Why and how adults can learn languages better than kids

[Music] [Applause] [Music] okay um this is the the second part of my presentation and as I said before uh we talked about the Legends the myths of language learning and now we're going to talk about methods and cognitive principles or just principles of learning now the question is the very first question is uh do we learn can we learn how kids learn languages a common suggestion is that we should learn like kids do and that is called the natural way now it it's a fact that without a doubt kids end up learning a language very well but the wrong conclusion that people draw or some people draw is that if you learn like a kid or try to learn like a kid you will succeed now let me start by saying that uh in general the conditions in which kids and adults learn languages are quite different first of all kids don't have another uh language they have just one language they don't have another language like adults influencing the language you're learning and as I said before they have no choice but to learn because they live the language so the main difference is that uh learning your first language is the result of living it's not the result of a choice you make to learn another language and normally when you have no choice you cannot make a bad choice but adults can actually make the wrong choice and they can learn the wrong way and they can't give up but this doesn't necessarily mean that kids learn better and faster now in English there's an expression uh when you say that you're comparing apples with oranges it means that you're comparing things that have nothing to do with one another and that's the case of language learning for adults and for kids now I believe that a fair comparison should be done in the same conditions now it's true that uh adults have some disadvantages but we don't have enormous disadvantages so let's look at the way kids learn a language first and in what conditions now first of all as Richard said before they are they have a family and this means that kids are surrounded by the language since they are born this implies affection from your mother from your father but also playing time and natural and genuine curiosity towards the world and this psychological Factor plays a huge role in language learning and then we all go to school and in school we learn a second language in a formal context we interact with our classmates we get corrected by our teacher when we speak and when we write so learning a language is also the result of a social interaction with peers with your classmates and with other Learners and then we all like watching movies listening to the radio listening to music and we spend a lot of time without even thinking about it we spend a lot of time listening to the language and then of course we have a lot of friends all this helps us learn a language as kids now if we do the math a year normally is like 365 days let's suppose that we're considering a 18-year-old kid so times 18 years and then 24 hours because the brain learns even when we're sleeping and this is almost 880,000 hours of reading listening speaking and living the language everything happens as a whole process in the course of a long time now let's consider the conditions in which adults learn languages first of all we have interference from our native language and this implies interference in grammar syntax pronunciation and so on and then kids are more genuinely curious than us we are still curious but a little differently than them as I said before adults have problems psychological problems when they have to speak when they fear making mistakes they fear being judged by others and there are other factors like we have less time we don't have an environment surrounding us and where the language is constantly spoken we have other commitments in life we have a job we have to do a lot of things in our life and we're generally busy so this basically means that comparing is difficult because conditions are different first of all because as I said before there are some internal psychological factors like the one I said talked about before having no language means that you can learn any other language and you have no interference and then the this emotional connection with the world in which the language is spoken that plays a huge role and then apart from the psychological internal factors there are also the external environmental factors now if you any of you go living in say Italy for 18 years and then you hear you listen you speak you go to school you get corrected if you follow exactly the same pattern the path that that kids followed I am sure that you would speak the language quite well and you will reach maybe you will not reach a a native level but you will reach a very high level that will allow you to do whatever you want to do in that language now how do we learn a second language well first of all we most of us don't go living in another country we stay in our own country so how can we learn a language as independent Learners in the comfort of our home now as I said before the bad news is that we don't have all the advantages that kid have but there's also good news because we have some advantages as adults now when we start doing something whatever it is I think it's very important to start with the right mindset and obviously you have to make the right choices now on the internet there's a lot of people asking themselves what is the the best method to learn a language now the problem is that searching for a universal objective efficient method is pointless let me explain you why now the reason why there is no one best method is because every each and every one of you have a different learning style and different tastes what is good for me might not good for you it's a trial and error problem process it means that you have to try and you have to see what suits you best since the very beginning so an important principle is to figure out what you like since the very beginning now before delving in talking about methods let me talk about basic cognitive principles the very first thing the very important thing