Let me ask you a question. Have you ever
been in that state of mind when you are doing something, something creative that
is so interesting, so captivating that you lose all sense of time .You don't get
hungry, you don't get tired, you're so into the thing that you're doing that
when you glance up at the clock it's already four o'clock in the morning. Wow!
where did all the time go I've been doing this for 12 hours .I'm sure that
you have felt that way and that my friend is The Zone. The Zone is a mental
state of focused concentration where everything else in the environment
becomes irrelevant. Psychologists have another word for it they call it 'a state
of flow' Flow, to be in the zone, it's the same thing. Now what has this got to do
with learning English, a language or anything else for that matter? a lot to
find out more stay tuned. Hello and welcome to LetThemTalk and I'm sure
you've experienced being in a state of flow. Some people get there when they are
learning a musical instrument or playing a video game or programming or writing
poetry or hopefully, in your case learning a language which is what I'm
going to talk about today. Let me give you some background. Please stick
with me because knowing the psychology is important here
it was the Hungarian psychologist Mihai Csikszentmihalyi who studied this
phenomenon extensively in his book Flow. Here it is and I'll leave a link in the
description to the book if you want to read it in its entirety which I highly
recommend that you do. In the book he shows us the state of flow is very much
linked to enjoyment with some other important elements thrown in that ensure
our progress and we'll look at that in a moment. now Csikszentmihalyi looked at flow in a lot of different areas including science that scientific breakthroughs
and discoveries that would not have been possible if scientists did not enjoy
their work. In the book he says that the amount of funding given to a laboratory
was far less important in getting results than enjoyment. Having the right
conditions for a creative environment was a more important factor than money.
The best musicians are motivated by enjoyment not money, great singer-
songwriters are motivated by enjoyment not by the prospect of winning the Nobel
Prize for Literature. Now this is an important lesson as it shows us clearly that we
need enjoyment to succeed at our task. If you want to learn anything, not just
English but anything, if you can get yourself into a state of flow while
doing it it just got much easier if what you're
trying to learn is boring but you force yourself to continue it's going to be a
whole lot more difficult. The reason why people fail at learning English or any
language is because they don't consistently and regularly reach this
state of flow. The language industry is a bit like the dieting industry in that
it's based on failure it's like it's like a triangle with a vast
majority of people at the bottom and a small number at the top who reached an
advanced level. So a big chunk of people who start to learn, learn very little or
almost nothing and my job as an English teacher is to get you to continue
studying so that you rise above the big block of beginners who've given up at the
bottom of the triangle and reach that advanced level now two incontrovertible
truths about language learning first one is it takes time. To have a reasonable
conversational level it takes about a thousand hours. To master a language - so
that you can say that you're fluent and you're comfortable in any situation and
you can understand more or less everything and express yourself without
searching for the right word takes approximately 10,000 hours. That's
about 10 years of study. "How I learnt Italian in one month and how you can do it too"
"if you learn this English method you can learn English perfectly three months." Anyone who says these things is lying to
you they are all trying to tell you the same thing you've tried lots of methods
and you've failed miserably but we have a secret method that really works give
us X amount of money and we'll tell you the secret.
Let me tell you the secret, there is no secret method now the second
incontrovertible truth in succeeding in learning a
language is coming back to the state of flow. People succeed is because they
get into the state of flow again and again and again. In short if you don't
get into the zone you won't succeed. and I'm sure that anybody watching this
video who has successfully learned a foreign language as an adult will tell
you that it was hard work but they enjoyed it. There is no silver bullet.
it's all about hard work and finding the pleasure in learning. Now I know what
you're you're thinking "teach er how do I reach this state of flow." That's
not such an easy question to answer because everyone is different. what works
for me might not work for you. But I'll try as much possible to answer the
question. So first of all you do need to practice the four basic skills you need to
read, write, listen and speak (rwls) and you do that as much as possible this is not, by the way, a
revolutionary method every language teacher will tell you the same thing but
how you do it is important it's you need to make sure that each of these four
things is undertaken using the flow method. one of the elements of flow is
that the difficulty of the task should provide the right degree of challenge to
your ability. What this means is that when you are reading, if the material is
far too difficult for you you're going to give up and do something else. If the
material is far too easy you're going to give up and do something else. So when
choosing something to read pick something that is just a little bit
above your capability so you're learning from material that you feel that, with a
little extra effort, you can do it it's difficult but you can do it. Also read
things that you would also read in your own language.
