuff I didn't really understand so now I want to read it and see what what was that like I I kept on missing the same parts or maybe I didn't understand any of it then I go back in and I read it don't why the next day I'll be listening to it again and they're still missing the same parts and then I go by again so that the listening is key the listening is something that's so easy to do then it triggers the rest of it okay so so what would you say to two students who maybe you know maybe they learned English of high school but they didn't really learn anything and maybe you know they they went and they bought like a I could teach yourself book and they didn't you know nothing happened and you know what would you say to the student who who really wants to learn a language or English but they don't really know like what to do and they don't know what what works um yeah well I would say that that they've got to have a strategy that is sort of a two-pronged strategy the sort of big picture strategy and then the nuts-and-bolts strategy and they got to do both of them the big picture is get into content that interests you whatever it might be if you're in business look up business articles on the internet pick your way through them learn the words listen to podcasts on business depends what the level is of course but if they're not at that level they've got to start at a somewhat lower level but that's kind of just getting the language in you lots of listening and reading the other aspect is then the nuts and bolts because a particularly if you if you need the language for business then you are concerned about you know your tenses and all the other finicky points of you know of English usage well well thank you so much for talking it and good luck [Music] [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 217,156

Keywords: canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, how to learn english, How polyglots learn languages, Steve Kaufmann, steve kaufmann language learning, steve kaufmann languages, steve kaufmann interview, steve kaufmann polyglots, language learning

Id: 9YpvlPbzgnM

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 07 2019