is attitude have having a positive mindset is very important and you have to know since the very beginning that learning languages is fun and it's not difficult as difficult as people think so the attitude that you have not only towards the language but also towards the people plays a very very important role in language learning now the psychological factor is as I said before absolutely essential you have to know your limits we are all human beings we all make mistakes so if we know that we have limits it can be our Force make the time now one of the most common excuses for language Learners is that they say I don't have the time to learn a language uh quintilian who was a Roman rorian said it is not that we don't have time it is that we make poor use of it and he was right I think because we always find time to do things that we like so the next question would be how do we make the time as you can see that that's small thing there is which is a portable device as you know a real Revolution for language learning because you can use it anywhere and whenever you want it obviously you have to want it you can do it while walking driving the car washing the dishes and even when you go to the supermarket now another very important principle is consistency that means that in order to be successful you have to learn every single day and possibly even twice a day for example spending 30 minutes deliberately studying for example listening and reading something when you feel fresh and weekends for example when you don't work and if you're a little bit tired or you're doing something else you can use your debt Time by listening to Portable devices and I showed you the the example before like when you go to the supermarket when you're at home cleaning up or washing the dishes Etc the B advantage of this of stunning every single day is that you are feeding the brain you're giving it food and another important thing is that uh the brain normally learns with small chunks of information so people might think that if they spend 10 hours learning a language every day it's actually better than spending 30 minutes but when you spend too much time doing something your level of concentration goes down you have the impression that you're learning a lot but you're not learning efficiently and you don't burn out Burn Out means that you are tired sick and tired of the language and you don't want to learn it anymore which is a very common mistake that people make now another principle is uh the fact that the input that is what you read and what you listen to has to be intelligible you have to understand it and as I said before it has to be interesting another very important thing is that you have to vary your work because if you always do the same thing then it gets boring for example when you have a text in front of your eyes and you keep reading and reading or just your activity your learn language learning activity is reading then it gets boring so if you consider a text so a piece of information and you have audio as well you can not only read it if you think about it you can also read and listen at the same time you can just listen to it or you can even read it out loud or speak to yourself by using the things that you have seen in the text so what counts is not only how much you do things but also how you do things the advantages are that listening and reading at the same time is an easy thing to do everybody can do it and when you change and Vary your operations and your activities it keeps you interested and motivated like in all schools in the world language is one of the subjects that you have to study foreign language and unfortunately sometimes it's considered most of the times I would say it's considered like another subject to study but as I said before languages have to be learned they don't have to be studied you cannot study a language you can only learn it a very important thing is Road memorization that means when you learn things by heart so you think that learning by heart is a good thing like when they tell you you can learn for example a poetry by heart but speaking in language is actually the ability of assembling blocks assembling bricks in order to produce something you learn by repeating things varying things and getting exposed to content obviously so the bottom line of this is that you don't learn grammar and you learn grammar and words from Context if you think about it that's exactly what kids do you learn by repeating by revising things not by learning things by heart another very important thing is motivation if you have a beautiful Ferrari but you don't have any fuel in it it's like having no Ferrari at all so most people give up after some time because they don't know how to keep themselves interested to keep themselves motivated a an easy thing to do this to motivate yourself is to think about what you can do with only some months of studying you can travel all around around the world and it makes speaking languages makes your life easier you can talk to people you can read interesting books about the culture of that country or that language you can watch interesting documentaries or movies and television and for the most romantic of you you can even find love and obviously friendship which is an important thing in life so every time you start learning in your learning session think about all about all the amazing things that you can do in your life this means that actually languages can change your life and they changed mine another principle is action learning speaking languages interacting with human beings is actually the art of imperfection each and every one of you uh have tried to babble in a language and trying to say something and at the beginning it was difficult each one of you each and every one of you made mistakes when trying to come across your ideas and kids make a lot of mistakes before they learn to speak a language well so you have to accept your limits and to know that in order to do something well you first have to do it poorly I in my experience I find a lot of so-called perfectionists that is people who want to speak the language perfectly