Someone once advised me when I was learning
Spanish that I should read children's books because they are much easier.
Finally this was bad advice because I don't normally read children's books and
I soon got bored. What I preferred when I still had a very low level of Spanish
was to read or short articles from from newspapers which I found interesting
which what I would do in English too. Anyway that's just me find the things
that you enjoy and stick with that. With listening it's the same idea listen to
things that are challenging but interesting where you'll learn a lot of
new words but it's not so complicated that you have to stop every two seconds
and consults the dictionary. YouTube is a great resource. Start off by watching a
video in the language that you are learning with subtitles. Make a note of
the words you don't know watch it again without subtitles. With speaking, seek out
good conversations with smart people if you're speaking to native speakers or
advanced speakers ask them to correct you this is an important part of the
flow system. You should be getting regular feedback which enables you to
correct mistakes and improve. If you don't have the opportunity to speak with
anybody then speak to yourself or read aloud this will at least get the
mechanics in your brain processing and familiarizing yourself to the new
language and it'll help later when you get to have quality conversations. Now
writing is often neglected but, believe me, it does help writing slows you down
you need to consider every word and check the grammar that's very important
for learning a language so do do it. If you have friends who know English or the
language you are learning well then write them emails and, once again, ask
them to correct them. If you're working alone then what you could do is write a
sentence in your language translate it into the
target language yourself then use Google Translate to translate it and then
compare the two. OK google translate of course is not perfect but it's a good
starting point. What about grammar? Yes you do need to
learn grammar but this is a difficult one personally I love grammar. I love
spending my free time reading grammar books and I like to see how the pieces
of the language fit together and how the logic of one language is different to
another but that's just me I'm a bit weird but many people hate grammar but I
think often the way grammer is taught he is boring not the grammar itself. Like
everything else if it can be explained in an interesting way then it's a
different story. Another rule about reaching the state of flow is that you
must have clear and realistic goals. Clear and realistic goals. If you are
learning English don't think I want to be able to understand all the Netflix
shows in English within six months and you're a beginner. No these
abstract, long term objectives are pointless it's like saying I'm going to
become a millionaire buy a yacht it's your dream
but don't think it and promise it. instead make small everyday steps to
reach your target. When you're learning a language you could say to yourself by
the end of the day I will have learnt 10 new words, a new grammar point and I'll learn one idiom. I'll also have at least one conversation. So that's realistic,
that's doable so aim for small incremental steps rather than
meaningless long-term ones that you'll never achieve. Returning to what I said
earlier, I don't know how you will get into this state of flow that's up to you,
everyone is different. The important thing is that you must make
language learning enjoyable if it's enjoyable you will continue. One of
the elements of flow is the feeling that you are in control if you are blindly
following a text book or an online platform or whatever this probably won't
be enjoyable so you need to take control of the learning process and do the
things that work for you and your rhythm with a sense of purpose. don't let any
teacher or any language school or any platform or app tell you that they have
the best method they don't you have the best method it's you who engineer that
success. You know they talk about two types of happiness
the first is hedonistic happiness, that rush you get when you buy something
new you buy a Ferrari or your football team wins or you eat a piece of
chocolate cake and that gives you a little bit of pleasure in that moment
the problem is with this type of happiness is it is short-lived so what
you've got a new Ferrari ok for a few moments you're elated but then reality
sets in you still got to deal with your
relationships, you still have to wash your socks and mow the lawn the other
say of happiness is called eudaimonic which comes from the Greek and it means
something like 'human flourishing' and this is more of long-term happiness
where we focus on getting attached to the things that motivate behavior the
state of flow is intrinsically linked to eudainomic happiness doing the things
that are creative and stimulate your mind and now get as much of that in to
your life. So creativity is happiness. The goal of flow is not to reach a peak and
come down, the goal is to reach flow and continue and continue and continue and
you will have to restructure the tasks that you do to make this happen. So don't
listen to those who say that they have a magic formula, bullshit frankly, everyone
is unique you are unique but if you want to get beyond the big base at the
bottom of the triangle that I talked about then find the things that you love
find the things that resonate with your personality, find things that make you
want to come back for more and integrate it into your language learning and do
that today and the next day and the next day and yeah, you'll you'll make it,
you'll get there. So question for you. Are you learning English or another
language? and how do you get into the zone? okay we'd love to hear your stories
please share them in the comments thank you for watching stay healthy and see
you next time
