Language Mentoring: Don't teach me, make me learn - Lýdia Machová at the Polyglot Gathering 2016

the polyglot gathering is brought to you by I talkie become fluent in any language I'm going to talk to be talking to you about a different slightly different topic which is something to do with teaching something to do with learning definitely something to do with languages and I would like to start by thanking you all do polyglots because you helped me get over a huge feeling of frustration that I had had for many years now serious now you know I've taught in many different settings until English I started well since I was a little bit better than my classmates I started teaching them then I told in primary secondary schools and 20 language schools companies and now I teach at the University and I always felt really frustrated they don't why because I always knew how I learn languages effectively and how it works and that it can actually be pretty pretty fast that can work very well but I could never transfer that know-how on to my students it could never see the progress with my students whatever I did however I tried how many however many lessons I had with them and I felt really really frustrated with that it's like okay how can I make them and I get what the language learning is about and now you basically help me figure it out because this is from last year some of you I think might recognize yourself recognize the cells in the picture and this is where I came with the first onto the pole globe gathering and I was completely new to the polyglot community I didn't know anyone actually remember sitting in one of these rows talking to someone one of one of the guys and he said have you heard come on Paula is not going to come he had to cancel and I was like whoa what you haven't heard about Mukul am very ill but you haven't heard about Richard Cinco right well sorry Richard i Helland up to two lamas years gathering I didn't follow any blogs or or anything else I was just learning languages by myself in my own ways and then it was really really inspiring to meet all of you to talk to 300 polyglot to learn languages in different ways and to figure out how you learn languages and I found out that there are so many methods and they seem to be all working right so for example benny seeks from day one right but Steve Kaufman of says I better I first build up my vocabulary I've read a lot and listened a lot and then I start speaking to different methods but they seem to be working not just for them but for many people that are following them that's just one example Marie other data here at the first volley globe gathering said I think she said on the ground alert I started learning a language by taking a grammar book just going through it all you know just to know what the grandma is about and Emanuele Marini basically starts with a dictionary he starts using the language using a dictionary so he doesn't know a word ellipse it out uses it in conversation okay so that's that's a different approach again and another example is Gabriel Winer who really is a big fan of flashcards maybe you heard about him and look how Ontario might now do know and says he couldn't he couldn't care less about flashcards okay so I realized by meeting you and by following all your blogs and videos after the conference that there is just so many ways how we can learn a language and and it's not limited to do some one particular method and that got me thinking I started thinking what is the difference between how the polyglot learn languages and how people learn languages out there outside of the port community and I'm talking mostly about people who take language courses and go to schools etc what is the difference there and after studying always Polly Walton and reading about them talking to them I think the secret is but polyglots do learn languages and they are not taught languages and I think this is really the main difference it's about the responsibility that you take for your own learning right because we just don't go to a course I am never I never met anyone here who would say like oh you know what I happen to speak five languages because I had an amazing teacher he taught me all that we all have a lot of methods that we use but means a lot of work that we put in ourselves now to put it in more detail for me personally language learning a language is based on four main pillars and this is something that I realized after the gathering and after looking at many different polygons and how they learn languages I think first of all whatever we do must be fun do you agree that learning languages is fun absolutely we just love it you know five minutes a day you take out your anchor rod and you go through the vocabulary or you take it from a book and you do some exercises right well it can be fun but it also means that you use materials that are interesting to you so you don't just take a book that someone told you this is the best book ever for learning French or whatever you pick a book that you like right used to be a book that smells good that you like holding in your hands that has a nice picture etc so it we need to have a positive attitude towards learning languages and I think this is so important because it all it happens a lot in language courses and and what in language schools for example that there's just one book and people work with that just that one book but um you know sometimes I'm not interested in reading about the history of Thanksgiving for example and yet we're standing to lessons with that talking about it over and over again I'm just not interested okay I would rather watch an episode of Friends when I see how Thanksgiving work works in the u.s. in practice and that's my way of learning that's I prefer to