since the very beginning and I think that perfectionism is actually not a good thing when it comes to language learning so when it comes to talking to people speaking to people you have to feel ready and when you feel ready can start for example talking to yourself might some people might think that you have become completely crazy if they see you speaking to yourself on the street but actually I found out that a lot of people do it for example when taking a shower and speaking to yourself is not a far-fetched it's not a crazy idea it's actually a very effective one and of course U as I said before you can always find a partner online or in life with whom you can interact for example you can exchange a language for another so the bottom line of this is that language is a communication tool it is something we use to talk to other people and we perfect it by using it and when we do it becomes an automatic process you don't think when you speak Russian you just speak it and this is not only for your native tongue but also for other languages that you want to learn so there is no best language path that you can follow but there is your language path it means that when we have for example to go from point A to point B there are all sorts of possible ways to reach that point a proof of that is that evidence of that is the fact that for example I or Richard we have learn languages in very different ways yet I think we both learn it well so another thing is that you have to try to find your own language path now this is my personal language path so it's not un IAL but that's what I normally do with languages here on the axis you can see T which stands for time and this is the efficiency with which you learn and it depends on time so at the beginning that this is so-called the beginner phase what happens is that you start learning a language slowly that's the way I do it it means that I decide to learn slowly because the language is unknown but then when you have a feeling of the language it becomes a little bit more familiar something amazing happens in your brain which people call the Epiphany point where you de develop a feel for the language it's in your head you can use it and when that happens you can learn faster without even realizing it by using the language that means that the language is automatic it's an automatic cognitive process so if we consider every single stage at the beginning the language is totally unknown and the advice that I give you as I said before is to work a little bit every single day the content that you can start with when you learn a language can be for example language series like books that help you learn a language at the beginning my my personal method is to use for example bilingual text if I want to learn Russian for example I would choose uh make sure that I always have a text in Italian or some other language that helps me understand the text in Russian and then I use a special technique which is called bilingual translation that helps me retain extract the information and keep it in my head and the principle here is that it's better to put quality in your work at the very beginning and the goal is to train myself to get a solid foundation of the language now when you have learned and you have a solid foundation of the language it becomes a little bit more automatic and when you start doing that you don't even think about it you just use it and in this phase I create and choose uh as I said before monolingual and bilingual text I create them through the internet um I still use bilingual translation but I also read a lot more and the principles are not only quality but also quantity and and the goal is to build a language core in your head now when you have reached a certain level the language becomes very familiar and this means that you can actually do all sorts of things and not even think about it time is not a problem anymore uh in this phase what I use for example is TV movies and obviously native speakers because interaction human interaction is important so the method basically in this phase is that I create my own environment where I can use the language every single time in all possible situations and that means that I use the language constantly my goal which is an ambitious goal obviously is to reach a native like fluency but obviously we never start we never stop learning we always learn well the reason why it is effective and I found I found out about it later is that it respects the parito principle it means that you learn something a little bit and you learn it well and that helps you to learn the other part of the language which is actually 80% of the rest that's the reason why it's called the 2080 principle learning a language is not a linear process for example you don't learn you don't first learn all the colors and then you learn all the other parts Etc it's something that comes randomly at you it's not linear but it's Progressive it means that you keep progressing and a good thing is that my method changes with time I don't always do the same things in the different phases and it's consistent that means that I use it in a certain way and it has to respect the principles of consistency and it adapts to my way of learning my tastes it's constant because I do it every single day once I start learning a language and it's varied because I do all sorts of things with a language not just one and it's obviously fun it's entertaining I find it very entertaining so the conclusion is that language learning is not difficult and it can be fun and another thing that you always have to keep in mind is that it can change your life and it can be done if you know how to do it and another very good news is that internet is a revolution and it has changed the way we can learn so the last thing that I wanted to tell you is Happy language learning [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Luca Lampariello

Views: 153,704

Keywords: language learning, Polyglot, Languages, How to learn a language, How to speak like a native

Id: CWuGZidj76U

Length: 21min 16sec (1276 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2015