Why You Struggle to Learn Languages
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ม.ค. 2024
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About me:
I tried for about 10 years on and off to learn Chinese. Like most people who try to learn a language I got nowhere. I watched all the TH-cam videos of polyglots and it felt like they had something I didn't. Eventually the penny dropped and I realised anyone really can learn a new language if they have the right approach. My goal is to help others achieve their aim of learning a foreign language
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Good to see you back. Thanks for another valuable and encouraging video.
I look forward to your videos. They are some of the most inspiring for me.
Than you so much 🙏
Eyy, glad to see you back! I was just thinking about your channel a few days ago and hoping you hadn't given up 😁
Always appreciate a little positivity injection like this and I wholeheartedly agree with all your points.
Here's to another year of learning 🥂
Sorry, life got a lot busier! I'll be able to make a lot more videos this year now and looking forward to it! Thanks for all your support 😊
I sometimes listen to a Spanish speaker as I’m relaxing to sleep. When my head gets filled up I spend weeks unconsciously processing. Then when I go back to listening to his videos again it seems easier. Tiny sentences he teaches. He’s a real teacher and a native speaker. It only gets repetitive when I fully understand. Then as I listen I say the word before he does. But I’m learning Spanish because I love he language. I don’t do it thinking I’ll go find someone to talk to. I’m not interested in going to a Spanish speaking country. I’m learning it because I can even if all I do is mutter it to my cats. I’m in no hurry to learn the entire language. I don’t go to real classes any more because teachers can be impatient, move too fast, spend too much time on grammar. I learn with visual words, pictures, repetition. And when my head gets full I stop for a while while I digest it. Then I have room in my head to learn more. The only end game for me is because I can. Just knowing a little is enough just for me. It’s just something to do. I may take my last breath just knowing hello how are you I’m fine in Spanish. That’s enough for me to be able to say it, understand it, read it and write it because I can. It’s like my hobby art. I don’t sell it, I do it because I can, enjoy doing it and it’s something to do.
Finally!!!! Matt is BACK, baybeeeee! Here I am, minding my own business and having breakfast with my family when y notification tells me he uploaded a video. The family was tired of me running away to watch these in the middle of whatever event we were doing. They had a multi-month break so I don't wanna hear their complaining!
Welcome back, Matt!
Hahaha! Jeff! I'm back 😊. I was busy mostly sorting my house. A lot more to come this year. Thanks for all your support chap🙏
Fun fact: mars days are called sols, and they're just over 24 hours long, at 24:39
Also, sol is sun in Spanish and Latin. Bingo, you just learned!
I had a rough day with reading. 15min/page dropped to 30min/page and they weren't even difficult. It's always a nice reminder to trust the process. But hey, it's still time spent in the language. I just have to accept that there will be more days like this but I can also look forward knowing that today's struggle is tomorrow's fluency. Thanks for the great motivation as always.
And some pages are just going to be harder than others. I often read on my iPad and a book I thought I could read without looking things up started to describe things in detail and I was bombarded with new words some of which I looked up (the whole sentence not just the word). Once it got back to dialogue I was fine again. Interestingly yesterday I was watching a TH-camr (Ter) who speaks fast Spanish and she used one of the same words I had read multiple times in the story. It was the word for 'dome' which I thought I would never use. As soon as she said it I understood it instantly showing I had acquired it. Just keep going. If you're enjoying the story, who cares how long it takes you to read it! 🙌
Why can I understand a good bit of Japanese in regular conversations and on drama, but even after 21 conversation lessons online, i feel as if I've not improved even a little bit? It's so frustrating. I live in Japan so speaking has become an important part of learning.
I can see that being annoying. Keep going. It'll take a while for your brain to get used to all the different sounds - native speakers talking to each other and even over one another can be one of the hardest things. Keep immersing yourself in content you can largely understand - I see there are podcasts for learners of Japanese. Your brain will fill in the blanks and acquire the language that way. The more you pick up the language the more difficult the content can be. Japanese is hard (depending on your native language) so it may take you a while. For Chinese I used flashcards to get me the most basic characters before I could read graded readers. Providing you already know the sounds of the language reading is a great way to acquire vocabulary which will help you understand those words when you hear them spoken
@matt_brooks-green thanks for the encouragement. I've read a few Mangas thus far and watched some dramas, so I will just keep going and hope for the best.
Matt vs Japan has some videos on this topic - including one interview with a guy who has a degree in Japanese yet found it impossible to communicate with ‘ordinary’ Japanese people. That Matt recommended several months of deep immersion in fully natural Japanese (podcasts, etc), plus chorusing exercises to imbed the natural sounds in your head. Krashen recommends just relaxing, reading and listening, and eventually it will come naturally. The stress of one on one conversations can actually be counterproductive, your brain resists it.