learn right so I think that it's extremely important that we do stuff that we like that we enjoy that we kind of dig up our own methods how to how to learn and are all materials you do agree that important definitely now the second thing and I think this is probably the greatest difference between polygons and unsuccessful language learners who are struggling with the language for a long time it is quantity huge amount of hours that we put into our language learning and this is something you know that people suppose that if you if you speak a few languages oh you're so talented you know it's it's just so easy for you you just learn another language just like that I hate to hurt hear that because there's a lot of hours that I put into every every one of my languages and it's fun hours because I pick the materials and the methods myself but it still is a lot of hours that we need to put into that learning and we need to do it actively this is the responsibility that we have for our learning so I think this is another huge difference the third thing that I heard with many many poet walls is that you need to do something not just a lot of it but also to do a little bit every day right 15 minutes here efficiently it's there it's much more effective than learning for three or four hours on a Sunday for example right so it's really really important to do it on a frequent basis and finally I think learning a language is really much easier if you have a system if you have a plan how to start doing it how to end what you want to achieve how to set your goals etc so this is basically my language learning philosophy that I figure out after the polyglot gathering and as I told you my great frustration was how to put this in practice how to make other people learn languages like that and that's how that's hot that's why I came up with an idea and I think it's best illustrated with this picture and and I'll and it's actually a metaphor that Alex also used yesterday which is interesting when you don't speak a language you're basically on the island on an isolated island right and you have very limited possibilities you cannot communicate with so many people so you're kind of stuck there now when you want to get out of the beautiful ocean which is full of possibilities you need to get across the waves but as you can see the waves are just around the island they're not everywhere on the on the ocean right so what you need to do if you want to learn a language well is to take your boat from the island and grow your way through the waves and I think this is something that people don't normally do very well because they they grow a little bit you know like Heather was in on Monday in a language school and then wrote a little bit on the right have a lesson on Wednesday and then they just wait they don't learn every day they're not put in all the work that we do and so the waves carry them back to the islands a little bit so they kind of move forward but then they're dragged back towards the island and the thing is they never get across these last waves which are the biggest ones the biggest struggles and I think personally that that's that's the b2 level for me I don't know about you but when I when I managed to achieve a beachy level in a language I think I don't have to think about it I use it naturally and that's what I don't have to worry about the language learning so much I just enjoy the beautiful ocean swimming in there and using the language in all possible situations but I don't have to grow so much every day I think order to get there I need to row quite a lot to get across the big waves okay so this is just an explanation of how I see language learning and I'm telling you this because I want to tell you now about a few experiments that I've done with my students when I was testing this idea in practice I wanted to see if I tell people about this and if I may them realize that if they want to speak a language if they want to know the language well they need to start learning it and not just wait to be taught I want you to see what happens and the results were actually quite amazing so this is something that I decided to call language mentoring I decided not to teach any lessons ever in my life again because I am not sure if if it's really possible to teach someone a language that's again something that Kirsten mentioned yesterday if we heard it in some other talks - is there such thing as teaching someone a language well I call it very much mentoring and I'm going to explain to you what's the difference and how I go about doing it so I did my first experiment at the communities University in Bratislava where I'm currently finishing my PhD and as such I teach some classes I normally teach interpreting classes but sometimes they ask me to teach something like the introduction to English studies and I had 100 students in four groups and I was supposed to do two things with them in one semester I was supposed to improve their presentation skills so how to present in the public and to improve their practical English skills there are students on a B to maybe see one level but mostly B to can I need to practice their English quite a lot and you know how difficult it is on the more advanced levels to actually practice in a systematic way so I said okay let's do it perfect but I only had 45 minutes a week can you imagine a class of 25 students 45 minutes a week and you're supposed to make them learn or practice their presentation skills and also improve their English how do you do that and that's how I that's that's what I did I tried the language mentoring in practice so basically I told them okay guys I'm going to tell you one thing this university is not going to teach you English at all you're not going to improve