
Chris Lonsdale is Managing Director of Chris Lonsdale & Associates, a company established to catalyse breakthrough performance for individuals and senior teams. In addition, he has also developed a unique and integrated approach to learning that gives people the means to acquire language or complex technical knowledge in short periods of time.
Jan-21-2014 Update. The video transcripts are now available via the following links:
English Only: http://www.the-third-ear.com/files/TE…
English + Chinese Translation: http://www.kungfuenglish.com/files/TE…
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How to learn any language in six months | Chris Lonsdale | TEDxLingnanUniversity
۰:۱۰
The people in the back, can you hear me clearly?
۰:۱۳
OK, good.
۰:۱۵
Have you ever held a question in mind
۰:۱۹
for so long that it becomes part of how you think?
۰:۲۵
Maybe even part of who you are as a person?
۰:۲۸
Well I’ve had a question in my mind for many, many years
۰:۳۲
and that is: How can you speed up learning?
۰:۳۸
Now, this is an interesting question
۰:۴۰
because if you speed up learning,
۰:۴۲
you can spend less time at school.
۰:۴۴
And if you learn really fast,
۰:۴۷
you probably wouldn’t have to go to school at all.
۰:۵۰
Now, when I was young, school was sort of OK but…
۰:۵۴
I found quite often that school got in the way of learning
۰:۵۸
so I had this question in mind: How do you learn faster?
۱:۰۲
And this began when I was very, very young,
۱:۰۵
when I was 11 years old,
۱:۰۷
I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia,
۱:۱۱
this is sleep-learning,
۱:۱۳
where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed
۱:۱۶
and it turns on in the middle of the night
۱:۱۹
when you’re sleeping,
۱:۲۰
and you’re supposed to be learning from this.
۱:۲۲
A good idea, unfortunately it doesn’t work.
۱:۲۵
But, hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas
۱:۲۹
and we’ve had incredible discoveries about
۱:۳۲
learning that began with that first question.
۱:۳۶
I went on from there to become passionate about psychology
۱:۳۹
and I have been involved in psychology in many different ways
۱:۴۳
for the rest of my life up until this point.
۱:۴۵
In 1981, I took myself to China
۱:۴۹
and I decided that I was going to be native level in Chinese inside two years.
۱:۵۶
Now, you need to understand that in 1981, everybody thought
۲:۰۱
Chinese was really, really difficult
۲:۰۴
and that a Westerner could study for 10 years or more
۲:۰۶
and never really get very good at it.
۲:۰۸
And I also went in with a different idea
۲:۱۱
which was: taking all of the conclusions
۲:۱۳
from psychological research up to that point
۲:۱۶
and applying them to the learning process.
۲:۱۹
What was really cool was that in six months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese
۲:۲۴
and it took a little bit longer to get up to native.
۲:۲۸
But I looked around and I saw all of these people from different countries
۲:۳۳
struggling terribly with Chinese,
۲:۳۵
I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages,
۲:۴۰
and so my question got refined down to:
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How can you help a normal adult
۲:۴۷
learn a new language quickly, easily and effectively?
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Now this is a really, really important question in today’s world.
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We have massive challenges with environment,
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we have massive challenges with social dislocation,
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with wars, all sorts of things going on
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and if we can’t communicate,
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we’re really going to have difficulty solving these problems.
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So we need to be able to speak each other’s languages,
۳:۱۰
this is really, really important.
۳:۱۲
The question then is: How do you do that?
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Well, it’s actually really easy.
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You look around for people who can already do it,
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you look for situations where it’s already working
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and then you identify the principles and apply them.
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It’s called modelling and I’ve been looking at language learning
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and modelling language learning for about 15 to 20 years now.
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And my conclusion, my observation from this is
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that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months.
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Now when I say this, most people think I’m crazy, this is not possible.
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So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress,
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it’s all about expanding our limits.
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In 1950, everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible,
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and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956
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and from there it’s got shorter and shorter.
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۱۰۰ years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn’t fly.
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Except it does and we all know this.
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How does heavy stuff fly?
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We reorganise the material using principles that we have learned
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from observing nature, birds in this case.
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And today we’ve gone even further…
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We’ve gone even further, so you can fly a car.
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You can buy one of these for a couple 100.000 US dollars.
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We now have cars in the world that fly.
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And there’s a different way to fly which we’ve learned from squirrels.
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So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does,
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build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.
۴:۵۰
Now most people, a lot of people, I wouldn’t say everybody
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but a lot of people think they can’t draw.
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However there are some key principles, five principles, that you can apply
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to learning to draw and you can actually learn to draw in five days.
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So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days
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and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this.
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Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing
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and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do.