Good to have you back with your videos, Matt. I think the most important thing you can do as a learner is find the material that you find interesting - this varies hugely according to language of course. Finding the Innerfrench channel made my French studying vastly easier simply because the host is very smart and engaging and I genuinely enjoy each video. Likewise, the Bitesized Japanese podcast (nothing of course to do with how cute the girl who presents it happens to be).
That's it exactly. If you're enjoying the content (and the process) it doesn't have to feel like such a slog. I'm sure that presenter is keeping you motivated to learn too 🤣
I found out about flashcards, never used them before, but now I've got my storage box always at hand. Either on the desk or the nightself. So going to bed I check out the new words and in the morning I do so again, most often I know 50% more than the day before. It doesn't take much time (I work fulltime and have got two dogs). I try to learn russian everday, even if it's just a few minutes sometimes. That's still enough to learn 50 new words a week, which will add up to about 2.600 by 2025 I hope. 😊
That's a great fact 👌
Do you think transliteration is a good method too. For example singing music where the lyrics are in English but arranged in that specific languages form.
hey, it’s always a pleasure listening to you, though I’d like to share a wee struggle. On youtube, we’re overwhelmed with thousands of methods and resources to learn languages and i’m at a point where I can’t stop watching those videos, although they constantly make me change my plans/ routine and on a whole doubt myself and what i’ve been doing, even when it’s been working great for me. What should I do :(
Thank you for checking out the video. Honestly, don't worry so much about the various methods out there. The acquisition process is the same regardless of your level. Find a way you can consistently have contact with the target language in a way that you can understand the meaning. That way you will acquire the language. That can be reading or even TH-cam in your target language. Everyone has different preferences so if someone likes doing something different, that's fine by me - I'm doing the things I enjoy and can see my abilities slowly increase over time. Worst case scenario you can watch the same type of content but in your target language. It does depend on your level of course so find content you can follow along with.
Thank you !!
I would like to say, you don’t need grammar until you can speak, so just watch videos, read, listen to natives, learn new words
Also I am learning now Norwegian, and there ton of shit with genders etc, I barely can remember something. I will just do it when I will feel that I really need it. So I just wanted to say that it’s like driving car. First time you afraid, in 1 month you can drive but still struggling and in 1 year you feel +- confident. Same with language. Fucking hell this genders so annoying
@Obsidian_Tactics your brain should tell you that you have just made 3 mistakes
How about listening to native speakers of almost any language other than English sounds like complete gibberish to me (my fault 100%, not theirs), even when I've been studying using books, videos and other audio visual language learning tools. Makes me want to give up.
Most likely whats happening is that you're not used to spoken X. French is infamous for this. And it's mainly because even the spoken French you learn is "antiquated" in most cases. I suggest putting on TH-cam, or podcasts such as Radio France (just as an example) where people speak casual or informal target language. Eventually you'll get a feel for it
Try taking it slowly at first. Find an audiobook, podcast, or youtube video about a topic that interests you with preferably a transcript. What I would recommend is to listen to the first 30 seconds or so while reading the transcript and try to pay close attention to how they are saying the words. If you are at a level where you can understand the written transcript, that's great. If not, try to look up enough words of that first 30 seconds that you can understand it when reading along. I would recommend repeating this a few times before moving to the next section of audio until you feel comfortable with understanding what is said. Then, listen to those 30 seconds without the transcript and you should be able to understand much more. After that, move on to the next short segment of whatever you are listening to. It doesn't really matter that it takes a lot longer to do this than just listening normally because you are understanding a lot more this way and training your brain to recognize the speech patterns. When you have finished the entire audiobook, podcast, etc., I would recommend moving on to another, but keeping the audio saved and listening to it whenever you are driving or really anytime you can. Even if you are not fully paying attention to it at this point, the repetition will help you to improve and I can guarantee that after 10 or 20 times of passively listening to it, you will find that you will be able to understand almost all of it with ease. This is what I have been doing to study German, and with Spanish it has brought me to a level where I can just about understand anything the first time I listen to it.
Just keep going - your brain can pick up the language. Have you tried crosstalk? I loved using it for Spanish but you can use it with any language
@@matt_brooks-green Sorry, what is "crosstalk?"
@@ReidVV I did a video on it a while back th-cam.com/video/IgY7X3M_Ijg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=EkAoVTHvpwXsh1ww