just by studying here they studied to be translators and interpreters and I'm telling you that now so that you save some time so let's take the learning into our own hands and let's learn together actively you know I want you to do something every day that's the frequency I want you to do a lot of it and it doesn't matter if it's watching series or reading books or working on your vocabulary or grammar or whatever you like and we also have a system about it so we had a plan we had an accountability sheet etc so we we put some framework around it so that is not just okay I'm learning here I'm learning damn okay so this was this was the project the experiment and some of the students came up with amazing ideas how to note it down so how to monitor the progress for example one of the students created a calendar like this and every day she put in the information what she did like she watched some TED Talks and BBC learning and YouTube videos etc and she put in the time and then she counted it how much time it was which was quite a quite an interesting way she did it in front of her table so that she always sees it every day now I'm gonna tell you I'm going to show you what they actually weren't doing because I asked them at the end in a questioner all 100 of them and it was interesting to see that when you tell them ok guys you need to learn by yourselves this is what happens they started listening to podcasts quite a lot 93% of all the students they started watching TV series but not just you know TV series with select subtitles as they would normally but in English subtitles or no subtitles at all which i think is much much more effective they started using ng droid for the vocabulary from other lessons they read books and articles online or watch some other YouTube videos or other videos and they did grammar exercises even 50 for some of them something amazing I was quite happy with that result because I told them you can pick yourself again we I left it up to them because I said it needs to be something you want okay you know what you need to improving so make sure that you do it in a way which is interesting to you and so this is this is what they did and I asked them at the end how did you like it how was the learning problem for you you know not the what's lets be taught but let's learn and I was so glad to see that just seven percent of them said oh well not really my cup of tea but the rest of them you know said it was great or it was quite interesting so they were really enthusiastic about learning English finally you know and then I Austin has your English improved because I didn't have any objective ways how to how to test it I didn't test them at the beginning and at the end I did it with my second experiment which I'm going to tell you about but um these guys just set by themselves like do you think your English has improved and we are talking about two months here okay not a very long period just two months October November and look at how many of them said yes at least a level or even quite a lot in just two months and again this was a lesson of 45 minutes where I didn't spend any time actually teaching them you know we just presented with we just did presentations in the lesson but no no learning was actually done in the lesson itself knows all about them spending time outside of the lessons with English anyway which they like I asked them if they would like to continue in such a program in another subject because you know the introduction to English studies actually had nothing to do with learning English or it was not the primary goal and almost all of them said yes absolutely it's let's do it okay because it was good so they were never happy about it they were satisfied now when you look at the time how much time they spend their annika was the mole active student and in two months she put in 81 hours of language learning and I can tell you these guys are extremely busy I studied the program myself they study two languages at the same time plus they have some subjects about translation and interpreting they often have as many as 12 or 13 subjects every week okay and they need to prepare for all of them so they're extremely busy so when I saw that she could um put in 81 hours of language learning just because she wanted to she wanted to improve I was really really happy to see that the other students were like yeah 36 34 and on average it was 23 hours and when you actually compare it to what they would have if I was teaching them in the lesson we would have spent six hours in two months all together because it was just 8 times 45 minutes and now they're real learning time which they said by themselves not because they were told but because they were learning item size was 23 hours so when you compare that it's almost 400% of increase in learning time isn't that amazing and it's much more effective and I think whatever I would do with 25 students in a class I could never find something that interests all of them so whatever they were doing is something that they picked themselves and I think it was much more effective for them some of them work on the grandmum the 15 percent some of them worked on other areas you know that they needed and everybody was enjoying it you know that fun it was a really nice atmosphere we spent seriously just 5 minutes every week talking about the learning I asked them if anyone had any problems it was kind of motivational and it just worked amazingly they often came to me and said well what all this was so good let's do it in other semesters too and it's just one simple idea that you tell them ok guys don't wait to be taught start letting yourselves so then I asked them how the program has helped them and I was really happy to see their answer because you know