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And I looked at this and I went:
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“Wow, so that’s how I look like when I’m concentrating so intensely
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that my brain is exploding.”
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So, anybody can learn to draw in five days
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and in the same way, with the same logic,
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anybody can learn a second language in six months.
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How? There are five principles and seven actions.
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There may be a few more but these are absolutely core.
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And before I get into those I just want to talk about two myths,
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I want to dispel two myths.
۵:۵۴
The first is that you need talent.
۵:۵۶
Let me tell you about Zoe.
۵:۵۸
Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland, was trying to learn Dutch,
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struggling extremely, extremely… a great deal
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and finally people were saying: “You’re completely useless,”
۶:۰۹
“you’re not talented,” “give up,” “you’re a waste of time”
۶:۱۳
and she was very, very depressed.
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And then she came across these five principles,
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she moved to Brazil and she applied them
۶:۱۹
and in six months she was fluent in Portuguese,
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so talent doesn’t matter.
۶:۲۴
People also think that immersion in a new country is the way to learn a language.
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But look around Hong Kong, look at all the westerners
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who’ve been here for 10 years, who don’t speak a word of Chinese.
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Look at all the Chinese living in America, Britain, Australia, Canada
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have been there 10, 20 years and they don’t speak any English.
۶:۴۳
Immersion per se does not work.
۶:۴۵
Why? Because a drowning man cannot learn to swim.
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When you don’t speak a language, you’re like a baby.
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And if you drop yourself into a context
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which is all adults talking about stuff over your head, you won’t learn.
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So, what are the five principles that you need to pay attention to?
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First: the four words,
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attention, meaning, relevance and memory,
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and these interconnect in very, very important ways.
۷:۱۰
Especially when you’re talking about learning.
۷:۱۲
Come with me on a journey through a forest.
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You go on a walk through a forest
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and you see something like this… Little marks on a tree,
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maybe you pay attention, maybe you don’t.
۷:۲۳
You go another 50 metres and you see this…
۷:۲۶
You should be paying attention.
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Another 50 metres, if you haven’t been paying attention, you see this…
۷:۳۳
And at this point, you’re paying attention.
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And you’ve just learned that this… is important,
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it’s relevant because it means this,
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and anything that is related, any information related to your survival
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is stuff that you’re going to pay attention to
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and therefore you’re going to remember it.
۷:۵۲
If it’s related to your personal goals,
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then you’re going to pay attention to it.
۷:۵۶
If it’s relevant, you’re going to remember it.
۷:۵۸
So, the first rule, first principle for learning a language
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is focus on language content that is relevant to you.
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Which brings us to tools.
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We master tools by using tools and we learn tools the fastest
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when they are relevant to us.
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So let me share a story.
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A keyboard is a tool.
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Typing Chinese a certain way, there are methods for this. That’s a tool.
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I had a colleague many years ago
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who went to night school; Tuesday night, Thursday night,
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two hours each time, practicing at home,
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she spent nine months, and she did not learn to type Chinese.
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And one night we had a crisis.
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We had 48 hours to deliver a training manual in Chinese.
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And she got the job, and I can guarantee you
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in 48 hours, she learned to type Chinese
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because it was relevant, it was meaningful, it was important,
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she was using a tool to create value.
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So the second principle for learning a language is to use your language
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as a tool to communicate right from day one.
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As a kid does.
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When I first arrived in China, I didn’t speak a word of Chinese,
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and on my second week, I got to take a train ride overnight.
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I spent eight hours sitting in the dining car
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talking to one of the guards on the train,
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he took an interest in me for some reason,
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and we just chatted all night in Chinese
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and he was drawing pictures and making movements with his hands
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and facial expressions and piece by piece by piece
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I understood more and more.
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But what was really cool, was two weeks later,
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when people were talking Chinese around me,
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I was understanding some of this
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and I hadn’t even made any effort to learn that.
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What had happened, I’d absorbed it that night on the train,
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which brings us to the third principle.
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When you first understand the message,
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then you will acquire the language unconsciously.
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And this is really, really well documented now,
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it’s something called comprehensible input.
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There’s 20 or 30 years of research on this,
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Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field,
۹:۵۷
has published all sorts of these different studies
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and this is just from one of them.
۱۰:۰۱
The purple bars show the scores on different tests for language.
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The purple people were people who had learned by grammar and formal study,
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the green ones are the ones who learned by comprehensible input.
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So, comprehension works. Comprehension is key
۱۰:۲۱
and language learning is not about accumulating lots of knowledge.
۱۰:۲۸
In many, many ways it’s about physiological training.
۱۰:۳۴
A woman I know from Taiwan did great in English at school,
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she got A grades all the way through,
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went through college, A grades, went to the US
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and found she couldn’t understand what people were saying.
۱۰:۴۵
And people started asking her: “Are you deaf?”
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And she was. English deaf.
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Because we have filters in our brain that filter in
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the sounds that we are familiar with
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and they filter out the sounds of languages that we’re not.
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And if you can’t hear it, you won’t understand it,
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if you can’t understand it, you’re not going to learn it.
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So you actually have to be able to hear these sounds.
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And there are ways to do that but it’s physiological training.
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Speaking takes muscle.
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You’ve got 43 muscles in your face,
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you have to coordinate those in a way
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that you make sounds that other people will understand.
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If you’ve ever done a new sport for a couple of days,
۱۱:۳۰
and you know how your body feels? Hurts?
۱۱:۳۳
If your face is hurting, you’re doing it right.
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And the final principle is state. Psycho-physiological state.
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If you’re sad, angry, worried, upset, you’re not going to learn. Period.
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If you’re happy, relaxed, in an Alpha brain state, curious,
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you’re going to learn really quickly,
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and very specifically you need to be tolerant of ambiguity.
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If you’re one of those people who needs to understand 100 percent
۱۲:۰۰
every word you’re hearing, you will go nuts,
۱۲:۰۳
because you’ll be incredibly upset all the time, because you’re not perfect.
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If you’re comfortable with getting some, not getting some,
۱۲:۱۱
just paying attention to what you do understand,
۱۲:۱۳
you’re going to be fine, relaxed, and you’ll be learning quickly.
۱۲:۱۶
So based on those five principles, what are the seven actions that you take?
۱۲:۲۱
Number one: Listen a lot.
۱۲:۲۳
I call it brain soaking.
۱۲:۲۶
You put yourself in a context
۱۲:۲۷
where you’re hearing tons and tons and tons of a language
۱۲:۳۱
and it doesn’t matter if you understand it or not.
۱۲:۳۳
You’re listening to the rhythms, to patterns that repeat,
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you’re listening to things that stand out.
۱۲:۳۹
(Chinese) Pào nǎozi.
۱۲:۴۱
(English) So, just soak your brain in this.
۱۲:۴۳
The second action is that you get the meaning first,
۱۲:۴۶
even before you get the words.
۱۲:۴۸
You go: “Well how do I do that? I don’t know the words!”
۱۲:۵۱
Well, you understand what these different postures mean.
۱۲:۵۵
Human communication is body language in many, many ways, so much body language.
۱۳:۰۰
From body language you can understand a lot of communication,
۱۳:۰۳
therefore, you’re understanding, you’re acquiring through comprehensible input.
۱۳:۰۷
And you can also use patterns that you already know.
۱۳:۱۱
If you’re a Chinese speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese and you go to Vietnam,
۱۳:۱۶
you will understand 60 percent of what they say to you in daily conversation,
۱۳:۲۲
because Vietnamese is about 30 percent Mandarin, 30 percent Cantonese.
۱۳:۲۸
The third action: Start mixing.
۱۳:۳۱
You probably have never thought of this
۱۳:۳۳
but if you’ve got 10 verbs, 10 nouns and 10 adjectives,
۱۳:۳۶
you can say 1000 different things.
۱۳:۳۹
Language is a creative process.
۱۳:۴۳
What do babies do? OK, “me”, “bath”, “now”.
۱۳:۴۷
OK, that’s how they communicate.
۱۳:۴۹
So start mixing, get creative, have fun with it,
۱۳:۵۱
it doesn’t have to be perfect, just has to work.
۱۳:۵۵
And when you’re doing this, you focus on the core.
۱۳:۵۸
What does that mean?
۱۳:۵۹
Well, any language is high frequency content.
۱۴:۰۲
In English 1000 words covers 85 percent
۱۴:۰۶
of anything you’re ever going to say in daily communication.
۱۴:۰۹
۳۰۰۰ words gives you 98 percent
۱۴:۱۲
of anything you’re going to say in daily conversation.
۱۴:۱۴
You got 3000 words, you’re speaking the language.
۱۴:۱۷
The rest is icing on the cake.
۱۴:۲۰
And when you’re just beginning with a new language,
۱۴:۲۲
start with your tool box. Week number one,
۱۴:۲۶
in your new language you say things like:
۱۴:۲۸
“How do you say that?” “I don’t understand,”
۱۴:۳۰
“repeat that please,” “what does that mean?”
۱۴:۳۳
all in your target language.
۱۴:۳۴
You’re using it as a tool, making it useful to you,
۱۴:۳۷
it’s relevant to learn other things about the language.