these are these are students who just learned English at school they don't have any experience learning by themselves and now they said like wow I have never worked in my English everything that they're doing this semester thank you or then the last one I never liked listening exercises at school too much but now I enjoy listening to English maybe because I did it voluntarily in my free time maybe yes really nice discovery and it was beautiful that they discovered kind of well for themselves I told them like you need to learn and these are all the methods that you can use for learning a language but they it was beautiful to see how they actually agreed really is like yes yes this is much more fun much more effective I see results let's do it again so then I did my second experiment I moved it a little bit higher even it was again with a hundred students but different ones different different classes and I call it the program was called semester with language mentoring and we just finished it last week so I'm still processing the results of that and the amazing thing is that I work with a group of a hundred students with 13 different languages not just English and it's because that in our university you can study as many as probably 20 different languages to be a translator interpreter and they are in different combinations so we have students who study French Spanish German Portuguese Finnish Croatian you name it and students with 13 different languages came to that class it was actually not a class because I just told them what do it as our free time activity you're not going to get any easy TS points and credits for that in fact they are but I didn't tell them because I wanted them to have a genuine motivation surprise me to tell them next week just those that that persevered until the end they didn't know that I told them learn because you want to learn you want to improve your languages and not because someone asks you to or because you're going to get credits for that writing so we basically what I did at the beginning is I gave them a lecture where I explained to them what I just what I just told you about my language learning philosophy and I actually started by using all my languages that I speak so that they they see that it's possible that they can learn languages too and they were really inspired by that I was like oh wow this is cool I want to learn that too so I told him okay now listen you need to put in a lot of hours there is no shortcut in language like deal with it okay and I told him you know now I know 300 polyglots and they say the same so they they they trusted me to take my word for it so I explained to them what language learning is really about and I told him okay um let's create a plan and let's learn according to that plan so everybody created their individual plan and now we had regular weekly meetings where I put them into groups according to the language that they were reading and so this would be a Spanish group and the French and German etc and I told them to pick just one language to do this with even though they study all of them two languages because I think it's more effective if you concentrate on one language at a certain time so we were meeting um in three groups at once once a week and we were discussing the learning and the amazing thing was that I was learning together with them I was working on my Russian and we were all watching each other know how we're doing and so they could all see what I did on my Russian you know it was very motivating for me also not to not to give up and not to be lazy but to continue because I was the example for them right so that's how we met and we discussed all all the learning problems and and that there was no learning done in the meetings it was all about learning outside of the lessons and again it worked amazingly though based on time for example watching TV series reading books reading newspapers magazines etc doing a working out there auntie vocabulary writing the goal this method and set try to learn about all possible methods and they pick whatever they like I think that's that's really amazing to see how people can get excited about language learning when they realize that it's up to them and it's in no one no one's hands and it was nice because I I could tell the day they believed that I knew what I was saying because I studied the same program four years ago I finished at the very at the same University studying English and German and I told them do you have the feeling like you're in your third or fourth year and you're standing on say English and German it's you're in fact kind of a shame to tell people that you're studying German because it Germany is not fluent enough I don't like yes I help them too and and I said it's perfectly okay it's because you're not doing anything about your language and this university is not going to make you a perfect German or English speaker you need to put in the work yourself I think they understood that and now they're approaching language learning in a completely new way and they're writing emails like this is so amazing I'm doing it for my other languages too and I have a plan to work in the summer online Spanish you know which I want to take as a third language so they get really really motivated about language learning and I just did the group of this methodology this language learning experiment also in small groups these are four of my five of my friends who are learning English and Spanish on an ATV on model and again we met every week at my place and and we had a nice talk about that and I just wanted to see how that works and it seems to be working really well because they really are achieving great results or another group of people who are actually starting to learn a language so on kind of testing the idea on different different groups of people and now I started to to organize seminars even for the public where I tell people it's all about the learning it's not about being taught and it's mostly you know these people that go to the courses are people who would normally just take a lesson in in a language school but that's all that's all it takes for them to learn a language you know actually when I was here at the polyglot gathering I bought you this book fluent Chinese I think it's called and I probably put a lot of interesting even though I'm not interested in Chinese and I really enjoy the book and then my friend from Serbia wrote to me and he said Lydia I'm going to teach English in China I said yeah that's cool good for you and he says and you know what's amazing they're going to give me a private teacher so I'm even going to speak Chinese and by the way how he said it he looked to me like he thinks okay tick that's done you know Chinese has another benefit of the work for free you know that's okay so I just send him the book right away it's like read this you better work on your Chinese as you did says because she knows what she's talking about and you know I think this really is something that people believe in general like all you need is a good teacher and he will do the work for you you know and then these people go and look for the best teacher who can give them the the best know-how or the best sub language knowledge or something but it just I don't really think it exists I'm thinking it teachers were always to make the students learn and I think the teacher the teachers were is very important but it should the teacher should always stress how important is that students work on their languages by themselves outside of the lessons so these are the seminars that I'm organizing right now testing the idea I'm gonna see what it brings me I took it as my private mission to tell all the world that this is what polyglots do you know they actually learn the language they aren't they don't wait to just be taught and and as I said this is all based on the four things which I think are the most important thing in language learning and it'll be really interested to hear Europe whether you agree with it whether maybe you would like to add something and now we actually have some time for the discussion so that would be that would be all there any questions if you agree I will ask my question sir and give it to you after really Lydia I think it is not a teaching butter learning revolution you are pointing out and I really wonderful and one thing with the physical view show to us and there were three percent of people who didn't we're not amused this I go to complain to the direction to do to to the house I mean you are not a director of your school are you so all the direction reacted to do that yes this is one thing I'm very glad you answer think for the question and this is something that I was thinking a lot about how to actually do it because it's a formal education less than you know I need to actually assess them now how do you assess learning in their free time you know and I asked them how much time we actually had a chart and they filled in how much time they spent but if I had told them you know those of you who will spend more than I don't know 20 hours altogether will get an A then I wouldn't believe what they say that because they would just put in anything so I tell them look guys um officially I'm going to a sense you just based on the presentations and we did a few more activities like vocabulary tests etc but the most important thing in this subject is the learning part it's the most important one but I cannot assess it formally so let's just agree that we are going to do it if you really don't want to you don't have to there is no way for me how to how to find that out and it's totally up to you but I'm telling you this is your one lifetime opportunity you better use it because no other teachers are probably going to tell you to do that so let's do it together so I try to motivate them in a positive way and if they didn't you know if they didn't like it or something if they didn't put in all the hours it's like okay that's your problem so until I'm doing it came back to you for questions on particular points yes yes you doing the lasas moments at five minutes at the end yes to discuss whatever they want to discuss about the learning thank you Thanks um you use the term Gold list goals can you briefly explain what that is for all fellows here oh no I think I may not be the best person to explain that I change the author of the month that is here among us and the goal based method is basically a method of of rewriting vocabulary lists at least two weeks after writing the first list so you go you basically distilled the vocabulary and you rewrite 70% of the words that were most difficult for you every two weeks or more and it's learning into your long-term memory without actually wanting to learn without forcing your brain to learn I think you could talk to Dave chance about the method I think it's a really interesting one I'm using it myself I'm a Christian how about senses learning tools that can teach okay a student in order to continue his studies languages to see one level after he finished his intermediate and beginner and an English you wish to study well I will not now talk about all the methods I basically gave my students a two-hour lecture about the possible methods I think it takes a lot of contact with the language and it depends on you know what level if you'll be frosting about the upper intermediate advance then I suppose that people should work with native materials and work with the vocabulary a lot and just listen listen a lot and read