۱۴:۴۱
By week two, you should be saying things like:
۱۴:۴۳
“me,” “this,” “you,” “that,” “give,” you know, “hot,”
۱۴:۴۷
simple pronouns, simple nouns, simple verbs,
۱۴:۵۱
simple adjectives, communicating like a baby.
۱۴:۵۴
And by the third or fourth week, you’re getting into “glue words.”
۱۴:۵۹
“Although,” “but,” “therefore,” these are logical transformers
۱۵:۰۳
that tie bits of a language together, allowing you to make more complex meaning.
۱۵:۰۸
At that point you’re talking.
۱۵:۱۰
And when you’re doing that, you should get yourself a language parent.
۱۵:۱۵
If you look at how children and parents interact,
۱۵:۱۸
you’ll understand what this means.
۱۵:۲۱
When a child is speaking, it’ll be using simple words, simple combinations,
۱۵:۲۴
sometimes quite strange, sometimes very strange pronunciation,
۱۵:۲۸
other people from outside the family don’t understand it.
۱۵:۳۲
But the parents do.
۱۵:۳۴
And so the kid has a safe environment, gets confidence.
۱۵:۳۹
The parents talk to the children with body language
۱۵:۴۲
and with simple language they know the child understands.
۱۵:۴۵
So you have a comprehensible input environment that’s safe,
۱۵:۴۸
we know it works; otherwise none of you would speak your mother tongue.
۱۵:۵۲
So you get yourself a language parent,
۱۵:۵۴
who’s somebody interested in you as a person
۱۵:۵۶
who will communicate with you essentially as an equal,
۱۵:۵۹
but pay attention to help you understand the message.
۱۶:۰۴
There are four rules of a language parent.
۱۶:۰۶
Spouses are not very good at this, OK?
۱۶:۰۸
But the four rules are,
۱۶:۰۹
first of all, they will work hard to understand what you mean
۱۶:۱۲
even when you’re way off beat.
۱۶:۱۵
Secondly, they will never correct your mistakes.
۱۶:۱۸
Thirdly, they will feed back their understanding of what you are saying
۱۶:۲۲
so that you can respond appropriately and get that feedback
۱۶:۲۶
and then they will use words that you know.
۱۶:۲۹
The sixth thing you have to do, is copy the face.
۱۶:۳۳
You got to get the muscles working right,
۱۶:۳۵
so you can sound in a way that people will understand you.
۱۶:۳۹
There’s a couple of things you do.
۱۶:۴۰
One is that you hear how it feels, and feel how it sounds
۱۶:۴۴
which means you have a feedback loop operating in your face,
۱۶:۴۷
but ideally if you can look at a native speaker
۱۶:۵۰
and just observe how they use their face,
۱۶:۵۲
let your unconscious mind absorb the rules,
۱۶:۵۵
then you’re going to be able to pick it up.
۱۶:۵۷
And if you can’t get a native speaker to look at, you can use stuff like this…
۱۷:۰۲
(Female voice) Sing, song, king, stung, hung.
۱۷:۱۲
(Chris Lonsdale) And the final idea here, the final action you need to take
۱۷:۱۶
is something that I call “direct connect”.
۱۷:۱۸
What does this mean? Well most people learning a second language
۱۷:۲۱
sort of take the mother tongue words and the target words and go over them
۱۷:۲۴
again and again in their mind to try and remember them. Really inefficient.
۱۷:۲۸
What you need to do is realise that
۱۷:۳۱
everything you know is an image inside your mind, it’s feelings,
۱۷:۳۴
if you talk about fire, you can smell the smoke,
۱۷:۳۶
you can hear the crackling, you can see the flames,
۱۷:۳۹
so what you do, is you go into that imagery and all of that memory
۱۷:۴۲
and you come out with another pathway. So I call it “same box, different path”.
۱۷:۴۷
You come out of that pathway and you build it over time,
۱۷:۵۰
you become more and more skilled at just connecting the new sounds
۱۷:۵۳
to those images that you already have, into that internal representation.
۱۷:۵۸
And over time you even become naturally good at that process,
۱۸:۰۱
that becomes unconscious.
۱۸:۰۳
So, there are five principles that you need to work with, seven actions,
۱۸:۰۸
if you do any of them, you’re going to improve.
۱۸:۱۰
And remember these are things under your control as the learner.
۱۸:۱۴
Do them all and you’re going to be fluent in a second language in six months.
۱۸:۱۷
Thank you.
۱۸:۱۹
(Applause)
How to learn any language in six months
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Watch on YouTube:
How to learn any language in six months | Chris Lonsdale | TEDxLingnanUniversity
Full transcript is available here (link)
Watch this video on YouTube with subtitle
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Hello.
Great.
Let us have more of these English posts
Lectures about philosophy for instance .