because this is something that our students just don't do enough of listening to sell one thing that at least in Slovakia is really underestimated can be can we give the microphone to exactly that person I thought you were the person I don't think James is here what a question I I fully circle in what you're doing but how do you make it that we go out of our comfort zone because I mean personally I like reading or writing on this is where I'm going to do all the time when I kind of don't go to the oral part because it's my tougher part and I say okay I prefer taking a book that looking at a video so how do you push your student to go out of the comfort zone very good question thank you and the first thing I did with them is for them to realize what are their three priorities that they need to concentrate on and I made them write it down before I continue so I said okay now think about it what do you need to work on most what do you need most m93 ton of them roads speaking is number one and vocabulary is number two and then you know listening writing whatever it whatever they chose and I said okay let's spend these two months concentrating on your priorities and if you put in speaking now I want you to actually write down exactly how you're going to improve your speaking and I gave them a range of possibilities even including things like talking to yourself self-talk which is an amazing way for introverts for example I think it's a it's a good method so I told them various possible ways like you can go to language cafes you know you can you can use several websites actually meet foreigners in Bratislava you can use I tolki for online teachers you have a tandem we have Erasmus students in Bratislava so there's best possibilities and I told them now pick one and write down what you're going to do and then we oh geez and I told them okay guys some of you said your priority is speaking but I see in the chart that you still haven't been to any language cafe you haven't talked to anyone so how are you going to improve your speaking you know and then I I always tell them you know it's it's very comfortable to do the things that we like you know like you're reading and listening where we are not also outside of our comfort zone but you're speaking will never improve without speaking so I said okay uh before next week I mean this week everybody needs to do something about the priority that they haven't still done anything about and you're going to report to me next week and then I would ask them in front of the other people so what about your language cafe did you go and they're like yeah you know um I already have a night elqui session booked for tomorrow it's like okay good so this basically motivation like that I have for the mic back here send it up front after one more person here I normally don't plug things but I recently took a course from sensible Chinese comm for learning Chinese characters and I was extremely impressed by the systematic approach that it's about it wasn't specifically to teach me Chinese characters themselves but how to go about doing that in a very regular easy-to-understand way if anyone's interested good - hi thank you so much for that presentation you sort of answered my question but I just want to know if there's anything else so to ask it directly you had the puzzle pieces there and one of them was system so you discovered about you know they make the goals and then they work on their priorities and all of that was there anything else as part of that system that you haven't already mentioned yes it's it's also the accountability sheet or count account making sure that they are held accountable for their learning which is something that I took inspiration from the add1challenge you know the Google spreadsheet where people write what date I think it's a really good way of making sure that it's public everybody sees it it's not just something they would report to me by email that would be a lot too much work anyway to process that so this is this is how we this is how I did it we basically also make sure the accountability was there I think that's an important part of the system - well first of all well done guess what I agree I said half of the things that you said yesterday in your presentation right yeah but better amazing work really really great one thing I was wondering is your group are all busy taking and interpreting and translating degree they're all foreign language students you've got like a big self-selecting group of language nerds to a certain extent maybe not as nerdy as nerdfest however you did then say that you know you were working on it with your friends you've worked on it with sort of even zero beginners I think that's really interesting because I'm looking at it's good I'll do this in my town this is great um but I would never find you know like people who are self selected language people so I wonder if did you notice any differences um yes surprisingly the students who study languages are not such language enthusiasts you would probably expect right and they often choose that because they didn't get to medicine or whatever you know but in Slovakia we have five universities that prepare translators and interpreters we have like 20 languages in there so it's just you know you're studying polish why well they open polish in my ear you know so you have students and students there you know um however I I do work only with people who do have a little bit of internal intrinsic motivation I don't need to persuade anyone like if someone wants to be taught and they well they are willing to pay a lot of money to be taught I let them figure it out for themselves because it's like I tell them about this and it doesn't resonate with them then too bad you know I decided to just work with people who want to work because I I don't promise the money enemy Regulus message you know this is like hey guys I'm going to help you learn a language but you need to do the work I'm just going to be the guide I'm not going to give you the perfect method which will teach you English in two weeks you know so I guess this is this is the natural selection I tell people about it some people say like well sounds like a lot of work I'd better go to my to my language course you know and and if if others like it like the idea and we work together in the voluntary group did you have anyone drop out like yes this went quiet on you yes actually counted it yesterday I think 176 people ended the course and were regularly going and doing this this is the things some of them broken you know like yeah you know I'm really busy this semester and one day I will do the amazing things that you told us about and that's what for example Brian Tracy calls the one day I'll you know people never get out of that I'll thanks so I classic guitars and I completely agree with every single point and when I'm hearing a lot from people here is that people want to play an instrument but not practice people want to speak something but not speak and so that's so as a musician to language learner everything you said is 100% true so if you have that comfort zone problem to one day i'll whatever you want to call it maybe both if you're an introvert can't do this because you're setting up your own boundaries and that is why you cannot event so even she cannot help you no matter how good of a teacher she is if you are not willing to step out so you get it you get actually I I use this metaphor quite a lot in my in my lectures on my students I use the guitar and I show them a picture of the guitar and I said if you if you like to play the guitar how do you think you will achieve that do you think you could watch some YouTube videos and practice with on the imaginary guitar and then once you know how to do it you take a guitar and go and do a concert that's that word I go like no of course not you need to pick this along with the guitar it's like okay what about speaking you know you want to practice speaking and you're accepting and somehow by just reading something and listening to something you suddenly start speaking in a fluent way doesn't work and it's actually it helps a lot when I tell them if you know I've gone through this process several times right now I'm learning Russian and I'm somewhere and still in the wave zone you know still struggling and still putting a lot of work um but you know even but even though I it's my eighth language right now um I still felt really frustrated at the beginning it's like it is a painful process deal with it okay you want to say something you're talking to someone you could express it in fact on the language ease what you want to do it in Russian it's like how do I say that you know it's really a painful process but I tell them just keep rowing and it's going to pay off right going on with that it's like you want to have a concert but you only want to play the first piece in your program you want to play a concert but you're only going to practice scales when you have other pieces if you play scales cause I mean you can play arpeggios if you play arpeggios I mean you can play scales etc so listen to her excellent work ah I would have interest in your Google sheets that you set up because I did depth two and I don't know it's like dude do they have to do it every day or every week and what what do they enter because it can be too much it can hit Willis I don't know your balance um I'm experimenting with this again I'm trying to work out the best way with the first group we would need it with colors so we had a we had a sheet which was the rows were dice run from s 60 and the columns were individual students in several sheets and they were basically supposed to color the given cell for the day green if they did well you know if it was like half the time they were starting to they were planning to send red if they felt that they and it was style of violet if it if it was a day off because I told them you don't need to study every single day and so then you looked at the chart and you saw exactly like a there's quite a lot of red cells in here you know what's going on and then you could discuss it with that student so that was my collar method and I even rewarded them like if you if you put it twice as much work because you know students get really motivated at the beginning and they start learning a lot so I told them if it's if it's a really active day then make it a green cell and put in a smiley face you know and then you can see like I have so many smile it's this week you know they were very proud to to show the others so that's my first method right now for making them actually write into the cells what exactly they're doing how much time they're standing we're counting the minutes and they're giving notes like what exactly day they were doing like 15 minutes of that 20 minutes of that and then we count it together that's how I could find out how much time did she spend doing so it's even with numbers or with colors actually a lecturer two English teachers in Slovakia about this and some of the teachers were to be like I'm actually coming to try these my students and one of the teachers trotted with kids which are more like 10 years old and she says it works perfectly you know the kids are watching YouTube videos and they're they're learning English and it works well and she works with the colors because they want to have the cream cells you know and they even have a chart like in the in the classroom or the color the things themselves so seems to be working even for children hi thank you very much back to my seat thank you very much for your presentation my name is Johanna I created a kind of teacher self method language learning method in some of my clients get private sessions with me I'm thinking of one in particular he's a very busy businessman I'm supposed to teach him or he's supposed to learn English and I try to explain kind of the same thing you're saying I give him a lot of resources with video he could watch but I never tried the accountability option what would you recommend for one-on-one session because he has nobody else to to prove to he cannot do a Google sheet with anybody else so what could you recommend okay there's another thing that I tried also I also a mentor like that a friend of mine with whom I said okay people are really motivated by money you know people want to have money and when they lose money they feel bad about it so I think that's a good motivation too so I told her okay you give me 50 euros and you learning German so I'm going to test you in one month in 50 most frequent irregular verbs in German I'm keeping the money I didn't see them but with my friends the two groups that I showed you they gave me 100 euros and I told them you need to stick it out till the under three months otherwise I'm going to have a really good weekend and so this this or something that seemed to work for them too you know they don't want to people are really really afraid to lose money so I I didn't want to take any money from them because they're my friends I was just testing the idea in this way they were like you know I want to I actually I earn money by learning look at that you know what an amazing approach like if I if I learn a little bit more Agata behind red euros the psychology of that it seems to be working pretty well if you haven't tried that um thank you so much that's really inspiring because I would love to do some of the thinking of men touring methods that you do and I was wondering how you found different group sizes from 1 1 to 100 what have been the differences pluses and minuses benefits of each one and is there a size you would say you would recommend not going past or I think this can be done with as many people as possible and it also doesn't depend on the languages you know I help people improve their finish I don't speak a word in Finnish so um it doesn't matter what languages there are even what level I think it could be done with people on different levels as far as everybody's learning on the song on their own level and there are some pluses and minuses like I would say with this group of 100 students it was extremely motivating that they met in person that they actually weren't there together and even when I did the lecture you know I'd propose this all around the university I said we're starting a new learning revolution here at the Faculty make sure you kind of learn how pointless learn languages and I had a whole roomful of people you know and they were like it was amazing to see that this room is actually full in one of the lectures you know and that there are so many other people who want to learn that was very inspiring for them to see that their classmates are also doing it and then I also put them into Facebook groups where they could share resources for their individual languages so we had a Russian group English German etc and I kind of motivated them and I boosted the activity in the groups at the beginning I even had assistants who actually helped me with that and you know that they were motivated by other classmates mentioning you know what they what they were doing for example with a will but this thing the goal based method book Volvox method I told them it's important to have a notebook that you love you know you need to take a really beautiful notebook and so one of one of the students in the Italian group actually posted a picture of her notebook as she said has anyone got a prettier no they were motivating themselves it's amazing you just need to basically Kingdom the spark and it seems to be working by itself so I would say that's the greatest benefit of working with a group and working with one on one it can be more adapted to the needs of the person so for example I mentor a few people where I I discuss their language learning in the language so it is considered English for example which for them is an additional practice which they which they like I couldn't do it with the group of a lot of students with different languages okay most listen yeah this is exactly what I do in the first hyperbola or finals I said I'm a lazy polyglot and this is exactly thank you and this is exactly what I do I I used all my mm time that I couldn't normally I couldn't use when I was at university queuing for the university restaurant on eating with friends or washing dishes whatever and I always have either YouTube or some friends to practice languages with I think this is the sea isn't it like people people think like oh you spent two hours a day or three hours a day learning and I was like no really no I mean I don't have that extra time I'm quite easy so I just use I make sure I use the time when I excel do exactly those things okay guys so just one more thing if you if you want to find out more I know the website right now in Slovakia see Kobe mentor in build SK Joseph you'll probably not understand I also want a language mentoring calm which I'm just starting right now so there is not much but you can contact me there if you have any other questions or ideas and thank you very much

Channel: Polyglot Gathering

Views: 74,893

Keywords: language, languages, polyglot, polyglots, gathering, language learning, language teaching

Id: _lNUc5yfQ5c

Length: 48min 15sec (2895 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2016